Mercury update: So the Mercury shit the bed on me on Christmas eve, cruising down Harvard Ave doing some last minute grocery errands and it died on me and backfired, so I threw it in neutral and coasted it into an empty parking lot. Popped the hood and nothing looked out of place and it wasn't running weird or anything beforehand, so I tried to restart it and it kept popping through the carb and the exhaust. First thing I thought was maybe the pin broke on the distributor gear which is pretty common on Fords and I've had it happen to me multiple times, so I pulled the distributor cap and cranked it over and the rotor was spinning so that eliminated the broken pin. So after hanging out in the parking lot for a couple of hours waiting for AAA to tow it home I convinced myself it was something in the 2bbl carb because of the way it was popping through the carb and blowing gas everywhere. So with that in mind I traded for the 4bbl intake and ordered a new 4bbl carb which I was planning on doing eventually anyway. Fast forward to last week and I finally got everything buttoned up enough to try to fire it again and it was doing the exact same thing, popping through the carb and backfiring like it was out of time. So after alot of cussing and head scratching I convinced myself that maybe the idler gear on my gear drive might have slipped out and threw it out of time, so I tore the front of the engine off to check things out and of course nothing was out of place. So fast forward to yesterday and I almost got everything put back together and retimed it to see if it going to run, I would have gotten it finished but of course I broke off one of the fittings for my oil pressure gauge.

2 years ago today when I started removing the wrecked front bumper and header panel to assess the damage and see what I would need to replace to fix it.

Here's a rare one that you don't see every day, a Ford cross bolt main 427 center oiler! What is up with mauve purple???

I got busy and forgot to post on December 28th these 2 Ford 351 Clevelands one was a factory 4 bolt main.

I got the roller Windsor uncovered, off of the engine stand, and onto the rollers. How about the hand port and polish job on the exhaust ports.