Self deprecating forum user buys huge car, shares with GRM, hilarity ensues? 1965 Mercury Monterey

9/11/20 through 9/13/20 update - The open road!

This weekend my wife and I took the big Merc up to Duluth to see some friends. Originally one couple was going to be getting married, but that wedding has been postponed until next year. Still having the Air BnB reserved we decided to make the trip up there anyway. 

On the way up the car got close to 14 mpg cruising along at 70 mph. Intake gaskets fixed the oil leak, and apparently this 390 is in decent shape because it didn't use any oil. Total miles driven over the weekend: 331. No problems. When we got into Duluth we sat and idled in traffic for 20-30 minutes while a giant 700' iron ore carrier went out, the car got warmer than cruising temp, but didn't overheat or do anything bad. Score! 

While sitting in traffic some guy got out of his truck and walked over to us and asked to take a picture for a friend who 'used to have one just like it'. People really like the old cars and love to talk about them and the experiences they had in them. 

Driving up to the lift bridge in Canal Park. Our rented house was on the other side. 

Crossing said bridge. 

Backed in at the Air BnB - The beach is about 30 feet behind the rear bumper in this picture. Beautiful spot and a super nice house. 

Twins separated at birth? I think this barge was about a 700'er. Watching these go in and out was cooler than I expected. They were obviously massive, but very quiet as they snuck out onto the lake. Duluth is an interesting town, lots of industrial design & history. 

The weekend was fun, we left around 10 on Sunday to get home and take care of some chores around the house before the work week. I gave the car a bath as it sat outside all weekend and got rained on a bit and quite dirty & dusty. I also got the dome light cover I ordered on eBay and snapped that on. Looks much better. 

I get excited about dumb stuff like this dome light. 

And here's the glorious 390 with it's new V-belts, plugs, wires, cap and rotor. 

I need to replace the ground wire for the battery as it's pretty crappy and small. 

Overall trip experience was great. Unfortunately we didn't get to putter around much on back roads, this was more of a banzai blast up and back due to time constraints, but the car performed admirably. 

9/16/20 Update - Hilarity begins to ensue? 

You ever think to yourself - I should stop what I'm doing, there's an easier way. But then you say to yourself "but it's just 4 bolts, I'll be done soon". 

And then you're scooting under the bumper between the motorcycle on your back weaseling your shoulders under the bumper so you can get to one of the 4 bolts. The other 3 require similar (but different) gymnastics. I should have jacked the car up. 

Finally after some internal strife I did move the motorcycle, but I didn't get an air ratchet which would have made the job easier, or a longer 1/2" wrench, or gloves. I insisted on suffering just to change these silly sway bar to frame bushings. 

Old crunchy bushings. They didn't look terrible but once I got them out they were pretty wallowed out and hard so it was a worthwhile endeavor. 

Very OSHA approved razor blade and vice grip method of cutting the old ones off. Actually worked quite slick. 

New on left, old on the right. 2 bolts. Another 'not hard but difficult' task as there was a layer of scale and grime on the threads so the nuts didn't come off especially smooth once they were loose. Old cars. 

New bushings in their home. Watch out Porsche nerds in the canyons the Merc is coming for you! 

I doubt this will have much effect, but I ordered the bushings so by god I am going to put them in. Yesterday was a 12 hour day in the office with meetings and sales numbers and all kinds of desk work. I think on some level going out to the garage and doing this the hard way was a way of proving my salt to myself. Or something. 

At least now I know if I find myself needing to replace front swaybar bushings in a 1965 Mercury Monterey on the side of the road without a jack I can do it. Survival skills ACTIVATE! Form of - unnecessary struggle! 

Once back in the house I looked in the fridge and found a beer I had forgotten about! Score! I had my beer and read my book for a bit and went to bed. A nice reward for a long day.

Thanks for reading 

In reply to Gunchsta :

That was cathartic just to read. Good job!

9/17/20 Update - Glamour Shots! 

