kishy's 1985 Country Squire

[kishy]

I've finally managed to get one bay of my garage into usable shape. This has been complicated by the fact that I didn't get my garden shed put together before winter, so one bay of the garage has been full of stuff that goes in a shed, and the other bay has been full of the shed, still in its box. Plus all the miscellaneous clutter.











Tight-ish squeeze if I want to work on things in-depth, but it's a functional space. On the bright side, the Acclaim will be all "hotdog in a hallway" when it moves in.

The first car in the new-to-me garage is the wagon. This wasn't going to be the case, but I took it up the block for a brief drive, and was reminded of a few annoyances I want to address:

• There is a horrendous squeak sound from the left side of the dashboard, seemingly near the top, near the A-pillar. This sound can't really be reproduced by hitting or shaking anything, but road vibrations reveal it.
• There is an awful rubber squishing sound coming from the reman brake booster, and I would like to at least look at it to see if I can quiet it. It also doesn't feel quite right (too squishy, assist feels a little weak) so I might put the original back on, since I know it's hanging around in storage. A quick sandblast and paint job would achieve most of what I was after with the reman anyway.
• The transmission range indicator cable snapped, and I recently scooped a NOS one thanks to 87gtVic in his finds thread.

Since two of these three things require some dash disassembly, I decided to start with replacing the transmission range indicator in the cluster.



Yep, that's broken.
The plastic tube broke ages ago, and I guess the edge of the break frayed the inner cable until it snapped.









Leaving this out of the car until I sort out the squeak. Will only install it when it's a little warmer, too, because I'll hate myself if I crack that new-old-stock plastic.

Part number for the sake of Googlers: D9AZ-7E363-A

Squeak and booster issues to be addressed another day.

[Tiggie]

I broke one of those collars when I put the PI speedo in my 88. The original was trashed, but the new one cracked while tightening it up. I'd suggest leaving it loose rather than tighter! It's still better than the original.

[gadget73]

this seems like a prime thing for someone to 3d print.

[friskyfrankie]

Depends upon the break but I used a zip tie on my friend's '88, several years ago and it is still holding up.

[87gtVIC]

Good deal.

Like the orange accents on the metric speedometers.

[kishy]

I broke one of those collars when I put the PI speedo in my 88. The original was trashed, but the new one cracked while tightening it up. I'd suggest leaving it loose rather than tighter! It's still better than the original.

Yes, definitely, better loose than tight. Just tight enough to stop it from slipping will be the goal. Also, the minimum amount of flexing and stretching it in the course of installation.

this seems like a prime thing for someone to 3d print.

I was thinking about that.
We could certainly make a new collar design, but I don't think I would make it look the same or even particularly similar to the original part.
The particularly tricky part is the tube and cable, which cannot be disassembled from the original without being rather destructive. The tube is glued into the collar.

Depends upon the break but I used a zip tie on my friend's '88, several years ago and it is still holding up.

Yeah, when the break is just the collar piece itself, zip ties work, and that's how mine was set up rather successfully. However, the tube was also broken, and the broken tube is what frayed the cable and made it snap.

Good deal.

Like the orange accents on the metric speedometers.

The orange is actually a 79 thing. This is a '79 speedometer unit purchased NOS, probably from one of your posts, back when I got the car, re: wanting to be rid of the US speedometer it had originally.
The '85 correct part is all white lettering and needles.
I'm not sure what year it changed, I'd guess 79-82ish are probably the orange setup, which I vastly prefer.

[87gtVIC]

Ahh I see. Ive said numerous time before...the details in these cars just slip away model year after model year. The early cars are just so damn thought out/plastered with neat details.

[kishy]

Spent some time in the garage today.
I think I sorted out the squeak noise, but another test drive will be needed to verify it.
I put some electrical tape on the parts of the A-pillar plastic trim where it makes contact with the actual A-pillar behind it, and added the screws which have been missing.
I also added a piece of electrical tape pinched tightly between the lower dash mount on the driver side and the body.



Test drive with the dash pad not installed and cluster not screwed in found no squeak. Brought the car back in and moved on to another annoying problem: the whole steering wheel has been sorta jiggly the whole time I've had the car, as if (my original thoughts) the pins for the column tilt were worn out. With it all apart, it was clear this wasn't the case, so I took the wiper and turn signal switch off and found the problem. Two bolts attach the whole assembly that forms the end of the steering column to the steel tube below, and they were backed out. Little bit of blue threadlock, tightened them back up, and it's all tight now.







Very carefully snuck the plastic collar into place, hooked the cable on, and tightened it only just enough to stay in place.

Put the dash trim and dash pad on very carefully, and managed to not break anything more than it already was before. This time, the dash pad received all of its screws, again in pursuit of squeak avoidance.



Looks and feels nice. Thinking of swapping the steering wheel since I have a nice blue one, but it also doesn't really bother me so maybe I'll leave it alone until it gets worse.

[1985crownvicltd85]

My crown vic had that same problem with the steering column when I swapped from a non tilt column to tilt. I remedied that with blue loctite too.

Also, Good Idea not tightening the plastic collar all the way.

[kishy]

The awful brake pedal noise has been identified!





