Once again I am doing many tasks at once. Some I am doing well, and some I am struggling a bit. I’ll start with the latest thing I tackled and work my way backwards. I need to order rims and tires before the shipping costs skyrocket even higher than they are now. I have a set of Ford rims that would have come on 69 Mustangs and Fairlanes and Torinos and even some Cougars. I restored the painted rims last year for a different project that has taken a back seat this year to this Cougar. These rims have new BF Goodrich raised white lettering tires on it. They are 14 ” wheels with center caps and trim rings. They look fine…..but I originally pictured this car in 15″ Magnum 500 wheels with the blue Cougar center caps. Here is what I am doing poorly at. I can’t seem to pull the trigger and order them because the price of these have increased by $700 since the last time I ordered them five years ago. Not only that the BF Goodrich tires that so many muscle cars are adorned with have gone up $100 a tire since last fall. I could just use the 14″ that I have ready to be put on a vehicle. I took two 15 x 8 wheels off one of my other cars and fit it on the back of the Cougar to see if they fit the wheel wells OK. I am going with a 8 ” wide rim instead of the factory 6″ wheel and moving up to a 15″ wide rim for more bling. The tires to go on the back are 275/60/R15. It is about as wide as I have gone without having to modify the wheel tub to fit wider tires on the rear. I like the stance of this setup and knew that I would so this coming week I will order them. As for the tires, I am likely going with Cooper Cobra tires since they are $60 per tire cheaper than the ridiculous cost of the BF Goodrich tires. There, now that I have written it there is no backing out now! Check out the gallery below for the look that I want to achieve. These on the back are polished aluminum but I will go with chrome for this set that I buy.
Also in the gallery are fender photos as well as a marker light rebuild from that fender. The fender had broken metal on the inner fencer lip where the bolts are to hold the fender down to the upper apron. The apron had rusted (which I repaired earlier with welded metal pieces) and the rust lifted the metal of the fender so much that it bowed up the inner fencer and cracked. I had to cut out sections and weld sections in. I did my welding from the underside so that the seen surface could be easily shaped to be painted. There were two sections that had to be cut out. The marker light was removed and the metal bracket that holds the light to the fender was sandblasted, primed and painted. The reflective surface was polished and the nuts on the back were wire wheeled and clear coated. The area where the reflector plastic is surrounded was given a fresh coat of grey paint and the chrome surrounding the outline of that was polished. The inner rusty crusties on the fender were wire wheeled off and rust inverter was applied. When this was dry I sprayed two coats of rocker coating from an aerosol can to cover with a hard black coating.
I also tackled the bottom of the quarter panel on the passenger side by cutting out a section of poor metal. I ordered two trunk drop offs, one for each side as these are usually rusty from many years of sitting. The opened section now is easier to see what has to be done to form a new piece to weld into place. This job will be done in sections as there are a few pieces that need to be formed and fitted before the welding commences.
