My '93 Town Car "Kelly"

[Hearsesrock427]

Meet the second newest model year car in the fleet. My first aero too! This all began in late January. I wasn't necessarily in the market for a '90-'94 Town Car but then Tiggie found a Hemmings classified ad that had a pair of old Lincolns for sale as a cheap package deal. I pounced on it, and it's been a mostly positive experience. Kelly runs and drives well enough, especially considering the all but completely dead battery she came with. Transmission felt fine, and didn't give me any cause for concern beyond typical maintenance and small fixes (TSB for the 1-2 shifts come to mind, among other things). With the help of a buddy of mine, we loaded Kelly up onto a rented Uhaul trailer albeit with some difficulty on behalf of the sagging rear air suspension. Aside from that the transport back home was pretty routine. Long day though!

At $500 I'm expecting things, plural, to be amiss. There were some, but on the whole it's nothing terribly expensive or concerning. Annoyingly, the column shift linkage isn't connected to the cable, so you have to use a hammer to gently bump the articulating arm on the valve body forward or backwards. Easy enough fix. The main establishment I deal with out in Ontario NY will handle that, plus some other little things like replacing the ignition lockspring, flushing the fluids, and such.

Of course, no project car is completely free from proper headaches, and Kelly is no exception. There was some spectacularly godawful "body work" done at some point in the past, eerily similar to '80 Mark VI I bought from the same seller. I've already priced out replacing the rocker panels, patching the pass side rear quarter, and patching the driver's side fender. That can really be done at any time, because this car's going to be parked inside when not in regular spring/summer use, and I'm not putting any winters on Kelly either so we're set on that front.

Plans for Kelly in 2023:
Replace battery terminals and battery cables
Replace column shift linkage & dust boot
Replace ignition lockspring
Flush power steering, power brake, coolant, and transmission fluids
Power window maintenance (need to test them proper to know what's needed)
Replace both rockers, patch driver's side rear wheel arch, patch pass side fender
Remove rivets and weld the holes shut that were leftover from the vinyl top
Repaint areas of the roof with pitting/light surface rust, along and above the roof rails

Once that's all done, it'll be high time to get fun upgrades done. Including but not limited to:
Reupholster front and rear seats in proper rich velour, including the vaunted pillow top style for the fronts
Timing chain, radiator, & water pump upgrade
'03+ frame, with additional bracing
Rear air suspension delete
Custom 2.5 inch dual exhaust with long tube headers
275/50/R17s at all four corners
Metco watts linkage
CHE rear control arms
Addco front & rear sway bars
Poly body mounts
Dedicated LPD stacked plate cooler for power steering and transmission
31 spline axles and 3.55 final drive
Aluminum driveshaft, unless it's already been done
Replace weatherstripping, including front & rear windshield seals

The timetable for digging into Kelly proper will depend on how soon Anita the '79 New Yorker gets done, which will in turn affect what car goes in afterward. It's a toss-up between the '79 LTD-S and Kelly. I will definitely know better come August. I attached some pictures, seen below. Link to introduction/early update video (https://youtu.be/toeuoVZ-Qiw)

[packman]

Nice! Hoping for success and many pics for this project

[Hearsesrock427]

Been digging into Kelly. The only power window that works perfectly is driver's side front. All the others require maintenance; pass side front struggles mightily to lift the window all the way back up. I expected this, so when the time comes I'll order the requisite ball bearings and get all four lift motors upgraded and greased. (I don't have the means to drill out the rivets. Otherwise I'd be handling this. Oh well. I'll be better prepared next time). One of the driver's side parking lights is out. Should be easy enough to upgrade all those to LEDs, assuming they're anything like Ebyt's when I swapped some of her tail light bulbs over. We'll see.

Both front door panel mounted controls are unacceptably loose, especially the pass side. Whatever shop around Nassau that was "maintaining" Kelly before my ownership clearly used too many ugga-duggas when tightening the controls to the posts inside the door panel, which cracked the posts. They then resorted to gluing the ever living shit out of the housing in a vain attempt at "securing the controls". Fucking incredible. How much do you want to bet that this was the same establishment that did the wonderful A+++++ concours d'elegance rocker panel "repair"!? Or how about the super duper hackjob trailer light* wiring job in the trunk? Why use sheathing, connectors, and crimps when we can just, tape wires together, and then wrap packaging tape AROUND THE WIRES?! Or how about the giant glob of great stuff foam used to "repair" a missing chunk of headliner in the front left corner? Whoever was behind all this needs to be shot in the face repeatedly. There is zero excuse whatsoever for this "workmanship". None. Reminds me a lot of B's Garage, Henrietta Collision, and Camelot Automotive, what with how they sign their "work".

