Odd lots

During the stripping of the roof skin off the Cougar, I also discovered a few pieces that were a bit different than the ones on my Torino that I wanted to use. I snagged the larger vacuum canister that was on top of the drivers side wheel well and also the one mounted to the back portion of the wheel well under the fender. I cut a section out of the upper portion of the driver's side fender to use as material to form a patch panel for the rust hole in the lower section of my passenger side front fender and that's how I gained access to the "hidden" canister.































While I had my arm inside the fender, I noticed that the Cougar had a hard plastic rear fender cap to seal the backside of the fender area at the door hinge post. Once I had the canister out of the way, I dropped my trouble light into the opening to get a better look at the plastic piece. It looked like it was in usable condition, so I removed the attaching hardware and pulled it out to see if it would fit on the backside of the Torino fender. While it didn't follow the contour of the Torino fender exactly, it did line up with the holes and locator tab opening already stamped into the fender structure. I installed it loosely to confirm it would work and then I cut a matching hole in the upper portion of the passenger fender so I could remove that side as well. Here are a few shots of the rigid plastic fender seal and insulation.

Until next installment,

ZEBRA 3 OUT

Popping the top

After learning how to remove a roof skin by stripping the Cougar, I set about popping the top on the Torino. With all my tools at the ready, I was able to get the skin off the 2M8O in a little over 4 hours, working alone. The following shots show the progress and the bare structure once the skin was set off.






























































































































































































































































The last couple shots show the additional Cougar roof brace set in position. The Cougar's longitudal center brace will also be used to replace my damaged piece.

Stay tuned...MORE TO COME....

ZEBRA 3 OUT

Skinnin da Cat

As you may remember, my roof had sustained some damage at some point during the life of my car and had been Bondoed over. I discovered all the damage when I stripped the interior and paint from the car and I began a search for a suitable donor. That turned out to be a '76 Cougar XR7 that was in the junkyard of a friend of my best friend. I tried to buy the entire car but they wouldn't part with it so I arranged for them to deliver the carcus to the dealership so I could take my time and pull the skin and inner structure without resorting to a torch or sawzall.

After drilling out what seemed to be a thousand spot welds (more like a hundred... give or take) I was able to lift the roof skin off the Cougar. I also noticed the Cougar had a extra roof brace just aft of the shoulder belt mount, so I also removed that brace along with the inner quarter panel reinforcement. The quarter panel inner structure is a bit different than the Torino's, but I think I can make it work.

Here are some pics of skinnin' da cat....
































































































































































































































































The last three pics are of the Cougar and Torino roof braces. Next installment I'll pull the roof off the Torino. Until then....

ZEBRA 3 OUT

New Priority

Hey gang, been busy with a NEW PRIORITY.... I have met Miss Right, so the Torino has kinda taken a back seat for a while. Here is the new love of my life....





















She's even supportive of my hobby but I want to be with her when I have free time, however I am making SOME progress. See my next posting.

ZEBRA 3 OUT

Tilt column conversion

I'm a tall fella... 6'4", so I can relate to needing every extra inch of seat travel, but the Gran Troino was never a car I had any problems with not having enough seat adjustment. My original S&H LE was a bench seat, fixed column car with no frills what so ever... the only option on the car other than the options required for the 022 package was AC. That was fine back in the day of my youth, but I like more ammenities today, so when I undertook this project, one of the objectives I had was to option the car like I would if I were somehow transported back to a Ford showroom in 1975 or 76.

My current project Torino wasn't quite a barren as my LE, but neither was it optioned up to my desires which meant I would have to locate the necessary option packages to bring it up to my current standards as well as replicating the hero cars from the TV show (see my blog for more on this subject). However one option I wanted that Ford failed to offer in the Torino was a tilt column with a floor shift. Seems it was offered in her Mercury cousins and more upscale siblings, but for some strange reason was missing from the '76 Torino option check-list. Since it was available in the Montego and Cougar (I have seen and bid on several of these on eBay without success) I decided to see if it were possible to create my own.

The first order of business was to purchase a column shift tilt unit and another floor shift fixed column from BlueOval. I asked John while I was ordering the units if it were possible to retrofit/modify a column shift tilt unit into a floor shift model, but he said they had been unsuccessful doing so.

Once they were received, I completely disassembled them to determine how they were different. What I discovered was that by simply removing the shift tube I was 90% there!
















I reassembled the tilt column (minus the shift tube) to see where I was and found the shift tube also performed another function on the the fixed column... it was also the key interlock which prevented you from turning off the key and locking the steering wheel until you were absolutely ready to. At first I thought I would simply fashion a filler collar to finish out the column and forget about the key interlock, but the more I thought about it the more my anal nature kicked in, so my next objective was to purchase a floor shift tilt column to pull apart and see how the key interlock worked on it.

As luck would have it, there was a floor shift tilt unit on eBay from an mid 80's F150, so I bid and won it. When it arrived, I immediately pulled it apart and found that by drilling and tapping a hole that was "marked" on my Torino unit and adding 5 simple pieces from the truck unit, I was done!































The pieces from the F150 included the column filler collar with interlock opening, the interlock "finger", the interlock pivot shaft, the return spring and the e-ring retainer. Pulled my tilt column back apart, drilled and tapped the hole, installed the pivot, spring and retainer and reassemble placing the collar in position as I went and VILOA... I had my very own floor shift tilt column!

So I broke it down one last time, cleaned, painted and lubed everything up then reassembled it for the final time. She's now all wrapped safely in bubble wrap until it time for final installation in the car.












































































Well that's it for this installment. Until next time........

ZEBRA 3 OUT