2000 Town Car Q

[Mr. Land Yacht]

As you all know, my pop is getting rid of his Mark V and trying to get into a 98+ Town Car.
the few I have found around here in good shape are 2000 Cartier editions.
However, I'm hearing the 2000s have some sort of defect in their engine tune that causes bad mpg and whatnot.
my question is, what kind of mpg are we talking about?
obviously, it will be better than the Mark V with a 400.
I would imagine that it's something fixable if you replace the ecm and whatnot from say a 98-99 Town Car.

anyone who knows about this please post cuz I would hate to pass up some nice Cartier Town Car just cuz its mpg isn't quite as good as a 98-99 or 01-02...especially if it's easy to fix.

[70torino429]

epa ratings are 16city and 23 highway mpgs. the only bad thing ive heard of the 4.6's in that era are something to do with the intake coolant crossover piece and it leaking due to being made of cheap material. i forget what years exactly were affected by that issue.

[Lincolnmania]

anything is better than a 400 2v

[Spaz]

the intake manifold is made out of nylon or some other composite material on 96-01 (im ont sure about 02 models) but the main issue is that it makes the coolant crossover prone to cracking as 70torino429 said. there is an updated intake with aluminum crossover which takes care of that problem. another issue to look for is that sometime around 2000 ford went to plastic timing chain guides which deteriorate at 150K mi or so