Any box panther mechanic types in the Hampton Roads area?

[Medusa]

Hey guys,

Is anyone on here in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia? I'm in need of a good once-over on my 1988 Mercury Grand Marquis. I have never owned one of these before, nor anything like it, so I just need a bit of your time. I have a coolant leak but cannot determine the source. Two other mechanics looked at the problem and couldn't find the leak, either. I know there's other stuff wrong, too.

I really dig this car, and I need to keep her on the road. She's all I have right now.

Beth



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[His Royal Ghostliness]

Where's the leak? Like, does it make a spot on the ground, or does it pool up on top of the engine somewhere? If you have a picture of the general area where you found it we could provide some possibilities for the source.

Btw I haven't forgotten about those vacuum hoses, I'm only getting to that engine now. Yah I know, took me long enough... LOL

[DerekTheGreat]

Ashley and I have been through the gauntlet with coolant leaks.. These like to barf the intake gaskets and the little hoses going into the throttle body end up leaking along with the hoses connecting the water pump to the intake. Take a look under the hood where the fan is. Follow that to the engine and then look at those small hoses around the area where the hose clamps are on the water pump. If those hoses are all grayish and cracked and/or the area around the base & hose clamp look damp then that's a leak. Water pumps can leak too when they go bad. There's a little weep hole for that on the bottom of it on the passenger side. Finding leaks that aren't obvious can be a challenge as you have to crawl all over the place and try to find the source of the problem. I got proactive with mine and redid the gaskets on the upper half of the engine and replaced those small hoses and other notorious vacuum lines. Buys peace of mind and I haven't had any leakage since. Let us know what you find and post any pics.

[mitymerc]

I had a coolant temp sensor leak that was not apparant, the coolant would evaporate & did not leave a stain. I finally found it after a short drive. As it did not get hot enough or drive long enough for it to dissapear.

[MattDoscher]

I'm in need of a good once-over on my 1988 Mercury Grand Marquis.

I live in Chesapeake and have a '91 GM LS. I would recommend Bruce Warren Auto Repair on Azalea Garden RD in Norfolk. My '91 had been sitting for several years and he got it back on the road again w/ a new Jasper engine and various other things. He runs an old fashioned shop where you can actually hang out with him inside the shop and talk to him vice waiting in a lounge. Extremely nice gentleman that will treat you right.

Matt

[Toploader]

A lost breed to find people like this still in business!

I live in Chesapeake and have a '91 GM LS. I would recommend Bruce Warren Auto Repair on Azalea Garden RD in Norfolk. My '91 had been sitting for several years and he got it back on the road again w/ a new Jasper engine and various other things. He runs an old fashioned shop where you can actually hang out with him inside the shop and talk to him vice waiting in a lounge. Extremely nice gentleman that will treat you right.

Matt

[MattDoscher]

A lost breed to find people like this still in business!

It really is and it's a shame.

[Medusa]

Thanks for the responses! I thought no one had answered because I got no notifications. Maybe my settings are wrong in tapatalk app.

Think my heater hose may have had a small leak that finally blew wide open. Replaced the heater hose and coolant level seems stable now. Keeping an eye on that, however.

Oil sending unit was leaking like a sieve, so replaced that. Quick and easy...

Now it seems the darling smog pump has taken a second job as a popcorn popper or rock tumbler. Bout to take the pulley out and bypass that bag of tricks with a shorter a/c belt. Found an excellent thread on here about that...GMN is priceless!

Thanks so much for the info on the Norfolk mechanic, Matt. I will definitely contact him next week. It's almost amusing how many experienced mechanic types have looked under the hood of this car and went away scratching their heads.

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[jaywish]

One thought, If one hose is bad, what is the condition of all the other cooling system hoses?

[Medusa]

One thought, If one hose is bad, what is the condition of all the other cooling system hoses?

Prior to the heater hose burst, I flushed and refilled the coolant system and inspected all the hoses and connectors. No bulging, no rotting, no sponginess...but I must have missed a small hole in the heater hose.

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[DerekTheGreat]

Good point by Jay. These cars have so much rubber under the hood its a PITA. From what I can tell I'm still sporting my original radiator and heater hoses. Will replace those within two years if they don't fail before that. Look fine from what I can see.

Amazing that you've had "mechanics" walk away from stuff. I'm having second thoughts about our "trusted" shop myself. Seems that if its not obvious its not getting fixed. That or that's because it isn't profitable for him to search around for what might be. No clue. I suppose if I had one that would be my profession.

