Nominal

Cor porking? Sounds kinky!

Yeah, don't be shy...

Bought a new starter cap a couple of weeks back for spa pool pump. Cost about $40. Then found the newish one I took of the last (rooted) pump in the shed. Grrr.

Holey Moley!

Now for the main part of the grille. I had a friend (Hi Shane) cut the main bars and tig weld them together at the correct angle. I hand filed the welds then finished the joins with various grades of emery tape and a quick session with a buffer. Partially assembled here with some of the plywood mounts to see if it was all going to work. I started the assembly with the shortest (middle) bar and some more mounting brackets Adding bars. The shaped brackets made it really easy to assemble straight. It would have been a real pain to get in alignment any other way. Once fully assembled I blocked the bars up in the grille opening and made some body mounts to span between the existing radiator support structure (or hood latch in this case) and the triangular brackets. This worked well, and made it easy to assemble the grille first. Remember to check at each stage that the grille can be removed from the car without too much dismantling, and that all the mounting bolts can be reached with a socket or spanner. Cutting out some more stainless for the body mounts. This shear made life easy! Once all together I painted all the bracketry (and welds on the backside of the tubes) with a spray bomb. Overspray on the tubing was removed with thinners before it dried. The finished product. I am really pleased how this turned out. It cleans up the front of the car no end. Since this pic we';ve been on a long drive to the Whangamata Beach Hop. No problems with the grille except a fair few bugs stuck on it! (this was done back in 2013)

The original grille is a stamped aluminium affair with vertical bars. The design is fussy, and the blacked out areas really needed repainting. I don't have a good before pic, but this one shows the grille reasonably well. A complicating factor is the quad headlights. I designed the grille to use the existing headlight surrounds. This means that the new bars follow the same V profile as the original, both vertically and horizontally The first step was removing the headlights and original grille. A workshop manual was handy as there are quite a few bolts involved. I had to paint the area behind the headlights satin black as it was previously body coloured. I got rid of the dead moths later! Each dual headlight assemble is a large pot-metal casting that bolts through the radiator support in 4 places. The tube grille assembly between the headlights would need to be attached to this casting. After checking out some tubing sizes and looks I settled on a 7-bar design using 5/8" (16mm) stainless steel tubing. I made some plywood mounting brackets to test out the look. When correctly assembled the headlight bezels cover the ends of the tubing. After sourcing some tubing and cutting to the correct lengths (the usual measure twice, cut once routine) I made a template (with the small holes) then used this to create a couple of mounting plates from some stainless steel sheet. The larger holes were drilled with a unibit. Most of the holes where then cut off with a Bosch shear to leave this shape. The small cutouts were a bit help in locating and aligning the tubing. For these short pieces I also used the plywood brackets for alignment when welding. The tubes were MIG welded to the mounts. I didn't have an SS wire handy so just used the normal steel MIG setup - hopefully this won't bite me in the ass later. Due to the stepping spacing of the headlights (that matches the overall V at the front of this Mercury) the mounts are not at 90 degrees to the tubing. I didn't really want to drill the headlight mount casting, but didn';t see a good option. So I made these large mounting plates which bolt to the casting in four places. Trial assembly. Both between-headlight assemblies with the mounting brackets and plates painted black. Looking OK!

Ownership restriction (4 years) applies to modern vehicles (the special interest category). However it isn't an issue for the 20 year and older LHD.

Fully agree with Kyteler - short zaps are essential on panel steel. Looks to me that you need a little more heat/less wire speed. The weld should be "in" the metal, not just sitting on top. I also find it is better to use the 0.6mm wire for welding thin steel.

Within 250mm according to the latest amendment http://www.lvvta.org.nz/documents/infosheets/LVVTA_Info_09-2011_Drive-shaft_Safety_Loop_Requirement_Clarification.pdf Depends on the bracket mounts, I suppose. If you bolt it to the floor it needs a doubler plate and 2 10mm bolts each side.

Nice going. Video is good too - must be time for a broken axle? Or a blower ....

The long tubing will be on the sucky side. Bigger will help though, I agree.

The usual Morris ones have a check valve in the reservoir fitting I think. Mine is a bit poked, so I have to pressurise it with the garden hose before each WOF. No reason why it wouldn't work from the boot, it's mainly about the head (height difference) between pump and reservoir I would expect.

