Here goes. The car belonged to his Tehachapi High School history teacher, Mr. Hale. The Cougar was his 1st car also. He built it in high school with his dad. He went to college and couldn't afford to take it with him so he left it at home, in the "care" of his little brother. Doh! Of course, as a younger brother in high school, it got hammered over time. Something about friends dancing on the roof and hood. Ouch! When Mr. Hale returned from college, he took the car back and daily drove it for awhile. It had a rebuilt 302. Mr. Hale also had an early Bronco. He was a big snow boarder guy and he was using the Bronco more The Bronco engine failed and so he pulled the Cougar engine out and put it in his Bronco. The Cougar then sat at his dad's house outside. During his ownership, the car was repainted in a light blue. The quality paint was bad and it quickly turned into a leather texture. Before the Cougar was parked, he would drive it to THS where he was a teacher. He was a brand new teacher and was just out of college in his early 20's. Brent would see it when he was in 8th grade and would talk up to the high school to ride home with big sister Amy. Fast forward a couple years and Brent has Mr. Hale as his history teacher in 1999 for his Junior year.
Brent and Mr. Hale found out that they both were car guys. Brent did not yet have a car. Mr. Hale told Brent he'd essentially give him his Cougar. The car had a recently rebuilt C4 transmission, which cost him a few hundred dollars. The engine was not running. He told Brent, "If you can give me $250, you can have it."
Brent told me that he had no job and no money. But somehow he was going to make it happen. This was in September early in the school year, which meant he just had his birthday. He did get a pretty nice mountain bike for his 17th birthday and basically talked his friend Spencer into paying him $250 for the bike so he could buy the Cougar. Mom gave the ok to sell it as he only had it a month. With the go-ahead and $250, they had a deal. Dad and Brent towed the Cougar home. It had no working engine, some fake 14" knockoff Cragars. Included in the deal was the broken Bronco engine, also a 302ci SBF. The Bronco engine had a dropped valve seat and very worn out heads. The engine had been previously rebuilt (not stock pistons) and a stock 2bbl intake and carb setup.
Brent's issue was, as noted earlier, he had no money. The goal was to get the car! He'd figure out the rest later.
So, with no money to buy any parts, the focus was cleaning it up and doing bodywork. The car was a Caribbean Blue color with blue interior. The original color was a metallic blue (not as dark as it was painted later), similar to the Windveil blue of his 2005 Mustang GT. The interior wasn't horrible. Brent didn't ever do too much to the inside except clean it up. The exterior had some dents and primer spots.
The paint was really bad. The texture of the paint was like leather, it was very rough. His dad worked for Lockheed and the paint shop said "hey, we have this blue paint (aircraft paint, but not right hardener) that is expired and is going in the trash, you can have it". After the paint job, it looked good, but after sitting in the sun it turned to leather.
Brent and dad started doing bodywork, sanding, and literally using a chisel and scrapers to remove the old paint. The passenger door had been hit and had a bunch of bondo. That was all removed and new bondo applied. After a couple months it was in primer.
For Christmas, Brent spent a couple hundred bucks to get a simple rebuild kit; gaskets, seals, oil pump, rings, crank and cam bearings, etc. The pistons were dished and not even with deck, so it was probably only like 8:1 compression. The short block was cleaned and reassembled during Christmas break.
Dad's friend Larry Hinderman had a friend Dale (both from Cal City), who had huge workshop. Dale says "got a hole pile of heads, take what you want". Dad and Brent rummaged through the pile and took 2 sets of small chamber 289 heads. Dad and Brent ported the heads, dad lapped the valves. It was a super "shadetree" mechanic rebuild. A big sanding block was used to sand, err "deck" the heads :). Shims were put under the valve springs to give them more spring pressure. The point was to just get them usable. Brent used the original Bronco 2bbl manifold and carb. It would flood quite often and ran like crap. The intake manifold was ported a little (because, that's what we do).
By the end of Junior year (spring of 2000) they got it running. Some long tubes, straight pipes and turbo mufflers rounded out the exhaust system. Brent says it was like 2" "fence post" tubes, super thick and heavy! Eventually, a 4bbl cast iron manifold, ported per the usual, and Uncle Ricky gave him a 4bbl carb (500-550cfm) for it, which was rebuilt. Brent says it ran pretty good. Brent drove it through summer, in primer. It had the rebuilt C4 trans with stock torque converter and 9" open diff rear end.
