My 1987 Mercury Colony Park

[TecNickal]

It's weird. So the negative cable looks like it was replaced at some point because it looks like one you can get from a parts store. It has the main cable which grounds to the block, then there's a small 12 or 14 gauge wire that comes off of it, a butt connector, then that's attached to what appears to be a glass-type fuse holder (one of those plastic cylinder type ones; black in color). That wire continues into a loomed harness immediately thereafter and disappears.

I'm thinking I may need to add a battery ground to core support cable based on how things look. Unlike the Aeros and Whales that have the negative cable that goes down to the chassis and the other smaller cable that goes to the fender, this one just has the cable to block and then the other small wire that goes somewhere. I know on my friend's C1500 his small negative cable that went to his fender came out of the battery terminal and caused the gauges to behave weirdly if you turned the headlights on.

Again - I replaced that cable because it had AutoZone cheezy screw on terminals on some dried out crappy battery cables - BYE. Especially when the smaller 16 gauge wire broke and the nut for the battery terminal was stripped by some prior hack "mechanic". Hooked it up like the factory had it and off to the races minus the butt connector I added (instead of soldiering) to join the remnants of the factory cable to the replacement battery cable.

[Kodachrome Wolf]

Replaced the negative terminal and tossed a ground strap from the terminal to the core support (bolted the eyelet under the crossbrace). Lights on the dash don’t seem to dim with turn/brake light application now, or at least as far as I can see.

[DerekTheGreat]

Sweet. I hardly notice any dimming any more either, none if I'm not jamming the radio. At ear bleed volume levels & thumpa-thumpa happening I can see the headlights and dash lights wince a bit that doesn't happen often enough for me to be concerned.

[Kodachrome Wolf]

Had some time to do a little work over the weekend.

I've been dealing with functional but flaky brake lights unless you were really holding the brake pedal. It would do an intermittent flash or not come on at all under light braking. Cruise control would sometimes not deactivate and the car would try accelerate out of a slow down. Tossed in a new brake light switch and now they come on with even the lightest touch on the pedal and stay on until released. I pulled out an OE one, so I assume that switch was shot.

I also started looking at the door speakers. Passenger side was still wired in, but the driver side one wasn't. I ran speaker wire down from the dash speaker to the door connector and just spliced it in. The factory harness is cut up enough from the original install, what's one more splice? Speaker didn't come on there either, and the passenger side is definitely inoperative. Having been in the doors before, I believe those are the original speakers and I bet the coil is frozen. I may toss in some new speakers and see if they work. I just want the sound to be coming from more than the back of the back and the windshield.

I also tossed on my stainless vent visors. Been sitting on these for a moment, and finally decided to try my hand at installing them since I was having trouble the first time I tried. The fronts were easy, but I was scared about the window felts in the rear since the front passenger felt shattered into many pieces when I removed it. Luckily the rear felts were pliable enough to pull them from their channels.



They also didn't fly off on my way to work today, so that was a plus.

I've still got to go over the idle issue. TPS voltages were in range when I checked them last night and the code scan came back with an 11. Still has grumbly idle (you can just feel the car shaking a bit) and sometimes you'll really feel a miss. With the lights on, you'll see the dash get dim and come back up when that happens. Now, that got me wondering about the alternator. It passes a load test, but the lights get real dim when that happens, then come back up. Puts out 14.6v at idle. No idea if it's got something flaky about it since it came from a junkyard, but was fine previously. I may pull the SPOUT and see if it idles smoother. It cruises down the road well enough, Tripminder shows average MPG (14-16 city), but sometimes the issue rears itself at low RPM in 3rd, such as slowing down and then picking back up speed, it chugs until it gets going. Also when coming to a stop it's not a smooth glide. I don't know if the brakes are being grabby, the TV pressure is a touch high, or if the engine is acting weird. It'll slow down fine up to about 25 MPH, then jerk a bit until you're stationary and the idle goes to being grumbly.

I figure I may also need to grab a vacuum pressure tester and figure out if it's maintaining steady vacuum or if it's going wacky. That could be a telling sign if somethings up.

[DerekTheGreat]

One thing to do is make sure you've got clean connections at the starter solenoid. I assume the voltage regulator must sense load before it starts throwing out more amps to compensate.

[Kodachrome Wolf]

Got a line on some "performance" components. A guy I know will be doing some work to his '89 302 Mustang and will be ditching his factory upper intake, TB, and heads. I know I can use the upper intake and the throttle body once I get the EGR spacer bored out and swap around the throttle linkage. No idea if the heads are anything I should worry about getting, or attempting to use on a stock LoPo. If I got them, I'd swap on 1.7 rockers. Figure that stuff coupled with dual exhaust I might get HP up to around 170 HP. Since it would be free, kind of hard to just pass up.

I've never considered going full HO swap on the engine, but bumping up power just a touch would be nice.

Anyone got any thoughts on the heads?

[jaywish]

heads, + intake + cam + headers + computer and duals. He might be giving away his headers and cam if he is changing heads.

Many will say, correctly there are better heads. If the free ones are in good shape, i.e. don't require a valve job, what the heck if you can lay up the car for some time.

[gadget73]

Even just the heads are a help. Porting is better, but even just lapping in the valves and new seals would be worth doing on something with miles. I wouldn't spend any real money on them though. Cash beyond a set of valve seals is probably not really worth it. If the seats are burned and the valves need replacing, forget it. The exhaust valves are most likely to show issues, and you'll see it pretty quick if you remove one for inspection. If the contact area has significant pitting you aren't going to be able to lap that back in.

