[mmc757]

I thought I would make a thread for my other car since I don't have much to say about my two dead Cougars right now. I promise not to prattle on about it, just some tidbits from time to time. I still love and miss my Cougars, they are a very different vehicle.

I'll start with an engine bay photo. I just installed the battery cover this weekend. It uses those little snap on fasteners right on top of the battery hold down studs so its super simple. I would try to fabricate something similar in Foundracer if the battery were still in the engine bay.
The FSTB is just dipped, not permanent although the dip has been holding up just fine for several months now. I'm toying around with using green highlights on this car to compliment Foundracer but we shall see how far I actually go with it. I've also replaced the factory accordion tube with a silicon tube, and deleted a "sound tube" that piped intake noise to the passenger compartment. That tube was super ugly and dumb. Next priority for the engine bay I think will be the washer fluid reservoir. I'll either get a second tank and paint it, or fabricate a cover for this one. I don't want to do any permanent modifications to this car.

The biggest investment I've made outside of already buying two sets of tires is a hidden hitch. When the adapter is removed, this hitch is totally invisible, hidden behind the bumper. The adapter slides in vertically. Its pretty slick and the concept would be easily reproducible on a Cougar.
Here's a stock photo that shows the design:

Here's mine installed with a 4" lift / 1 1/4"->2" adapter and a cargo rack installed. This is super handy.

The wheels in that photo are from an older generation, I bought them to use as my winter beaters but I could see using them full time potentially. TBD

That's all for now. Hoping for some Cougar news soon.

 

[mmc757]

A couple weeks ago I did an oil change myself the first time on this car. I've been using K&N HP oil filters for as long as I can remember so I reflexively bought a K&N for this car.
Welp; This car has an aluminum belly pan that needs to be removed to change the oil. The good news is that except for removing the belly pan, the filter is super easy to reach and change so there's no real need for the K&N...I'll just use M1 in the future. The bad news is that when I went to put the pan back on again, the nut on the end of the oil filter was touching the belly pan. After weighing the pros and cons of the situation, I elected to live with it and I tightened the bolts down and went on my way with a god-awful rattle. Living in a hotel most of the time, I had to live with it for about two weeks.
This weekend, I visited home for a few days so I was able to address it. I elected to install some longer bolts and spacers on the belly pan in order to get a gap rather than doing an early oil change. I'll just restore it to normal next oil change.

The cool part of this story, is that I used it as an excuse to buy some Rhino Ramps. After a single use, I can already see that this is going to be one of the best investments ever. I sort of held them up to the Cougar nose and it looks like they should work for that too! I used to have some metal ramps that were kinda sketchy, and also didn't fit under the nose of the Cougar but these are much nicer.

 

[mmc757]

One of my regrets with my Zn is that I didn't take steps to protect the contact surfaces from normal wear and tear. We all know about the embroidered seats problem...I probably couldn't have prevented that. Ditto with the fauxluminum HVAC panel. But I wish I had protected my embroidered mats, my shift knob, my carpet, and my steering wheel better.
For my new car, all weather mats were my first investment. A good steering wheel wrap wasn't far behind, and now I've got a new shift knob.
The knob itself is delrin so it's not torture in the winter, and I commissioned my dad to make the aluminum skirt on the lathe. Pretty happy with the final result.

 

[mmc757]

I had to replace a side view mirror because my car is invisible to other drivers and a truck tried to kill me a while back. Luckily only the mirror was damaged. Working on the road, I really didn't have time to deal with insurance fixing it so I did it myself. I think his insurance will probably send me a check but TBD.

Anyway...I learned a lot in replacing the mirror.
Long story short, after disconnecting the window switches, there was a procedure I didn't know about that I had to follow to reprogram the window. The manual sort of hints at it but the wording is misleading, and youtube mirror replacement videos didn't say anything about it either.

So I wasted probably two hours trying to figure out why I couldn't get my window to work right when all I needed to do was hold it down for ten seconds, then hold it up for ten seconds.

Oh well. Now I know. I took my door apart and put it together so many times I could probably replace a window, a mirror, or a speaker in under 20 minutes now.

Unnecessary electronics in cars are stupid.

In other news, I hadn't planned on buying a header for this car, but I stumbled across a stainless long tube header on closeout for $217 with free shipping so what was I supposed to do? I'll probably wait until my warranty is used up before I install it, but it's still an exciting find.

The same place also had this cool Cougar tool bag so I've got that coming too!

 

[B3NN3TT]

Yeah the power window re-learn procedure is pretty ubiquitous. I know the Mustang is similar - but that doesn't relate to the mirror function that I've ever seen! Sucks about the damage, but luckily that was all that was hurt.

 

[mmc757]

The relationship was just that I had to unplug everything to take the door apart. Thats why it was so frustrating. These cars have one of the little triangle windows at the front of the door, and I had to remove that to get to the mirror so I thought I was screwing up the alignment between the fixed window and the moving one.
The other part that was throwing me off was that the window worked fine when I held up the door card and plugged it in to test, but then when I finished putting the door together, it didn't.
Long story short, it works when only the window connector is plugged in, but not when the locks connector is plugged in. It took me a while to discover that relationship, then a while longer to make sense of it.

 

[02cougarxr]

ooh, what's the source on that toolbag? Nice way to package some cleaners and such in the trunk.

 

[mmc757]

ooh, what's the source on that toolbag? Nice way to package some cleaners and such in the trunk.

I got it here but it looks like its available from other sources too.

 

[mmc757]

Forgot to get pictures but both the header and the tool bag arrived this weekend. Really fast shipping!
The tool bag quality is middle of the road. I wouldn't want to put a ton of weight into it, but a basic road-tools kit should be fine. It plenty big enough for a basic kit including nice sized breaker bar.

It will probably be a couple years before I install the header unless I just get tired of waiting. I don't want to risk any warranty blowback, but at the same time my confidence level in not actually needing the warranty is pretty high so I'm a little conflicted.

Also conflicted about coating. I suppose I should have it coated, and also get some kind of heat shield for it, but it seems a shame to cover up a stainless header that's actually visible in the engine bay. With the Cougars it doesn't matter because you can't see them anyway. Here's the sales image. It looks like this;

Everything down to the first bend in the tubes would be readily visible if not covered up.

 

[wadespencer99]

Is the window relearning because of no window frame on the door?

 

[mmc757]

That makes sense I suppose.
This car also has a weird little feature that cracks the window open when the door opens or when operating the roof, then shuts it again after the door is shut (but not the roof).
So I suppose it makes sense that it needs to know where it is in the cycle, it just seems like something that could be done in a simpler manner.