It's all for you Mom. Hope you're enjoying it.

[Luva65wagon]

As some of you may know, my mom passed away last year in August. As if 2020 wasn't bad enough. Of course, when a parent leaves this realm, your realm tends to inherit some amount of the possessions of said parent. One item I struggled with for the past few years, avoiding the inevitable, was what to do with her 1980 Mercury Capri RS (2.3 N.A.) in Rally red. Well, when it became you got no choice time I ended up loading it onto a trailer and driving it up (at the time) through the flames and fire and smoke that was the first week of September through most of the West coast.


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Now what? Was it worth anything. I don't know. Probably less now that I let it sit outside in Washington for the last 6 months. But maybe it'll clean up. Anyways, it depends on who you ask or what web site you go to. It was worth something to me, but I can't have another car. I still have a 66 F100 to list and get rid of. But as is my natural state of can't leave well enough alone I finally decided to pull it into the garage after the Ranchero was moving again under its own power and just give the old girl a thorough get at it. Oh man; now I done it.

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So as I looked at it all, she really wasn't all too bad. My mom always took good care of her. Of course, looking, can change to digging, and digging to doing. And so for the past few weeks I've been doing. It had some cracked trim up front from.. maybe kamikaze bird attacks. I don't know. But they want almost NOS prices for cracked replacements, so I figured I'd give it a go to fix those with some JB Weld like stuff for plastic. Came out way better than I expected. Also one of the mechanics she took it to once was a little longer legged than the legged room had legged room for - and he cracked all the handles on the steering column and pushed the headlight switch through the dash. They fixed the headlight switch but, I think, figured my mom might not notice the turn signal switch and wiper switch. She did, but never complained. I guess. So, like other things I'm working on... I couldn't see getting me to take a $1000 less for this, so I fixed them.

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And of course, as things go, the forum is running out of picture juice for this here post. So you gotta keep reading below to get more pictures worth a thousand words. And Lord knows I'm wordy.

[Luva65wagon]

Part 2.

Then I decided I ought to see how well these mechanics (based upon the aforementioned observation) did on the other bits; like, the motor. So up goes the hood and I dig. Of course the first thing that hits me is the dangling hood insulation pad. That's gotta go. And seems the car is still running the original spark plug wires and cap. The oil film on them is definitely pre-2K. There's more vacuum hoses in this car than I've had cars, which is hard to believe, so I gotta be careful to not get them mixed up, but since that Thermactor California emissions stuff got its belt yanked when the AC died 20 years ago, probably won't matter. So she got a tune-up anyway (I polished the contacts. That ought to be just fine). And added some old, but better Autolite sparkler wires, in orange, which should be good for an extra 9HP, I'm sure. I'm fine with that. Of course there were other While I'm At It™ fixes and repairs I couldn't leave well enough alone, so I did those too. But she's looking pretty good under there now, even though you can't really see any of it; there's so dang many vacuum hoses. I even found new hood insulation, which will go in after I spray some Gunk-be-gone under the hood and hose it off so you can see the color codes on some of the upper-level wires anyway. That ought to be worth an extra $45.83 of value.

And of course, here I am without "there, I fixed it" pictures. Squint, it'll look the same.

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So finally I got to looking at the flaming red Rally Red paint and started thinking how best to tackle that job. Removing the taillight housing and rear deck wing. That seemed like a reasonable way to start. Glad I did. The tailights needed resealing and there was a small national forest-worth of dirt between the rear hatch and the wing. No wonder water wasn't flowing out when I washed it. So I scrubbed up the taillights inside and out and found I had the correct rope sealant, in stock, to whip them together again. You'll have to take my word on that. They came out nice!

Clearly the deck lid was painted "after" the wing was installed.

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The paint is in pretty good shape, but she's a single-stage paint and you touch it and turn red. So I decided, why not. My garage floor needs some color. So I get out the 2000-grit paper and make her smooth before getting the polishing machine 2000 out and rubbing on her a bit. She's liking that. Garage floor... not so much.

Still a mile and a half of body to do, but I know my mom is looking over at me (she was convinced she'd be coming back as a spider, so I'm sure she's under the workbench somewhere, if so) and smiling (as only a spider can) as I rejuvenate her beloved Capri. Of course I've already told her I'm going to have to sell it. She's sad, but understands.

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[Tom P]

Nice, I like it. A four banger with air is certainly not overpowered. I would need to swap a V8 or a later turbo 2.3. I wonder at a Ford dealer (not Mercury) in 80-81. Pretty much the low point for performance. The "big" engine was a 255 V8 in those cars with hardly any more power than the 4 banger.