[Kodachrome Wolf]

heads, + intake + cam + headers + computer and duals. He might be giving away his headers and cam if he is changing heads.

Many will say, correctly there are better heads. If the free ones are in good shape, i.e. don't require a valve job, what the heck if you can lay up the car for some time.

I know I'd be pretty close to yanking the cam, but I figure that might be saved for a bit later. As far as I know, he's keeping his cam and computer, and HO parts have been somewhat hard to find down here. He's just swapping the intake, heads, and TB. Even without going full HO, I'd assume just those things would help. I guess I'd be close enough if I decided to pull the trigger, however.

Having the wagon down isn't a problem since it's a secondary vehicle.

Even just the heads are a help. Porting is better, but even just lapping in the valves and new seals would be worth doing on something with miles. I wouldn't spend any real money on them though. Cash beyond a set of valve seals is probably not really worth it. If the seats are burned and the valves need replacing, forget it. The exhaust valves are most likely to show issues, and you'll see it pretty quick if you remove one for inspection. If the contact area has significant pitting you aren't going to be able to lap that back in.

I don't think his '89 has that many miles on it. I can ask him next time we get to talking. I know it runs rather well. Since the heads wouldn't cost me anything, I'm really not out anything save for some gaskets and head bolts if the heads are any good. When I check them out, I guess I'll be able to make the determination then if they'll be used.

AFAIK I likely won't have my hands on this stuff until around early Spring next year, assuming he starts his build sometime soon. He's going a GT40 intake route with some high flowing aluminum heads, along with some other stuff.

I definitely appreciate the responses about the heads. I didn't really consider getting into the engine that deep, but I figure might as well if I can grab all this stuff along the way. I'm not trying to make a street performer, but just waking up the motor a little bit more (love the torque as it is, and I know some folks have said the full HO setup loses low end grunt). Figure with a few breathing mods, it might do better on the highway in passing conditions.

[gadget73]

the stock HO cam quite frankly sucks for torque under about 2500 rpm. The lopo cam is pretty solid for torque but its totally done by about 4300 rpm. I got some better low torque on the Mark VII with a slightly upgraded lower intake but there is no magic pill to totally make up for the fact that its not a great cam for a heavy car with a low stall converter and tall rear gears. The Explorer cam is a better option with stock gears and converter. Power curve like the lopo cam, but more of it and you can get to about 4800 before its done.

[Kodachrome Wolf]

the stock HO cam quite frankly sucks for torque under about 2500 rpm. The lopo cam is pretty solid for torque but its totally done by about 4300 rpm. I got some better low torque on the Mark VII with a slightly upgraded lower intake but there is no magic pill to totally make up for the fact that its not a great cam for a heavy car with a low stall converter and tall rear gears. The Explorer cam is a better option with stock gears and converter. Power curve like the lopo cam, but more of it and you can get to about 4800 before its done.

Understood. I know going WOT with the factory LoPo it makes a lot of noise up top and not much else before it catches the next gear.

I was going through some of the info for HO stuff, and I didn't see anything regarding push rods. Assuming the heads have never been machined, can the original push rods be used? I'm trying to figure out a list of things I'll need so I don't wind up leaving things apart for long.

[DerekTheGreat]

Yes, the HO is soggy below 2500. Gears make up for it though. Honestly though, it moves about the same if not better than a lopo under 2500 rip'ems though, just doesn't put you back in the seat like a lopo does so it's misleading. The Mark VII we've got is "on plane" (at posted speeds) much faster than my Townie and requires less travel of the go pedal to get it done. Sure, they're different cars but when you get down to it, the Mark is about 3,800lbs, Townie about 4,100 lbs. So they're close enough in my book for comparison. Even with the 3.08's the VII has against the TC's 3.27's the VII feels like a thunderbolt in comparison. Especially on the freeway. A lot of guys stress about that bottom end but for a cruiser or at speed, I'd rather have mid range to top end power, you're only at the bottom once in a race. Now, sometimes you get to the bottom of a gear like OD and low end helps but again, the Mark will walk right up to 40 or even 80 from 33mph in OD without sounding like it's lugging and at about the same rate if not better than my Townie does it.

[sly]

You really see the low end difference when towing a good load. But highway pulls are much easier with anything other than a lopo.

[Tiggie]

Pushrods should be good. That said, assume nothing in engine assembly.

I personally wouldn’t mess with the heads. Free is free, so get ‘em, but I wouldn’t worry about the swap until you do a cam.

The HO in my 94 is a rocket between 2500-4000. It’s done after that. It’s got no problems off the line either, but the 3.35 first gear and 3200lb car is quite a different animal than any AOD Panther.

[knucklehead0202]

When i did the top end on the dead car it completely changed the curve of that motor. Stock LoPo with edelbrock performer 5.0 heads, 1.7 rockers, typhoon intake, 65mm TB, C&L 77mm MAF, 24lb injectors and full exhaust. Thing totally fell on it's face off idle but above about 2000rpm it pulled like a train until i was afraid to scatter the motor. Having no tach i can only guess it was somewhere beyond 5000rpm. I had way too much injector and the computer also hadn't figured it's shit out yet so i could only go about 3/4 throttle. Had planned to go to 19lb injectors which may have helped. Suffice it to say though, a bit milder setup would have yielded much better results from the LoPo and gears would definitely have helped too. That car had 3.08's.

I'd say you're on the right track just doing the intake stuff and maybe some love for the exhaust. Should wake it up a bit without sacrificing much if anything down low.