1975 Maverick - Ldo

This is a '75 with the blue LDO trim option. Car came with a transplanted 200 from some other donor. Some minor rust in some places, but the seats and door panels are in fair shape considering the heat and sun down here. The car was originally polar white, but had a rattle can paint job to turn it blue. Car has the 8" rear end and is 5 bolt wheels, power disk brakes up front.

Projects:
- Installed a Unisteer power rack and pinion system
- Rebuilt and installed a 5.0l HO EFI engine a '92 cougar XR7 donor
-Staying with the C4 for now, but have the AOD from the cougar if I get to it.
-Repaint to Polar white - Maybe
-Change to a grabber hood (on hand, bought locally)
-Seat belts have been re-webbed
-All new weather stripping and seals
-New headliner
-Figure out how to get a good looking dash pad
-New wheels, not even sure what these came off of, but OK during rebuild.

December 2022: Been a quite a while since I put an update in my garage. Been working pretty hard on it the last couple months.

Started the body work this winter with the plan to get paint done in the spring. Taking one section at a time and cleaning up dents and repairing some minor rust issues. The rear of both rockers were bent up from someone jacking on it. Had to cut some openings in the area behind the rear seat panels and was able to hammer it back into shape pretty close to original. Not perfect, but so much better than it was.

Bought some New Vintage USA (NVU)~ Performance Series 2 Gauges. Added a Tech article on installing those in the cluster. Still have to update the tech article as I took some input from responses to that and the gauges are installed in the cluster. As you can see from the pic of the wiring, its a mess with the original and aftermarket wiring from the engine control. One thing I didn't realize was that the little buttons to control the digital display are separate, but they will look fine that way I put them in. Here is the thread on the gauges:

http://mmb.maverick.to/resources/after-market-gauges.270/

Mounted some 1998 explorer seats on the LDO tracks and got them mocked in. Widened the holes in the floor pan 1/2" to move the spacing out to 14" as the original was 13". Need to get some more robust spacers for the drivers side, but the passenger side is done. These are a bit narrower than the LDO seats so hopefully that allows some extra room for a center console. That will be a later winter project after I get the shifter replaced with the one from the donor, see note about the AOD install.

Started recoloring the interior parts including kick panels, rear side panels, lower dash section and all the rest of the plastic stuff. Going with a satin black. Not sure I'll go all black on the dash. May do part of it and then use body color on the top.

Pulled the vinyl covers off the door panels and will make new backers. The covers are in good shape so hopefully I can just recolor those and put them on some fresh hardboard panels. Fortunately one of the backers was in good enough shape to use a pattern.

Mechanically, it was pretty complete, but decided to put an AOD in it I was saving for another project. This tranny came from the same donor as the motor so it has the built in accommodation for the TV cable. Bought the AOD cross member so hopefully that fits as I've moved the engine forward a bit to accommodate the AC compressor conflicting with the shock tower. Will use the floor shifter from the donor as that is set up for control of the AOD and uses a cable to shift.

Relocated the battery to the trunk. Amazing that the under hood battery tray fits great on the left side. Added the relays for the fuel pump back there as well. Cleaned up and used bed liner in the trunk area to keep stuff from sliding around. Still have to put the wiring cover back on as I had that all out to coat the trunk.

Note I put pics in the discussion thread.