kishy's 1985 Country Squire

[gadget73]

Good to see one back from the dead

[kishy]

I have a friend who I get to think up initialisms/acronyms for my license plates. Can Chug Jamba Juice, and indeed with a 302. Entirely by chance, but it's a good fit.

As for rust prevention, there is no way in hell I'm doing anything to it while I still need to go under it. This car will never be garage stored and will probably see bad weather. It will eventually get sprayed with something, probably this stuff, because I have a bunch on-hand.

Something about the front suspension is screwed up. I think it's on the wrong springs. Sits too high, almost on the upper bump stops, and when going over a bump/specifically when dropping off a small edge like uneven cement pads, it's kind of jarring as the suspension fully extends. Spring rate is too high for sure. It was a steel bumper car and is now an aluminum bumper car, but the difference in bumper weight never could have been enough to compress these things enough to make them correct. I might still have the original take-offs from my '91 in which case they will likely go on. I had replaced them thinking they were accounting for a left-right ride height variance but I think that eventually came back to body mounts instead...I think.

I took this to the local car scene gathering last night and it definitely turned heads earning a lot of positivity from young and old alike. The Sylvania Aquavision did not survive the night, as expected.

This car is not "done". It is just "done enough to leave the garage".

[GM_Guy]

Sweet. I gotta ask, is that a personal plate, or did you luck out with the random mto plate that got you a '302'?

Alex.

[DerekTheGreat]

Great to see it back on the road!
It really looks cool the way it is. WTF is jamba juice? You kids and your "insider only" personalized license plates. Pfft.

[kishy]

Sweet. I gotta ask, is that a personal plate, or did you luck out with the random mto plate that got you a '302'?

Alex.

Entirely by chance. CCJJ was the current series two years ago when I got the car, and 302 was just dumb luck.

I would not buy personalized plates in this province. Compare our $300+ vs Michigan at 30USD.

Great to see it back on the road!
It really looks cool the way it is. WTF is jamba juice? You kids and your "insider only" personalized license plates. Pfft.

Jamba Juice is an American chain of fruit juice and smoothie bars, although it appears they changed it to just Jamba.

[kishy]

Marti Report time! (minus the personalized stats, which are still forthcoming)



Special Purpose Vehicle is intriguing. I think this had somehow come up before, but I don't recall how...it did look like the car had been sold in Detroit initially, which would definitely be consistent with maybe an executive or corporate company car, since Dearborn is right next to Detroit.

I have also wondered if it might be an extremely early St Thomas car, being built in Feb 85. Maybe something along the lines of a "production prototype" demonstrating STAP performance to Ford execs...is that too far fetched?

If anyone happens to know what the first VIN issued at STAP was, that would be super handy. I bet Marti's data could provide that, but since everything needs a VIN to be checked against, I'm not sure they can look at it backwards like that.

[VicCrownVic]

If I'm not mistaken that says Ford Motor Company was the ordering dealer. Ford Motor Company World Headquarters has been in Dearborn since 1956. I take that to mean that this was originally a company vehicle. Some manager's company vehicle is a possibility. I know at The General I can look up similar info in internal systems and see which dealer was the ordering dealer, and originally company owned vehicles are similarly marked like the "special purpose vehicle" you see on your report. Managers of a certain level and above get company vehicles and any problems that may arise provide valuable test information. So the special purpose could have been nothing more special than some managers company car if Ford does things the same way. Still neat though.

[BigMerc96]

There isn't a ton of info about the specific region codes, however your RC is 89 which is not for Detroit, (which is 48 on a Ford or 45 on a Lincoln/Mercury). According to the only reliable reference on such things I can find for anything newer than the '60s (from the 1996 workshop manual but it appears unchanged at least into the '80s), RC 89 is "Transportation Services". That seems about as vague in its meaning as RC 84 on my '98 which is "Home Office Reserve". It could mean it was a vehicle originally ordered as a Ford owned vehicle like a demo or corporate fleet car, but I've also seen it mentioned that it could mean it was a Hertz rental or a lease vehicle. Given that your car was not "sold" for a year after it was built, it would seem probable that it was in fact a demo car.

