Battle Stance 1967 Mercury Cougar XR7

[JRodigan]

I like this way too much. I have a 1970 XR7 that I've had since I was 16. Been slowly picking away at it for years. Even drove it every day for a solid 2 years haha It's headed in the same direction as this now though. Built factory motor (351C) with the factory c6 behind it, coilovers, vinyl top, factory color... Can't wait to see how this turns out!

Awesome. Feel free to post some pics of yours if you'd like. I'm really wanting to do the same thing to my Mustang one day. It's a 289 C4 car right now, but I wanna swap to a 351 and a 4-speed.

That engine makes me feel funny. Like good funny. In my pants. Good work sir.

You should hear it!

Every time I see a Cougar, I know that I would buy one in a heartbeat over an original Mustang.

They're the "rich mans Mustang" lol. Much rarer so not everyone and their brother has one like a Mustang.

[Aitch]

Every time I see a Cougar, I know that I would buy one in a heartbeat over an original Mustang.

[zedsdead]

That engine makes me feel funny. Like good funny. In my pants. Good work sir.

[CrackerTeg]

Can't say I'm a blue oval fan but I can certainly appreciate a well built, Merican classic. You have my attention.

[SheaMoose]

You have my attention.

[aLaFleur]

I like this way too much. I have a 1970 XR7 that I've had since I was 16. Been slowly picking away at it for years. Even drove it every day for a solid 2 years haha It's headed in the same direction as this now though. Built factory motor (351C) with the factory c6 behind it, coilovers, vinyl top, factory color... Can't wait to see how this turns out!

[P78]

subbed

[JRodigan]

You're my hero.

Thanks, glad you like it!

That flip phone tho.

hahahahaha Yeah, that's my dad's work phone. You can drop that thing 30 ft and it will survive.

Great to see another true american muscle build here! I'm jealous of that front suspension... Nobody makes coil-overs for my Torino Can't wait to see it finished!!

I didn't even know they made anything like this until he got this car. When he said coilovers were coming I was shocked. haha

This is awesome. Please keep going

Thanks!

I did forget the mention plans for the exhaust. We will be making the exhaust in-house if all goes according to plan. The headers collect to 3", but with all the bracing under the car, we can't go any bigger than 2.5" from there back. But the small exhaust issue has been dealt with in the form of two electric cutouts that dump right off the headers. They're controlled by a switch on the dash.

Basically all that's left is tidy up the wiring in the engine bay, do the final fine tuning on the timing and fuel, make up the exhaust and send it to paint. Shooting to have it done sometime this summer.

[Thom]

This is awesome. Please keep going

[TheContra]

Great to see another true american muscle build here! I'm jealous of that front suspension... Nobody makes coil-overs for my Torino Can't wait to see it finished!!

[zephyrueffer]

That flip phone tho.

[montgomery]

You're my hero.

[JRodigan]

Wasn't sure how many of you guys would be interested in this, but I thought I'd post this up anyway. Let me start by saying that this isn't my car. As much as I would love to say it is, I can't. What I can say is that often help work on it, and it belongs to a long-time family friend and it stays in my grandfather's shop.

Onto the good stuff. The car is an extremely rare 1967 Mercury Cougar XR7-GT. Basically the XR7-GT package meant it had every option from the factory and a 390ci engine. (instead of a 302) When the car was purchased it had all the parts, but it was mostly disassembled. All the numbers matched, however, and it had zero rust. The plan for this car was to make a mostly stock appearing Cougar into a car that handled and performed like most modern cars. That's not a small task on a 40+ year old unibodied muscle car.

The first thing to go was the shock towers in the engine bay. They'd no longer be needed, but the space was needed for what was going in it.


That's a Ford 460 block out a 70's F-Series truck. 7.5 liters of raw American V8. It was planned to be built to around 700 HP, but after weighing costs and realizing the extent of fab-work needed to make it fit, the plan was scrapped. I'll get back to the engine that actually went into it later.

While debated what engine to use, we installed the new suspension and brake kit.






The kit was originally designed for Mustangs, so it needed to be slightly modified to work on the Cougar. Also rack and pinion steering from a later Mustang was added to aid in handling. It also included full underside tubular bracing. This thing is STIFF now.


Obviously the brakes are a massive improvement over the original ones, so the stock 14" wheels wouldn't fit (Which I'm happy about because they were absolutely mint and very rare, and now they're on my Mustang. ) so we had some 15" replicas of the originals built for it. However, they're now 9" wide in front and 10" in back, unlike the stock 8" all around.

(And yes, that's a Vinyl top. )

After the suspension was all said and done, the interior went in it. Stayed 100% original aside from a Cassette player, nicer speakers, and an 8k RPM tach. In fact, most of the parts are original to the car.






While the interior was going in we decided on the engine. After considering a crate 427, we decided to just build the stock 390. It was bored and all that, had aluminum Eddlebrock heads with roller cams installed, different intake, new Quickfuel 4-barrel carb, and an MSD electronic ignition system. Full billet pulley kit, removed the fan, and had all braided lines custom fabricated by a local shop. Should be putting out around 525 HP. It will eventually be dyno'd to see. It's truly a thing of beauty.







The original C6 Transmission was rebuild and installed, but when we tried to move it, nothing happened. Instead of screwing around with trying to fix it again, a C6 Streetfighter tranny was bought and installed. It's dyno proven to handle 600 HP. I don't have pics of the transmission right now, but the car does move under it's own power now!

So that's mostly everything. I left out a few small details, but this really brings us to now. The car will be repainted in the original green color that you can see a bit of on the cowl in the last pic and on the fender in the background.







Sorry for the pics, I'll get some good ones soon.