72 Mercury Comet GT in Germany

Ouch - I hate to see that cowl vent. But it sounds like you will fix it!

 

I like that opel GT in the background. I always wanted one of those with a smallblock in it.

Your comet really isn't in that bad a shape. Yeah, a lot of the same issues we are all having to deal with, but salvageable.

 

That looks like a 70s Camaro shifter if I am remembering them correctly.

 

ok, the interior is gone. the exterior as well. today we took the trans and engine out. as usual, some impressions of today's work:




more pics on my site:
http://www.72comet.de/gt/index.php?id=24

 

Looks like it was a factory floor shift car (it has the hump) but for whatever reason, they swapped the shifter??? Nice work!!

 

it might have been the fact that they swapped transmissions and couldn't get the old linkage to work - the current trans doesn't have the correct lever.

but i'm slowly getting all parts together. i made some decent scores on ebay, at least i think i made a bargain.
i got a consolette (without clock) for 50 and a pair of racing mirrors (with a working remote knob) for 75

i think i'll take friday off from work so i can work on the car. i'll start to remove the old paint completely so the rust repairs and the welding can finally begin!

 

Nice scores on the eBay parts.

If they swapped trannys and the donor car was column shift, the rod with the shift arm would be reversed. I believe that a floor shift rod and arm are a different piece. The tranny needs to be taken apart a bit internally to change it.

edit ... I just reviewed a PM that I had with Paul S here on the board ... resident transmission guru.

He stated in that message that column shift rods and floor shift rods were different pieces from the factory, but a column shift rod can be used if flipped. He also advised me to make a shift rod out of threaded rod, since my combo is binding going into Park. Start with the trans and shifter in Drive and base your dimensions off of that. Since it is threaded rod, some adjustments can be made to zero it in.

 

here's a pic of the tranny:

the shift lever seems to be one sided only. from what i've seen on the board, i need a two sided one. but the tranny will be taken apart completely as well - so i'll address this issue later!

 

Flipping the lever only works with some of the shifters. With others the lever is too close to a direct push through the centerline to get it to move out of Park. The angles are all wrong to make the shifter detents line up with the transmission detents. You can almost always make a cable shifter work but the manual shifters are not as flexible.

 

Paul, you wouldn't have an extra lever you could sell to me? I'll try to take a better picture of what i have on friday.

 

No, I don't have any extra levers but I am always looking for them.

 

progress, progress, progress...
started removing paint today. i discovered it's only four layers!
first i started scraping it off manually in the corners. but for tomorrow i try to remove the big areas chemically.
i also found a bad spot on the driver's side. looks like the car has been severly hit - and badly repaired. removed bondo about an inch thick.
quarter panel skin is already ordered - are the rocker panels from autokrafters any good?

here's the pics:





more pics here:
http://www.72comet.de/gt/index.php?id=25

tomorrow i'll try to get rid of more paint and maybe open the cowl vent panel!

 

Wow, not only was it four colors, but four COMPLETELY DIFFERENT colors! I'm looking forward to watching this project.

 

i attacked the cowl vent panel today. during the process of drilling out the spot welds - a work i'm terrible at - i was cursing myself quite a lot. turned out that the thing can be done in two hours time - even by a first-timer like me.

after grinding the whole area down with a wire wheel, it doesn't seem terribly bad:









http://www.72comet.de/gt/index.php?id=26

 

wow, you are not wasting anytime. that's some fine work.