My 1989 Crown Victoria.

[slack]

Hey All,

I figured I would post a Reader's Ride post about my '89 Crown Vic. I've done a decent amount of work to it and wanted to post it up.

I bought the car in Sept 2012. It's my fourth panther car I've owned. (I've previously owned a '91 GMQ, '94 LTC and a '97 LTC.)

Here it is in Oct 2012 on a trip to CT to pick up my friends '83 tudor.


And Here's a few pics I snapped yesterday: (I'll fill in the work done in additional posts)

The car currently has a front nose swap with an '87 and the rear bumper swap of an '87. Still looking for a good trunk lid to complete the swap. (I have the rear tail lights on standby)

Front:


Back:


I'm going to wait until the weather's warmer to attempt to paint the mis-matched parts.

After those pics were taken, we went down to my friend's dad's friends house who sells tires and picked up some big truck tires for the rear. (My current ones were bald and I was fishtailing in the snow like it was nobody's business).

Here's a pic from today:


More posts to come!

[visionmercury]

looks like an interesting monster your building man, good luck and keep up the pics.

[johnunit]

Welcome! looks like a pretty easy car to get into really nice order.

[slack]

Thanks guys!

Here's some pics from earlier this year when I swapped out the old springs for the heavy duty cargo springs and new shocks. The old stuff was completely shot.

Now suspension goodies:


Compressing old spring to remove it:


Another angle of the c-clamp in spring tool:


New stuff in car:


One of the old dead shocks that was in the car:


I also changed the diff fluid at the time and painted the back plate just for the heck of it:


Old fluid:


Painting:


Plate installed and fluid filled:

[slack]

The car after all the suspension was all done and installed:

[slack]

Front tie rods also needed some love earlier this year so I went ahead and replaced all that stuff as well.

A few before pics:


Old stuff out:


New stuff in and installed:


Afterwards I got an alignment done.

Here's the before:


Here's the after:

[slack]

I wish I had more pics of this nightmare that happened this past December.

So, I went to replace the thermostat in the CV and the left bolt on the housing broke off in the intake manifold. We were able to use enough heat to get the other bolt out fine but it took a ton of persuasion. When taking the thermostat housing off the intake manifold, it apparently was baked on and didn't want to come off at first.

After prying at it... this happened:


The thing just fell apart in half. Never saw that happen before. It must have been from all the heat.

In any case, while wrestling with this, the TFI module got cracked from it's base. (Not sure how). We removed the distributor for further heating of the broken bolt just to be on the safe side.

New TFI module:


Luckily there was enough of a nub sticking out the intake manifold to be able to grab the broken bolt with some vise grips and heat the holy hell out of it. After that bolt was out, we robbed a donor 302 of it's thermostat housing and bolts.

New thermostat was installed as well as new hoses all around. (Hoses changed the following day)

Here it is with everything installed... definitely not the prettiest RVT job but I was done at this point. (I think it was probably close to midnight)

[sly]

hopefully it isn't too much RTV. too much may clog the bypass and/or t-stat and screw things up.

[slack]

Yeah. I was a little worried about that too. But it seems to be okay. It's been almost two months since that debacle now without any problems. The car has an 8hr round trip to PA as well as daily driving under it's belt since then.

[sly]

[87gtVIC]

Nice work man. Really appreciate you putting up the progress pics. Did you go to PA for some of the great junkyards?

[79lincolnlover]

Was the original header panel cracked?

[slack]

Nice work man. Really appreciate you putting up the progress pics. Did you go to PA for some of the great junkyards?

Thanks! Ditto to you too! I have a few more folders of pics from work done in the past year I still need to update this thread with.

I was actually going to hit one up in the Poconos today for the '79-87 trunk lid but Center Morriches junk yard apparently has about 3 box panthers laying around in the far back. I was able to score the lid, trunk lock eye (or whatever it's called. The loop on the body side) and all the rear fillers for cheap. Not to sound like an ad but they're my go to guys for older cars without having to leave the island. Back to the question though. All my family besides me basically live around York, PA so I head out there to visit a couple times a year. Maybe next time I'm out that far I'll check out some of the "you pick" yards and see what they have laying around. I'll give you guys a holler in case anyone wants me to pick something up when I do.

Was the original header panel cracked?

The '89 header panel? Nope. It's actually in really nice shape. I've been trying to sell it for like 3 months now and haven't had any takers. I'm moving at the end of this week and I'm not sure how much longer I can hold on to it. I'm trying to find a home for it because I'd hate a good part like that to go to waste.

So, as mentioned above. I got the trunk lid. I'm currently in the middle of painting it and getting everything ready to mount tomorrow morning. I should have some nice progress pics up on Monday.

[Louis]

Nice work on the '87 swap.

I have always preferred that look over the "aero box" look.

[87gtVIC]

I was able to score the lid, trunk lock eye (or whatever it's called. The loop on the body side) and all the rear fillers for cheap.

Good to hear you found something local. You talking about the latch? I had to think for a few about what you meant by "loop on the body side."