Projects Saving a 54 Mercury Custom 2 Door Sedan Build Thread

I'm finally current on your build and want to assure you we are reading your posts . Your explanation and pictures are excellent . You have provided and explained a lot of useful ideas that will help others . Your rad install and remake of side panels to allow larger rad is one of my favourites . Thanks for taking the time to post this , Jim.

 

Thank you!

Thank you loudbag! It has been a long build and I was thinking last week that it will be much nicer than a new 54 Merc when it is done.

Thanks Joel, It is just another one of those little details that take a lot of time but add to making the car unique and well detailed.

Here is another project that went well.




The door latch mechanisms were in pretty good shape. They just needed some clean up
and a new coat of lithium grease.

The strikers pretty ugly. The drivers side one had suffered some abuse due to a misaligned door.

Patience ,steel wool, files, sand paper and a buffer made for some better looking pieces.

Don told me after I was finished with these that he can order a new one...... I think he will replace the drives side piece.

 

Parking lights needed a little clean up.

These light light sockets had been modified in the past. The lenses were very cloudy but
could have been cleaned and used.

Don was able to find a new lens kit.The housing were re-chromed.

The back sides were painted semigloss black and the fronts were painted a gloss white
for better reflective qualities.

 

Thank you 204carcrazy! That radiator support mod was challenging and fun. It's one of those time consuming modifications that came out well enough that no one notices when they look at the car. I guess that means it came out well....

 

Wing windows.....quite a project. I took a lot of pictures of this process. It took a few days to get the stainless frames polished but the rest of the project move along a a steady pace.

Here is what we started with. Pretty rusty and no fuzzy stuff left in the channels

The rubber was pretty brittle.


There are a lot pieces to on of these assemblies.


After bead blasting and paint the new rubber seal went in very easy.

The fuzzy rail was delivered a little long and with no holes , so I had to use the old one as a pattern.

I found a piece of wood that fit the slot. I found that if I did not have the wood in the
slot that the fuzz lining would push out into the slot and some time tare making for a
a damaged fuzzy liner. I forgot to take pictures of the process we used to attach the
vertical fuzzy channel to the wing window. 3/16" rivets were used for some parts.
These had to be flattened in the channel so that they would not stick out of the fuzz liner
and scratch or break the glass.Small screws shown at the end of this post were also used
to attach the vertical to the wing window.

Getting there. I did one at a time so I could have the other one to compare throughout the
the restoration process.

These little rivets are used to hold the steel backed rubber seal the seals the wing window
when closed.

This seal.Notice the channel is inserted onto a piece of steel stock. This was used for an
anvil when the brass rivet was set.



I taped the rivets in place so I could keep them there while I places the stainless channel
over the steel anvil.



I started the setting of the rivet with small centering punch.

I then moved on to using a center punch. It was difficult to keep the rivet spreading evenly
during this process.

Last I used a larger centering punch (not shown) to flatten the rivet head out. There
were four of these rivets for each seal. Fortunately the shipped two extras in the seal kit.
It was easy to screw up a rivet using this method but since we lacked the proper tools
this method had do. I am just thankful you can still buy the seal for this vintage of car.

This is the kit we used

I took the wing window latch off so I could clean and polish it. Here the parts. I had to
replace the pin.

If you are wondering about the glass, We thought it was best to leave the old glass in
the frame while we did the sanding and buffing of the stainless frame. So far it has worked
out well. We will see what kind of condition they are in when the glass cutter gets done removing
the old glass and installing the new glass.

Here is a new trick (for me) that I tried this time. When bead blasting little screws like
this are almost impossible to hold and clean. So I inserted them in this brass screen.
It worked great for blasting and painting.

It may seem like a posted a lot of pictures for this project. There should have been more
but I got caught up in the project and forgot to take pictures of many of the steps of this
wing window restoration. As I may have said before these 50's cars have a lot more
to restore than a prewar Ford. Restoration of the window assemblies is a lot of work but interesting.

 

Way to go , Sam. I've been dreading the vent window rubber for a long time. They look as nice as the rest of the car. About 1 more week and I should be working on my vent windows.... or maybe 2 weeks.

 

Great job on the vent windows. I did some mid-70’s truck ones. Wish I had seen this then. I really like the tip on using the screen to hold the small screws! I’ll be using that one.

