In reply to Indy "Nub" Guy :
It is not, but a quick Google search does make them look very familiar. This is in western Wisconsin - there wasn't a ton of hiking, just a neat hole in the ground.
In reply to Indy "Nub" Guy :
It is not, but a quick Google search does make them look very familiar. This is in western Wisconsin - there wasn't a ton of hiking, just a neat hole in the ground.
In Menomonie! Neat.
Love this car!
In reply to Georges1991 :
Thanks!
9/8/20 Update - Shocking.
Behold, the loot! This is what $200 in maintenance & spares looks like. Plugs, wires, cap, rotor, points, condenser, coil, front and rear shocks, and a spare V belt.
Local parts house had everything in town and was ready for pickup by 4 pm. I think it was about $30 more than a comparable Rock Auto order.
After dinner I went out to the garage and decided which piece to eat. I decided to take a bite of the buttery, flakey front shocks. I knew they were toast when I lowered the car but I put them back in anyway.
Before we get to that, here's what this barge looks like docked at home, including my 2019 Surly Wednesday and 1975 Kawasaki KZ400. Cozy.
Two wheelers out of the way, we can start chewing on the front suspension. I recently had this all apart to cut a coil, so I knew everything would come apart without too much hassle.
Old & busted on the right, new hotness on the left. I compressed that shock when I pulled it out and it never rebounded. Rumor has it it's in a landfill somewhere to this day still compressed.
More garbage. Swaybar end links are shot.
New shocks are in and looking very YELLOW against all the other crust. Thanks Monroe.
Remember when I said I was going to rebuild 1965 Mercury swaybar links with 1997 Honda Civic parts? That's right.
Swaybar bushing violence.
Nut and bolt restoration. Bushings from the Honda links, attached to the Mercury hardware. Works fine. I have doubts about the longevity of this setup given that the bushings are barely wider than the holes in the bar & lower control arm... but it'll be fine.
The 'smush the suspension in the garage rebound test' tells me that this will be nimble like a Miata now. Back roads watch out, the Big Answer is coming for you.
Bonus pictures!
One car garage life. There is about 3' between the rear bumper and my work bench, and about another 3' in front of the car where the bicycle and motorcycle live. Fortunately for a 1 car garage it's pretty deep, so this is managable. Also, you can see a big ding/bend in the rear bumper. This car has seen some action in it's life.
Mmm, Cheesey.
This area makes no sense for a production automobile. Unless I'm terribly mistaken this car was built by blue collar people on an assembly line. I imagine some guy hungover on a Monday screwing all this trim on cursing Mercury for using so much chrome as the sunlight glints off it and temporarily blinds him.
Does your car have a Greek God on the C-pillar trim?
In reply to Gunchsta :
If it doesn't, you're doing it wrong.
I'd vote for Mercury Monterrey as The Big Answer.
The Big Answer is a joke right? Because right now I'm envisioning 17" CVPI steelies and big sway bars.
9/9/20 Update - Shocking!
I couldn't bear to have new shocks in the front, and old crappers in the back.
Vice grip and double box end wrench kama sutra? This style of upper shock mount is always a pain to get off. If somebody knows a better way to do this than maliciously attack the shock with a vice grip I'm all ears. I sprayed this twice with PB blaster and still had to try to get the upper nuts off.
One of the shocks eventually broke, which was fine. I was tired of turning two wrenches anyway.
Lower mounts were easier. One 3/4" nut comes off easily with the impact and out come the shocks. These too were absolute garbage, no rebound and very little compression.
I again went with the Monroe Ol'Yellers for the rear. They are vastly more shocky than what was on there.
All happy and safe in their new home. Again, the garage compression test says we're going to be staying ON the rails, not going off them like a particular insane freight transporter.
And a bonus picture of the wrong rubber hose being used. I am responsible for that ugly ass support bracket from the rear end - it isn't rubbing on the hard line as it appears to be in the picture. There's a cushion clamp/p-clip over one of the hard lines to keep everything in it's appropriate vicinity. Not great, but hopefully better than leaving everything flopping in the breeze.
Low hanging fruit folks.
A quick recap of what I've done since I got the car on July 30th.
Dual master, new rubber hoses, new brake fluid
Cut coils in front, new front and rear shocks and sway bar end links
Painted wheels/Chrome lug nuts
Replaced fuse & bulb for dome light (wow!)
Built battery hold down and new battery tray
Intake manifold and valve cover gaskets
Oil change (twice, didn't like the 10w40 that was in there, went to 20w50)
Rebuilt carb, replaced air filter & vacuum hoses
Replaced v-belts
I think that's it so far; decent progress for a month of ownership. Working on cars is interesting, this is a mechanically 'simple' device, but often times it's simplicity leads to difficulty. Illustrated perfectly by the hour plus it took to get two nuts off of the shocks. Was it complicated? not at all. Was it easy? Technically speaking yes, but it was physically difficult and time consuming given the simplicity of the task.
I'm having fun.
I'd highly recommend some aluminum 17" wheels and sticky tires for autocrossing, and keep the steelies for cruising. Best of both worlds. Something like a 225 to 245 wide tire, with maybe a 50-ish aspect ratio. A big front anti-sway bar and a smaller one in the back will definitely help. These barges seem to like soft springs and big bars. You could clamp a coil on the front and back springs, too.
EDIT: NM, forgot you'd already cut a coil. Proceed! ;-)
Gunchsta said:9/9/20 Update - Shocking!
Vice grip and double box end wrench kama sutra? This style of upper shock mount is always a pain to get off. If somebody knows a better way to do this than maliciously attack the shock with a vice grip I'm all ears. I sprayed this twice with PB blaster and still had to try to get the upper nuts off.