My '98 was "sold" 6 months after it was built, and its a fully optioned car so I really don't know what mine coulda been. I am tempted to order a Marti report for the '98 for the sole reason of its RC being 84 and its door tag claiming it has a 3.27 locker when it in fact has the 3.27 open you'd expect in a '98 GMQ HPP. I don't know if the report would actually answer anything I don't already know tho.

FWIW, I attached the Region Code list from the 1996 Factory Service Manual to this post. For those that don't know, the RC was once part of the DSO codes (as its listed on Kevin's report), but eventually became its own section on the door tag whenever Ford switched to the later format with the barcode. It is the region in which the car was ordered for production. It is something that has little explanation in any of the service manuals I have, and isn't even mentioned in the paper copy of the 1998 CV/GMQ FSM that I own. I would suspect that with the increasing use of computers for tracking a vehicle from production to delivery thru warranty service, RC and DSO codes lost their importance because it could simply be tracked by VIN.

[Tiggie]

At the least, a FoMCo company car. “Sold” a year after being made points to some employee(s) cruised around for a year. Lot of options on this one.

[VicCrownVic]

Ohhh, remote locking fuel door. You have a fuel door popper orange button in the glovebox next to the yellow... oh wagon, no yellow trunk button? I have a spare orange button that I have no use for, I didn't want to use it in favor of a '90-'94 TC fuel door button because it sort of fits my '91 dash (physically fits perfect, would be nice if it matched my existing buttons, but I put it in the '90-'91 wagon tailgate button location so not right beside the others and not painfully obvious).

[kishy]

It's all very interesting...certainly, Ford (nor other automakers) didn't put their employees in stripper models; it's a form of self-promotion to put your staff out on the roads in the finest example of something that you make. This is a very well-optioned car and I'm sure it was on the top end of the pricing scale for its time.

Yes, it has the electric fuel door popper in the glovebox, beside the unpopulated hole that the trunk popper would go in. The electric fuel door did work and has ceased to, which is annoying, but the manual one inside is thankfully functional.

I will strive to figure out what the first VIN out of STAP was. I don't see an easy way to get to that, but with how often I run into 85s in yards, I should be able to narrow down dates vs VINs vs plants to at least get a better picture of where mine falls. The only question then is, if higher VINs could exist in US-built cars, or if the VINs were pre-allocated to each plant when STAP got up and running.

A data point that might be meaningless: the first Aerostar came out of the retooled Hazelwood plant on July 18 1985. A news article suggests this was later than originally intended. I'm not sure how much overlap there was between Hazelwood and St. Thomas, but there couldn't have been a lot.

[DerekTheGreat]

Yeah, very interesting and cool indeed. I think you're right; it's a self promotion thing. Probably sold to an engineer or some other higher up. When my grandfather was head of payroll for Chrysler in the late 70's and 80's he got a new car every year or so, his pick if I remember right. Then later I became friends at work with a guy who had a '98 K1500 Chevy Suburban. Fully loaded minus the F44 package. He told me he got it through his friend who was an engineer through GM, that this GM dude got a new car every year through GM but got to order it any way he liked. He ordered that 'Burban the way my buddy asked him to, (except the F44, as if my buddy didn't buy it, he thought he'd have a hard time selling it) drove it a year and then sold it to my buddy. So its plausible Ford did the same thing for it's [higher level] employees.

[VicCrownVic]

As far as I can tell the actuator for the fuel door popper is the same on mustangs and other ford products of the era. The mounting bracket and/or (depending on the vehicle) cable length are the different parts, but those are easily inter-changeable.

[87gtVIC]

Neat. Never knew the marti reports were available for our boring cars. I hear about it all the time on the four eye forums. How does one go about acquiring such a report? What information is needed aside from the VIN?

[gadget73]

so far as I understand it, you go here

https://www.martiauto.com/martireports.cfm

give them a VIN and money and you get back a report. Marti owns rights to all of Ford's production data so they can get you a report for anything. Mustangs are of course the only Ford product ever made though, so thats why you only hear about the reports for them.


Make sure the popper switch is actually good before you get too deep into the system. When the one on the Conti quit working it was just crappy contacts in the switch. I took it apart and polished it up. Forget the particulars, but if you remove the thing its pretty easy to work out how to open it up and the switch itself is dead simple and not at all sealed. The brass contacts in mine were green, but a few minutes with a wire brush and a wipe of spark plug grease sorted it out.