1968 Ford Wagon - Fergus

Looks like an early Mustang gas tank. I assume the original started to leak so some previous owner put it in there; there are companies out there making reproduction gas tanks for a variety of cars, but what I've seen they don't make any for station wagons. You may have to try to find a decent used one from a salvage yard.

In reply to stuart in mn:

Probably what's going to happen is the cargo floor is going to get cut and a fuel cell is going to be installed. The stock tank is hard to find and only holds 20 gallons. Even if I did find one, a lot of the supporting metal in the rear quarter has gone the same place as the tank. Even if I did want to source one and fix all of the metal needed to mount it, I'd still have a tank sitting right on the quarter waiting to get squashed and popped. Some measurements lead me to believe that I can get a 30 gallon fuel cell behind the rear axle, between the frame rails, and all plumbed in under the folding floor. I never intended for this to be a restoration, and the improvement in practicality and safety makes sense to the wife and I.

It's been a busy spring. This is why we call Fergus an Irish twin. These two came into the family way too close together. We love them both though.

fuel cell idea is a good one. id also ditch the rubber line ASAP. im a dealer for classic tube, and im pretty sure they have an application for you. but having it shipped to me and then to you would negate any savings i could pass on, so id just order direct from them. theyre usually pretty close to the factory bends, and just need some minor fitting.

id also say that if the fuel line is rotted, the brake lines will be marginal as well, even though theyre noty leaking yet.

on the front brake front, scarebird pieves work well,m though i personally believe them to be a bit undersized. granted, i have a saying "theres no such thing as too much brakes, just not enough tire" ive used the scarebird stuff a few times, and it works. though with them being drum spindles, a floating rotor/dual piston caliper/adapter bracket setup would probably be cheaper/easire to accomplish, though i cannot say for sure having never seen your spindles naked.

as far as road feel: part of the problem is alignment specs. part is the primewall 75 series tores and how much the sidewalls flex. part is abysmally low sprig rates. part is shock valving. if i remember right, these old fords use a single pigtail 5 i9nch coil in about 10 inch uncompressed heght. you should be able to source 6-700 lb circle track springs pretty easily, which with this front suspension design, should be a comfy ride. power brakes should be a cheap swap awy from a latermodel donor. i personally prefer GM s10 stuff. incredibly simple to adapt to anything.

also, gear-vendors should be able to do a overdrive if your set on keeping the three speed on the tree 4.11 combo, and towing.

also, take a look into a full sized tranny cooler for the FMX. heat kills tham quick.

lastly, im pretty sure vintage air offers a sanden compressor conversion for the 390, shedding weight, decreasing hp drain, and improving cooling capacity. youll have to adjust the ac thermostat, though, if you convert to 134 (at least on GM)

michael

In reply to Dusterbd13:

Classic tube doesn't exactly show an application, except maybe they do? I know it's a full sized ford. That means Galaxie? Except the internet says the wagons were based off the Galaxie until 66 and then off the LTD. I need to learn what crosses between models. Along those same lines, I was surprised to see a 3 link with a panhard bar and coils in the rear. Are all of the full size Fords from this era like that? I hadn't seen anything but leaves on American cars from the 60's before, but I guess I haven't stuck my head under that many.
The brake lines to the rear of the car are all new. Hard lines at least. I don't like how they're run and I'll be redoing the whole system. I also think the right rear might be dragging, so I need to pull that apart.

I had a '68 Country Sedan for a while a few years back. Mine was a higher trim level than yours, with the 390 4-barrel and it had front disc brakes and power brakes. Front discs should be a factory swap setup if/when you're interested in that. The factory discs and calipers are big enough to require 15" wheels.

A lot of the full size cars in the 60's had coils. They were working on getting the riding softer, which as you can tell was a success. Hehe.

dculberson wrote: I had a '68 Country Sedan for a while a few years back. Mine was a higher trim level than yours, with the 390 4-barrel and it had front disc brakes and power brakes. Front discs should be a factory swap setup if/when you're interested in that. The factory discs and calipers are big enough to require 15" wheels. A lot of the full size cars in the 60's had coils. They were working on getting the riding softer, which as you can tell was a success. Hehe.

Any clue which full size fords shared the same suspension? All of them? I'd like to un-smooth the ride a bit in the future. I don't want to make it race car stiff, but I'm not looking to float on the seas of asphalt either.

Now I'm going to reveal my massive ignorance and ask you some question about the carburetor on Fergus. This is the 2bbl carb feeding 390 cubic inches of glory. We're looking at it from the passenger side. What's the black plastic thing sticking off the side? Choke?

What's this little brass tube? Should it be going somewhere? Capped?

What about this little rubber cap on a rod? At no time does it seem to actually close.

This little brass tube comes out of the bottom of the top part. It also goes nowhere.

I know where this one goes, to a breather on the passenger valve cover. It needs to be replaced I think. The breather on the drivers side valve cover feeds back into the air cleaner. Note two throttle return springs. Can't be too safe. That and the fact that the throttle cable housing has some fire damage. More about that later.

On the intake manifold we have this other manifold. One of the nipples actually feeds vacuum to the HVAC system. Another is capped. Two others have pieces of tubing with screws in them.

On the drivers side of the carb is this thing. It just hangs there loosely. Is it supposed to be doing something?

Incidentally, the car runs great. Starts easily, idles great after about two minutes. Starts cold and hot. Whatever has been done, it works, I just want to know what's going on under there.

black thing is a choke. bolt the brass nipples on the carb should be plugged, as they are for cavuum. the can on the side that hangs there is probably an idle compensator for the AC. see if it has an electrical connection or vacuum nipple.

the flapper that never closes is a bowl vent. meant to vent the gas fumes back to somewhere safe.

also, those vacuum manifolds are common in the late 60s on up. lots of vacuum and emissions stuff going on.

honestly, with what you just showed, im guessing you have a later truck motor stuffed in there right now, but cant be certain. im not ford guy enough for that.

michael

The last thing is called a dashpot, keeps the throttle from snapping shut when you let off quickly, this is an emissions thing mostly.

