Skyd's 2001 Mounty repair & build thread

[Skydmark1]

Hey everyone. I've decided to make a build thread for my newest acquisition. I picked up a 2001 Mercury Mountaineer for $900. It has the 5.0 V8, AWD, power moonroof, etc. etc. Has about 175k miles on it and runs good, drives good, but needs some work. Mostly it needs body work and the obvious stuff for a 14 year old vehicle.

My Intent - Have a reliable daily driver that's also capable of light off roading. Now I say Daily driver, but I have a work van so it's not really DAILY. Which will be nice as it affords me time to work on it without having to rush to get it back on the road.

Basic Build Specs as of right now:

30" or 31" all terrain tires
Rear warrior shackles and a TT
Front Bull Bar with lights
Roof Basket with full size spare


Haven't thought much past that at this point.

 

[Skydmark1]

Alright so here's a shot the night I brought it home with my daughter peeking out the moon roof.

Like I said, it mostly needs body work. The rockers need attention, the rear quarter panels have some rust and inside the liftgate is rotted on both sides.


Here's my current punch list:

Repair rocker panels
Repair rear quarter panels
Paint rear bumper
Tint rear lenses
Paint wiper arms
Fog Lamp Mod
Gauge cluster swap to blue LED's
Re-cover console lid
Fix rear doors (they don't open from the inside).


There's more than that, but that will keep me busy for a while.

 

[Skydmark1]

While I wait for some repair panels to arrive I decided to tackle the rear driver's side wheel well this weekend. It's been a little while since I've done body work so it took me a while to get going.

First I took my angle grinder to the area to expose all the bad metal. Then I switched to my cut off wheel and cut away all the bad metal.

Once I got all the bad metal cut out I tried to clean up the inside and coated it with some rust inhibitor then primer.

Next I cut out a piece of 22 gauge steel that was slightly bigger than the hole and attached a screw to the middle of it. Then I mixed up some fiberglass and put it the inside of the hole as best I could and also on the outer side of the new piece. Then inserted the new piece into the hold and used the screw to pull out on it and hold it in place. Added some more glass and waited for it to set enough to be able to let go of it.

 

[Skydmark1]

Next I moved to the worse part of the rear wheel well. I used the same basic techniques here, it was just a bigger area. Also took a little more work to cut the metal because of the shape, but I got it the way I wanted after a couple of tires.

After I got a good coat of glass on there I sanded it down and moved on to body filler. I did 2 coats of body filler, sanding it smooth in between coats.

Then I moved on to glazing putty

Once it was smooth enough for my liking I put a coat of primer to it.

I still need to sand the primer with some 800 grit and order some color matched paint to finish it off. This side was worse than the passenger side, I may not even need the metal patch on the passenger side.

Well that's all for now, hoping to get some more work done on this thing soon.

 

[DjDom]

Here's my current punch list:

Repair rocker panels
Repair rear quarter panels
Paint rear bumper
Tint rear lenses
Paint wiper arms
Fog Lamp Mod
Gauge cluster swap to blue LED's
Re-cover console lid
Fix rear doors (they don't open from the inside).

It looks good. I've done this repair and it's annoying.
It'll turn out good though.

Also, please, add new tires to that list.. those rear ones are bad..

As for the fix rear doors thing, there's a child safety lock on the rear doors. When you open the door, it's below the actual latch, just flick it in the safety lock off position. You'll see it.

 

[Skydmark1]

It looks good. I've done this repair and it's annoying.
It'll turn out good though.

Also, please, add new tires to that list.. those rear ones are bad..

As for the fix rear doors thing, there's a child safety lock on the rear doors. When you open the door, it's below the actual latch, just flick it in the safety lock off position. You'll see it.

If you think those are bad, you should see the front!! Tires are in the works for sure. Will check on those child safety locks too, but I think I tried that already