Glad to find this place. It's nice to find a Mercury forum that is still active. I joined the Mercury fan club when I purchased a desert hulk of a 68 Montego MX last year with the intention of trying to make a fun, classic, driver. I had fixed and maintained cars for my family and work for a long time, but never tried to build something the way I wanted it before. I didn't have a garage or the right tools for the job, and the car was in a lot worse shape than I thought, so it was a lot more work than I expected. It's just starting to be fun to drive and looking good, but it doesn't have air conditioning so it's a little miserable in the heat. The car started life in Dallas as a gold and white, 302 2V, 3 on the tree, with gold and parchment interior. The car was sold for parts in Arizona to a guy in New Mexico, I bought it from that guy. I think it hadn't been driven since maybe the 90's? It had been in a couple of tussles with the front left and rear right quarters showing replacement parts and angry body work, but the chassis seemed straight. The car was grey and white when I got it with most of the interior rotted away, and lots of missing trim parts. It would start and idle, but it leaked oil and the heads were shot. The owner threw in a set of steel, 5 spoke, 14x8 Appliance wheels with Keystone center caps. With those wheels, I thought the car looked like an old bootlegger car. I stripped it down and rebuilt it in my backyard with some less angry and slightly more effective body and paint work (but still pretty bad), it's green now and looks good from about 20 feet away
Anyhoo, it's running and driving pretty good these days. The 302 has been refreshed with a fresh oil pump, replaced the leaky gaskets, a Comp 268H cam, tri-y headers, Blueprint heads and 500cfm 4-barrel. That all drives the original 3 speed (now with a floor shifter) and highway 2.79 gears. At sea level it would probably be pretty peppy, but at 7000 feet it's just moderately peppy. It sounds like a boat at idle but makes satisfying V8 noises over 2000 rpm. Nice to be here!
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