Ok, this web page might suck, but I'd have to say the content is worth it! :)
The car is a 1978 Mercury Cougar XR7. I bought it in August 1995, and I'm the second owner (I have the original bill of sale for $7221.60. I paid $2500). The car was extremely clean, even for only having ~72k miles on the ticker. Probably due to the fact that Michigan uses sand instead of salt on their roads.
After driving the car for about a year, the engine spun a bearing. At least thats what it sounded like, but it didn't really look like it when I tore it down. I had been planing on rebuilding the engine anyway, so no big deal. It has the same block right now, with a bigger cam and some Trick Flow 'Twisted Wedge' heads. The heads are great... one of these days I'll even replace the OEM 2 barrel carb setup with some real induction and find out what they'll really do! The engine now has Keith Black hypereutectic slugs that give it a 10.5:1 compression ratio. No, the engine doesn't like 87 octane. ;)
o Have the rear end redone. Add posi, ditch the 2.71 gear for something realistic, hopefully switch to rear discs.
o Beef up the front discs.
o Upgrade the exhaust system. I currently have dual cats into
a single muffler, with crappy OEM headers. The headers are
definitely going, the cats probably are, and I'd like to run
true dual with a crossover. Maybe even stainless. :) Expected
cost: $1-2k.
Update: Done! I spent $1400 and got a full dual exhaust, 2",
ceramic headers, balance tube, hi-po cats and mufflers.
o Intake and Spark. Currently, both are OEM, and are woefully
inadequate for the engine. I'd like to go to a multi-port EFI
system, like what
Edelbrock
offers for Chevys. If you know of a
I took these pictures the day I got the car back from the body shop (Turner Autobody, 414-694-2600). Definitely worth the $4,536.50 IMHO.
Pic #1 Pic #2 Pic #3 Pic #4 Pic #5
There's a few other people who have sent me emails about their cars. You can read about them here.