It was my wife's birthday yesterday so we took the big Merc out for some errands and dinner. New sway bar bushings worked marvelous. I actually went out and 'threw' it around some corners after dinner in an industrial park. It's funny - it has a lot of body roll, but it seems like once you get that out of the way it stays relatively planted for a 55 year old car.  

I'm still chasing an off idle stumble - I've moved the accelerator pump arm to just about every possible location, and it never seems to make much difference. It revs nice and clean at idle, but with a load on it it'll stumble from a stop/slow roll until you get past about 1/8 throttle. I did some reading last night and it seems like some people have attributed this to float level. I will try resetting the float level and see if that has any effect. I did play with the idle mixture screws and my vacuum gauge and went from about 15" to 17" of vacuum at idle, so that's a positive. 

Incremental progress! 

In reply to Gunchsta :

Glamour Shots! 

I have never seen a glamorous loading dock. You can do better.

In reply to TurnerX19 :

Any loading dock is glamorous with a 1965 Mercury Monterey parked in front of it :) 

TurnerX19 said:

In reply to Gunchsta :

Glamour Shots! 

I have never seen a glamorous loading dock. You can do better.

I've seen some interesting ones in my time, but they are mostly on old semi-abandoned military bases

These would work well for the car, I think

https://gregbenzphotography.com/twincities/the-old-loading-docks-in-st-paul

In reply to Mr_Asa :

Cool spot for sure - this is my 63' Nova there in 2008. 

Gunchsta said:

In reply to TurnerX19 :

Any loading dock is glamorous with a 1965 Mercury Monterey parked in front of it :) 

While I agree, I think the color of the car is too close to the color of the background.  Perhaps some backdrop of a dark-colored wall would be better, and the car would contrast more.  Not black though, since the wheels are black.  Either very light (like, off-white) or something red-blue-green. 

9/19/20 Update - More windshield time! 

My wife hosted a baby shower at our house, and I was tasked with being out of the house for most of the afternoon on Saturday. So I loaded my bike into the Merc and headed to some mountain bike trails in Red Wing. 

Right when I got into Red Wing I cruised with this 1962-ish Dodge Pickup. It looked pretty original and cool

Once I got there I did a really terrible climb up this bluff to get to the trails that were at the top. I'd never ridden these before so I just parked at a random city park and found them from there. In hindsight there was a parking lot right up near the trail head that I would use next time. Anyway, the view from one of the look out spots was great, and the trails were worth the climb. Some fun twisty singletrack, some teeter-totters, and a couple of really fast downhill sections. Good stuff . 

Once I was satisfied with biking, I hit the open road. Down highway 61 along the river to Lake Pepin - the birthplace of water skiing. Also a nearly 2 mile wide part of the Mississippi river that was formed at the end of the last ice age (according to Wikipedia). Anyways, it's a nice drive down there and the roads along the river are very pretty. 

Good old 2 lane highways - perfect for this old boat. 

Stopped at Lake Pepin for a minute to check in with my wife and take a couple of pictures of the car

Since the weather was perfect and the car was running good I decided to continue south to Wabasha. Once there I would cross over into Wisconsin and take highway 35 back north - a very popular crusing road for Corvettes and Harleys. 

This bridge takes you across the Mississippi between Wabasha MN and Nelson WI. 

Once I got into Wisconsin I was met by hundreds of motorcycles & riders lining the streets of every small town I went through - I was quite surprised. It was a bit of a twilight zone experience for me, I haven't seen any big gatherings of people like that since 2019. 

I think from Nelson up to Hager City I must have seen 1,000 + motorcycles - hundreds parked at bars, and hundreds on the road. It was a beautiful day for a ride, that much is certain. 

Deciding I didn't want to deal with packed streets in small towns I crossed back over to MN at Hager City and went home on the MN side. The plan was to take Wisconsin 35 all the way north and cross over around Prescott, but the day (and my own personal opinions) decided I do something different. 