Simple. Maliciously attack the shock with a sawzall. They're coming out anyways, right?
Atleast your shocks match now!
In reply to volvoclearinghouse :
This is why GRM rules. Even hinting at autocrossing this hog would probably get me accosted most other places, here people have genuine insight.
In reply to dropstep :
Color coordination is key.
In reply to Gunchsta :
Because I raced this in leMons.
In reply to volvoclearinghouse :
That is so awesome. And probably quite similar to my car underneath. Was this the one that was later rebodied?
9/10/20 Update - general tune up
Replaced the plugs, wires, cap and rotor last night. No surprises. Actually all the plugs looked pretty good, which is encouraging. Nothing goopy sticking to the electrodes or anything too ugly. Another pleasant surprise, the cheap parts store plug wires fit well and aren't spaghetti strewn all over the place. No pictures because, well it looks the same as before but it has black plug wires not orange. Success.
Test drive revealed it running smoother with the new plugs, and handling like it's on RAILS with the new shocks and swaybar links.
Did I say rails? Let me clarify, rails made of butter and gravy. It's a barge but there is a degree of response now when you turn the steering wheel. It feels more firm in it's footing, more confident in it's movement.
Then I had to do a quick window track lube job as the drivers window was sticking. Can't have that. Door panel comes off with some screws and clips, funny the factory vapor barrier is like construction paper. Shoot some grease in appropriate places, work it in, button it up. Good to go.
And with that, I think we're ready to get our sea legs again and set sail for Duluth this afternoon!
In reply to Gunchsta :
Yep, it became the Plymford.
In reply to Gunchsta :
"Test drive revealed it running smoother with the new plugs, and handling like it's on RAILS with the new shocks and swaybar links.
Did I say rails? Let me clarify, rails made of butter and gravy. It's a barge but there is a degree of response now when you turn the steering wheel. It feels more firm in it's footing, more confident in it's movement. "
I feel like a lot of the complaints about terrible handling on big, older cars comes from driving examples that are just fully knackered and worn out. Additionally, most of these cars weren't really designed to last all that long (though they are easy to fix when they do wear out) so unless you were the original owner, likely they just sort of soldiered on with whatever FoMoCo stuck in there in 1965. OEM tires on these were crap, barely safe for puttering down to Bingo and back. Advancements in rubber technology over the past 60 years have been tremendous. Simply bringing everything back to stock, suddenly you have a large, comfortable car that actually rides and handles reasonably well. Add some modern tires and what might be the equivalent of the "police package" in terms of sway bars and shocks and it'll surprise more than a few folks.
Steering was one area that was admittedly pretty terrible- big wheel and lots of boost. For our race car, we de-powered it, but low speed steering effort is comically high. Volvo used an electrically-powered hydraulic steering pump for awhile on some cars; I'm investigating fitting one of these to Plymford to give some low speed boost but have it reduce boost at speed (it's a variable-speed pump, natch).
In reply to volvoclearinghouse :
Agreed wholeheartedly. I'm thinking the longer term winter project might be to refresh all the control arm bushings - after that some sway bars and I'm thinking it'll be pretty planted. I'm going to stick with the power steering as I probably won't do anything more than play around on some back roads. MAYBE an autocross next year.
I wonder, does it have the same camber problems the Mustang of the era does? If so, is there a Shelby drop style solution?
May be another quick-ish project, if so
How did I miss this thing? I mean, it's like 19ft long! 
These Breezeway barges are cool as all hell. Awesome snag, and loving the progress so far. And good on you for changing out that single circuit master cylinder before it became a problem. I also know what it's like to sail through an intersection in something of this vintage due to a finicky single reservoir master cylinder. I don't recommend it!
Kindred spirits! I have a 1964 myself.
These are great highway haulers.
What I've done :
Intake manifold gasket, New plugs, dist cap, thermostat
Fixed drivers window ....use silicone spray on the felt guides that's where my window sticks. If you actuate the rear window and you hear the motor but it doesn't move maybe those felts are stuck too. Rollers are same as for 1964 mustang. Fixed 6 way power seat.
Cut out and replaced pass front floor plan same as 64 ford galaxie.
Replaced carb twice ...mines a 4V, had a race 850 DP on there i rebuilt a 1969 autolite from a lincoln , now I finally !!!! Found the correct shoebox 4bbl
New carpet, loop which is incorrect for 1964 but it looks better.
New,trunk liner...original was a musty, rubberized burlap. I went with the plaid vinyl tablecloth everyone else uses
The trans is a dual range Merc-o-matic, mine was shifting fine before, hadn't driven it lately noticed it has a delayed 2-3 shift....hmmm
Fun fact, for 1964, the rear quarters are galaxie stampings with....FIVE....separate additional pieces welded on. For style purposes. How this ever got approved on a production line I'll never know.....
Next: reseal AC compressor get new evaporator , switch to R134a.
Rebuild shoebox carb.
Replace speedocable which I ruined cutting out floor ...DOH!
I believe this platform was the basis for so-called "NASCAR" chassis up to and including recently.
My fave Rising Sun car maker Nissan, gained their early rep for durability by dropping car bodies upon truck frames, able to withstand the rigors of prewar (horrible) Japanese roads. Look at this car:
-full perimeter frame
-FE truck style big block engine
-BW designed MercO Matic
-9" Ford rear
this IS a truck. Only the tinworm Can kill it.
Growing up in The 1960s-70's , the only cars i ever heard making it to 200,000 miles were:
FE Fords and 289's
Chrysler 318's
dodge slant sixes and six flat heads
Buick 350's
AMC's
Chevy 283's
In reply to Agent98 :
Nice car! Thanks for sharing. They do seem like pretty robust cars.
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