To circle back to the door panels and such- I think the controls can be tightly secured with zipties. Will take some creative routing and daisy-chaining, but there appears to be enough surrounding material and openings to loop and hook things around. It's not elegant, but it's functional and it'll definitely work better than broken posts, glue, and hope. It's the only way I can see that would work, without drilling more holes into their housings, which are already warped some from heat cycling and thus weaker than they were from new. Won't be doing that for some time though, because there's more digging to be done. The seat controls are mostly inoperative. Only one that works is the tilt function. Makes me think there's something amiss with the wiring inside the front door panels, especially considering the joystick for driver's seat adjustment is stuck in the forward position and won't return to center. Neither of the manual recline levers work either. I'll have the place in Ontario dig into all this proper when the time comes; all I can do now is test stuff for functioning. Doesn't make sense to do much more until we find a better way to secure door panels. The pass side front is super loose- that's Ford's fault for using shitty plastic retainer clips that aren't sturdy enough for the application. I'm leaning more toward just having my main subcontractor in Ontario handle that, and just engineer proper bolting/screwing all four door panels to their respective door skins, like they've done on a smaller scale with Ebyt.

All that said, if anyone has a source for metal or even delrin retainer clips I'd be interested in that before farming out re-engineering of fastening devices. Let's face it, anything's better than the junk factory hardware at this point.

Dug into the trunk and other areas, to see if there was any further rust, and there definitely was. There's chunks of both rear quarter panels missing, conveniently hidden by the bumper cover. I blame the extension piece that runs along the bottom of the cover for not allowing moisture and debris to drain from the inside, as well as the rear wheels flinging things back at the metal just ahead, by the wheel arch. Basically a smaller, more easily remedied problem that the bubble Caprice sedans have. Not entirely unexpected, but disappointing. Of course the extensions were fastened to the bumper cover with chicken wire. I have a feeling we'll find more hackjobs on Kelly as subsystems are further checked, replaced, upgraded, etc. Rear inner bumper is scaly but solid, so that'll need to come off to get properly painted. The additional rust I found definitely means I'm leaning more toward the '79 LTD-S from Georgia when it comes time to have a car go under construction. (Assuming of course, that Oksana is as solid as I'm banking on her being. I'll know better come August).

*I'm guessing that's what it is; couldn't find any markings on the device. Could also be part of the inoperative alarm system. Who knows at this point.

Update video: https://youtu.be/YCVTKwKLkdI

[friskyfrankie]

Your window repairs may only exist of repairing the motors/gear sets. The regulators may be fine. Are they the original motors and never repaired? If so, a punch in the middle of the rivet and then a drill bit will remove them. Then a properly sized hole saw or large drill bit will make the access permanent. Can you get the required tools from a friend or borrow them. Might be worth the effort to simply buy what you need as the expense would be low.

[GM_Guy]

re posts inside the panel: probably had the fresh outta school tech on it... Thats how they tried to fix the fuck up they did in my new work van. Went to the dealer for a fix for the loose switch panel since I hadn't even had it a month, figured a warranty issue... Turns out somebody drilled the hole for the natural gas switch too high and drilled out the dic switch retainer, and then tried to "fix" it. That got charged back to them--which will probably come out of future repairs getting some extra graft on them...

[Hearsesrock427]

Thank you friskyfrankie for giving me the gentle kick in the ass to dive in and tackle these window lift motors. Ended up renting a Milwaukee heavy duty drill and it ate 5 out of the 6 rivets without incident. Had an issue with the last rivet on the driver's side rear but that was because I couldn't punch out the center section properly. I imagine the hole for the replacement bolt is probably still somewhat viable, but we'll have to see how it holds with 2.5 bolts or so.