[Medusa]

Smog pump is out. No more toy machine gun.

As for coolant leaks it appears to be around the thermostat housing, coolant sensor, or the timing chain cover. We'll see.

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[DerekTheGreat]

How do those small hoses going into the water pump look? Our TC's had sprung leaks there.

[His Royal Ghostliness]

Thanks for the responses! I thought no one had answered because I got no notifications. Maybe my settings are wrong in tapatalk app.

Oh come on, you should know better by now, the collective here doesn't leave people hanging. Honstly no idea how Tapatalk works, but it may be something in your GMN's user settings, in the notification's section.

Prior to the heater hose burst, I flushed and refilled the coolant system and inspected all the hoses and connectors. No bulging, no rotting, no sponginess...but I must have missed a small hole in the heater hose.

One place that's often missed is the plastic temperature sensor housing inline with the heater hose towards the back of the engine, has two vacuum lines connected to it as well. Has two modes of failure, one is in the form of a vacuum leak which disables your floor setting on the heater (idea is to NOT be able to blow air on your feet while coolang is still too cold to heat the air up properly), and the other is in the form of a coolant leak. Standard procedure here is to remove the assembly entirely, connect the two coolant hoses with a proper union, and plug the two vacuum lines.

Amazing that you've had "mechanics" walk away from stuff. I'm having second thoughts about our "trusted" shop myself. Seems that if its not obvious its not getting fixed. That or that's because it isn't profitable for him to search around for what might be. No clue. I suppose if I had one that would be my profession.

You got it right with the profitable part. Often it can take quite a while to find a problem, and when you do you may end up with the customer going all "oh that's too expensive, i'll just junk the car and get a new one". More common than we want to see with old beasts like these, they're not old enough to be considered a classic car that is worth collecting yet they are just old enough to make perfect beaters and ride hard and put away wet, especially in a big city environment. Mechanics often make a judgmenet call on that based on the customer's appearance and behavior... and they're often wrong (which can go either way). Best practice would be to charge some reasonable labor time for the diagnostics, this way even if the customer backs out of repairs at least the mechanic didn't waste their time on the car instead of just working on stuff they already got in.

But there is also the part that many "techs" don't want to spend the time diagnosing an issue, if the onboard computer can't tell them what's wrong or the problem isn't blatantly obvious they'd much rather do something more straight-forward. Has to do more with personality than anything else, and you get people like that in all professions...

As for coolant leaks it appears to be around the thermostat housing, coolant sensor, or the timing chain cover. We'll see.

You forgot the lower intake manufold - there's a coolant passage right behind the termostat, it connects the two heads, the gaskets will get petrified between intake and heads and coolant will seep out. Best have it looked at soon, as if coolant decides to leak in the other direction it will end up in the crankcase with oil - oil is lighter and will float, coolant will sink to bottom of oil pan, oil pump is a bottom feeder so it will such coolant instead of oil, and coolant does not make a good lubricant for crankshaft bearings and such.

How do those small hoses going into the water pump look? Our TC's had sprung leaks there.

A heads-up on that one, the termostat housing being aluminum it will get corroded from coolant, it will also have nasty deposits left on it after the small hose comes off it. Both can prevent a new hose from sealing properly, one is best off to just pull the termostat housing and wire-wheel the ports for both hoses down to clean and bare metal. Good opportunity to do a thermostat job as well. And a heads-up on that, be very gentle with the thermost bolts! They are only grade-5 in strenght and 5/16" in size, so hardly anything that can take substantial torque by leaning hard on a long wrench. If the thermostat gasket has leaked one is more tha likely to find coolant has seeped around the threads of the bolts effective becoming like Loctite to them... And if you break the lower bolt you gotta pull either the timing cover or the lower manifold, take your pick. Gentle heat application from a propane torch helps quite a bit in removal of these stubborn bolts. Just careful not to catch the car on fire!

[Medusa]

Took the old girl to see Bruce Warren yesterday at Matt's suggestion. He thinks the timing chain cover may be the source of the coolant leak. Unfortunately, he also says I've only got first and second gear now, thanks to that fiasco with the TV cable. Don't have $1,700 for transmission rebuild, so I guess at this point all I can do is try to find someone to finance me for another vehicle. I guess my 1988 Mercury Grand Marquis LS is up for sale now...and that makes ME very, very sad.

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