1967 Mercury Cougar XR7 - Project Green Kitty

[SeanP]

Ok! New starter was purchased and installed. It's a remanufactured unit from my local parts store. So far it's working great.

I'll keep and rebuild the old one to have on hand as a spare, and hopefully learn a new skill!

I took the car out with my daughter on Saturday morning and we cruised around for an hour or two, with stops along the way for a cars and coffee event and to pick up some meat from the butcher that was located approximately halfway between the cars and coffee and my house. All in all a the car did great! Still have some minor driveline vibration on deceleration and at about 70ish mph, but 1. I don't typically drive that fast anyway and 2. I have new u-joints to install and will do so at some point. Also, the front suspension needs a bit of an overhaul from general wear over time, again, I have the parts for this already, just need time and tools.

What I wasn't prepared for was the car not running right the next day. I had planned on taking the car to a car show, and my son and I went to get some gas and the car was stumbling, had no acceleration, and generally ran like total dog poo. A stark contrast to the previous day's performance.

I readjusted the timing and re-set the idle mix and idle speed. Nothing worked. I checked the plugs, the first two on each bank had massive amounts of carbon build up, which I was used to from all the hard starts flooding my cylinders with gas. I hadn't checked them since and I had installed the new starter, so figured the deposits were from before the new starter was installed. I cleaned all the plugs off and that only seems to have made things slightly worse.

Went through the steps again for timing (she likes a lot of advance) and idle mix/speed.... basically everything I had done before that made things better. Nothing.

A bit of a head scratcher. I'm going to check my fuel filter and see if some sediment may have built up from my old tank. Also going to take the carb off and do all of the checks I should have done before installing it.

Anyone think of anything else I should check?

[Arquemann]

Vacuum leak or starving for fuel. Does it act smell rich? Could be a blown power valve.

[SeanP]

Vacuum leak or starving for fuel. Does it act smell rich? Could be a blown power valve.

Thanks for the input!

The power valve and vacuum leak we're on my radar - was more leaning towards power valve because it does run a bit rich and the idle is pretty good. I expect if I had a vacuum leak it would give me lots of problems there too. I'll check it anyway though since I know the base mating on my carb doesn't have the greatest reputation. That would be the first place it would probably go!

[p71towny]

Stock fuel pump? Sounds like a fuel issue. I’d update to an electric pump and snag a block off plate from any newer ford.

[SeanP]

Stock fuel pump? Sounds like a fuel issue. I’d update to an electric pump and snag a block off plate from any newer ford.

The fuel pump is stock, I believe. I haven't had any fuel issues before, but I'll keep this plan in my back pocket though.

Seems I now have a very serious vacuum leak somewhere. My idle is very high (approx 2k-3k rpm). Going to swap an old Ford 4300 on it to see if it makes a difference... that way I can at least determine if it's the carb or not.

[jaywish]

maybe this has been discussed, EFI?

[SeanP]

maybe this has been discussed, EFI?

NEVER!! LOL actually, will consider if/when the engine goes on her. I have a line on a few HO/AOD setups, which would potentially work well with EFI.

I think the Summit Carburetor was just not happy with the car. I put a new filter on the Autolite 4300 I got from my father-in-law and it runs great (which is amazing because it's been just sitting on a shelf for almost 10 years - came off a 1968 4 bbl 302 Cougar that he converted to EFI... which, yeah, further supports Jaywish's suggestion). Took it to work yesterday and drove well. Still needs to warm up before the C4 will engage into drive. Probably needs a rebuild in the next little while... or get a good core and rebuild that for a swap.

My heart split in half on the drive home though. Noticed that my oil pressure gauge was reading 0. Never really put my mind to my gauges before, so did some research on how they work and where/how they're installed. Looked under the hood and lo-and-behold the wire had come off the sending unit. Mystery solved!

[SeanP]

The wire keeps falling off of my oil pressure sending unit. Going to crimp the slide connecter a little bit to tighten it up and see if that helps things.