 

Thanks Joel! did you get to those vent windows yet?

Thanks brEad! That screen thing really does work well for us. We had to revisit the wing windows again. When we sent them to the glass guys to remove the old glass and install the new they sent one back with a a broken handle stem. Just so happens it was the one I had removed the handle on for cleaning......

Well I thought we would have a difficult time finding a replacement for that part but Don was able to find a brand new one! Surprised the heck out of me....

The part just required a short time at the buffing wheel to bring up a little shine.
It is held on by three brass rivets. We were able to set the rivets the same way we did the other
rivets on this assembly. Don also has ordered a new handle for this but it has not arrived yet.

Just a new picture of the finished product with the new glass.


here is a small project I did recently. This is a seal that goes on the the valance just behind
the front bumper. It straddles the bumper supports This was a part we could not find reproduced.
They were originallyinstalled with large staples.

We had some 1/8 rubber gasket we had used on some other applications so I copied the
dimensions as best I could and cut out the replacements.



I used Aluminum rivets to attach them to the body panel. I think we could have gotten by
without installing these but they were simple to reproduce and fairly easy to install, so why not?


The new electric wiper motor has been installed and I finished installing the rest of the
Dyna Mat on the firewall. we will hold off on installing the rest of the Dynamat on the floor
Until we are finished wit the headliner and wiring. I found that the insulation can get smashed
when you crawl around on it a lot and it tends to ooze black goo all over your cloths. We apply
tape at all seams in the overhead applications to keep the goo from escaping there and probably
should do that on the floor and firewall also.

Well that's it for now, we have been working on the glass install and door seals but I am
not ready to report on that yet.

 

The little things:


Things like this are real time eaters

The good news is that we had all of the old window channel to work with. The usual news
is that it all had to be replaced.

This rear window channel had many pieces that had to be removed from the the channel,
cleaned and painted.

Theses rock guards eventually received about one weeks worth of labor to reclaim them
for further use. This is early on in the refinishing process. The creases and big dents
have been removed and sanding is underway.



Finished guards.

Rear window channel laidd out

Sand blasted and painted channel parts. we ended up not using the little locator buttons.
Epoxy was used to attach the seal to the body.

We epoxied the the restored hardware to the new channel

After the first bending attempt around that 90 we decided to bend the channel over the new glass.


Installing the new door seals was a two or three man job.

A little protecton to keep the glue off of the new paint.

The new fuzzy trim was epoxied on

The newly installed seals made the doors stick out so some pressure was applied with
wood and clamps to compress the seals. It took awhile but the doors are fitting good again.

A little Mercury bling is installed.

One of the wind wing handle stems broke off while the new glass was being installed.

Don was able to buy a brass new replacement for it.Three brass rivets came with it and
were successfullyinstalled using the same methods shown earlier.

Stay tuned!

 

You do stainless polishing too? Nice job, Sam. That Merc is going to be better than new.

 

Thank you Joel,
Yes we do stainless polishing. It is quite challenging. and we are very slow at it. We probably have hundreds of hours into the trim on this car. It has come out nicely though and will add a lot of bling to the finished car. I would say that this car will be better than new in many ways. It is still an amateur rebuild though but we are proud of what we have accomplished so far.

Anything to report on your coupe? Maybe some pictures from the upholstery shop?

 

No news on upholstery yet. The bottom cushion is supposed to be done and I am supposed to see it this week. My fingers are crossed
I’m cleaning the window regulators while I wait.


Sent from my iPhone using H.A.M.B.

 

great craftsmanship

 

Great job all the way around. Upholstery?

 

Thank you Texas 57! We are working on the upholstery. I will post a little on that soon.

 

Nice chrome molding clips. Do they have sections that can be removed? It looks like they are grooved so you can shorten them.

 

Not to hijack their thread, but I have used those clips, or tried to. That's exactly what they are. Problem I saw was I thought those "break off" indents left the strip too weak. Probably just me.
Nice to see they survived all those hours of buffing........it's a dangerous job, but one with very gratifying results when the stuff ends up looking like theirs.

 

The clips do have shallow grooves or indentations. I think they are more useful for allowing accurate/equal cuts to be made while shortening them to fit your application.