Regulators appear to be fine in spite of being visibly dry from obvious lack of grease over the years. Looks like I got to them just in time; none of the windows skipped or otherwise showed signs of misalignment when I tested them prior to digging into the inner workings of Kelly's door panels. I have one motor ready for reinstallation, the pass side rear. Scraped out the 10+ year old grease and while it was a little dry in some spots, it wasn't as bad as I expected. (I'd replace and repack grease every 7 years to be safe). Applied extra tacky high temp long life heavy duty red grease into the requisite areas and and am feeling much more comfortable servicing aero panther window lift motors moving forward. No reason at all to subcontract this out.

I'm definitely replacing the pass side front lift motor. It was by far the worst functioning of the bunch. Surprise surprise I pull it and attempt to get to its guts, only to find out it's a super duper shitty cheapo non-serviceable motor. Hence I ordered a proper Motorcraft unit from RockAuto, along with some other odds and ends. Parts will be here circa the 21st. Suffice to say I'm replacing the shitty plastic plugs with ball bearings and verifying the grease's integrity before installing the new motor. Once all 4 lift motors are in and all 4 regulators are soaked in grease, I'll address the door panel controls and such. It's going to involve some creative daisy-chaining of zipties to really get things secure, plus being gentle with the screws and surviving posts.

Replaced the parking and turn signal bulbs with requisite LEDs and am very happy with the result. Had a small issue with a pinched wire for the pass side parking light socket but that issue hasn't resurfaced since I adjusted it slightly and put everything back together. Update videos for all this and other adventures with Kelly will be up next week.

GM_Guy: Ouch. It amazes me how little care is shown toward jobs that are very clearly "measure twice cut once" in nature. Glad you at least got them to pay up for the fuck-up. You've had far better luck than I have with such endeavors.

[friskyfrankie]

Thank you friskyfrankie for giving me the gentle kick in the ass to dive in and tackle these window lift motors. Ended up renting a Milwaukee heavy duty drill and it ate 5 out of the 6 rivets without incident. Had an issue with the last rivet on the driver's side rear but that was because I couldn't punch out the center section properly. I imagine the hole for the replacement bolt is probably still somewhat viable, but we'll have to see how it holds with 2.5 bolts or so.

Regulators appear to be fine in spite of being visibly dry from obvious lack of grease over the years. Looks like I got to them just in time; none of the windows skipped or otherwise showed signs of misalignment when I tested them prior to digging into the inner workings of Kelly's door panels. I have one motor ready for reinstallation, the pass side rear. Scraped out the 10+ year old grease and while it was a little dry in some spots, it wasn't as bad as I expected. (I'd replace and repack grease every 7 years to be safe). Applied extra tacky high temp long life heavy duty red grease into the requisite areas and and am feeling much more comfortable servicing aero panther window lift motors moving forward. No reason at all to subcontract this out.

I'm definitely replacing the pass side front lift motor. It was by far the worst functioning of the bunch. Surprise surprise I pull it and attempt to get to its guts, only to find out it's a super duper shitty cheapo non-serviceable motor. Hence I ordered a proper Motorcraft unit from RockAuto, along with some other odds and ends. Parts will be here circa the 21st. Suffice to say I'm replacing the shitty plastic plugs with ball bearings and verifying the grease's integrity before installing the new motor. Once all 4 lift motors are in and all 4 regulators are soaked in grease, I'll address the door panel controls and such. It's going to involve some creative daisy-chaining of zipties to really get things secure, plus being gentle with the screws and surviving posts.

Replaced the parking and turn signal bulbs with requisite LEDs and am very happy with the result. Had a small issue with a pinched wire for the pass side parking light socket but that issue hasn't resurfaced since I adjusted it slightly and put everything back together. Update videos for all this and other adventures with Kelly will be up next week.

GM_Guy: Ouch. It amazes me how little care is shown toward jobs that are very clearly "measure twice cut once" in nature. Glad you at least got them to pay up for the fuck-up. You've had far better luck than I have with such endeavors.

I KNEW you could do it! Happy to hear of the progress and we await photos or videos. I love to hear folks fixing their own stuff as opposed to "farming" it out. The biggest hurdle is worrying about the job. Once you dig in, you'll usually find its not that bad and you get a real satisfaction from doing it right and doing it yourself!