Forgive my lack of exact terminology. The shop manual states that "the brake booster (including the check valve" is serviced only as an assembly" and provides no information about the magic within. Of course, my high school auto shop class did teach me what goes on inside, but that was a long time ago.

There is an outer piston assembly which the pedal pushrod goes inside of. Evidently, there is some sort of valve inside that piston assembly, and the pushrod pushes in a little to operate that valve, and at that point, the whole piston thing starts sliding into the booster and will travel the same distance the master cylinder travels to operate the brakes.

That outer piston rides inside of a seal, and was making an obnoxious squeak/scrunching type noise...think like, a rubber raincoat rubbing on something plastic. I put some Super Lube synthetic grease on the piston and operated it a couple times, it's appropriately quiet now. It also moves a lot easier by hand since doing this, which probably accounts for why the pedal seemed too stiff before.



Also taking this opportunity to paint it. My surface prep wasn't the best so I'm not expecting great results, but anything to keep it a little nicer looking. And it's not like I'm rushing to return the car to service, so this is the time to do it.

[kishy]

The brake booster received 2 coats of paint and a partial third, and seems to have turned out nicely. I reinstalled it tonight with minimal paint removal in the process. As before, tossed some gasket maker on the mounting face to try to keep any misdirected water out of the interior.



I'm pretty sure I could lengthen the master cylinder pushrod a little bit, but the pedal travel before the brakes begin working is pretty acceptable and the effects if the pushrod is made too long are pretty bad (dragging brakes), so I might leave it alone. And as far as the noise goes, mission accomplished, the booster no longer makes awful rubbery noises.



I then removed the throttle body and drilled out the broken screws for the choke thermostat used for high idle. I drilled the holes out larger and tapped them for 10-32 screws, which I've now realized I have none of hanging around, so I wasn't able to fully repair fast idle. But it's now in a state that I can reassemble the rest of it on the car, so I put the throttle body back on.

I noticed that the already-poorly-attached driver side radiator hold-down was flopping around as its two screws (the common Philips interior screws) were stripping out of their holes. The captive nut is missing on this side so the proper hardware could not be used. I used a step drill to round off the square opening, then put in a threaded insert/rivnut for M8 hardware and bolted it together nicely.

[87gtVIC]

Nice detective work on the booster. Paint came out good on it too. I love using riv-nuts, nutserts etc...they are fun.

[kishy]

Thank you, the paint did turn out pretty well. I had a friend on Facebook make a remark about painting it nicer, better prep and stuff...why though? It's not and never will be a concours car, I just want it to stay a little less ugly for a little longer.

Today, I replaced the shift knob on the wagon.
I have been collecting decent junkyard ones for a while, but they never have been somewhere that I knew the location of at times I felt like changing this one. Moving helped with that.

The old one put up quite a fight but I got it off. Tiny bit of grease on the new one for the next time I need to take it off, and put it on.



I then took the car on a brief test drive and verified my earlier efforts to eliminate the squeak on the driver side of the dash paid off. No more squeak. At least not that one. There's still one from somewhere on the passenger side, I believe from inside the door, which may be harder to eliminate. But that one is just an occasional one-off going over a bump, whereas the one I was chasing in the dash was constant with road vibration.

I did note before the test drive that the coolant was low, and I am not immediately aware of any leaks on this one, so I'm going to need to monitor that. Keeping coolant in these cars has proven to be a real challenge across my 'fleet' but I thought I had this one all sealed up.

[kishy]

With the wagon playing the role of backup car in case something prevents my 91 from going on its upcoming road trip, I want to keep on top of anything that comes up with it.

Today, after using the wagon to go to the parts store, I found the driver window would not go up. I have previously noticed this motor "skipping" a bit, but it didn't seem like the usual gear plug failure, so I wasn't quite sure what to make of it. It outright quit lifting the window at all this time, so I had to do something about it.



I opened up the door, yanked out the motor (which apparently I replaced with brand new in the past - looks like maybe an ACI motor), and tested it. The gear turns just fine in both direction and motor sounds healthy. I then used pliers to hold the gear and ran the motor, and found the problem. The metal gear is made of two parts pressed together, and they were basically "declutching" the plastic gear from the teeth of the metal gear. Alrighty then. Might even be under warranty, but I don't want to deal with that right now.





I pulled a motor out of my crate of used window motors, harvested the metal portion of its gear, and swapped it into the wagon's motor. Reassembled the door and everything's good again. It seems likely the same will happen to the other side if I put a new motor in there at the same time, and I likely did.

On the point earlier in the recent replies about dash squeaks, the annoying one at the left side of the dash is back. My latest theory about it is that it's the dash pad itself squeaking when it moves very slightly against the plastic dash structure beneath it. I hesitate to try to solve it by cranking the screws tighter, since my dash pad is flawless and I'd rather not wreck it. Adding some sort of layer between the dash pad and the stuff below it is what I'll try to do instead.

[VicCrownVic]

After I replaced Marge's heater core I also have a squeak on the left side of the dash. Like you, I'm pretty sure it's between the dash pad and the plastic panel. Some sort of gasket or hardware store foam weather strip on the plastic might be a possibly solution. It will be a while before I get back to my wagon though.