Tex-cat restoration

Just a wild guess, Norway ??

Just an updated picture…

Looking very good!!!

You guys sure don’t waste time. It’s coming along very nicely.

If I send you Mine,… :think:

Yeah no kidding. You have a crew of 5 working with you?

The project has been slowing down a bit lately as I have had shoulder surgery and really should not do much. That’s not easy, so I am sneaking into my garage now and then telling my “crew” what to do and how to do it :slight_smile:

First of all, we had all the bolts and nuts and a little more at the plating shop to have them restored before we started to re assemble the front and rear suspension. it is a lot more fun to work on a car when these are looking like brand new.

Here is the rear axle back in place. We decided to put on a set of new brake lines, otherwise everything is just cleaned and painted.

Most of the front suspension and steering is also back in place with new strut rod bushings, new stabilizer bushings and all four tie rods have been replaced.

Nice!!! That is going to be a sharp car.

Amazing what cleaning the carpet can lead into…

Here are a couple of pictures I have that will also show what the car will look like.
Gry, very nice work!

Thanks for posting those pictures. It is nice to see other cars with the same color but with a few details done different than we have planned for Tex-cat.

Our goal was to get the transmission and engine block installed before Christmas, and we made it just in time. Since the original engine mounts were broken we had a set of reproductions ordered from Mustangs Unlimited. Maybe it is just my usual bad luck, but man we struggled to make those fit. I sometimes wonder if they have any quality control on the parts they sell at all. Oh well, I adjusted them to fit properly with a good sledgehammer and a file.
Usually I fully assemble the engine before I have it installed, but in this case as we had the cylinder heads shipped the slow way in a container to Norway, and the container is supposed to be here sometimes in January, so the rest of the engine will be put together then. The container also contains a rust free hood from Arizona, so painting of the car will have to wait until we have all the body parts ready. That means there will be a pause in the work until the container is here. (That means I am going to Thailand on a vacation in January :slight_smile: )

Man that is going to look nice. Really makes me miss the original Ragcat. She was 2000 something Viper Yellow w/black top/interior. I love yellow!!

It’s looking really good!
Maybe you had so much trouble with your motor mounts because the convertible motor mounts are no longer available and the available hard top mounts are not the same. (Or is that just a problem for the Windsor engines?)

Well, according to Mustangs Unlimited web site these are correct convertible motor mounts with a unique parts number different than the lower mounts for the coupe. The old ones were broken off in the rubber so I could not compare them 100%, but to me they looked to have correct hight. Also they had “Made in USA” stamped on them so they are not Chinese reproductions. Maybe it was just me and my bad luck again and that I ended up with a set that had a manufacturer flaw. Who knows. BTW, they are the same as the Windsor motor mounts.

I told that we would keep our hands off the car until we had more parts. Well, we had a lot of bad weather here not suited for moving the car to my brothers garage lately, and it is hard to just look at it doing nothing so we got a few more things done the last couple of days. We got the gas tank and fuel lines installed, rear brakes are back on it including new parking brake cables, we got the brake booster and master cylinder back in the car and also installed the restored A/C and heater box. Most everything on this car is going smooth and quick, so this is a fun car to work on.

Yesterday we finally had the cat moved to my brothers place.

Now , there is one part I have found that we really need. Maybe someone here can help? The bolt on the center link going into the idler arm had been replaced with a non correct bolt that is just a little too small. As a result there is a little play in the idler arm and I really need the correct bolt for it. These bolts are pressed into the center drag link, and not easy to find without buying the complete unit. I would prefer to just get the bolt shipped as shipping the whole link to Norway would be somewhat expensive. So if someone has a bent center drag link, or even a good one and can get the bolt pressed out of it and shipped to me, please let me know . Thanks.

I have heard on another thread some time ago that the motor mounts were different between the convertible and the coup, does it really make a difference? Why couldn’t the coup mounts be used on the vert?

To be honest, I don’t have the slightest idea of why they used different motor mounts for the different body styles. What I noticed on my brothers car is that it looked like the transmission bracket is attached a little higher on the cross member that than I have seen them on the coupes. Could it be to make the engine and transmission clear the extra support plate under the car? I really don’t know. Maybe someone else do?

Time flies and very little have been done to the Cougar lately as we ahve been waiting for the new hood to arrive to continue the restoration. The new hood was supposed to be dent free, which unfortunately was not entirely correct. The hood had been hit in the front and the nose was badly bent. To make sure everything would fit properly I had to order a new reproduction grille and a lower hood nose piece from WCCC so I could see if the grille would fit as it should. It was surprisingly hard to get it right as these hoods are incredible stiff and has double layers steel, but it seems like I finally got it where I wanted. By the way, the reproduction grille is a really nice piece :slight_smile:

My brother also wanted an Eliminator scoop on the car so I pulled one out of my closet and drilled the holes. I think there is no other single part you can add to a Cougar that brings this much attitude to the car as these hood scoops :slight_smile:

The box with the cylinder heads, intake and exhaust manifolds also has arrived. Unfortunately the seller of the parts had thrown all the parts in the same box without anything to protect them from scrubbing and denting on each other. As a result the rebuilt cylinder heads had bent valves, cracked valve guides and the aluminum intake was trash. The cylinder heads are right now at a machine shop here in Norway where they are trying to save them, so we are crossing our fingers and hoping for the best.

BTW, I am still in need of the idler arm bolt for the center link or a complete center link… :whistle:

It’s been some time since my last update on this one and today the car went in to be painted. Hopefully it is back here soon and I will post some updated pictures when it is. Also Mr Wellington (that’s the 68 in the background on the picture from my last post is back from paint shop so it will be a busy winter putting these two cats back together.

Wow, you sure are busy, working on all three cars, your “G” and the other two. Keep up the great work, you do very nice work, I must say and the amount of bad parts you have had come your way when expecting good one’s, hats off to you for not quitting.