In reply to George3rd :
Dang, sorry to hear about your daughter.
In reply to George3rd :
Dang, sorry to hear about your daughter.
George3rd said:I'll get un-lazy and post some if anyone is interested.
We love Fergus. Post more Fergus.
Thank you
Okay, here are some pictures of the car. The first one was the rust right behind the driver's side rear door. That one took some real work to repair. This one is from the back of the car, driver's side.
Fergus!
Welcome back, George!
Yay fergus!!!
So enough of the rust. They don't make anything for the Country Sedan in the way of sheetmetal, so Galaxy stuff will have to do.
So, starting at the front of the driver's side rear wheel well which honestly took the most time cutting/fitting..... There was a LOT more work here than one mere picture can convey. Inside the wheelwell, there was more rust that reared it's ugly head. There was some detritus under the rear seat which, knowing my luck, was lit and required a quick and judicious application of chemical fire extinguisher.
Just hitting the high points, the rear of the quarter panel went on pretty good. You can see at the rear that the Galaxy quarter panel is quite different from the Country Sedan, so hand fabrication was required to make the corner.
The view from the rear. I know if looks rough, but there is a lot of thought/sweat that went into this piece.
This is one of the most controversial changes, retiring the column shift for a floor shift. The column shifter was so sloppy (how sloppy was it?) that it felt like a “where is Waldo” picture trying to find a gear. I like it, you may not.
Next challenge was the fuel tank. The tank that came in the car had a rubber hose zip tied along the frame rail all the way to the fuel filter located in close proximity to the exhaust manifold, then to the fuel pump. It did seem to work (whenever I remembered to put fuel in it) but with my luck, I thought I might enhance my longevity with a fuel tank enhancement program. I did find an original (ish) tank and it would have fit and been used if the original mounting brackets had survived in the car (they didn’t). I know my luck, so I went the fuel cell route instead of cobbling together brackets for the original style tank (insert image of gas tank falling out, catching on fire and sending Kermit (AKA Fergus) ablaze in your mind here). The tank is secured with aluminum brackets in an over achiever style, secured to the floor and side of the wagon. Fumes are vented with the Blue line so no light headed fume induced driving any longer! Getting rid of the rubber hose in favor of braided line with rubber grommets (again, I know my luck) through the metal in the body increases my confidence level, and it is secured with half moon metal brackets normally used for conduit (hey, it works and looks quasi-professional).
Kermit (AKA Fergus) was taken to get some exhaust word done, and once it was done, we (Cotton and I) were looking at some of the engine stuff (cue eye roll at the technical term “stuff” here) discovering that the radiator was just full of chocolaty badness, oily gooey sludge that spawned yet another “scope creep” moment. Engine flush (as good as possible), aluminum radiator, electric fan with housing to maximize fan efficiency (eliminating the ugly, noisy, prone to failure (my luck again [anyone see a pattern?] original), new water pump, new thermostat and housing, new carburetor (fuel leak and overt laziness), Pertronix ignition conversion (I can do points, but again, lazy for the win!), clean up some wiring, painting brackets, correcting pulley aberrations later, this is the result. I can't over state the grungy, nasty condition of the water (if you can call it that) in the radiator which no longer cycled the "water," so apparently being consistent with my nature, one small-ish change requires at least a dozen other totally unrelated changes because the time to fix something is when you see it and it just bugs the crap out of you and you're under the hood anyway fixing something so you might as well fix that while you're at it, then, OMG, I never noticed that, and I can't just leave it like that moment... I'm assuming that everyone is like this, right?
The last picture in this installment is the “new shoes, new shoes” snapshot. While I do love the idea of the original wheels, the tires available that can go on the wheels are narrow and don’t do much for the handling of the car. American Racing 18” wheels kind of match the original 500s on my ’71 Mustang, so maintaining continuity between Kermit (AKA Fergus) and Phantom sealed the deal on wheels and tires.
