Early aero severe duty maintenance

[Hearsesrock427]

Taking ownership of a '93 Town Car on Monday (that lovely 2 car deal Tiggie found; thanks again mang). She's been sitting for ~2 years. Going to get some little things done before putting some easy miles on her. Just small errands around town, going to landscaping jobs, small impromptu photo ops, etc. before parking her indoors for a bit.

This is my understanding of proper long term maintenance on '91-'95 4.6 2V panthers:
5W30 Full Synthetic Oil + Wix/Motorcraft Oil filter every 5,000 miles or yearly
Service/clean PCV, MAF, EGR, throttle body, headlight lenses, common wiring grounds yearly
Big 4 fluid flush every 30,000 miles or 2 years
Check drive belts every 30,000 or 2 years, replace if any sign of fraying showed.
Head gaskets, timing chain & water pump every 100,000 miles or 10 years
Oxygen sensors, valve cover gaskets, intake plenum gaskets, Gear oil every 50,000 miles or 5 years
Remove power window motors and replace grease inside them every 5 years
Apply high temp long life grease to throttle cable/throttle valve linkage every 50,000 miles or 5 years.
Grease doors 4x yearly, more if used heavily
Apply leather seat oiling treatment 3x yearly. (These will be reupholstered in cloth ASAP, but I'd rather keep the leather nice if I can in the meantime).
Everything else as needed

I'm not overly concerned about maintaining the stock chassis, wheels, and brakes because this car will be getting '03+ frame swap. (As soon as Eva's back from Connecticut! Assuming the '93 Town Car is in as good shape body-wise as Anita, of course. I'll know soon enough). Anything I'm missing here? I'd rather over-maintain as opposed to neglect. I put a lot of hard miles on my cars once they're in service proper, especially in the spring and summer.

[sly]

Head gaskets... only when they leak. That is a serious bitch of a job. I have yet to hear of those going on a 4.6 2-valve with less than 250K miles. You should plan on valve seals though as those will be shot by now if they haven't been replaced already.

I've never needed to grease window motors. Regulators tend to break before they need lube too. Hinges get lube when they ask for it (squeak), as needed.
I've also never known anyone to replace gaskets unless they leak (valve cover/oil pan/exhaust/etc).
I also only do trans/rear axle every 45K since I don't tow with it much. Even with the 8-clutch LSD. An open diff car only needs the rear axle done every 60-90k really.
My O2 sensors are currently at least 67K miles and work fine. Another replace as needed item.
MAF only ever gets a spray of electronics safe contact cleaner (what I have on hand... MAF cleaner works too) when I clean the filter. With stock paper filters, this shouldn't be an issue. A quick spray when changing the air filter is more than enough though.
Checking things on the schedule is probably good, but actual replacement of items should really be on as-needed basis really.

I would at least grease the joints on the chassis when you get it just to tide the setup over until you replace it if that will be more than a few hundred miles. Ball joints on these can get sketchy quick. Had upper ball joints gain 3/8 inch slop in the actual joint over the course of my daily commute in about 3 months (I grease them once a year or 5K miles - whichever comes first - when I change the oil). Steering was getting very sketchy but only on rutted roads so I didn't notice with the concrete flat roads I drive on regularly.

I've also never had to lube the throttle cable. Parking brake cable and speedometer cables I've had to lube, though. If the car has seen or sees corrosion inducing environment, then I can see that maintenance need.
While working on that, check/lube the slip joint on the steering shaft. That's not official maintenance, but it is needed as it will help prevent the shaft seizing in place and punching you in the chest in the unfortunate event of a front end collision. I just pump lube (axle grease - I use the red and tacky personally - any good quality grease should be fine) into the indents in the shaft.

If the brake fluid is black/green you should probably flush that anyhow if you plan to drive much before the frame swap.

On the subject of the frame swap... if you plan on towing at all, don't swap the frame. The binding 4 link is much stronger than the watts link for towing unless you completely swap to all the aftermarket arms, links, and ARP stud and even then, side load induced from a trailer may cause problems with the watts link stud. If no plans on towing, have a nice day.

