The car is a red 1988 with a 5-speed and it's the first Merkur that I have ever owned... actually the second car that I've ever owned. (Yeah, I'm 18... don't judge
) I picked up the car over the summer after wanting one since the last big Carlisle reunion. I had never seen or even heard of one before that and I was drawn to the fact that so many people had no idea what the heck a Merkur was. I found the car on Craigslist and it was a solid piece. 103k on the clock but the previous owner had only put a few thousand miles in the 8-9 years that he owned the car. I bought the car with the intent of getting it ready for Carlisle 2010 before I actually put it on the road... that's still the plan. It's incredibly hard to not drive the car, but I want it to be done right. I'll admit that I'm not much of a handyman, so my father has been playing a huge role in getting this thing going.
We started by completely tearing down the engine and possibly tuning up the car for the first time since 1988. We tore everything down to the block and made sure that all was well. Turns out that the engine was in fantastic shape, so everything was reassembled with all new gaskets and hoses. (Holy crap are there enough hoses... we replaced every single one. Thank you BAT) Dad rebuilt the turbo and we replaced the radiator, but that was about it. My father runs a small powdercoating business so we also coated a bunch of pieces while we were at it. All of the lines and the air filter box was coated as well as the intake and valve cover (among other things). It's awesome to have that resource to keep the costs down.
Once the engine was all back together and running beautifully, the next thing on the list was a clutch. That thing was ridiculous. That tranny is tight in there. Regardless, we knocked that out in a relatively short period of time which signaled just about the last of the mechanical work. The only thing left was the paint.
The red factory paint was pretty badly faded in certain spots, so we knew that it would need to be redone. The body was solid except for a couple of rust scabs where the lower body panels looked like they had rubbed. Also, the driverside fender was pushed in a bit. Otherwise, the main issue was just the faded pink hue in spots. Neither Dad or I know anything about body work so the car was moved to my grandparents where the next generation back took over. Between my uncle and grandfather, they are both excellent dealing with painting and body work so they offered to help out over the winter.
This pretty much takes me to the present day. Just today Dad went to the local Autobody Products and after talking to a friend of his, came across a mismatched gallon of "Scarlet Red." We got the $300 gallon of bright red paint for the whopping price of FREE. When it's all said and done, I'll have about $150 in materials to paint the entire car... which has me psyched. My next step is to get back over to the car and get to sanding down the lowers. That'll be fun.
All of the pictures that I have are after the engine work. I think that it turned out quite nice. I can post more pics as progress is made and I'd appreciate any feedback or suggestions. I plan on keeping the car entirely stock at least for this year and plan on making my fourth trip back to Carlisle except this time with my XR. (Dad has a 500+ RWHP Lincoln Mark VII that we take every year... I can post pics if you'd like. Haha, we've got to be different
)I'd really like to thank my family for the help they've given me so far. I've got to cover it financially, but it's a 3 generation project that I'm excited to be a part of. I'll keep you guys posted as this thing comes together.
