1997 Mercury Grand Marquis LS

[Kodachrome Wolf]

Thought I'd start a repair/update thread for my car, as weird things are always going on.

Car has some 146,000 miles on it, still running good enough (more on that below). Toreador Red Metallic exterior with Light Flint leather interior. Bought it in 2011 at around 112,000 miles and have been driving it almost daily ever since.

It's definitely due for some suspension R&R, but still gets on.

Today I did a few things to it:
1.) Drove it.

2.) New trunk badge installed.

Chrome paint on the 'V8' one was turning gray. Also, it's totally High Performance 'cuz P71 ECU, lol.

3.) Drove some more and managed to have a spark plug turn out on me on my way home:

It did not damage the threads! I was able to get it threaded back in after it cooled down. I would have been on my way sooner, but I didn't have a long enough extension for my ratchet and had to wait for a friend on the side of the road. I am glad I keep a tool kit in the trunk, since you'll never know when it might be needed.

I'll check all of the plugs for tightness tonight. They were changed by myself some 20,000 miles ago, and were tightened to spec. I don't know what caused it, but at least nothing got jacked up.

However, it sure was interesting when the plug went, I had coasted at around 25 MPH through a school zone and when I pressed the gas, I got "thup, thup, thup" noise from the engine bay followed by a smell of gas and exhaust. I pulled off the road fairly quick after that and saw the boot and plug chilling up on the valve cover.

All in all, typical weekday with plenty of driving involved, save for breaking down for the first time ever. Even when the intake manifold ruptured, I made it home, lol.

[79lincolnlover]

Average # of miles driven per week?

[Kodachrome Wolf]

Average # of miles driven per week?

When I have class, I can average up to 210+ miles each week. I do a lot of commuting when school is in. When I'm on break or out of school for the summer, I could average under 50 in a week.

[Kodachrome Wolf]

Installed new driver's side wiper arm and new Trico blades. The new arm doesn't have any play at the pivot point and stays latched tightly. I didn't realize how badly worn out the other arms had really been.


Now it just has to actually rain again, whenever that'll be again, since it would seem the last four days of rain are now giving way to week or more of sun. At least the temperatures will finally move back up into the 60s.

[miamibob]

LOVE the color of your car and what you are doing to it! Bobby

[Kodachrome Wolf]

While I was at work, my car got parking lot clipped by a car backing up at some odd angle. I figured it out almost as it happened because I was working the drive through and the person at the speaker was waiting for the line to move, and I heard, "Ooh, she just hit that car... Sir, you need to let whoever drives the red Crown Victoria (lol) know their car just got hit."

I told them it was my car, and quickly had someone cover for me while I went outside. I felt anxious at first, but I just kept cool since it wasn't bad and shit happens. It not that bad, it just looked worse than it was at first. We exchanged info, but still contacted the police just to have a recorded incident report. The Marquis is going to need some minor cosmetic work, so it might be going in sometime soon.

Photos at work:





At home:









Yes, the car is dirty, except for the area where it got hit. I just washed, polished, and waxed that area to protect the finish there for now, and see what was out of whack.

From what I can tell, the impact strips did a good job protecting the door, and took the brunt of the impact, so they'll need repainting as the finish got scraped off. The area above the strip has some scratches in the clear coat and needs to get hit with a buffer to take them out. The door has a shallow dent/crease that you can feel and see, it just didn't show up well in the photos (should be easily popped out). Finally, the dogleg is a bit pushed in, but should be able to get pulled out. I'll be in touch with my insurance company tomorrow regarding the incident.

[sly]

Bah!

[Kodachrome Wolf]

Upgraded the blinker mod today.

Used a 7443 socket set and 7443NA bulbs.

I just had to use sandpaper and widen the stock hole until the new socket would fit and lock properly.

Start:


Widened:


Test Fit:


Wired Up:


In Action:

I did this just so that in the day the side marker signal would be brighter when it was flashing. The 194 wasn't very noticeable during the day. The signal also lost the alternating pattern when the lights are on, but that doesn't matter since to me much. And for the record, the 7443 is a dual filament bulb, and fits nicely in the housing once the changes have been made.