[gadget73]

if you're doing an 03 frame swap, why on earth would you keep the stock driveline? its the least powerful 4.6 and the weakest transmission plus oil burning problems.

[Hearsesrock427]

sly: Yup that's the plan. At the bare minimum, the 4 main fluids (power brake, power steering, coolant, transmission) would be flushed, and the oil & oil filter would be changed before even light daily driver duty happens. Will use AAA membership to get her out to the main shop I deal with in Ontario NY. Expect that to be done by April 8th. Regarding the power window guts- I believe it was 7/16" or 11mm stainless steel ball bearings that should be used in place of those shitty plastic plugs these lift motors came with. Did some digging and found also found delrin bushings. Would these also be acceptable? https://www.ebay.com/itm/24-Ford-Lin...=20012&mkevt=1

Oh wow I forgot about the ball joints until you mentioned that. I vaguely recall reading that these cars are hard on those parts in normal use, and especially so when driven hard. Easy thing to add to a 5,000 minor service. MAF spray at every ail filter change (which can coincide with oil change) makes sense. Cool. Parking brake cable, I also forgot about but it makes sense. Especially when one considers that both the cars I'm picking up soon have been in NY their whole lives. Lower steering shaft slip joint can be done during that time too. Appears like that's something all cars from '79-'11 benefit from having checked periodically and greased as needed.

I'm going to run a custom panhard bar in place of the watts linkage. Will run CHE rear control arms. Thanks for the info; I have updated the maintenance intervals accordingly.

gadget73: Many reasons, biggest one is I'm not putting any money into going faster before the rest of the car has been gone through and upgraded to my standards for braking and handling. I'll chase some small reliability improvements along the way- just like I did with Ebyt. There are mild engine output upgrades planned down the road, but that's easily 3-5 years out. I'm not concerned about the oil consumption. All it takes is a fresh valve job and good seals a la FelPro. I'm not concerned about the AOD-E; I run big LPD coolers in front of anything AOD based. The 1-2 shifts issue (especially when done manually under hard driving conditions) is easily resolved with a better accumulator that's easily accessed inside the valve body. There was even a TSB issued for this a while back. If I somehow have issues after that, there's a place that handles most of my transmission work that will get put onto that detail. They did some light upgrades to Ebyt's AOD when I had them properly rebuild it in 2019, and Kira's 4L60E never gave me problems after they rebuilt it. I would have them do things in a similar vein to the '93 Town Car's AOD-E, including the vaunted 4R70Ws gearset, a swap you can do to all AOD derived transmissions.

The only real planned performance upgrades for the 4.6 2V are a '97-'06 truck specific 4.6 2V intake plenum, replete with 14" runners for better low RPM thrust, (I don't even know if that would fit cleanly under the hood, but it's no trouble to have Logan take some measurements when he's doing the aforementioned maintenance a la intake plenum gaskets later this year), Lunati torque focused camshafts, and port matching the intake plenum & heads. So nothing racy at all, just squeezing out a little bit more power from a reliable naturally aspirated workhorse motor. If I somehow have issues with that warmed over setup, color me impressed. Course by then I'd be able to easily afford a Coyote 5.0 and 6R80, among other things....

[FordMan77]

You'll like those CHE rear control arms. My 03 Sport really changed with that upgrade.

[Hearsesrock427]

Biggest selling point was delrin bushings. Saves me money needing to have a set made and installed in place of the poly bushings the Metco arms came with and provides better performance to boot! I'll be in touch with them to see if they offer higher performance bushings for stock upper and lower control arms next week. I'll be the guinea pig/test mule hopefully!

[Tiggie]

Heck yeah glad you are able to use the two cars and keep them out of junkyards or the derby.

Your list is pretty inclusive. On the 4.6, I'd be tempted to just feel it out and see what it needs.

Any ideas on how many miles it has?