1968 Ford Wagon - Fergus

I drove the kids to school in Fergus this morning. One mom stopped and asked to take a picture of the car because she thought it was so cool. I know the kids love it, but I did not expect that.

Awesome!

Be careful, though. Next time she might go all Tawny Kitaen on the hood!

She was more of the "let me show you my pinterest account" than the hood draping sort. Still, I'll take whatever female attention a car brings me.

Attention/admiration is always welcome! FYI, I used to have a '68 Mustang, and the threaded nuts for 3-point belts were there, under the headliner. Since yours is a '68 with optional 3-points, I'll bet you have them. If you can, figure out where they should be and then press into the headliner with your finger and try to locate them. That's what I did before cutting the headliner.

Thanks for that piece of advice Winston. I did a little braile reading on the headliner today and I think I found where the shoulder belts would go for the front seats. The super exciting part is that I kept smushing vinyl for a few minutes and I'm 99% certain that there is a matching set of anchors for the back seat up there as well. If I could get four shoulder belts in this car it would go a long way to making it acceptable to my wife.

I will be following this. I have a 66 Ranch Wagon I should be taking delivery of in the next 6 months. I am a little worried about rear glass regulator. The glass is there but its sitting behind the rear seat. Luckily the car is sitting in a shop. The front brakes are being switched to disc and a dual master cylinder setup. Shocks and front end bushings are being done. It has a brand new carb on it. It's all being done at my friend's school that he is an automotive instructor at.

I had a thread a little while back but things came to a standstill a few months ago. I will probably post a new one up eventually.

Your wagon's exterior is awesome! I am envious.

The rear window in mine terrifies me as well. You can't open the rear door with the window up. However, there is no way that I can figure to get the window down other than take apart the rear door, which you can't do with the window up. What happens when the power window fails? It's pretty clear that all of the missing trim on the rear of the car was a result of someone trying to deal with just this problem. It's not clear how they solved it. I'm looking forward to hearing about your wagon.

The tank sitting in the back of Fergus isn't vented. I suppose the vent was originally part of the filler neck, or more likely, the cap that was meant to be on it was never meant to hold in fumes. With the addition of my mid 80's tech gas cap, I had a problem.
When it got warm, or even when it wasn't very warm. The fuel tank would build up pressure which would build up pressure in the fuel lines, the fuel pump, and the carb. In the short term, if the pressure got high enough it would push fuel past the float and out of the bowl. In the long term, the pressure was bad for pretty much every part of my hacked together fuel system.
So I vented it. Now there is no problem.
This feels like one of those times where you cut yourself and put a bandaid on. Then the bandaid starts to peel off so you put some tape over the bandaid to keep it on.

it feels like that because it is like that. and it's been a while, but yeah i've put tape over bandaids too.

I was talking to my wife about my long term plans with Fergus. I really like this car and can see myself tinkering and rebuilding and driving this car for a long time. The eventual goal is this:

I'm looking at 10 years out for that, but having something like that on the horizon is exciting. Having my wife on agree that it's a reasonable goal is even more exciting.

I like. Once the Mini sells, I think I'll be moving to a big American wagon.

Just saw the Pleasurizer dampers. Fantastic.

There's a Fergus twin for sale on Hemmings right now. Different color but 3-on-the-tree as well. A wee bit more expensive, but looks to be in very nice condition:

http://www.hemmings.com/classifieds/dealer/ford/country_sedan/1583985.html?refer=blog

Poor Fergus gets the hand-me-downs.
When I got home from summer the battery in Fergus was D-E-A-D dead. I tried to recondition it. I did the dropping trick to try and de-sulfate the plates. Nothing. I finally ended up stealing the battery from the 2 so I could start him up and move him out from under the car port so my wife could have her covered parking back.
Ok, so dead battery. Easy fix is a new battery. Except...... my wife's FJ's battery is something like 7 years old and is starting to fuzz the terminals every now and again. It still works fine, but she wanted a new one. Sweet, buy her a new one and give Fergus the old one. Except..... her truck needed to be inspected after the first of september and disconnecting the battery gives is a not ready reading for 3-6 days. So Fergus sat. Then the FJ got a new battery and so did Fergus. Today I put it in. It fits perfect and the terminals are even on the right sides. It is a little taller than the battery that was in there, but doesn't hit the hood. I really do need some hold downs now.
I fired Fergus up and took him into town to buy milk. He runs and drives and good as ever. I'm happy.

Had to explain to my wife why it makes sense to spend $350 on the really cool gauges and then make a panel for them out of an old microwave. Pretty sure she didn't get it. I'm waiting until the weekend to install them because my 10 year old really likes electrical stuff and wants to help me. Should be fun.

Love the gauges!

I'm not sure if you've figured it out just yet, but the 'crest' on the tailgate should pop open and is a crank to roll the window down. That is the way it worked on my mom's '66 wagon.

Also you might want to do a search for 'Bronco hydroboost' for some braking options/ideas.

Love the wagon.

On the wagons with an electric rear window, there is no manual way to roll down the window. It's a weird option on this car.

Sorry, my mistake. You would think that there would be a secondary manual option.

You would think. It's the reason I'm missing the rear window trim. It appears that a previous owner tried to get the rear open by dismantling the window channel. That doesn't work. You really need to remove a bunch of screws and remove the panel from the inside of the gate. Previous owner did not put the trim back.

One showed up for sale in a driveway on my way home form work. I have to see it everyday; I already have one (maybe two) wagons so it isn't needed but there is something about them.

Re: the overheating issue. I'd start with simple and cheap first. Pull the radiator and have it cleaned and pressure tested. Usually only costs a few $ and eliminates a potential problem source. Also, Ford water pumps are cheap. Replace it, the t-stat and hoses while radiator is out and everything is easy to get to. Then if you still have overheating problems, you'll know its probably a blockage in the engine.

In reply to Ian F:

You forgot the radiator cap.

In reply to Kenny_McCormic:

Can you tell most of my cars have remote reservoirs?

Overheating? The car has a 13lb cap and hasn't pushed any coolant past it despite the fact that the temp gauge has hit about 220. Cruising temps are about 215 on the gauge. New thermostat. The same. I've burped like no man has burped before. The same. The cap holds pressure. I checked that pretty spectacularly. Radiators aren't expensive and I'll eat my fist if this isn't the stock rad. The upper and lower hoses are actually pretty new. Can I flush the radiator myself and do any sort of a good job? I need to think about it.
The good news.
We got up the morning and after breakfast the boy and I sat around in our underwear and wired up the gauges. He doesn't quite have the hand strength for crimping. He's close.
All wired up. I personally thing we did a fine job.
It's good to have a helper to crawl under the dash. I'm finally getting old enough to really appreciate this.
Once things were wired up the car got fired up. 14.5 volts. 35ish PSI oil pressure, and hot. As I said above, 215 or so while cruising. I had suspected that things were hot which is one of the reasons I decided to wire the gauges up. We ran to the parts store and got a new thermostat and replaced that. Then I spent much of the rest of the day beating my head against the wall while my wife watched football. I reset the timing just in case that was making it run hot. I pulled the carb and took it apart and blew it out and reset everything just in case that was making it run hot. At this point I'm pretty much down to the radiator or the pump. It has an old radiator with brass end tanks. I would hazard a guess that this is the radiator that was installed when the car was built. I really just want to throw parts at in until the problem is fixed.