1967 Mercury Cougar XR7 - Project Green Kitty

[SeanP]

Did a whole bunch of work this past weekend swapping in my new flexplate. Wasn't able to get the car high enough to get the transmission completely out from under it, but had more than enough room to take the old flexplate off and install the new one.

As I partially suspected, I had two drain plugs on torque convertor but only had 1 aligned on the drain hole, which means the other plug was pressing against the flexpate, pushing the weight into the path of the starter and scraping my spacer plate (I don't know what that plate is actually called but it sits between the block and the flextplate).

Managed to get the transmission back on pretty easily thanks to some alignment studs I fabricated by cutting the heads off some appropriately sized bolts and cutting screwdriver slots on the ends. Simply had to jack the transmission to the appropriate height and then push and lift the transmission onto the studs and pinch everything together. From there I just would remove a stud and replace it with a bolt.

Made four alignment studs total for the two bolts on each side. I put the top bolts in last as I would need to tilt the transmission down to get at them. But with four out of six bolts already installed, the top two went in no problem.

From there just had to button everything back up and reinstall the exhaust and the driveshaft.

Starter and flexplate work great now that everything is installed properly. Still having some running issues but believe it's a carburetor/timing thing. Going to reset my timing and see if that helps. If that's not it, I'll have to see about getting a new caburetor. (I've just been making due with used ones this whole time)

[jaywish]

Excellent

[SeanP]

I ordered a new Coil as well in case that's part of my problem.

[SeanP]

While waiting for my new coil I did a spark test and observed an orange arc on my sparkplug, which I understand is not ideal. A lot of my hard start and running issues seem to correspond with symptoms one would experience with a weak/bad coil and the colour of the arc corroborates this. From what I've read it should be a blue or purple arc, not orange. So, very hopeful my new coil will fix my problems. Fingers crossed, as every other component of the ignition system has been changed (cap, rotor, wires and plugs).

Fuel is pumping strong, and my compression may not be great, but it was definitely not bad. So really the only x-factor is spark. Excited to find out. Coil arrives tomorrow.

[SeanP]

Gah. Amazon keeps pushing back delivery of my ignition coil. Going with a local store... it's a bit more money, and I bet the parts come out of the exact same factory, but at least I'm getting good local service.

[SeanP]

Ok. Installed the new coil and my new carburetor (1406 EBrock... hold your opinions lol). Still won't really start at all. I think I may have an issue with my Pertronix ignitor module. It likes to have 12 volts from the coil but I'm only reading 10-11 volts at the coil in the key on position.

If anyone has any experience with this that they could share I would be very grateful!

[Arquemann]

Obviously the first things to verify would be spark, fuel and probably timing.

You might have voltage loss somewhere in the ignition wiring. Even though not optimal, 10-11 should be enough, but the voltage might drop too much during cranking. You probably have eliminated/bypassed the original resistor wire?

[SeanP]

Obviously the first things to verify would be spark, fuel and probably timing.

You might have voltage loss somewhere in the ignition wiring. Even though not optimal, 10-11 should be enough, but the voltage might drop too much during cranking. You probably have eliminated/bypassed the original resistor wire?

Fuel and timing are good (at least as good as I can make it for not having a running car... I've pulled and reinstalled the distributor lots of times and its always run well.. at least back when it was running). Getting good fuel flow too so not too worried.

I had initially checked positive coil voltage with my tach bypassed and it was 11. With the tach back inline its down to 10 volts. The pink wire (resistor) wire is still in the car (goes into the tach) but not sure if its been bypassed or something. Going to test for that in a few mins.

[SeanP]

Update. Resistance spec for my pertronix module is 1.5 - 3.5 ohm .... testing my ignition circuit at 3.6 ohm and coil is 1.4 ohm for a total resistancepf 5 ohm.... so its been running 1.5 ohm over max spec for years. (Note- the pertronix was i stalled by the previous owner so dont know much about it).

[Arquemann]

Inline tach sounds weird, is it a factory thing?
Factory resistor wire is between the ignition switch and coil positive. The Ignitor wants 12v, so the resistor should be bypassed or eliminated.

If you have ~11 volts at the coil with the key on, how much do you have at the battery?

But you've had the car running and working well enough with the ignition system as is?
A simple check would be to temporarily run a wire from the battery positive to the coil positive.

[SeanP]

The ignition circuit goes from the coil to the tach to the ignition switch from the factory.

I've attached the diagram I have a copy of that illustrates this. It was the same for Shelbys too.

I've read that the system would work at 10-11 volts, just without the full 12 volts it will wear out prematurely.

I did some further investiinvestignder my hood. The fellow I bought the car from did a whole bunch of weird wiring. I do have a yellow wire spliced into the group of wires going through the firewall. It traces back to what looks like a relay or something next to the starter solenoid. Theres a whole bunch of stuff going on that I dont understand. Some of it was to wire in an electric fan that I removed.

Ill take some pictures.

[Arquemann]

Neat setup, I have no clue how that tach works electrically speaking

3.6 ohms for the ignition circuit seems like the resistor wire is still in place. I think the pink resistor wires are usually 3-ish ohms cold.

[SeanP]

Neat setup, I have no clue how that tach works electrically speaking

3.6 ohms for the ignition circuit seems like the resistor wire is still in place. I think the pink resistor wires are usually 3-ish ohms cold.

I would say it would seem so. I've seen everything from 1.5 to 3-ish for the resistor wires. I think the idea was to get the coil down to 7-9 volts or something. I'm sitting around 10.

I believe the yellow wire I mentioned before was the switch for the electric fan that was installed. It's probably a feedback from the temperature gauge, appears to go into the switch on the inner fender which the fan plugged into.

[SeanP]

So I think I may have a bad battery. I'm going to get a known good battery from a work friend and see if it makes a difference. My current symptoms are as though the battery may be failing... which sucks because I just got it in the spring.

Anyway, stay posted.

[SeanP]

The battery I got from my work friend was very small. I tried it in tandem with the battery in my car, but no difference. I'm going to take my battery in for a load test at a local parts store and see if that's the issue or if my starter is the issue.