1982 Ford LTD-S 351W Police Car

[Grand1]

Just replace the hoses, ....can't beat that! Don't ever sell her, that is one cool toy!

[DerekTheGreat]

...I installed the new PS pump, only to discover today it has a slight leak out of the shaft seal. It seemed to have a decent amount of lateral play on the bench, so I was skeptical. Mine was a rebuild A1 cardone. I'll be returning it, does anyone have any recommendations as far as rebuilt units?...

I've put two pumps on our F150, both A/C Delco reman units from Rock Auto. Each one is junk. Only slightly quieter than the factory unit they replaced. Considering buying a junkyard unit from a box & making it fit our application.

What's with the chip on cylinder 6's piston @ ~9 o'clock? That can't be helping compression..

[gadget73]

Thanks man, it came with an oil, trans, and power steering cooler from the factory, part of the police package.

Yeah I may just return this to rockauto and go local, easier to return if the next one is sub-par. Sounds like its not worth my time to rebuild if it requires special tools

Its a seal driver. I have it, you're welcome to use it. It came in a kit of other tools that I did need. You could probably drive the seal in with a socket or a suitable size bit of pipe. I've got a seal kit if you're inclined to experiment, or it can sit on the shelf until I have one start to leak.

[Brown_Muscle]

Installed 2 Magnaflow XL stainless mufflers I had laying around in place of my flowmaster 40's in an attempt to make the drone and noise go away. Well it sounds better...but drone is still there and it's still louder than I'd like. I am considering putting some resonators on the tailpipes. Has anyone had any luck with doing this? I even isolated the exhaust system from the frame to see if it were the hangers, but it made very little difference.

[gadget73]

Is it rpm specific? If so, you may want a heimholtz resonator setup. Basically its a dead-ended tube that tees off the exhaust. The tube is a specific length to cancel out the drone frequency.

https://www.performancetrucks.net/forums/gm-engine-exhaust-performance-21/how-build-exhaust-resonator-tube-eliminate-drone-489463/

Its something I want to do on the Towncar, though I'm also considering dumping the Fox H pipe and having something made up that duplicates factory routing. Seems like Fox cars and cars using their exhaust parts are prone to that, so I'm thinking its something particular about the design of the pipes.

If not rpm specific, resonators on the tailpipes may help. I lined the trunk with sound damping material and it helped somewhat, but it also widened out the rpm band where the drone is. At its worst its not as loud, but instead of about a 5 mph band where its annoying, its more like a 10 mph band that its noticeable.

[86VickyLX]

Mine doesn't really drone now that it has the X pipe.

[gadget73]

I really just think its Fox H pipes that have suckage issues.

[CountrySedan]

I read once that the factory mufflers on the fox mustangs were slightly different lengths in an attempt to deal with the drone.

[gadget73]

They were. The Mark VII also had different diameter tailpipes. Stock exhaust on those is perfectly silent. It can be done, but it needs some trickery to pull it off.

[DerekTheGreat]

Huh.. I never knew that but yeah, I don't remember my dad's VII being loud or droney at all. Only time you heard that engine was at WOT, sounded pretty good then. I mashed that thing often as a 17-19 year old kid.

[Brown_Muscle]

I mashed that thing often as a 17-19 year old kid.

I think most of us do at that age

The overall volume needs to come down, I ordered a couple 14" resonators I'm going to install on the tailpipes, it seems to be the loudest after the mufflers, and I've read people having good luck toning down the volume and harmonics with these. We'll see, they weren't crazy expensive and wont take long to install. Im considering putting just one on and see what happens too, before i do the other one, for kicks.

In other news...if you're riding around on your original calipers...I strongly recommend getting new/remanned or rebuilding yours. I got all new rubber parts and pistons on closeout. I got the pistons "just in case". What I found when i popped the old ones out was scary. If i had know they were THIS bad I wouldn't have even driven the car. There did seem to be a little more drag on the front wheels when spinning them then there should have been. Check out the pix



There was a TON of crude in the piston bore, the piston as you can see was pitted and corroded badly, and the square cut O-ring was extremely distorted. I have no idea how I didn't have sticky calipers.

[DerekTheGreat]

Haha yeah, I certainly did. Drove my Grand Am for a week before I realized "I could floor it and it would go fast..." Well, go fast was wrong but I still floored it. Best that turd did was 103 IIRC, much to the dismay of my girlfriend at the time.

Wow yeah, those are nasty.. Bet she'll do a bit better on gas now too.

[gadget73]

And that is why I put new calipers on the Continental right after I bought it. Probably could have rebuilt them but I got replacements for like 15 each on closeout so I didn't feel the need to bother with it. Not sure if they were original but I knew the car had sat for ~10 years and I wasn't interested in risking it. The rubber lines were downright scary on that thing anyway.

[Brown_Muscle]

A few updates:

I took her on a 4500 mile road trip in August. She performed flawlessly, no trouble whatsoever other than a broken exhaust hanger during the last 50 miles of the trip. The cruise control and quieter exhaust made the trip quite pleasant.

Now for the mechanical updates!

I have an EGR compatible edelbrock 4 barrel intake, along with the EGR plate. I want to retain EGR for emissions and gas mileage reasons, it's not easy to find these intakes used but I got a heck of a deal on it. The stock EGR system simply requires a ported vacuum signal, and not its own EGR port like previous systems, so it'll be easy to make it work with any carb.

I also FINALLY found a carb that had everything I want. It's relatively new (came out about a year ago). Edelbrock AVS2 #1906. This carb feature annular booster in the primaries, just like ford had in the the late 70s/80's. This improves atomization, throttle response, and a host of other things. In addition this is a spread bore carb that uses square bore bolt pattern. The quadrajet used this and was known (when running and tuned properly) for its good gas mileage and throttle response. The carb is 650CFM, but the secondaries have an adjustable spring loaded plate that will only give them as much air as it is asking for. I bought this carb new on a black friday sale, my first new carb ever. I'm pretty excited for it.

Now the tricky part. I'm a little crazy, and want to retain the TV rod. Nothing available is compatible with this setup...however I can make it compatible. I already separated the TV rod linkage from my old VV carb, I'm going to make an adapter plate that will hold this linkage and bolt it onto the carb. I'll be sure to post pictures of the process later. This will ensure the correct, factory geometry, and adjustability.

My old 2150 carb will be for sale. It's modified to work with the TV rod, the biggest you can get, and a perfect bolt on to replace a VV carb in these cars. I'm hoping someone will be interested in this as they are hard to find.

Sorry It's not letting me upload pictures, I will as soon as I can

[gadget73]

Vac secondaries are a good thing. Variable flow based on engine demands and abilities just makes good sense. Most things do not need a mechanical secondary, thats for motors that go 1/4 mile at a time.

The only other thing I'd really consider besides the factory rod is the factory cable. If you can adapt either an EFI cable or find the hen's teeth 90-91 351 tv cable setup that would be cool. The rod just works. I've dealt with those Lokars before and have only been impressed with just how crappy they are.