A good friend of mine does a lot of reselling cool old stuff, and he had picked up this 59 Merc a couple years ago. The car is all original down to the heat riser on the air cleaner, so he was waiting for someone who appreciates that stuff to sell it to. Well after a couple years of the car being buried in his yard and me throwing him stupid lowball offers he gave me a good deal on it. It seems like a couple guys on here like the 59s so I thought I'd share some pics. It's staying all stock the way it is, except for the wheels. Can't get 14" tires that are tall enough so I'm going to throw some 15s on it and cruise it. 430 MEL, 3 speed Merc-O-Matic, power steering, power brakes, power windows, power locks, power seat. The odometer stopped at exactly 75000 miles but it runs and drives fantastic. The story I got is that the second owner daily drove it until they slid off the road into a fence post with it. They got scared of it after that and it stayed parked ever since. It's got some rust and it's a little banged up, but it's unrestored and still roadworthy. That makes it the perfect year-round cruiser in my book.
Exellent choise. My personal favourite body style. 4 doors, no waiting and hard top. Older 72-95 g20 van wheels should fit. Atleast they fit in my 57.
Nice, I'm partial to '59 Ford products for some reason. I passed on a '58 Turnpike Cruiser in 2015, it was complete, did not run and was a rust bucket. At $6500 it was hardly a screamin' deal.
I've got a radio that's supposed to be from a 59 Merc. Does yours have the vertical station knobs, instead to horizontal ones? One of the coolest looking stock radios I've seen. More dash pics, please.
A white 2 door hardtop version of your Merc lived in our driveway for about a year and a half when I was 17 years old. My father picked it out for my older sister to use but she hated it. When I could afford a few dollars to put some gas in it, my buddies and I would cruise in it on Friday nights. Gas mileage was horrible. The power steering was great….it wandered all over the road with just a finger to guide it. The heater didn’t work much so it was more important to load up as many guys as possible for the body heat. Half of us smoked so that added a few BTU’s to help keep the windshield less foggy. Speaking of the windshield, you could have planted one of my pals up on the dashboard since that glass was a few first downs ahead of the steering wheel. The Merc had one big advantage….we could load six guys inside plus pack two or three more inside the trunk at the drive in theater.
I'll try and get some more pics of the dash after I clean up what's left of the pad. It has the vertical buttons, but also has "town" and "country" buttons at the bottom. Pretty neat. Found a good deal on some old Poncho 15x6 wheels in the bigger 5x5 lug pattern so they'll have to do for now. I really like the original caps but can't stand the dinky 14" tires on it. I've been cruising it back and forth to my friend's house and it goes pretty well with the snow grips on the back. (Not to worry, they don't use much salt here and the trunk drops are already swiss cheese.) So far I've just been doing little stuff. I got the front power windows working, and adjusted the passenger door latch. The passenger quarter was still pretty smashed so I got the wheel well pulled back into shape which also freed up the door that was pinched shut. The front seal on the transmission intermittently pukes everywhere, so I ordered all the external seals for the trans. Naturally as soon as they arrived, it stopped leaking again. It sometimes makes some god-awful noises out of either the converter or front pump, but quiets down in gear and drives beautifully. I'm just going to save up to have the trans sent off and rebuilt at some point. I have too many cars to put many miles on any particular one, so I'm sure it would still last another 20 years as-is...
Those Rally II's look kinda good on him, and like Idahoo, there is not much salt used here, just enough mixed with the sand to keep it from freezing in the bed of the plow truck.
I always thought the front looks better than the '59 Ford, and wanted to mix the two together. Then tell everyone it's a Canadian model, very rare
I've been tinkering on this boat some more, getting it ready to cruise around this summer. The first issue is the brakes. Once in awhile they work really well, the rest of the time I've been nearly rolling stop signs at 5mph. I narrowed the problem down to the brake booster and linkage. I pulled the master cylinder off, and the pushrod was sticking out at an angle and wouldn't pivot up. Looking inside the booster I could see some gunk, and the piston was cocked in the housing. I thought there was just some buildup in the housing blocking the piston, so I pulled it all off and apart. Turns out the pushrod that goes into the piston was seized onto the linkage on the back of the booster, so it wouldn't pivot. It just kept pushing the piston at an angle instead of straight on, and it jammed everything up before it could even push on the master cylinder very far. The linkage was so rusty I had to stick it in the hydraulic press to get the pin out of the booster's pushrod. I managed to get it all apart without breaking anything, so now I'm to the point where I just have to clean everything and reassemble it and I should have good brakes. I didn't get any pictures of the disassembly, as my arms and leg were drenched in oil, but I will get some pictures when I start putting the booster back together...
Very nice I still have the mechanical tach, distributor and drive cable out of my 57. I drove a 59 Ford wagon in high school and would love to find one of the rare 59 2 door Courier wagons today (not really into 4 doors).
Go the booster all back together. The seals were all in very nice shape still so I just cleaned and reassembled it. I dumped a cup or so of Neatsfoot oil in it to replace the original vacuum cylinder oil, and the brakes work very well now.
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