After a year or so one of the Astro wheels had an 'issue' which resulted in their removal from the car. I went back to the original 14" steels for a while, but needed something better for the Beach Hop, so acquired some 14" 5 spokes via Trademe. After a clean up, paint, and some newly spun bullets... Have done a couple of weddings. These are usually somewhat fun, but involve a lot of waiting around. At least this time I had a hooker in a Lincoln to chat with.

Nah, back in 2009. Welds broke in one of them, so I still have them but no longer on the car (well a couple are on now to work out ride heights) and I can't really sell them. Will mount them onto the garage wall one day - might make a good outside hose reel.

The black carpet was faded to brown (peril of a convertible) so I work contact kindly carried a new carpet as baggage to NZ. Removing the interior revealed a mostly good floor (the car was sold new in Illinois so that is an achievement) with a little rust that was dealt to. The surface was was cleaned up and neutralised, then POR15 applied. The roof mechanism is operated by this hydraulic pump behind the back seat. At the same time as the new carpet I fitted a more modern sound system with a sub mounted in a closed off area (big MDF panel) behind this seat, amp in trunk, head unit under front seat, and some 5" speakers up under the dash. All TM specials - sounds OK, nothing brilliant, but better than AM when on the road. Acquired some Astro - style- wheels at the PN swap meet, and bought new thin stripe whitewalls. For the sky-scraper look. Plus, these whitewalls were a right bitch to keep white.

Have had the valve cover off to swap to some finned ones. Looked at all the gunk, then slapped the new ones on anyway. Has managed multiple trips up the island to Beach Hop etc over the years with no problems, so I'm in denial about engine issues.

Oh yes. I have some more historical stuff (rust, tube grille, wheels etc), and the current effort on investigating airbags.

Build: //oldschool.co.nz/index.php?/topic/43505-nominals-1964-mercury/ Give me shit here.

OK, so since I am actually doing something with this right now I guess I should get a project thread going. Discussion: //oldschool.co.nz/index.php?/topic/43506-nominals-1964-mercury/ We've had this car since 2003. At the time I was working in Indianapolis for a few months, and looking for another car to bring home (at the time I also had a '69 Lincoln in NZ). I did a lot of looking online, but only inspected a couple of cars. The first was a "rust free" late 60's Galaxie, which was a bit too rusty. The second was this one. Something about the colour and chrome combination was very attractive. As bought, it had been on fire, with the air cleaner burnt up, and a large burn mark in the centre of the bonnet. The PO told me it had backfired through the carb, setting fire to the filter. He had got it running again with a cleaned up (or replacement?) carb. It would only drive in 1st and 2nd gears though. After a quick test drive we decided it was too cool to pass on so bought it. We were still in Indianapolis for a couple of months more so brought it back to the apartment complex and parked it in one of the garages. Like most US accommodation there were many rules in place, including some banning working on cars on-site (seriously). Managed to get the gearbox shifting by fixing the vacuum line routing. Also took the hood off to get it repainted. Otherwise I just used it locally and to/from work when the weather was nice. Outside office with stepdaughter (who now has a 2yo child sheesh) and missus. Engine as bought. 390ci Ford FE which is stock AFAIK. 2 barrel carb for economy (ha ha). When we were due to come home the car went on an open transporter to LA, then into a container via Steve Curle. It arrived in NZ a few weeks later and after coughing up the $$$ to officialdom came home. It had survived the trip fairly well, only getting dirty. The gas tank was hanging out (I suppose they drained it at some stage) and one tank strap had gone awol. While the tank was out I repaired some rust in the body mount in the trunk. Some genius has filled it with epoxy. After fixing that, fitting a high-level stop light, and swapping the low beam lights for some that dipped to the left it passed the VTNZ check to be road legal.

Keen to see some of your artist blacksmith work!

On my 64, I got through vin check with just the original US lap belts in front. Think it might be different for cert though.

Yeah, seems like you need to allow for at least a bit of suspension movement. It also has be safe (i.e. nothing dragging on the ground) if one tire is deflated.

That's a good deal. Plan is to get CXGPWR to sort me out. I don't need big big ones very often, the local garage has up to 1 5/8 that I can access.

That would work - I can borrow a 3/4 driver locally.

I had my kid sit in the drivers seat. Looks like the accelerator goes most of the way to the floor before picking up the kickdown rod. It only moves about 1/2 inch at the manifold end, so sounds similar. The manual has a really complicated adjustment procedure. I connected the modulator vacuum to the booster T, which is in turn connected to manifold vacuum. Good luck getting it working right.