In reply to George3rd :
Fergus / Kermit gonna dance in those new shoes... Nicely done, thanks for posting all the updates. The shifter should have been there to begin with as well! 
11 years since the start of this thread and still counting. Fergus is one lucky Wagon. Thanks for the update.
George3rd said:one small-ish change requires at least a dozen other totally unrelated changes because the time to fix something is when you see it and it just bugs the crap out of you and you're under the hood anyway fixing something so you might as well fix that while you're at it, then, OMG, I never noticed that, and I can't just leave it like that moment... I'm assuming that everyone is like this, right?
Yes. Exactly.
Rust is the worse man. Looks like your doing some solid work to shore this thing up
11/1/24. Replacing a stock radiator with an aftermarket aluminum radiator is easy, right? Well, no one makes a replacement radiator for a 1968 Country Sedan., but a brief search on Bezos' company revealed one that promised direct fit, and that was AMAZING!!! Well, not so fast Wile-E-Coyote... Getting the radiator installed required a bit of slicing/dicing original mounts, creating new mounts and the upper radiator hose fits exactly like the original. The lower outlet was about 2 or so inches higher than the stock radiator. The first time I put the hose on, it fit!!! Well, it did until I tried to put the alternator belt on. No joy. I figured, no worries, just get a shorter belt! Easy, right? I tried longer belts, I tried shorter belts, then really shorter belts and really longer belts, gazed at the stupid bracket as if internal fury and wishing would make it work. On a totally unrelated search, I happened upon turbo setups, and found the setup where a high pressure silicone hose was used. What did they connect it with? T-bolt clamps. Since turbochargers have higher pressure than a radiator, since silicone can withstand quite a bit of heat, and since T-bold clamps squeeze WAY harder than screw-type radiator clamps, I searched for silicone hoses. Knowing that I needed a 90 degree bend from the radiator, and knowing the pipe size, I found a silicone hose that could be modified. Now, I needed a 90 degree bend metal pipe from the silicone hose to the stock hose which took a little more searching on various and sundry speed shops. Baron Von Frankenstein in his most tortured moments could not have imagined a more twisted setup, but it actually works! So for your viewing enjoyment, Here it is.
When the car came home, the sway bar was in the back. Wait, did I say sway bar? To be honest, Chef Boy-Ar-Dee probably made sphagetti bigger than what was originally on the car. Well, as it turns out, somebody actually DOES make a sway bar for a Galaxie, and the Country Sedan shares a lot of parts including the front suspension. It fits, and it is more than double the original wimpy thing.
Cars of the 60s, well family trucksters anyway, were not found worthy of having a rear sway bar. To be honest, my first half dozen cars didn't have a rear sway bar, but having one seemed like the thing to do for Kermit. GUESS WHAT? No one makes a rear sway bar for a Country Sedan (Imagine that) so again looking for Galaxie parts turned up a rear bar that they promised would fit. Well, it would fit if you could measure, drill and get all of the pieces to line up. Begging Cotton to join in the madness, we measured, looked, measured again, held our collective breath and drilled. Wonder of wonders, it FIT!!! Please forgive the old undercoating and surface rust, because getting the darned thing running and mostly the way I want it before esthetics are to be addressed. In this picture, you can see the Cherry Bomb mufflers which, I figured, were almost mandatory at this point.
So, if you are converting a single exhaust to dual exhaust in a 5000 lb car using Cherry Bomb mufflers and have a stock 390, what is the most logical thing to do??? Of course, an X-pipe. I'm quite sure the 0.5 horse power gained by all this will never be felt, but how many people have a 1968 Country Sedan with a 390, 3 speed manual transmission on the FLOOR, beefy front sway bar, rear sway bar, dual exhaust with an x-pipe and Cherry Bombs??? THIS GUY! I think it looks cool, but I'm weird.
In reply to George3rd :
Around here, being weird is the norm. Thanks for the updates!
Love old Ford projects! Love Galaxie's too!
I approve of this project!
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