Over the past weekend, we picked up a 1963 Mercury Comet.  Not just any Mercury Comet, but a custom convertible with a 170 engine.  The car is mostly original, with only about 76,000 miles on the odometer.  This will make a great project car.  It is our hope that we can fully restore this car to original condition, yet make it completely able to be used as a daily driver.

One of the first problems I encountered when researching the car was obtaining a shop manual.  You’d think Ford (Mercury) would produce a shop manual for each car, for each model year.  Unfortunately, this is not true.  After about five hours of research, I found that I need the following manuals to work on this car.  All were found at Faxon Auto Literature.

1. 1960-1962 Ford Falcon Shop Manual
   

2. 1961 Mercury Comet Shop Manual
   

3. 1963 Falcon & 1962/1963 Comet Shop Manual Supplement
   

So instead of a single $40 book, I’m buying almost $90 worth of books to diagnose problems with this car.  Ouch.  There are manuals available online for free, but printing them out is not possible.  Using a web site in the garage isn’t the most convenient option.

7/19/09 - The car has been in the shop to have some transmission work done.  Of course, there is no direct “drop-in” transmission for this vehicle.  So, it will be rebuilt using a mixture of new and old replacement parts.  Nobody said this was going to be easy.

I’ll update this page as our restoration work continues.