1966 Mercury Colony Park - Restoration

1966 Mercury Colony Park - Just had her delivered back home to California from Illinois. This wagon was originally used at Los Angeles airport as a field operations car. Put in service in March of '66 until it was decomissioned by the County of Los Angeles in 1988. Have not been able to track down the cars home/whereabouts from 88-2004. Car has been garaged in Illinois the past several years. Since the car saw no open road from '66 to '88 and was strictly used on the airport grounds it has only 57,000 miles on it. Car is all original at this time; still has the holes on top of the roof where the safety lights were mounted. Since the cars been in Ca most of it's life it has little rust to speak of, just a little surface rust around several of the door seams.





(Can't seem to get larger photos on, sorry.)


This wagon now starts an overhaul of sorts. The interior is pretty decent shape only a single tear on the back seat. Carpet needs replacing and there are a few chrome items in need of attention. Otherwise all other interior parts are not worn and show no wear or sun damage at all; pretty amazing. The exterior paint and wood trim are shot. I'll be taking on the mechanical side of things while leaving prep and paint to a pro. Removing the 390 and Merc-o-matic (both of which will be kept should someone want to return it to completely original condition) for a 428 and C6. Upgrading the front drum brakes to discs. Redoing the front and rear suspension. And last adding a few extras from other Merc's such as power windows, power bench seat, roof rack and tilt wheel.


I'll update as I go, I have a few updates now but I'm a little short on time and need to make sure the pictures are coming through...

I'll be back soon...

Martin

 

Car Arriving from Ill.

I thought I might put a couple of pics of the wagon as it rolled off the freeway into San Bernardino on the back of a car carrier. It was delivered to my girl friend Natalie's work place.






These are the only pics we have of the delivery.

We have some pics coming up of the car we were able to find a 428 engine out of (a '66 Park Lane). So the next time I can share the story of the search for an engine and what we found as we tore the engine down...

 

Martin,

That looks like a really nice base for your restoration/mod project. And don't worry about the pictures, they look fine too. Good luck on your project. :2_thumbs_up_-_anima
I hope your new engine turns out ok when you open it up.

 

Thanks for the pics! Loud and Proud! Looks like a fine start.

 

Dig it! Where in SoCal are you? I'm in the South Bay. Let me know if you need some help. I'd like to get a closer look...

 

great project!!!

i almost bought one last year...shes a stylish piece!!

 

Well I thought I'd stop back by for an update.

Over the past couple of months both Natalie and I have been scanning the internet looking for a Ford/Mercury 428 to rebuild. This is somewhat like looking for a needle in a haystack. If we could find a 428, it was often a 390 FE block that had been rebuilt into a 428. Or if we could find a 428, a real 428, it was pretty cost prohibitive.

This story for this particular find comes under the category that sometimes it's better to be lucky then good. We had located a 428 and C6 trany on Craigslist over in Claremont, Ca. It was expensive. The guy wanted $3750, it had been rebuild and only had about 5K miles on it. I wasn't really wanting to spend this much, but the reality of it was that $3750 for both with that mileage on it wasn't that bad. I was at first skeptical that it was a 428, but after talking to the seller about how the engine/trany had come out of a '66 Mercury S-55 and the fact that he was a professional auto restorer lead me to believe it was legit. The numbers on the block showed it to be out of a '66 Mercury, but without seeing the rods or crank there was no way to absolutely confirm. So we left. I was going to put it on the back burner, but as we drove down the freeway and started pricing out what it would be to rebuild just a 390 into a 428 and rebuild a C6, I was thinking more and more that I might want to just get it; that said Natalie and I really wanted to do the rebuild ourselves...

... so has we continued down the freeway through Fontana, Natalie said, "hey lets stop by this pick-a-part place."(You got to love a woman who says lets go to the junkyard!) Well we went to Ecology Auto Wrecking; in Fontana, or "Fontucky" as we fondly call it out here. Not knowing what to expect, it was your basic pick-a-part place. For a two dollar entry fee you can go in and remove your own parts, take them up to the front and pay. Well, this place is full of mostly late 80's and up cars. I figure this is pretty much a bust but we continue to look at the saddest collection of Fords and Mercury's I've seen in some time. But lighting does strike, and there she sat...






A 1966 Mercury Park Lane. This was the only 60's era car on the lot. The car had not been there too long from the looks of it, but it had already been brutalized. First by the last owner no doubt, but also by the folks who had been there before us. The engine bay was empty, too bad. The VIN code indicated that the car had a 428 w/ a C6 trany. Not too surprising as the Park Lane was considered the top of the line for Mercury. Anyway, we proceeded to pick up some parts for the wagon. We collected some switches, lights, etc. A number of nice finds all things considered. On the way out Natalie spotted a bunch of engines sitting on the ground. We walked over to take a look and there it was, sitting right in the front.





A big block Ford FE engine; probably had just come out of the Park Lane in the last day or so. I took a look and could only tell that it had come out of a '66 Mercury (C6ME code). We decided to roll the dice. The engine and trany combined were going to come up to $450. So we scurried back home to get the pick-up and return to get the engine. So we have a big block Ford engine and trany, condition unknown? Well it's known now and I'll come back with a bunch of pictures of the tear down and what we found...

 

Nice Car

Hey There!

Nice car. Cant wait to hear about the 428 engine adventure.

P.S. what kind of girlfriend actually likes junkyards???

 

over the years..
..i only had a few gals that would put up with my Cardiction..
...maybe i shoulda kept one..............

congrats on the score!!!....gal and motor...

 

Congrats on the find! Awaiting the teardown pix...