[wojtekrobert]

It looks great, the more flashing orange the better! I liked it so much that I would like to do the same modification for my MGM

[Kodachrome Wolf]

I got lucky today and found myself an early birthday gift.


Finally found my leather wrapped H-Bar steering wheel. It's not perfect, but coming out of a '94 MGM with 200K+ on the dash, I'll be damned if it wasn't surprisingly still together. It did have electrical tape on the rim of the wheel towards the 9 and 3 positions, but that gunk cleaned off with the leather cleaner. I did also attack the rest of the wheel with some multi-surface cleaner to get of the black grime that was on it. It was almost as if whoever drove it purposely put their hands in dirt and then grabbed at every part of it. I'm still happy with how it turned out since I've been looking for almost a year now for one of these.

As for the vinyl one? Someone here on GMN already has dibs since it wasn't delaminated or turned into something that looks like a beaver snacked on it.

[pantera77]

Wheel looks good, my 92 has the leather wrapped one as well, but after cleaning all the gunk off it the dye seemed to come off too.
Interesting my 91 wagon has a Lincoln leather warped one, and it seems to be made of a much nicer material.

That car's just screaming for a 92-94 GM dash

[Kodachrome Wolf]

Wheel looks good, my 92 has the leather wrapped one as well, but after cleaning all the gunk off it the dye seemed to come off too.
Interesting my 91 wagon has a Lincoln leather warped one, and it seems to be made of a much nicer material.

That car's just screaming for a 92-94 GM dash

I'd love to do that. There's plenty of donor cars, but there's a few things that stop me from doing that (right now).
1.) Where I am I going to put the current dash?
2.) I figure the EATC could be kept as is with some work (really don't feel like doing sliders; they're not terrible until the blend door cable becomes a binding b*tch)
3.) I'd have to change my door panels to match the dash trim.
4.) I've never pulled a dash.
5.) It's me working by myself these days. My friend that used to help me is now in the military, but he will be back for about two weeks here shortly.

Now... lets say I go for it. How hard is it to pull the dash?

[miamibob]

LOVE what you've done with this car and STILL haven't forgotten about the wheels we spoke of a few months ago. Just TOO much stuff going on which I'll post about later!!

[VicCrownVic]

For dash removal follow the heater core replacement procedure, http://www.grandmarq.net/vb/showthre...l=1#post741980, and there should be just a few things that aren't covered for a complete dash removal. That guide is based on a 91 MGM but the procedure should be close to identical on a 92-94 MGM and fairly similar for your 97. It's not too complicated, just time consuming.

The sliders on the older ATC units suck terribly, on every one that I have seen the sliders have some play. Mine still works just fine but with all that play it just makes it seem old and tired. That's one of the reasons I would like to upgrade my ATC control head to a newer style unit but we'll see if I ever get around to trying it.

[Kodachrome Wolf]

For dash removal follow the heater core replacement procedure, http://www.grandmarq.net/vb/showthre...l=1#post741980, and there should be just a few things that aren't covered for a complete dash removal. That guide is based on a 91 MGM but the procedure should be close to identical on a 92-94 MGM and fairly similar for your 97. It's not too complicated, just time consuming.

The sliders on the older ATC units suck terribly, on every one that I have seen the sliders have some play. Mine still works just fine but with all that play it just makes it seem old and tired. That's one of the reasons I would like to upgrade my ATC control head to a newer style unit but we'll see if I ever get around to trying it.

I'll definitely look into that. The I think the donor car's dash was still mostly together, but I'll have to check.

As far as the sliders go, I've messed with a few of them at the junkyard. A good handful had sloppy levers, but nothing too bad when held with your thumb and finger. Then there's the few that are so bound up on the 'Cool-Heat' they don't have full play and it feels like you could snap the lever head off if you forced it any harder.