1968 Ford Wagon - Fergus

A nut splitter is your best friend for those situations.

In reply to Kenny_McCormic:

And now I know what to add to my toolbox. We'll see if I need one for the rear shocks. I did the fronts first because they were the 'easier' ones.

914Driver wrote: Ooooo.... It's a Pleasurizer!

I wonder if Barry White drove a 68 Ford wagon of that spec: (drop an octave) Awww yeah, baby...

I sort of lost my touch with rusty cars after 13 years of living in Texas. Not to worry though, I'm getting my groove back. If it's rusty, you can reach it with a sawzall, and you're going to replace it anyway, just cut the berkeleyer off. Of the six nuts that needed to come off to pull the rear shocks, I only put a wrench on two of them. One actually came off, the other didn't and then I started cutting. It was satisfying.

I though it was pretty cool that the new KYB's came with completely new hardware for the rear. New and shiny and not rusty and nice.

The verdict on the new shocks is..... the car is still huge and floaty. Using the squish it and see how it feels shock dyno, the new shocks only had slightly more damping than the old ones. The new ones are gas charged which probably makes them worth replacing, but the driving experience hasn't changed much, if at all. I can tell you for certain, using my squish it with my hands shock dyno, that the rear of my 2200lb Mazda2 has more damping than any corner of the 4400lb beast that is Fergus. Having said all of that, driving isn't bad, it's just way different than I'm used to. It's not two hands on the wheel corner at the limit driving. It's one arm out the window one hand on the wheel cruise at 52 mph and watch the world go by driving.

One of the nice parts about not building on a strict budget is that you can do things like spend $1.50 to replace nasty mis-matched old license plate hardware with shiny new stuff.

Something I needed to fix before I put my kids in the car was the filler "cap". It was just an old spray paint cap bungeed over the filler neck for the tank. I know, very bad, I should be dead, surprised I'm not.
Luckily, I never throw anything away so I have a fuel tank out of a 88 (I think) TBI K-car and that fuel tank has a filler neck on it. I yanked it off.
I wire brushed the undercoating off of it, cut it down and headed to the parts store to get a piece of rubber fuel hose to join the cap bearing neck to the tank bearing neck. Luckily they had it. Unfortunately they only sell it by the whole foot for $19.95. If anyone needs 8 inches of 2.125 ID fuel hose, drop me a line. Anyway, I got it all together and it seems to work.
It even clears the folding floor when it's folded due to some lucky placement. No more fuel sloshing into the trunk. Happy.

A big part of why I'm doing this build thread is to keep myself honest. When nobody is looking it's easy to do things the easy/scary way which is how most really terrifying automotive things happen. By making this build public, I'm hoping that you guys shame me into doing things in a way that won't get me killed.

In reply to mazdeuce:

Making great progress man. The little stuff seems to take for ever with not much to show for it, but in the end safe fun car. Looking forward to more updates.

BBC

In reply to mazdeuce:

Umm... silly question... why not just run the filler to the factory location? I know this is a quick fix and better than a plastic paint cap, but still...

In reply to Ian F:

Running it to the factory location would require a hole saw. Remember, this tank is technically in the interior of the car. In order to get out metal needs to be cut. When I cut out the cargo area floor and put in a fuel cell I'll run that filler neck to the stock location then. In about three weeks I'm heading north with the kids for the summer and Fergus needs to sit for a while. When I get back I'll start on the big projects.

Once I had the squirrel poop cleaned up I attacked the floor with a wire brush. I got things down about this far. It's actually cleaner than the picture makes it look.

From there I brushed on some rustoleum rusty metal primer.

And then I brushed on some grey Rustoleum paint which I'm not super happy with. I'm not sure if it's the humidity in southeast Texas right now or what, but after three days it's still gummy. Not cool, but it will probably work in the relatively safe under seat world.

I really wanted to get all of this done because these guys came in the mail.

Six brand new seatbelts from Wesco Performance. The 45 year old webbing was hard and crusty and smelled of squirrel pee. These are easy to buckle and easy to adjust and I feel better about buckling my kids in them than I would have in the old ones.

i love wesco. use their three points in the duster, and just got a box of mounting poarts for the elky.

id honestly go three point anywhere you can. just soo much safer/nicer than lapbelts. should be simple on the front, but not sure about rear on a wagon.

michael

The wagon had only lap belts in all six places from the factory. Looking over the option catalog, it looks like roof mounted shoulder belts were an option. At some point I'll pull the headliner to see if that's true, but it's just so nice I'd hate to screw it up. I would actually greatly be in favor of putting in a harness bar type setup in the rear to mount rear shoulder belts from.

whats the rear metal look like? you could probably pretty easily do a pair of seatbelt support plates, 1 inch 1/4 wall square stock with angle iron and gusseted brackets to do it.

ive actually been trying to figure out 3 points for the back of the duster. time to go to pull-a-part and see what the factory did for those kinds of installs.

you can also probably find a picture or measurement reference online where the front shoulder anchors would be. at least on mopar/chevy, the anchors are already there, just covered by the headliner. or carpets if it came with no seatbelts. didnt make sense for seperate lines for that small of an option.

michael

I actually have an owners manual for the car and it shows a drawing of the optional shoulder belts and how to tuck them out of the way when not in use. I'd be shocked if the metal isn't sitting up there. The rear would be easy. Like you suggested, just put in some plates and a bar. The metal in the car is actually perfect with the exception of the areas right behind each wheel. The car was thoroughly undercoated and wherever it didn't wear off, everything is solid. There were 8 seat belt bolts and there wasn't a hint of rust on any of them. The car is a mixture of beautiful and horrible. I love it.

