[ng8264723]

What happened?

 

[andrewb70]

I thought I would give a quick update on what is happening with the Cougar and a little about what's going on in my life.

The insurance company has been slow to work with, but they have been responsive. We have come to a settlement and I am hoping to receive a check soon. What happens to the Cougar is still up in the air. The damage is very fixable, but I am eager to start another project. On the other hand, it is tempting to fix the Cougar and build it to version 2.0. In the middle of March, right before the COVID-19 thing blew everything up, my wife and I were in Kansas City looking at various areas and houses. We plan to move there sometime in the next 60-90 days. This pandemic is the ultimate test of being able to deal with uncertainty, but we are managing it well.

I enjoy doing little project on the Cougar. It's hard to believe that it is almost five years since she has been on the road. With any car there are always maintenance issues to address. Since I have DBW throttle bodies that live outside the engine back, exposed to the elements, the wiring for the TBs has taken quite a beating. The sun's UV rays beat up the wiring insulation and this ultimately leads to DBW errors that leads to going into "limp mode."

The Holley DBW cables are quite long, so it is just a matter of stripping back the cable insulation and get to some new, fresh wires.

The DBW connectors are Metripack GT150 series. I purchased new connectors and already had the proper terminals and cable seals in my wiring tool box.

Good as new...

More to come...

Andrew

 

[andrewb70]

This week I finally got a settlement check from the other driver's insurance company. Despite being a little slow to respond and no doubt Covid-19 having something to do with that, I am pleased with the settlement. Given that my wife and I are in the process of relocating, the repairs on the Cougar are put on hold. The car is running and driving and it doesn't make much sense to start any sort of repair process at the moment.

As a follow up to the last update, I had my buddy Blake design some really neat covers for the throttle body connectors. He drew these up in SolidWorks and 3D printed them out of ABS plastic.

I had to de-pin the terminals from the connector body and fish the wires through. The fit is spot on!!!

Here you can see the difference between the 3D printed covers and my old balloon solution. I think these look much better!

Since I have installed these, we have had several really heavy storms with a lot of rain. The next morning I was able to start it up and have had zero issues. I think the combination of the new connectors and these covers should make this a fairly long term solution to keeping the throttle body connectors dry and protected from UV.

These covers would actually also be a great addition to any engine that uses the DBW throttle bodies. If anyone is interested in them, send me a PM and I will see if Blake wants to make some more.

Andrew

 

[leonbray]

Nice

 

[ng8264723]

Always loved your attn to detail!

 

[andrewb70]

Nice

Always loved your attn to detail!

Thank you gentlemen!

Andrew

 

[andrewb70]

I probably mentioned this in prior posts, but I am now living in Kansas City, and the Cougar is finally here with me. One of the things that has been bothering me for a while is the change in the exhaust note. I think my old mufflers were getting blown out and the sound was just not pleasant and way too loud for my taste.

So a friend of a friend recommended a local place and I went to see them for a consultation. I knew that I wanted to keep the tailpipes and that I wanted an X-pipe. Recall that this exhaust had no crossover pipe of any kind. We discussed muffler type and brand. I wanted things quiet, but I also didn't want turbo mufflers. I personally think the tone of turbo mufflers is just no that appealing. We discussed Magnaflow, Flowmaster, DynoMax UltraFlow and a few others. I also knew that I wanted the biggest case muffler that can fit in the space. He didn't care because I was ordering the parts. I settled on the 20" case DynoMax UltraFlows.

I got home and started looking up the pricing and the UltraFlows were like $120 each. That got me thinking about Borla ProXS mufflers, so I checked their website. Turns out they have 19" case mufflers and they were $15 cheaper. I ordered the Borla mufflers, Magnaflow x-pipe and a pair of Jegs brand v-band clamps.

Here are some in process pictures of the installation.

These are the old pipes from the manifolds to the mufflers.

Mocking up the x-pipe.

X=pipe in place:

Mocking up the mufflers:

[img}https://i.hmjimg.com/images/2020/07/01/909.jpg[/img]

Getting the tailpipes lighted up.

Final installation with both tailpipes attached.

I am very pleased with the installation and the sound. It is super mellow at idle, but starts to get a little volume around 2000RPM. It has a nice deep tone and the exhaust note is greatly smoothed out, not doubt because of the x-pipe. I am also pretty sure that the x-pipe added a good bit of torque below 2500rpm.

I have video clips of the sound posted on my Instagram account.

Andrew