Transcona a dirty old Cougar

Here we have the finishing touches on the front end. I made a coilover substitute from a farm implement turnbuckle. The nice thing is that when I am checking clearances later it allows easy setting of different heights.

We have both frame sections back at home and we are about to set up the frame jig and have a little fun with what we have. This is the classic vroom, vroom stage!

Setup of the jig is actually quite easy as the level of the floor is unimportant. Just have to find the high spot first.

We have the jig locked to the floor and if it sat there too long with nothing on it junk could pile up. Nature abhors a vacuum I guess? Let’s toss a few sub-frames and some tubing up there and see what goes down!

egoman said:

We have the jig locked to the floor and if it sat there too long with nothing on it junk could pile up.

I feel personally attacked.

gumby said:

egoman said:

We have the jig locked to the floor and if it sat there too long with nothing on it junk could pile up.

I feel personally attacked.

As you probably should........

My buddy Brent who you will get to know better later dropped by and while he was here we decided to experiment with the tires. I got it in my head that I had left clearance for a really big tire up front. Well we had the rear tire so let’s try that? Damn, it fits really nicely! Doesn’t hit the frame anywhere.

Naturally I started a project in a garage that needs to be taken down and replaced. I managed to talk the wife into a shipping container for the current garages contents while we rebuild. It also gives me room to store the Cougars extra parts for a few years.

Well the cars last few days as a complete car are coming to an end. We are stripping this thing down and we are gonna save and tag everything! SURE WE ARE……………

Never afraid to admit I don’t know stuff, but it doesn’t seem to make me stop working.

You will see as I go along that I pull off some ridiculous feats through sheer stubbornness.

The chassis jig is a tremendous tool but like our car projects it is dynamic and always changing.

The thing I knew from the start was that it would have to be capable of more than just being a level surface.

I swore to myself that this would be a rolling chassis before the snow flew. Luckily I am fat and can work when it is too cold for most.

Before we put the chassis away for winter I wanted to put diagonals in to prevent any shifting as it’s removed from and reattached to the jig. Don’t need to diamond the frame by running into it with my tractor, do I?

A little confused. Are you playing catchup with these posts? I thought you were in Canada, and you are talking about first snow in a May 8 post?

twentyover said:

A little confused. Are you playing catchup with these posts? I thought you were in Canada, and you are talking about first snow in a May 8 post?

Yes this actually happened 2-1/2  years ago. I wanted to not have any gaps while posting. This is post  55 of approximately 150 as of right now. Keep following it only gets better! That photo is October 2018.

I am quite lucky. As a school teacher I occasionally have the opportunity to let the kids help on my projects. Teaching a vocational program the opportunities to use tools and smarts at the same time is a gift. When we have some spare time we just start to tear into something and have a little fun. Occasionally plumbing code requires us to take a break.

Remember when I said plumbing code could get a little boring? Well that happened on this day and the kids were more than happy to take out some frustration.

Now I can answer and show you why the steel I beam was in the previous posts.

I promised that the jig was an evolving unit and it appears this is just another period in that development.

Of course with a trolley beam on the jig I needed a few trollies to roll back and forth on them.

I ordered them through Amazon to get a good deal. After a lot of time being pissed off at them the order was canceled and good old Princess Auto came through.

As the car gets loaded on the jig the new trolley system gives us the freedom to move in ways that are helpful in construction and convenience.

With the car set on the jig we need to get rid of a lot of “Cougar”. It saves weight for moving it around and it also helps my scrap metal pile grow. Can’t look like a true hillbilly without a large scrap pile can you?

The project for today is to be able to support the car and be able to move it around. Another project that takes a ton of time and doesn’t look like you did anything.

First I pull the engine and I didn’t even miss that annoying ground that goes from the firewall to the engine. Naturally when I have some success I can’t just leave it alone can I? Good thing that the rear end came out with no hassle?