[Luva65wagon]

Well thanks Tom P. And I would agree that 2.3 running the AC was probably peppy as all get out. Probably not. But as my mom indicated, it was a dealer install unit and never really worked all that well before it didn't work at all and then some mechanic along the way said, 'you can remove the belt' and my Mom probably said, 'sounds like a good idea.' Not knowing it was also disconnecting her emission stuff. But the way my Mom drove, I doubt she noticed. A guy thinks this stuff on the shotgun side of the car, if removed, would reduce the weight of at least one person. But I've not done any WA state paperwork yet (was thinking I'd wait for the person who's buying it to do it then) and I don't know if they'll want that hooked up. I doubt it since it's 40 years old. But you never know.

Well, I know the rest of you didn't believe me because I didn't have pictures of the orange spark plug wires and the fixed taillights, so you can ease your mind - here you go. OK, one taillight. But cross your eyes and you'll see the other.

I do know that 2.3 is a replacement for the original. I have papers showing it had a warranty failure and based upon the OD it's probably got 60K miles on her, though the car has just over 136K. And how she drove it that far, I don't know. One mile at a time, I suppose.

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As I kept polishing, stuff just kept coming off. I don't know why I do that. Just seemed it would make it easier. And it helped... but not much. Removed a lot more dirt and spider eggs. Hopefully Mom wasn't in one of those. (Sorry Mom). I think she is shining up pretty good though for a 40 year old paint job. I know she had a grocery store cart do something on the drivers front fender and the paint match they used wasn't... quite... right, but shined up it's way less evident. It needs a respray to address some thin spots from years of polishing (she loved to polish on her), but a guy could get some paintless spray dent repairs for the door dings and she'd be fine for another decade at least.

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And I know me well enough to know me well enough that if I were to keep it a V8 would be in that car in the not too distant future. So for that reason alone, I've got to get it sold. If you're one of the 17 people reading this and know somebody, PM me. It's a nice car to build on.

[Tom P]

Even the hood scoop was painted on the car. I've had older cars with bolt on scoops and the hood is painted underneath.

One other thing i've noticed is that when they started using the T5 five speeds in 1983 the shifter opening is crudely enlarged with a cutting torch burning the paint like they did on 4 speed sixties cars. Not sure if they changed the tunnel in 1984 or when but late 80's don't have a torched opening.

[Luva65wagon]

I'm surprised how it was painted, really. It's held up pretty well, so thankful for that.

This has the 4-speed which works great, but have not got deep enough to see if there are any torched hole. But dang, you got me curious now. I doubt it. I still plan to go under it and look at why the e-brake isn't working (hasn't for as long as I've known), so may look then.

[Tom P]

That 4 speeds didn't get the torched hole, only when the 5 speeds came out in 1983.

[Luva65wagon]

Getting mostly done with the polishing machine and putting things back on. A few threaded clips, held in place with 3M tape or epoxy needed to be redone (hood at the leading edge had a threaded stud bonded to the scoop using epoxy). These are all repaired and either installed or ready to polish.

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Really only have the two rear deck wing ends to polish and I can bolt them on. And the two front corner markers to reinstall. Found a new Mercury emblem for the one long lost on the rear deck. Odd how a simple thing makes all the difference.

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A lot of the black trim is chipped or badly faded. So I'm going to pickup a cheap airbrush and repaint all that. Or at least try to. Should be easier to do than masking up the whole car to rattle-can it. More on that when I try it.

[Luva65wagon]

Got most of the body parts reinstalled and will be crawling around underneath for a few days just checking on all that. I know the e-brake is defunct in some way and the tailpipe had a chrome tip on it, but it's WiFi between that and the muffler. Also looking at restoring the hubcaps. That's why one is off at the moment. Might be a pain to do. What the heck.

[dkutz]

Cool ride! Looking good.

[BadBird]

Amazing transformation. Your mother is proud of you young man. Larry

[Luva65wagon]

Thanks guys for your comments. It's been a slow, but rewarding project.

I've got only one more thing to do on it when it's not really yucky outside and that's to do a quick underhood clean and then put on the new hood insulation. But the rest of the car is done.

I picked up this little exhaust pipe (air injection for the catalytic convertor) that isn't being fed at the engine end (the belt is removed from the air pump, and has been for years), but was probably causing an exhaust leak underneath, so for $15 I got the last one they had on Rock Auto. The little U-bolt clamp was already down to one stud and the other broke when I tried to remove it. So I welded new threads onto it and - there, I fixed it.

Also polished up and painted the hub caps. They look gooder now.

So now it's time to find a new home for it.

[dhbfaster]

Those hub caps look really good. My wife had the mustang version with the four banger... it was pretty slow, but all she cared about was that it was a mustang.