1962 Mercury Monterey Project

Why does this have to be so hard? What is the point of inventing Google if it can't even decode your manufacturing stamps on your transmission? My transmission has LOTS of numbers on it: the transmission body: AF 7006 D 21 the side-cover: AB 7222 B the tail: WAR 7651 A And would YOU like to guess how many of those YOU can use to look up which parts YOU might order for a rebuild kit? NONE of them. If you want to know where to buy parts to do a rebuild on the 3-speed, manual transmission in your 1962 Mercury Monterey 4-door sedan, you can go through the following steps: spend 45 minutes looking up numbers that are flat wrong because the pictures you have are just not very clear until you go outside and take more pictures check - and try not to transfer the oil to your face when you go back in - it causes your daughter / the project manager to ask questions that have no answer know a guy who just knows check - that didn't take long to find the answer was "nope" know a gu...

Sometimes when engineers are trying to make a car go faster they will shed weight. They trim unneccesary items. You would be surprised at how much acceleration you can get when you rip out extra stuff like carpet. Since I plan for this to be high performance 6-person sedan that weighs 2 tons, I set out to eliminate that unneccesary carpet. Besides, my garbage can was only half full this week. I put on my respirator and started to razor knife around the edges. After about 3 minutes I realized that the carpet was rotted enough that using a knife was too good for it. I just ripped it out and balled it up. I found a PCV valve under the front seat. I do not know what car that valve was for, but certainly not this one. This car's idea of positive crankcase ventilation is to suck air in via the oil fill tube and vent out from a habit-trail-like pipe that goes out the top of the valley, hooks a hard left and down under the firewall near the passenger's feet. It is called "road dra...

My father-in-law came over to work on the car today. He brought with him pluck and determination. He also reaped the benfit of the penetrating oil I had sprayed before him. Once we had coffee and got ourselves situated, we went to work. Of course it took him several minutes to understand what I had been talking about regarding the offending transmission bolts. Those 2 holding the transmission are really hard to see if you aren't looking for them. Even more so when you consider the distraction caused by the nine other bolts which are right in front of you. He immediately pointed out that we needed more room to crank. So we raised the car another 2 or 3 inches. In the front, I am using 2 jack stands I bought years ago that are pretty good, but we are 1 notch down from as high as they will go. In the back I am using 2 jack stands that came with the car. They were probably made before I was born and are 3-legged. While 3-legged is a good way to frame a metaphor about balanced expectati...

 Catfish Hunter that is. He is quoted as saying [the sun don't shine on the same dog's butt everyday]. Or maybe the phrase is [even a blind squirrel never finds a nut sometimes]. My favorite is [the race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all]. I set out today with the ambition to remove the transmission. I ended the day with the transmisson where it was at the beginning and covered in rust. The transmission is held to a mount with 2 bolts that go into threads on the transmission body. The mount is held by 3 bolts to a cross member. You get to the bolts for the transmission by way of two holes in the cross member. I figured that out as I worked. I did not see the transmission bolts at first, so I started with the ones on the mount - they turned quickly enough, but then I realized they are a bolt and a nut - I was just spinning the bolt on the top s...

The car has four garbage tires on it - but it does have four tires. I would not want to drive around the block on these things, but I am ok if they will hold the car off the ground eight inches. On the back are "snow tires" that mostly hold air. On the front are quality "Sears Polyester Biply" tires. They mostly think about holding air. So I decided to try $12 worth of slime tire sealant. I used 16ox for each of the front tires. The bottle says to drive them for 2/10 of a mile after you fill it and put the air back. Instead I spun each tire as fast as I could by hand for 10 minutes. Not sure if that counts as 1056 ft, but I will let you know later if this worked. Next I set out to delete the gas tank. I asked the internet if there was something I was missing about the wire for the sender unit - and rolled under there and gave it a more determined pull. That did the trick. I rolled to the back and tried to undo the hanger bolts from the rear rail. Rust was everywhere...

Not that long ago I thought I was going to have motor runnning in 2 weeks. That of course was contingent on being able to turn the motor with a wrench on the crank-bolt. That did not happen (not even a wiggle). So I am just working my way through taking the engine down and out. So today turned into remove the starter day. The car came with a both an "extra" starter and an "extra" generator. Considering the service manual describes in very clear detail how to rebuild both these things, and the cost of a core charge for either, I am surprised to have spares. Gosh this thing is oily. And the gear is carbon-y. I bet the clutch plate is smoked, but I hope the flywheel is solid. I also wanted to look at the front of the flywheel and the ring gear. More oil and more carbon but I was really glad I didn't find a dead mouse or more housing material. So, then I crawled under to try and prep everything to pull the transmission. I was not going to pull the transmission witho...