72 Mercury Comet GT in Germany

trimmed the wheel housing trim, no more rubbing.

nearly lost my clutch, though. the z-bar bolt was coming loose. any idea how to prevent this? i'm thinking of securing the bolt with an additional nylon nut from underneath...

 

thanks to John Holden, I was able to finish my consolette. i had the console itself as well as the clock, but the inner metal frame was missing. now everything is together!

 

now that the new enigne is broken in, i made the first oil change and installed an engine oil cooler.

going to higher speeds on the autobahn, i noticed a bad vibration starting at 3500rpm in fourth gear. rotated the driveshaft 180 degrees, that improved it very much.

still need to check the driveline angles. with an iphone app, i measure 3.9° down at the tranny, but only 1.8° up at the differential. don't know what's better - shim the rear or the transmission mount?

and i'm trying to come up with a better solution to mount the addco rear sway bar. their u-bolt design simply sucks. the metal plates and brackets bend to easily. i'm thinking of using the lower portion of an exhaust hanger clamp together with a universal, greasable sway bar bracket mount...

 

its easier to shim the trans mount.
ive used exhaust clamps for sway bar mounts before. no real problems occurred with them. the addco mounts are supposed to wedge or bend to the housing to keep them from rotating. the exhaust clamps wont wedge. im worried that the exhaust clamps would be rotated by the swaybar. we have these on mashoris car and no sign of any movement on the clamps. if they do show any rotation i plan on welding the flat side of the clamp to the housing to stop it.

 

nice work thomas! i hope mine will be as nice when its done (i know it will be a never ending project as all are, but at least when its coming back to live it should drive and look well...)

im on your tacho, already found one with the aluminum and 220km/h...

 

Looks great with the new wheels. I'd only change 1 small thing:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/15-Trico-wi...Parts_Accessories&hash=item53e98a9b27&vxp=mtr

 

yes, that's a good idea. need to track these down over here!

 

i was forced to do some more work on the car, so here's a quick update on the car:

engine is running better than ever. still no dyno run, but i'm very happy with it.

i had some shifting issues which needed sorting out. on a complete stop i was not able to shift into first gear, but had to start in fourth and work my way down to first. felt like there was load on the input shaft, but i wasn't able to adjust the clutch properly to solve it.

took the trans out, inspected it. was shifting smoothly, oil was looking good, no metal on the magnet.
so i turned to the throwout bearing which turned out to be totally shot. no grease left inside, and rattling like a snake. changed it out to a proper centerforce unit. i'm done with cheap parts...
when the trans goes back in, i'll also swap in my aluminum driveshaft i scored on ebay a while back. i have already changed the u-joints.

i also took out the third member, as it was making a whining noise. i suspected a minor adjustment problem, but found it was rebuilt by probably the worst place on earth...
no preload on the pinion whatsoever, instead it was sliding in and out! backlash is totally out of whack, too. so i'm in for a major rebuild.
got the videos from badshoe productions and will be following this thread closely:
http://www.7173mustangs.com/thread-how-to-rebuild-a-ford-9-inch

let's see when this thing will be back on the road!

 

Tody,
Good to hear from you.

Sorry you are having issues there ... that is one way to de-bug things. When it breaks, step it up a notch. I went through the same thing a couple times.

 

finished up the car, took it for a quick spin.

transmission is shifting much smoother now, but i will have to take it to the highway to see if that diff noise is gone. rebuilding the diff was quite a lot easier than i thought.

that foxbody aluminum driveshaft fit like a glove...

 

To the Autobaun :bananaman

 

yes, i'm excited, too
the car had a vibration issue at high speeds, so i was always a little scared to go over 120 mph. i assume the car will be much more stable now.
i also swapped out the wheel bearings. the vibration shock the t-bolts on the axle housing loose, which in turn was not good for the bearings. i think that'll make the whole thing quieter as well.

the thing is - the same guy rebuilt my mustang differential which went in this spring. with even worse vibration at much lower speeds, i'm too scared to go over 60 mph, as that thing is all over the road by then. but now i'm pretty confident i can fix that diff, too!

 

That vibration might go away once you hit 180 Thomas

 

how does the comet feel at 120 mph. does it feel like wants to float or feel planted?

 

it feels pretty solid actually. i modded the suspension quite a bit, and it handles well.
but i had a bad vibration somewhere in the driveline (badly shaking floor shifter and all) which i suspect to have been the badly set up diff. i'll take it for a longer spin next weekend and see how it feels.

the mustang feels like it's floating around, and it didn't have that before swapping in the mav 4lug 8".