--Hal

 

Engine Teardown

When I last left off we were going to see if we got lucky with the Mercury Park Lane engine being a 428...

... and the answer is "yes", in fact I feel like we got very lucky.

As I mentioned we picked up the motor and took it back to the workshop.



First we had a little problem with the motor hoist that required a bit of repair, I include this only because it was an excuse to do some grinding and create a few sparks (always a good thing)



But back to the engine. We got her up on the work stand and started the disasembly.



As you can see from this shot this is going to be a very precise and by the book breakdown procedure (just kidding, ignore the latex glove...).

We removed the accessories




We then got down to the interesting part and took off the heads.



To our surprise the cylinder walls indicated the block had been bored out in the not too distant past. We had picked up a ridge-reamer but there was no need for it. We removed all the pistons, crank, etc. They were marked with a "428" on the outside of the piston at connecting rod pinion and the connecting rods had C6ME-A. So we're looking pretty good. We removed the crank and I was looking for a designation of C6ME or similar that would indicate a 428 crank. Well I couldn't find anything stamped on the crank. There was some damage to the #8 piston. The piston was broken in between the compression rings. There was also quit a bit of metal in the oil pan, but nothing that I was too concerned about.

At this point I was feeling pretty good but it was time to take it down to the machine shop where the engine would be reworked. We loaded up the block, crank, rods/pistons and head back down to BMS in San Bernardino. The owner Dave comes out to give it a once over. In looking at the crank he's able to find a "1U" stamped on it. A look into one of his books indicates that it's the factory crank found in a 428, Bingo. We're pretty psyhed at this point. We leave all the stuff with him. He's going to boil the block, etc. take all the measurements to let us know what we've got.

One week later we're back at BMS. We find we definitely have a 428 that's been bore out. The engine work that was done must have been done on the cheap. It was bore out but not honed. As such the piston rings were not sealing properly and there was probably detonation/blow-by that cause the #8 piston to fail. The measurements also indicated that the boring was 30-over but there was a wide variation.

Dave said he'll check out pricing/getting a 45-over set of custom forged piston. That is option one; option two is resleeving and going with a standard 428 piston (we know this to be expensive). Option three, which isn't much of an option is 60-over. The FE block is already a bit thin and Dave says he wouldn't recommend a 60-over. He also was going to send out the crank for evaluation to see if it could be refurbished or we'd need a new crank.

That brings us to this past Friday. The crank came back as being good. There was a slight miscommunication between the crank guy and Dave at BMS. When Dave got the crank back it had already been refurbished, oil ports flared, polished, etc. No worries. For $110 buck we got an original 428 crank that's in great shape now; cheaper than buying a new one. The rods also checked out good and Dave said it was best to go with them as they were probably Ford's most heavy duty rods except for the Le Mans rods that were in the 427. Dave checked in to the 45-over pistons and they're pricey. For the custom aluminum forged pistons it's about $100 a piston. This works out to be a little less than resleeving and going with a standard 428 forged aluminum piston.

So that where we are at. Dave's working up a complete cost list from getting the pistons, heads, etc. to doing the block refurbishment (boring, honing, boring out the oil galleys, etc). Hopefully by the end of the week we'll have a rough idea of the total cost.

While this was going on we had a couple of other exciting things happen. A trip over Phoenix to see a 66 Colony Park wagon to get more parts and we started in on removal of the wood trim and refurbishment of the fiberglass pieces. I'll post again with those two items and the engine rebuild continued...

 

This is getting real interesting.

Any idea whether a re-sleeved block ends up heavier? Was always curious about that.

My Fairlane came with a .060 over 428 CJ...the block was thoroughly checked for wall thickness. But it sticks in the back of my head and makes me a little nervous. I saw a .030 over 428 block on eBay, but I would trust that less than what I've got.

Waiting to see your upcoming post about the trim disassembly, etc. Keep us posted.

--Hal

 

sounds like your having tooo much fun!!
man i wish i had time to work on my cars...maybe this winter

 

Wow, now that's great detail info. Thanks.

 

Engine Rebuild Starting Up...

Well, I just wanted to kind of briefly tie-up the engine story... Dave at BMS put together a cost package for the "long block" rebuild. We'll be using the block which will be bore out 45 over; the oil galleys will be enlarged and a steel tube will be inserted to smooth out the galleys; this will increase oil pressure in the system. As I mentioned earlier the crank and rods checked out so we're ok there. The pistons will have to be custom order which turns out to be about $100 more than going with a 60 over bore. As mentioned the big block Ford motors have a tendency to be a little on the thin walled side. The motor will be balanced as well. We're going with aluminum Edelbrock heads. Also, a new camshaft with a good match to the lift/duration of the values; I won't bore you with the details. There's all the usual rebuild stuff with bearing clearance, etc. which is all pretty standard. I just decided to go with an aluminum pulley set; the crankshaft pulley was one of the cast-iron jobs so for a couple of hundred bucks I'm probably picking up 10hp at the wheels, not much but it starts to add up. Dave's going to go with an electronic ignition conversion using the old distributor. So that's saving a bit. There are a number of new parts... harmonic balancer, flex plate, lifters, push rods, etc. The stuff would fall under the street race category, nothing too exotic. I'm going to be around $4200 of which the heads are $1400. This stuff adds up fast. Not included in the price will be the intake man., carb, all the accessory stuff. And we still need to take down the transmission for a rebuild, which I've confirmed to be a C6, so for $150 bucks we're pretty stoked that worked out. So the drive train costs are going up and up. We’ll have the fun of final assembly so I'll have some pictures to share at that time.