Anyhow, the car worked phenomenal and I got some good quality time inside my own head. I finally relaxed and stopped checking the gauges every 3 minutes and just drove. It was very pleasant. I like to think the car was happy to be on this type of a drive. Mellow curves, slower speeds, very scenic - certainly more so than the inside of a parking garage. 

i see from the Nova pic you've been a fan of steelies with chrome lug nuts for a while now.  for me, after pondering it a while, that look falls short on this car.  it's a luxurious big beast, and IMO it needs full wheel covers.  however, i 100% believe "your car, your style" and it's better to be on the road without wheel covers than in a garage with.

In reply to AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) :

I'm starting to agree that the black steelies fall flat on this one. I still like the look, but they don't seem to fit the demeanor of the car. 

The wife liked the factory wheel covers, maybe I'll give those another shot. I've never been a fan of stock full wheel covers, but they are "right" in the sense that they belong to the car. 

I've also been shopping for a set of 17" 5-spokes of some sort, I'm just not sure I want to sink $1,200 into a set of wheels and tires. Knowing myself I would do this and then immediately list the car for sale. 

What's the bolt pattern?  There are probably a number of fascinating options in terms of used truck/jeep/van wheels out there.

In reply to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :

Oh, just probably one of the most common bolt patterns on earth... 5x4.5 or 5x114.3.

There's lots options, I'm pretty picky, and I also don't want to run a +45 offset wheel with an 1-1/2" spacer. 

I disagree.  I'm a fan of hubcaps, but I like the black with chrome lugs look here.  The black contrasts with the light body color.  Plus I just love black and tan. 

I abhor giant ugly modern wheels on classic iron.  I think they'd look more out of place than the "mild CA custom" vibe you've got going on now.

Gunchsta said:

9/17/20 Update - Glamour Shots! 

 

Been following along, love the progress. Just clicked to check in on a work break, Dancin' To The Truth by Dumpstaphunk came on right as I scrolled to this picture. I'll be damned if the first 25 seconds shouldn't be this car's theme music. 

Gunchsta said:

In reply to AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) :

I'm starting to agree that the black steelies fall flat on this one. I still like the look, but they don't seem to fit the demeanor of the car. 

The wife liked the factory wheel covers, maybe I'll give those another shot. I've never been a fan of stock full wheel covers, but they are "right" in the sense that they belong to the car. 

 

I've also been shopping for a set of 17" 5-spokes of some sort, I'm just not sure I want to sink $1,200 into a set of wheels and tires. Knowing myself I would do this and then immediately list the car for sale. 

How easy is it to get replacement factory covers?  I'm wondering if they could be painted the color of the body with some black or white highlights or something?

isn't there a 17" steel option from the 2003-ish crown vic P71 that was still pretty close to typical RWD offset?

In reply to AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) :

I think the cool looking P71 steelies are high offset. The 2002 and older Panthers had a more normal RWD offset but I don't think they had the 17" steelies. 

That said, I do have some 1" and 1.5" bolt on spacers left over from my Town Car that I could use, I just don't love big spacers as a general practice. Although I'm not sure this is warranted.

What is the classes opinion on bolt on spacers? 

In reply to Mr_Asa :

I'm guessing not terribly easy to come by - they do have some black highlights in them already. 

Gunchsta said:

In reply to AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) :

What is the classes opinion on bolt on spacers? 

I think that a few racing classes allow them on track.  SCCA maybe?  I can't remember.  For daily driving I wouldn't be worried about them provided I was the only person taking them on and off.  You get some tire jockey at your local tire place doing it and all bets are off.

Found these

https://www.ebay.com/itm/1965-Mercury-HUBCAPS-14-Set-of-4-Wheel-Covers-Merc-Hub-Caps-65-/303121936785

You could get them and play around with paint colors on them, if that idea floats your boat.

In reply to Mr_Asa :

Good to know on the spacers- I've run them before but they've always worried me a little. If SCCA or another such similar sanctioning body approves them that makes me feel a lot better. 

If I'm being honest I probably won't change much in the near future, but it's fun to consider options. 

Gunchsta said:

I didn't realize until now you're in Minnesota...we travel some of the same roads.    I'm in Minneapolis, but my company's Duluth office is in the building on your right, upstairs from the brewing company.

In reply to stuart in mn :

Interesting! I'm in Richfield near the airport.