My 1987 Mercury Colony Park

[TecNickal]

My local transmission shop rebuilt the transmission because it had a severely bad slip for second year and would not go into first unless I forced it with the shifter. Something happened with the valve body. He put in a used valve body he had in his parts stash. I think I paid eight bills to have it rebuilt with a new torque converter. And a towing upgrade on some servo from an F1 50. Both the engine and transmission we’re jasper units around the 250,000 mile mark I bought the car with a little over 300,000 miles.

Good job on fixing it Zach. Hope you have it up and running soon

[sly]

F150 OD band servo - 2 inch OD band as well to make that work. The AOD in the Mad Marquis has that upgrade. Excellent upgrade.

[Kodachrome Wolf]

Day 3: Not quite done, but ran out of light, however it does run.



I wanted to get the timing set at a minimum, so we just temporarily jammed on the coil bracket and propped up the alternator bracket to stay clear of the harmonic balancer and pulley. Fired off with ease and got base timing set at 10*° BTDC. Ran it for only about 45 seconds since 1.) There isn't any coolant circulating, 2.) It's about a quart low on oil, 3.) The charging system isn't hooked up.

Plans are to finish up with the front accessories on Tuesday, then iron out any issues. Probably need to pop off the valve covers and recheck lash as there was a slight tick from one side, but it could have been an exhaust leak too, but just to be sure. The engine does need to be brought up to operating temperature so I can re-torque the lower intake manifold bolts. We're also going to change the oil with fresh 10W-30 to get any contaminants and such out.

All the fresh stuff and some of the lubricants used to get a few bolts free definitely make for some great smoke and smells, but it's runs on all eight again.

[DerekTheGreat]

I'm anxious to see how it runs with HO stuff sans HO cam. You work fast. Tempts me to buy another panther and do stuff like that. I'd feel bad about opening up the Town Car.

[VicCrownVic]

I'm anxious to see how it runs with HO stuff sans HO cam. You work fast. Tempts me to buy another panther and do stuff like that. I'd feel bad about opening up the Town Car.

Time to get a beater panther! I don't feel bad about any of the hack... I mean upgrades that I do.

[DerekTheGreat]

LoL I'm seriously tempted. Ash was talking about wanting a '90 TC this past weekend. Suppose if I could stumble upon a clean one for $2,000 or less we could be tempted. Although an F100 might make it's way under our wing. TBD.....

[Kodachrome Wolf]

I'm anxious to see how it runs with HO stuff sans HO cam.

It seemed to idle rather smooth while setting the timing, however it was still in fast idle since it was cold. I really want to see where it falls once it can go to normal idle.

I figure it should run like a LoPo, but with slightly better throttle response and a bit more off the line punch. Obviously we will all know once we get everything done.

[DerekTheGreat]

Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. I put Trickflow aluminum cylinder heads, Edelbrock intake and a JET stage one chip on my Fireturd and that's what I noticed. Pulls real well from idle to mid, seems to run lean beyond that. Doesn't run so great in open loop if you're "punchy" with the throttle. Needs a real tune.

[gadget73]

I wouldn't expect much change on the bottom, but it shouldn't run out of power at the top end quite as fast. A lot of it will still be determined by the cam and intake though. Not sure what the chamber volume difference is, but its possible an E7 is good for a very slight bump in compression.

[Kodachrome Wolf]

Got the front all buttoned up, filled with coolant, and we've got one last snare to slow us down.

So, on firing it up today, we got a funky, intermittent knock that would occur. I suspect that was from the lack of coolant in the block because it disappeared once the temperature gauge started going up. However, the engine started shaking real bad as if a misfire was present. Pushed on all the wires while it was running and it smoothed out a bit. You can rev it up and it doesn't break up, but trying to drive it there's no power with the accelerator floored, and you can get it to back fire a bit. If you try driving normally it seems to accelerate normally, if only a bit sluggish. I may need to grab a code scanner and do a cylinder balance test. If it's misfiring, it's not as obvious as the dead cylinder issue was.

Current suspects:
-Wires and plugs
-Throttle position sensor
-Distributor clocking

My thought with the plugs and wires is that while the wires are "new", they didn't seem to really click on to the plugs well after having been taken off and put on several times. Might explain a possible misfire. The plugs are Autolite 25s, however I may swap them for good measure. They allegedly have 6K on them, but that's all I know.

The TPS had to be swapped from the other throttle body. It may not be zeroed out so when the throttle is depressed, throttle position may not be lining up with what expected engine load should be, especially at WOT.

With the distributor, it was set to 10° BTDC with SPOUT out, however it is clocked a bit differently than before. I'm not sure if that is having any affect.

Beyond the driveability issue, it idles smooth, so I'm figuring it has to do something with applied engine load.

[87gtVIC]

The TPS has a slit that should engage with the shaft in the throttle body.

[Kodachrome Wolf]

The TPS has a slit that should engage with the shaft in the throttle body.

That's engaged, however I did not have a multimeter and wire probes so I could set the voltage correctly. If the TPS is off, that would make it run goofy, no?

I might branch the issues onto a tech thread to try and hammer out the problem there.

[sly]

It should reset the base every start for the TPS. As long as it is actually working and the base setting is between about .7 and 1.3V, it should work fine. If it's outside of that, it should throw a code.

[gadget73]

Its not all that critical, the ECM does self-adjust to a point. If one of the tits is busted the TPS will not be in range though, so its worth confirming that the output is something reasonable and that it responds like you'd expect as the throttle opens. Dead spots will do stupid things.

[Kodachrome Wolf]

Mmkay, I'll check that out next time I'm out at the car. TPS was working otherwise fine on the old throttle body.

Any other ideas that may point to the weirdness happening? Everything else has been hooked up like normal. It seems as if it may be running too lean at WOT. At idle, it smelled a bit rich.