Been gone too long...

Hey all, just chiming in to see how everyone is doing. I had to take a couple of years off from building my Mercury Cougar II street rod wagon so I can build a house and new garage. It's been in storage for the last 2.5 years and I can't wait to bring it home and finish it. Hope you all are having a great year and hope to be back at it soon...

 

Now THAT'S a project....

Watcha got in mind?

 

It's important to take care of home stuff first and know you can get back to your hobby. Keep us posted with the resto and welcome back.

 

Good to meet you. I don't have a wagon myself, but I've had many so far, and I do my best to help others with their rigs, as I'm disabled and currently unable to go back to work. I used to have a Cougar wagon once upon a time, which I never got to drive, but I sure loved my Fairmonts. My first car was a '78 2-door sedan Dad bought new.

 

I already have a 4 point cage in it to sure the unibody and most of the chassis and bodywork is done. I have a 351 4v motor for it i haven't built yet. I'm a little unsure of the transmission i want to use. I know a guy in Texas who will build a 750 hp t5. Sounds like the best option now so it'll bolt in. I'm targeting around 550-600 hp in the motor. I desperately need a front header panel and hood. Less bad paint the Texas native car was in almost perfect condition when i paid $100 for it in 2011. However (still sick to my stomach about it) the header panel got destroyed and the hood mildly damaged when it was transported to South Carolina. I've been looking for a couple of years for the header panel,

 

Thank you....but seriously, if anyone out there knows of one of these cars for sale or in a salvage yard somewhere please contact me. 8644206293...I'm getting desperate. The car is so rare, the used part locators don't even list the cougar ii wagon.

 

IIRC, the Cougar front end is also the Granada one, except the hood ornament and grille. Unfortunately, Ford also had Fairmonts selling at that time and they beat the Hell out of Mercury sales, so finding a Cougar wagon or sedan is so very hard. Even the later Marquis is so hard to find these days.

 

I knew that, but the Granada is impossible to find as well. I actually saw a cougar II wagon drive by me about 2 months ago in Greenville, but i couldn't get turned around enough to track him down.....aaarrrg!

 

Yeah, and with the advent of Pull-Yer-Pud yards, the unpopular cars go in one door and out the crusher before you can say 'header panel.'

 

What year?? I never even heard of a Cougar wagon until now.
So a Granada front end and hood will do or it has to be Cougar?
There's a '82 Granada on Craigslist Dallas if that would work.
575 bucks and it makes it's own oil.
It's worth reading the description in any case.

https://dallas.craigslist.org/dal/cto/5735224832.html

 

Interesting you hadn't heard of a Cougar wagon, given that they existed in the Seventies as well as the Eighties. Search "Cougar Villager" on here. Anyway, to the OP: have you run through the ads on here?

 

http://www.car-part.com/cgi-bin/search.cgi

These are all Granadas. I believe that the fiberglas header panel is the same for the (non-XR7) '81/'82 Cougar. Grill's different, obviously.

 

Yeah, the XR7 is the same as the T-bird, but the Granada and Cougar 2- & 4-doors and the wagon are all the same as the Fairmont/Zephyr and the LTD II/Marquis. The sucky thing is, if you change to any of the other front ends, you just made that car instead of the Cougar, because other than the front ends and nameplates, they're all the same.

 

Welcome back. These old wagons are just hobbys to be worked on and enjoyed in spare time. Sometimes a break is good.

 

I was at the local Pick 'n' Nose, helping a friend; there were two midsize Fox chassis wagons: an '80 Fairmont and an '85 LTD II....