Man that green vinyl is awesome! Old skool rules!

Thanks for the intel on those seat belts. I didn't even know about Wesco. I've been trying to find bigger lap belts for my dads '64 Corvair Convert and everybody I asked said nobody made them. Well Wesco has them. They also have seat belt extenders which I was told were non-existent.

Liking Fergus so far. Keep it up!

I'm glad I helped you find Wesco. I have one of their belts in my Mazda2 for aautocross and it's awesome.
I took the kids to soccer in Fergus this morning. It was super cool. Made it the 12 miles there and the 12 miles back without a hitch. It did so well that I took them to a roller skating party in it tonight. It's a fun car to drive. I had forgotten how comfortable old cars are with all the windows down even when it's 90 out. They also don't get that hot in a parking lot with all the windows down.
It does have a bit of a stumble at steady state cruise. On throttle and it's great, take my foot off the gas and it smooths out, but partial throttle cruising at 53 or so is a little lumpy. At 62 it's better. Timing? Fuel? How do I hunt down something like that? Also points. Who wants to teach me about points. They seem to work great now, but the fact that there were two other sets sitting on the seats of the car let's me know that I'll have to learn about them sooner or later.

Honestly, I'd get a Pertronix kit and get rid of the points. We've put them in all of our Corvairs.

http://www.pertronix.com/prod/ig/ignitor/default.aspx

If there is a stumble at partial throttle, it could be a possible fuel delivery problem.

Fuel delivery......like lean? I've honestly never messed with a carb before. The few cars I've had with them simply worked so I didn't touch them.
The points will go away at some point. I just had a mind to live with them for a bit so that I at least know what it's like.

when I installed the 4bbl Edelbrock on my 70 Impala I tried swapping out the pre-installed jets to lean it out a little for better mileage. It made it too lean and the main symptom was a stumble at part-throttle cruise. It seems for a stock 350, the factory jets/rods were dead right.

Although yours is probably a stock carb and the jets haven't been changed, it could be a lean issue. Some carbs had little passageways that bled fuel in under idle or part throttle ( high vacuum) conditions. I'd bet that some of those are gummed up if you haven't rebuilt the carb. A $15 rebuild kit and an afternoon of liberal solvent and compressed air application will cure it if so. It's also possible you could have a slight leak in one of the lower gaskets of the carb body or carb-to-intake that's pulling in 'unmetered' air. Did you seal all those open vacuum ports? Spraying starting fluid or carb cleaner around it might find it - like any vacuum leak, listen for RPM change.

Points. I never got around to changing the Impala ove rto Pertronix, but that's the best option. The things to know about points: 1. To change them, remove the old set, mount the new set. Use a feeler guage to set the gap between the contact points to the correct gap by turning the adjustment screw. Check the gap every time you change the oil, adjust as needed. 2. At some point, they will die. The car just cuts off, like you hit a light switch. No spark when turning over, but plenty of gas. That's why you always carry a spare set of good points with you (and b/c it's a vintage Ford, you need to carry a spare starter solenoid too.) With a little practice you can change the points on the road side in 5 min without getting your hands dirty. You don't really have to worry about setting the gap roadside, it will almost always be close enough to get you home. If you HAVE to set it, a worn dime makes a ballpark feeler gauge. 3. With the engine running, NEVER stick the screwdriver or allen wrench in there to adjust the gap. You will get LIT UP. Guaranteed. 4. The most accurate way to set the gap is using a dwell meter and adjusting the points with the engine running. See # 3.

Setting points with a feeler gauge will get it running, but checking the actual dwell, which the gap controls, is important for best coil life and performance. Dwell meters are cheap and go hand in hand with the timing light you should own.

Its failure of the condenser that puts excessive wear and tear on the points.

Dwell meter. Check.
Spare points and learning how to change them. Check.
Do I need to change the condenser at the same time?
Why do I need to carry a spare starter solenoid with a vintage Ford? I should probably know about that. I can't tell if it's a blessing or a curse that the car starts and runs so well. Probably a blessing. Now I just have to learn about things as they break.

Starter Solenoids on old Fords have a tendency of crapping out.

And yes, change the Condenser at the same time,

But, I would definitely spend the money on a Pertronix unit if you don't want to keep dealing with points.

Most of the points I worked on came as unified sets, so the condenser and points were built into one easy unit, but that was on Chevy stuff. Come to think of it, I don't really remember the points on the F100.....

The starter solenoid is on the fender on the old Fords. they like to fail to a no-crank due to internal carbonization or sometimes bad ground to the fender. For fun, they sometimes emit showers of sparks if the ground is just wrong. In emergencies you can short the terminals with a screw driver or push start it, but a spare's only $10 (or used to be.) Everyone I know with an old (pre '90) Ford pickup keeps one stashed in the truck.

In the end. the Pertronix is a good idea. They do get you a much better spark, but there's something to be said these days for knowing how to run points ( and carb for that matter.)

EDIT: Oh, yeah, the timing light. Also a must-have. It will really help when you start reweighting the distributer and changing the advance curve for a little more power. ;-)

Just a word of caution, cheap replacement starter solenoids can also fail on. Luckily the Mustang didn't actually start, just cranked while I ran around finding a 1/2" wrench to disconnect the battery. Even though it happened from the driver's seat I don't think I will ever again stand in front of a car to connect the battery.

Enough of that, awesome wagon. Enjoy driving an old car in modern times and how everyone reacts to it.