My 1987 Two Door Crown Victoria AKA THE BROWN BLOB

[87gtVIC]

"No finish grind"

I need a bit of explanation if that is the case.

Whenever it gets tossed on the engine I will share my findings.

It was a pleasant sight to find instructions. Its just that extra "thought" put into the product.

[mitymerc]

Ryan's favorite color....Neon F'n Green

[87gtVIC]

Ahh.

[87gtVIC]

Buzzed around this morning with her. Still just in LOVE with the top end power/pick up this thing has. So much fun.

Anyways still need to change the water pump out as it leaves a couple drips on the harmonic balancer after a long drive. Unfortunately some schmoo is SLOWLY leaking out from between the block and cylinder head right at the number 5 piston near the lower head bolt. FML. Wonder if it is also leaking into the cylinder!? It is a super super super slow leak of a fluid I have not determined yet...Obviously either oil or coolant.


Anyways the car still looks good at least and runs normal.





Excited to get the under drive crank pulley on. Daily driver needs come first though..motor mounts in the Benz takes priority over the pleasure of working in the "fun" car.

[Bobcat]

Buzzed around this morning with her. Still just in LOVE with the top end power/pick up this thing has. So much fun.

Anyways still need to change the water pump out as it leaves a couple drips on the harmonic balancer after a long drive. Unfortunately some schmoo is SLOWLY leaking out from between the block and cylinder head right at the number 5 piston near the lower head bolt. FML. Wonder if it is also leaking into the cylinder!? It is a super super super slow leak of a fluid I have not determined yet...Obviously either oil or coolant.


Anyways the car still looks good at least and runs normal.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]47924[/ATTACH]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]47925[/ATTACH]

Excited to get the under drive crank pulley on. Daily driver needs come first though..motor mounts in the Benz takes priority over the pleasure of working in the "fun" car.

That sucks

[87gtVIC]

Yeah..Still moving though!

[87gtVIC]

Some sound effects!

[packman]

Congrats on POTM!!! Well deserved with all of the work you've done!

[DerekTheGreat]

X2 on that.

[87gtVIC]

Thanks guys. Greatly appreciate it.

[DerekTheGreat]

You keep your stuff clean and do great work. The attention to detail shows. Thought I was half way decent until I saw your cars haha. Now all I see on mine are swirl marks and more that could be done. Makes me feel unworthy to own my Townie.

[87gtVIC]

A couple weeks back I noticed my trunk muncher was not working so good. I looked into the issue and found out that the plastic housing was basically disintegrating /grenadeing around the bolt holes to the bracket it mounts to in the trunk. With the new (many years old now) weatherstripping for the trunk the muncher is really put to the test everytime to suck that trunk closed AND match the body lines on the quaterpanel extensions. I guess it had enough and the bolts pulled though and required replacement.

I purchased a new dorman unit (all replacement munchers were EXPENSIVE) and it looked basically the same other than the motor looking dinky in comparison.

I installed it and it closed the trunk just fine but normally there is a distinct and loud “click” heard once the motor reaches its full travel. I listen for that always to tell me that the motor is no longer energized and killing itself or the battery.

Well, no click was heard so I run into the garage and grab a meter to connect up to the battery and find out if the motor is still activated or weather this new motor just does not make that click once reaching full travel.

I come back and pop the trunk and the motor is HOT HOT HOT and did not retract the latch. FFFFFFFFFFffffFfFfffuuuuuuuuuuuu.

I take it out and disassemble it figuring the motor shat itself and attempt to swap in the factory ford motor. No go. I suck it up and reassemble the dorman and plug it back in to see if it still works. It does. Phew!

Now I realized that the switch mounted onto the motor was not telling the motor to kick off once full travel was reached. Swapped on the factory ford switch and I am back in business.

I know anything is possible but I find it hard for a brand new switch to be bad out of the box. I imagine that it is looking for inputs from a different terminal as there are about 5? Present on the switch while only three are used.

[sly]

I have a couple munchers in my pile. If you want another one, lemme know.

[His Royal Ghostliness]

For the record, the motor of the Dorman unit appears to be about the same size as window motors for '90s F-series trucks (and possibly cars? I don't remember). There are only two permanent magnets in the motor, so the housing can be flattened in shape between them to make the whole assembly more compact without adversely affecting power output. Overall diameter and length of the new housing seems comparable to the factory one, so hopefully you'll see many years of service out of this motor as well. Bummer about the switch thing tho, maybe you have to play with an ohm-meter to find out which of the 5 available terminals is the one actually telling the motor to shut off?

[87gtVIC]

I have a couple munchers in my pile. If you want another one, lemme know.

OH. Good to know.

For the record, the motor of the Dorman unit appears to be about the same size as window motors for '90s F-series trucks (and possibly cars? I don't remember). There are only two permanent magnets in the motor, so the housing can be flattened in shape between them to make the whole assembly more compact without adversely affecting power output. Overall diameter and length of the new housing seems comparable to the factory one, so hopefully you'll see many years of service out of this motor as well. Bummer about the switch thing tho, maybe you have to play with an ohm-meter to find out which of the 5 available terminals is the one actually telling the motor to shut off?

Yes. I saved the new dorman switch to find out whats going on. I am just happy the factory ford switched swapped right in place without any complications and saved my ass. Without that working I would have had no way to close the trunk.

Though the factory motor appears good in the above photo, later while doing some troubleshooting it completely fell apart and tore the housing to pieces where it would not be salvageable to even hold the trunk lid down.

Again, I am also luck the dorman unit came back to life after being SUPER mega hot to the point of not working because of that silly switch.