Carb was running a bit rich, so leaned it out a little bit yesterday too. Seems to have done some good.

Transmission still needs to get warm before it will decide to go into drive. I'm going to change the filter and put new fluid in to see if that helps things.

Also have a new signal switch coming in, so I get to take my steering wheel apart! Woot!!

[SeanP]

Developed a bit of an oil leak. Looks to either be the oil pan or the front crank seal. Hoping for the former vs the latter. Don't want to have to take the timing cover off if I can avoid it. Because if that's happening I'm doing a new timing chain set, oil pickup, pump, seals, gaskets and everything I can while I'm in there. And given that one of the upper bolt threads for the water pump is stripped out of the timing cover, I'd probably buy a new cover too. And I don't exactly have the $$$ for all of that right now.

So fingers crossed its just the pan!

[SeanP]

I was able to tighten the pan on Saturday morning. Had a few loose bolts, especially at the rear hump and passenger side... which is a bit annoying because I have to take my starter off to access two of the bolts.

That seems to have reduced my oil leak significantly (just a couple of small spots under the car now), but suspect the only real fix will be to replace the gasket. At least the occasional oil burn smell of leaking drips being sprayed onto my headers has gone away.

I also installed a new signal switch in the steering wheel. It's interesting to see some of the quality differences between newer and older parts. New stuff definitely has some quality reduction! It seems to be working really well though, so hopefully that will last for a little while at least.

[SeanP]

Leak came back with a vengeance! Replacing oil pain gasket and rear main seal. Pulled the pan (had to remove cross member bar and disconnect 75% of my front sway bar, but pan came down with very little drama from there. Gasket seems to have been entirely out of gasket maker except for the front and rear humps. Came off easily, but have some concern about the risks of this getting into my engine. Sigh.

Anyway, moved on to removing the old rear main seal, since I was in there, it seemed like a good time to tackle it (and while I didn't have any direct evidence that it was leaking since the oil in and around that area may have been blown in there while driving with a leaky oil pan, I also didn't have any evidence that it wasn't leaking).

Also, rear main seal is 2 piece rope style. Comes out of the cap easy. Comes out of the top not at all. I fought it for 5 hours and made very little progress except packing it deep on the passenger side as I tried to drive it out (Plan A) and chewing out about a half inch of it on the driver's side with a small screw and a pair of vice grips (Plan B). Turning the crank by hand in the direction I'm pulling helps not at all.

I'm soaking it with WD40 and have ordered a 'sneaky pete' tool to try to get it out (Plan C).

If that doesn't work, I'm going to pack more rope seal into spaces I've created and call it band-aided (Plan D). If it drips a bit here or there, so be it. I can address this in a more fulsome manner down the road during a rebuild. Got this idea from some old hot rodders and, while it seems like a junky strategy, it should work 'ok' as a rope seal is a pack seal and this will at least create a continuous loop of material, albeit in segments. Not ideal, but should hold off significant leaking for the next few years.

The lesson I learned is to never remove the rear main cap.

[jaywish]

I have used the sneaky pete with success.

[SeanP]

I have used the sneaky pete with success.

Good to know! Thanks for sharing that. Honestly wasnt sure as i dont know anyo e who has used it. Should arrive on Friday and I'm going to give it a try on Saturday and will report back.

[jaywish]

When I bought my old 89 Colony Park I changed the rear seal with that.

[SeanP]

Well, the sneaky pete was somewhat successful in that it was able to extract portions of the seal. I still have about half of it stuck in the block. And that would be the top half. I have about an inch and a half I was able to pull out from the driver's side and about an inch from the passenger side (wasn't working on one side so I tried the other).

Before I try to band-aid this by cramming more pieces of rope seal, I'm going to fashion a tool out of 3/16 rod. I will bend it into the same shape as the seal and try to drive it out by tapping on the one side of the tool with a hammer. Hopefully this will work!