At the end of that summer of 2000, Brent took the Coug' to Famoso dragstrip. They towed it down. Brent was feeling pretty good about his hot rod and was expecting to mop up and beat some dudes. The first race was against a Dodge Dakota. Even though it was Brent's first time driving down the track, he thought he would take the pickup no problem. The Dakota destroyed Brent, running a high 14. The Cougar went about 15.8 et or something, with open diff, spinning tires bad. Dad gave it a shot and drove it to a 15.2 or .3 et. Then the Hechtspeed mode was engaged. They took the air cleaner off, 0.1 faster, uncorked the exhaust, another 0.1, and took the fan off. The car ended up running a best of 14.9 at the end of the night.
Brent got a job working full time on a doctors horse ranch taking care of the ground and saving up money. With the bodywork ready to go, the cheapest paint possible, a single stage paint was used. It was the same paint dad was using to paint Larry's circle track race truck, so he knew how to work with it. It was about $100 in paint supplies. The paint was laid down and then rolled the car outside. They gave it a look and it was crappy. There were areas that were not coated fully. So, they wet sanded it and put another coat on it that night. It sat outside to cure for a couple days and then Brent reassembled it. Brent drove it like that his whole senior year. It was improved a little during this time. Brent did some work for hot rodder and R/C friend Ron Burgess. Ron gave him some 3.70 gears with a spool early that senior year. He took it to Famoso again to race it in Sept-Oct timeframe after the gears were installed. Ron also gave him some circle track slicks and steelies. They didn't do much haha.
Brent bought a mini spool to get the rear end fixed up. That was a sweet upgrade. It made for some nice burnouts. He then bought a 3k torque converter in it and took it back to the drags. This time they used Larry's trailer to get it down there, just in case you know. :) The car ran a best of 14.3 or 14.4 et. Even with the circle track slicks, it never really launched well. Ron gave him a B&M shifter during that senior year. Brent said he cleaned the car every day. It was never dirty. Tires always shined up.
Dad had some 15x8 Cragars from the junk yard that he used for his Mustang's slicks. Brent told him if he ever got different wheels that he'd take the Cragars for his Cougar because the 14" rear "Kragars" had a bad offset/backspace and they stuck way out and rubbed bad with any passengers in the car. Dad finally got new Weld draglites and gave the Cragars to Brent. He put those on the car with some tires from Larry, maybe 235/60/15's or something. They didn't last long due to burnouts and mini-spool. LOL The fronts were 14s. The front of the car sat a little high, too high to let it go :). So, one day, making sure dad was at work, Brent decided to cut the springs. Somehow he got the springs out without killing himself. He was planning to just lower it 1-2", no big deal, right. Wrong! Not thinking about geometry things, he took 2 whole coils out. When he set the car down, yikes, it was on the bump stops! Dad got home from work, took one quick look and says "What the hell did you do to your car?" Brent picked up spring extenders from AutoZone which made it drivable. He drove it like that for a long time. Finally, Spencer donated 6 cyl springs (not cut) and that was a decent ride, much safer for sure.
Spencer had some take off parts from his Mustang project and so he gave him a set of mustang e7 head castings that he wasn't going to use. Of course they were ported, a valve job, surfaced, and Weiand Action plus intake and Edelbrock carb. It ran really good. Brent wanted to go back to the track, but he never did get time. He decided to put the car up for sale whenn he put the Cougar in the Mountain Festival car show in late August of 2001. He put it up for sale at $4k. There was a guy who kept calling, kept calling, and finally wore him down. He told the guy to give him a couple weeks (so he could get it down to the drags), but Brent finally caved in and the guy gave him $3500. The guy didn't know much about cars. He kept taking it to the shop where Ron B worked. The points kept burning out. That guy eventually sold it to someone in Bakersfield.
Brent actually saw the car one time on the 58 fwy going the opposite direction. He was just married, so this was about 2005 or so. Apparently the guy who bought it drove it a ton. A couple years later, Spencer saw it for sale in the "Carmera Ads". This was a small paper booklet that you could grab for free at gas stations and grocery stores. I remember grabbing the Camera Ads all the time, looking for cars for sale when I was in high school and just after I graduated when I was looking to buy my first car. Spencer actually called the seller and asked some questions and definitely confirmed it was Brent's Cougar. Brent was newly married, had just bought his 2003 Focus ZX3 and didn't have the means to buy back the Cougar. Bobbye said "You should have just bought it, we would have figured it out".
Brent graduated from high school in 2001 grad, sold the car in September of the same year and used the money to get his suitcases, clothes and suits in preparation for his 2 year mission in January 2002 to Argentina.
Another one that got away! All part of the fun!
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