As you all know I had some bare metal showing on the ole Mercury so I decided to get some grey primer/sealer and at least spray the parts that needed to be covered with some paint. I had some help from the neighbor kid and his friend in masking off a lot of the trim, emblems and such and offwe went with 4-5 spray cans of dupli-color grey primer/sealer which makes the car look a little different. not sure if it’s a good different yet. Still debating whether I should get a box of the stuff and spray the entire car or not.

What are your thoughts? What color should I paint it after I get the body work done? Should I keep it the original white like I have been planning on or should I make it some other color?

Well everyone, as the title of this posts states the 65 Merury Comet does indeed live to see another day. A week ago last Thursday I brought it home from storage without too much difficulty, just a slight antifreeze leak inside the car from the heater box assembly which confirmed the need to replace the heater core.

I started by removed the hoses to the heater core from the engine block, it’s nice how they mount them up towards the front and top of the engine where you can actually get to them unlike on the newer cars where you are lucky if you ever find them! Once I removed them (and consequently cleaned up the mess of antifreeze) I Made sure all of the coolant was drained out of the heater core and removed the hoses inside the car as well. Inside the car I removed the control cables from the top of the heater box assembly and was able to pull the whole assembly out of the car. Once I had it removed I finished removing the hoses from their attachment place on the back side of the heater core and I began removing the clips that hold the heater box assembly together. Once I did that I pulled it apart and you can see in the pictures the mess of leaves and maple seeds or as we called them as kids “helicopters” that were trapped between the heater core and the heater box. I then pulled the motor/squirrel cage assembly apart and removed all of the rubber gaskets and foam seals from the assembly.

Once I had the Assembly cleaned up I spray painted the heater box with a multi-textured trunk paint that when sprayed on looked horrible but as it dried it ended up looking very good. Once the paint finished drying I installed all of the new rubber gaskets, and foam along with the new heater core that I got from AutoZone. The next day it was nice out and I began looking for a new blower motor seeing as how I didn’t want to have to rebuild the whole assembly in a year when the blower motor did finally quit for good. After some looking and calling around I ended up getting a four seasons 35400 single speed fan motor from Advance Auto Parts which was delivered on the next day which ended up being Sunday. Once I picked this blower motor up I was able to crimp on some wire connectors that allow me to unplug my blower motor at a moments notice so that it will make future heater system work more readily accessible. From here I was able to install the new fiberglass defroster duct that I purchased from Ebay

With all of these items completed it was time to install the whole assembly back into the car and cut the heater hoses down to length and install them with new hose clamps that I purchased to replace the rusty ones that would have been difficult to replace with a few more years of rust.

With all of this completed I was able to check all of my hoses and fill the coolant system back up with the proper mixture of coolant and water which took only moments. After reconnecting the battery the car is still able to leap to life and get up and move like before.

Unfortunately the day after I finished all of this work I noticed that the passenger side rear tire was going slowly flat on me. Now I’m not really surprised about this because all 4 of the tires are pretty bare as well as dry-rotted from sitting in my grandparents side yard. So I called up CNC Tire the best place in Ohio to buy tires for any car and got prices on new and used tires from them. The following morning I was able to take two of the four tires down to CNC and had them replace them with brand new 195/75-R14’s. Now that I have all 4 installed the car does ride much smoother.

This past Friday my friend Joe and I took the old car out for a drive on the open road over to work a few minutes down the road and it seems to run very well and there did not seem to be any problems such as smoke or dripping from m heater box assembly like before so I felt fulfilled. The only thing I did notice was a puddle of coolant that had been “Belched” out of the overflow tube and on to the ground. Some research on this issue on the Yahoo Comet forums I found that to prevent this you want to fill the radiator to the top of the rows inside so once the weather dries up and warms up I will recheck the mixture of coolant/water and remove a tad if neccessary.  Overall I believe this was a successful project and I look forward to driving and working on my car much more as summer comes up on the horizon.

Please feel free to comment on this summary of this project and ask as many questions you might have, I may not have all of the answers but I am learning more about the old Comet each and every time I work on it.

Thanks for reading