VicCrownVic's 1991 Mercury Grand Marquis LS "The Scab"

[sly]

Still not as beat up as my beater. Rustier than my beater though.

[Hearsesrock427]

Loooooove how that maroon turns into a dark bronze under certain light conditions. Definitely shows her age and use, but for something that runs and drives as well as she does for less than a grand, it's hard to complain. Will need some major body work down the line, like your other '88-'91 Grand Marqs, but it's something to work towards.

(Or so I tell myself when looking at the soon-to-be-mine two tone '85 and its horrific rust in some areas!)

[Chuck Norris]

Man, just get that one fender straightened out and the trim replaced, and this would be a pretty nice looking car! It just needs that little bit of body TLC. I likey.

[DerekTheGreat]

Car looks good, color makes it look much better than Icy. What happened to the passenger side trim and area around the turnsignal lense? I don't recall that being there on our last joint venture JY run.

If you're looking to clean the wheels with minimal effort Mequire's (or however you spell it) makes 3? levels of cleaners. I recommend the one that says it's for PAINTED wheels. Works great at eating brake dust and brightening up white walls again. Just spray it on, let it sit and then flush it away at a coin-op wash or high pressure hose at home.

[Tiggie]

Looks like a different car! I approve!

[VicCrownVic]

Derek, that was all there, I guess you didn't notice. I guess that explains why you nominated the car, lol.
Remember, we briefly talked about how old people have a tendency to take the garage door frame with them when they back out.


The color is definitely interesting. It's Medium Woodrose Metalic. I thought the car was maroon in the CL pics I saw before I looked at the car, but it is more of a brown with maybe a hint of maroon.

[DerekTheGreat]

LoL. I remember now though! I think I was too busy admiring the interior color. That has to be a rare color, especially for the year.

[87gtVIC]

Looks good man. Washing the exterior and cleaning the interior lets you connect with the car and really gain an appreciation for it. A nice clean car also shows others that you kinda care about what you have and like to keep it is as nice of shape as its gonna get.

[VicCrownVic]

The engine was missing late last week/past weekend so I checked it out this over the weekend and found plug wire #8 looked higher than the rest at the dizzy.
So I pushed on it and heard it click and figured that should solve the problem.
When I left my parents' place on Monday after my 4 day weekend I noticed that it was still missing. I didn't want to mess with it in the dark on Monday night so Tuesday night I decided to pull spark plug #8 and found this fugly mess:

(Bosch Platinums aren't necessary for a stock lopo, but after getting over 100k miles on a set in my '89 MGM I decided to try them again.)

Since these spark plugs have at most 5,000 miles on them, I cleaned it up and it's running much better now.


I also vacuumed the interior over the weekend and got a few pictures, but I'll have to get more picutes this weekend.

[sly]

wow. That plug was NAS-TAY!

[DerekTheGreat]

Interior looks great. I'm with sly on the plug's status. Leaky stem seals?

[Tiggie]

Do you think it was from the plug wire being loose?

My #8 in the 88 will also foul out every 10k or so.

[VicCrownVic]

I'm thinking riding around for probably 1k+ miles with that loose wire had something to do with it. It was a very slight miss, hardly noticeable, at first so I let it go, but over the past week or two it really became noticeable. I suppose intermittent/weak spark may have caused stuff to not burn well and crap up like that, but Derek's suggestion is also a possibility, or a combination of both.

#8 is always the worst when I've changed plugs on any of my boxes, including my '89 but that engine is in great shape and I got 100k out of the plugs before #8 plug went on that one.

Derek, I don't remember if we talked about it, but remember how The Ice Car was fuming out the oil fill breather tube like it was exhaust? Yeah, this car doesn't do that, and now that I'm running on 8 cylinders again it's running great.

[DerekTheGreat]

Years ago my one friend told me about his '88 5.0 T-bird that he bought new. Still had it, only he hasn't driven it in probably two decades. It's sitting with 250k on it. I asked about the engine and he said they're good but they were prone to valveguide/stemseal failure. Not sure if it was all cylinders (can't see why not) but because of the location of the spark plugs on the cylinders that are closest to the firewall those end up collecting oil and fouling out. I heard that running a hotter plug can help with that. Haven't pulled mine out ever but it's been 10k and nothing seems to be different. Same with Ashley's.

Yep, I remember that conversation and remember seeing it first hand. Never seen a car do that before.

[VicCrownVic]

Forced maintenance

It's been a rough couple of weeks for The Scab. Apparently this car does not like going to work on Fridays.

Two Fridays ago the Y pipe broke where the two arms combine. It looked like the welds rusted away (it was getting louder because of this) then it let go that morning. I hacked the tail pipe off and threw it and the muffler/rest of the Y pipe in the back seat. Made it to work on time since I had other plans that morning which I had to cancel.
Driving the car last week was quite loud with the exhaust ending basically below my feet. So, this past weekend, I ended up throwing a Y pipe and Muffler on since that's what I had sitting around.




Last Friday I lost my left rear tire. The tread was still in a ring with a good amount of tread left but no side wall connecting that ring of tread to the beads. After all was said and done I determined that what happened was I must have ran something over since there was a clean cash in the middle of the tread about an inch wide in the thickest part of the tread. That gash caused the tire to run low, which I somehow didn't notice, which caused the wheel to destroy the sidewalls.
The fun didn't stop there. Once I got the lug nuts off the wheel had no intention of coming off. I called my wife to see if she could find someone to bring me a sledgehammer while I tried everything I could to get the wheel off. During that time Michigan State Police pulled someone over right behind me so, after he was done with that, he stopped to help me out. I told him I was in the process of trying to get a sledge hammer and he said he thought he had one. He didn't but came back with the biggest crow bar I've ever seen. Whacked on the wheel for a bit before it finally broke free. I ended up turning around and working from home that day since I was drenched in sweat.
Over the weekend I swapped my 4 steel wheels from The Ice Car (originally from my '89), with tires I bought last summer, since I didn't want to ride around with one mismatched wheel and didn't want to buy a new tire since I have 4 matching low mileage tires.




After pulling the spare out and rummaging for tools I decided it was time to reorganize all the junk in the trunk (aka: my garage).

and the rest of the travel stuff which made the rear look low since I didn't air up the air shocks (Gabriel HiJackers, installed by PO) before taking pictures.





And the pig without lipstick as it sits now: