Teardown

Here are some picture of the teardown.

Prelude pt.2

...........When the seller got back to me this is what I received.

If you look in the above picture you notice an all original 428CJ engine that is complete!

 One thing that worried me was the missing door information tag.

Tennessee licence plate from 1979. The year car was parked.

So I ordered the Marti Report.. For those of you who are not classic Ford fans the Marti report is a beautiful thing. It all started with a lady who worked at Ford back in the day. Lois Emminger asked Ford if she could keep all of the old production information from years past when Ford was getting ready to throw it all away! They agreed. She later sold the info to Kevin Marti who now runs a business selling the info to crazy people like myself. Too lasy to hook up scanner so I'll just type what I found!

Serial number: 9F92Q561415 This number breaks down as follows:

9 -         1969

F -          Built at the Dearborn, MI Plant

92 -        Non XR7 Cougar Convertible

Q -         428-4V CJ Non Ram Air Engine

5 -         All Mercury Cougars have a 5 here

61415 - 61,415th Cougar scheduled for production at Dearborn

The coolest thing about the Marti report is that it has the door tag info that was missing on this car.

Body:       76A - Cougar Convertible

Paint:        D - Pastel Grey 

Interior     Trim: Light Blue Decor Bucket Seats

08D: Scheduled for build: April,  8th 1969

23: Cincinnati Ordering District

6: 3.00 Standard Axle Ratio

U: C-6 Merc-O-Matic Transmission

Dealer# 32G199

Options:

Black Power Top w/ Glass Backlite

C-6 Merc-O-matic Transmission

F70x14 Wide Oval Belted Tires

White sidewall Tires

Power Front Disc Brakes

Power Steering

Air Conditioner - Whisperaire

AM radio

Car was actually built of April 2nd, 1969

Now exaclty how rare is this car??  Here is the breakdown of ALL 1969 Cougar Convertibles built with 428CJ engines.

Q = Non-Ram Air

R = Ram Air

std = 4 speed manual transmission

C6 = Automatic transmission

Standard Convertible Q/C6 – 11

Standard Convertible Q/Std – 2

Standard Convertible R/C6 – 17

Standard Convertible R/Std – 16

XR7 Convertible Q/C6 – 39

XR7 Convertible Q/Std – 7

XR7 Convertible R/C6 – 96

XR7 Convertible R/Std – 31

Total Standard 428CJ -  46

Total XR7 428CJ – 173

Total 428CJ Convertibles – 219

My car is a "Q" code with an auto tranny so its one of only eleven produced!

Doesn't get much rarer than that!

Prelude

This is my attempt at documenting the restoration of my 1969 Mercury Cougar Convertible. I have been a fan of the '69 Cougar ever since I manged to get my hands on one at the age of 16 in 1990. It was a plain jane 351 2bbl "H" code coupe. I loved that car, but being from Iowa it was a complete rust bucket. So much so that the more I tried to "fix it up" the more rust I found. I soon realized it was so completely rotten that it was unsafe to drive.
Fast forward to 2009.
 I am on Craigslist searching for parts for a '69 "S" code 390 XR7 hardtop that I am working on when I run across an ad for a Cougar convertible for sale in Albuquerque NM.

The ad shows a white standard Cougar convertible for sale with '71 "dog dish" hubcaps.......nothing spectacular about this car I think, then I see it. Buried in the description it says "original 428 engine"
Hmmmmmm... They did put 428's in '69 Cougars. The 428 Cobra Jet that is. However, in a convertible this is an extremely rare beast. I wasn't sure how rare, but I knew it was rare!

9 times out of 10 an ad like this turns out to not be the real deal so I forced myself to ignore it and keep on searching for the parts I was looking for....... I don't really care for white cars anyway I told myself!

There were no pictures of the engine compartment and no way from the ad to prove it was a real CJ car. They were asking 20K which was way more than a small block car in this condition was worth.......so.....maybe it was real.....

I coudn't get this car out of my head so about a week later I called. Long story short I asked the seller for engine compartment pics and the VIN.

...........More later...........