I ended up cutting the clips to size with my dremel cut off wheel. I don't think they would break off all that easily. Speaking of dangerous, Don bent the final/last piece of interior stainless about 45 degrees off square. We straightened as best we could and figured we would have to live with it. Fortunately we had a friend that attends the local swap meets looking for some parts for us. He found a great source for 54 Mercury parts that we wish we could have known about earlier in the build. We made the 3 hour drive to check out his stash of parts and came home with a replacement for the piece that had been bent and several other treasures. If any of you are looking for 53/54 Mercury parts I would be happy to send you his info if you send a PM. He has an attic full of parts including body panels.

 

I noticed that my recent post only shows up as a quote. So in attempt to straighten that out I did this copy and past to see if it would show up as a regular post with decent size pictures.

Can't believe it has been so long since I posted a progress report. I have a lot of pictures to process and post. Here are a couple of projects that are behind us now.


It's time to install the stainless trim. We tried using the plastic push in clips using a piece of aluminum
but the plastic pieces would not hold the stainless tight to the body.

Don found these universal clips which I had to cut down to fit the trim. They worked well.
There was one clip location on each fender trim that we had to use the plastic clips because there was no way to get a nut or wrench on the clip inside the fender.


The plastic fitting

This fitting is used at the leading edge of the trim

This was our first try at trim clips before converting to the universal molding clips.

The door interior cards had this slot across the bottom for attachment. We had to come p with a plan since we could not find the original hardware to work in this spot.

With a little experimenting and fabrication we ended up riviting some 18 gauge steel to the wood door card .

It works very well.


The original covers for these access holes was cardboard. We used some 1/8" plywood
to make the new covers.

Heavy mill plastic sheet was cut and glued to the backside of the plywood to protect it from
moisture.


The door handles were re chromed in Spokane WA. They came out great!



We polished the stainless button and used a new rubber gasket set the install.

The new gasket were not an exact copy so some trimming was required.


Looks like new!

Maybe better than new!

 

Photos look fine.

 

I'd say better than new,Sam. You guys are taking big steps now. Great work as always.

 

Thanks Joel! I wouldn't say they are great steps but I think we can see the end of the to do list.

Here is a little project I had to to. Both of these kick panel weather strip clamp gizmos were rusted out at the bottom. I couldn't convince Don that we could do without these things so I had to fab up a replacement for each end.


Each part required several steps and the arsenal of metal shaping tools.




I could not figure out a process for putting the small curve at the outside pinching edge.
But I was able to duplicate everything else with reasonable accuracy.

I clamped the original section to some sheet metal and marked the curvature before cutting
off the old rusty section The I clamped the new section to the steel plate and welded them
together.


Not perfect but it should do the job. This was another time eater that I avoided doing for
a long time. I am glad it is behind me.

 

Just when I thought we were done with stainless Don brought in these pieces off of the door
panels. We bead blasted the back sides to get rid of the rust.

Talk about flimsy/fragile pieces to polish......I did a lot of the prep but after a few close calls
I decided Don could be the one that bends theses pieces. He made it to the last piece before
he bent one. We were able to straighten it out though. We have since found a complete panel
with like new stainless on it. The PO recommended we polish while it is still on the panel.
Good advice!

We wore out my old Craftsman buffer and bought this one from Eastwood to replace it.
It has much more torque and two buffing speeds. I had to make some spacers to move the
the buffing wheels further out on the long shaft. I also made a new stand for it. I put floor
anchors in so that the short bolts removed and unit can be moved on it's wheeled stand to
get it out of the way when not in use. It moves around like a hand truck.

This is what the original panels looked like.

Foil tape was was installed on all of the seams of the roof insulation.

Don had the headliner made up by his upholstery guy. After bead blasting and painting
the headliner bows Don spent several hours sorting out where they needed to go.

After considerable thought I think he was having second thoughts about installing this
headliner himself. But he is not easily intimidated and quite resourceful.

The learning process started with some tips from the upholster whom can no longer
work overhead. Then hours of trial and error, and some more instruction and help
from a club member that had some experience.

The reason for putting in the headliner at this phase of the build is that the headliner must
go in before the front and back glass rubber seals are installed.

The finished headliner Not bad for an amateur.

These headliners are a lot of work. I have always respected the upholstery craft. This
project just made me respect the practitioners even more.