Thanks for all of the help. I'll get the vacuum stuff sorted out on general principle. I'll also check the block/heads and see what I've got for an engine in here.

I do not know what Fords shared suspension with this, sorry. I do know that a decent set of shocks does a hell of a lot to take out the "float." The rear shocks can make a much bigger difference than you expect; on these wagons the ass weighs a lot so if the back shocks are worn or low quality it tends to "wag the dog" like a poorly loaded trailer. It moves all around and you end up sawing at the wheel to keep it going straight.

I think all your carb questions were answered. Definitely cap the brass fittings off the carb. An assortment of vacuum caps is a good investment and can really help clean up an ugly engine bay. (Those "short hose with screws in them" look bad, don't they?)

Speaking of short hose, there is a fitting on the water elbow coming out of the top of the engine that has a looped vacuum line on it. I've sleuthed about a bit and determined that it's job was to control vacuum to the distributor based on temperature. Is this something I should bother with? If not, can I use that port for a temperature sender?

I pulled some casting numbers off of Fergus this morning to see what I could see.
Head C8AE - H
Valve cover sticker C8AE 9C485-8
Intake C7TE 94256
Carb C8AF M
What does this tell me? Well, the C tells me everything was made in the 60's. The 8's tell me it was 1968. The A tell me they were designed for full sized fords. Everything else refers to part stuff. The only odd number is the Intake. It has a 1967 date and a T which indicates a truck application, with the caveat that the intake was designed for trucks but could have been used on any Ford engine on which it fit, including cars that were meant to work like trucks. Wagons. I could also read part of the code on the water pump, and it was C8A ***. Even the water pump is coded 1968.
I still need to check the date code on the block, but it's pretty gross down there and I didn't feel like crawling in the dirt this morning. My guess is that it will be a 1968 coded block indicating that I've got the original engine. Anything else would be surprising.
I did do something sort of functional on the car too. The clutch is operated by pressing the pedal which presses a rod which goes through the firewall and goes to a bunch of linkage which heads off to the transmission and works the clutch. There's supposed to be some sort of rubber boot that covers the hole and prevents the beautiful smells of the engine from wafting into the passenger compartment. The boot is also supposed to keep the rod from rubbing on the wiring.
Figuring out which boot will work and ordering it is on my list of things to do, but in the mean time I'd rather not destroy the wiring. To solve that I took a piece of the old crusty fuel line, split it, and zip tied it over the clutch rod. I also hacked off a piece of wire wrap from an old wiring harness in the garage and put it over the wires. Remember, never throw anything away. Ever.

The clutch is the exact same on my GMC - the boot is too!!!

The intake and carb look identical to the one that was on my '69 F100. I think the vacuum ports where open when I bought it too. Just remember, short pieces of hose with screws in them were factory equipment on all pre 1975 cars and many later ones!

FWIW I never could get the thermostatic choke to work on mine, I just installed a pull cable to it. Maybe you'll have better luck.

I like the gravity hold down on the battery. Gravity is a reliable force you know.

Look further into the O/D unit. If it's a external type, like a hone-o-drive, you could use it without messing up your column shift. It would require a separate floor lever, but some trickery with an actuator mounted down below could cure that.

Under the back seat in this glorious wagon we have these little doors. It's clear that these are rodent in nature and there is a lot of stuff behind them.

The seat bottom just snaps into place on some spring loaded clips. I really didn't have a good excuse for not cleaning up the mess that was lurking, so I grabbed some gloves and pulled.

There was a lot of stuff under there. Seat fluff. Plastic bags. Part of a report card from a Catholic School, a Western Union money transfer receipt for $40, part of a truck registration and a few bills. None of the paper was whole, and it had dates from 2004 and 2005. I don't think a person put it there, I think a squirrel did. The heaps of squirrel poop tipped me off. I picked up as much as I could and ended up with this.

Some quality time with the shop vac got things pretty clean.

That's when I noticed squirrel poop dropping out of a hole in the seat back. Poop. So I took that off too and found this.

When it was all said and done I filled a garbage bag with the extra stuff that was stuffed under and behind the seats. I'm glad it's gone.

I do have a bit of surface rust under the seat, but it's quite minor and should clean up easily.

blech. I HATE that process. If you still have it apart, I'd hit it with good antibacterial spray of your choice.

bleach water spray. kills mold.

berkin' rodents....

+1 for some sort of sanitizing process.

New shocks! Let's do the fronts first. Should be easy, right? Yea....... here you can see the nut on top. You can also see that I've started to cut it off with the dremel tool.
If you put a socket on the nut it spins. There's three options. First is to use an impact gun. I do not have an impact gun. Second is to grab the top of the shaft and turn the nut with a normal box end wrench. Due to packaging, I can get neither of those tools in their needed places. The last option, and what I usually do, is just go below and grab the shaft with a pair of vice grips. However, Ford decided to run the shock through the frame, so this is what you see with the shock fully extended. No shaft.

So by the time everything came apart it ended looking like this. On the second one I figured out that it was easier to just cut the big washer in half and leave the nut and shaft alone.

I pulled the shocks out and was pleasantly surprised to find out that they were a set of Delco Pleasurizer shocks. That made me happy. I replaced them with a set of KYB Excel-G. Not nearly as cool, but with better damping.

Ooooo.... It's a Pleasurizer!