 

Nice work on the headliner!

 

Amazing skills, so many excellent tips to apply to any build.
Thanks for taking the time to share your knowledge and photos.

 

Thank you 1959Nomad!

Thank you irant! I do try to share things that I think might be helpful to other builders. Some of them learned the hard way.....

Today's post is about armrests. That is one of the items we could not find reproduced or
readily available. So I decided to try to restore them.Since this car had been sitting outside
for decades the armrests had suffered. I am surprised the rats had not eaten them. One of
had a few teeth marks on it but they were easily sanded out.

You can see the sag in the top of the arm rest.

We applied a small amount of heat and used the hammer to gently push the sag out of the
part.

This worked pretty well as you can see.

This arm rest had a crack in it.

I drilled a small hole at the end of the crack to keep the crack from spreading.



This screw boss was cracked. I used Grey Marine Tex to fix it. Sorry no picture of this ugly
but strong repair.

I used Euro Gold glazing putty to build up the low spots.I chose this product because it
is soft and easy to sand. I also chose it because the plastic is also soft. Since they are
about the same hardness it was easier to blend the two. If I had chosen a harder bondo
I think I would have had a harder time feathering as the plastic would have gone away
before the putty.





There had been about 1/8" sag in this rear arm rest. I will show the finished product later.
We need to put up another small paint booth to paint a few parts in the next couple of weeks.
Al of the pads were in surprisingly good shape and we will be able recover them.

 

GLASS! As usual we decided to install the glass in the Merc ourselves. It proved to be
a very challenging project.


Getting the rubber to conform to the glass took some time. The tape was used to hold
the rubber on the glass. Without tapethe rubber would twist and fall off the glass.

Once the stainless trim was installed in the rubber seal the the seal would stay on the
glass by itself.


I had a cord and ball nosed tool to help with getting the rope in . The windshield was then
placed gently against the body windshield flange and the cord was pulled out.we used liberal
amounts of dawn dish soap mixed with water for lubricating the seal.



It took three tries to get the windshield in. We thought that was difficult......

The rear glass took about 13 tries to get it right. The wrap around design proved to be
difficult to center and place on the flange. We could get it close but once it was in
we could not get it to slide on the flange to get the precise placement required for a decent
fit. We initially did not use enough lubricant. Then when increased the amount of soap
lubricant mix we could not keep the seal on the glass long enough to install the stainless
trim in the seal let alone get it to the car for installation. So we had to super clean and dry
the glass and seal. I then applied gorilla duct tape to hold the seal to the glass. This allowed us
to install the stainless and get it to the car as an assembly. Note that the rope is installed in the
seal so that it can be pulled out from both sides. The final time we installed the rear glass we
put it on top first and carefully centered.The 13 tries were made over a 3 day period. we are so
glad to have this window project out of the way.

Back glass in!!!!!!!!

 

Miscellaneous stuff:

Don had these new shorter springs made in Spokane, more on them later!

After the springs were installed we were able to assemble the brakes.

And install the shocks

After installing the rear window we were able to start putting some more of that shiny
stuff on the car. This waist band piece was quite long. because if it's location it needed
to have rubber seals on the fastening clips.

Since the Carpenter pieces came without rubber seals I had to make some from some rubber
gasket we had in stock.






It's time to prep and install the dash.

This dual stereo speaker is something I had never seen before. Don will not be using
kick panel speakers. That is a microphone for the telephone on the left.

We had the dash in and out several times. We first discovered that the ashtray assembly
had to be installed in the dash before it is installed in the car. Then we discovered that
the glove box door left side bracket hit the air conditioner 1" before the glove box door
could close So we had to modify that. Oh and the radio has to be installed before the
dash goes in also. You would think would have known all of this..... Some things just get by
us .

We eventually got it all in there and Don finished up the wiring

This Ron Francis Gray Stuff GS-10 was used to run the wires from the cowl area to the quarter panel
along the drivers side of the floor.

Don used a Popsicle stick to push the wires into the slots. Double sided carpet tape was used
to secure the conduit to the floor. This stuff needs to be hung in a warm place for a few days
before you try to straighten it out and lay it on the floor.




At the quarter panel area the wire is tucked in behind the door card and run back to
the trunk.

 

Getting close now.