kishy's 1985 Country Squire

[gadget73]

Interesting fail mode. Also interesting that your aftermarket motor fit with an OE metal gear. I tried to do that with the Dorman replacement gear I had to buy for the Conti but they were shaped just differently enough that I couldn't assemble the factory Ford metal piece into the Dorman plastic one. Had to leave the Dorman metal part in place.

on mine the plastic gear cracked and it was randomly jamming thing up. The whole center hub of the plastic gear had split out, and the crack ran all the way out from there through the edge.

[kishy]

Over the past year since I updated this thread, this car has been occasionally driven and basically trouble-free. I have developed a few complaints with it which I'd like to address before they grow into a lengthy to-do list that ends up unofficially taking the car out of use until dealt with, those being:

• The previously mentioned dashboard squeak is intense and completely intolerable. It must be identified and eliminated.
• Although the KYB Gas-a-Just shocks contributed to rather desirable behaviour of this car in relatively high speed cornering, and they do a great job controlling pitching under hard braking, the car is fairly harsh over regular road bumps and changing the shocks might get me closer to where I'd like it.
• The exhaust situation isn't great: H pipe, mufflers, then nothing. The exhaust exiting into the cavity around the axle is bad for acoustics and the exhaust sound particularly at idle is headache-inducing. At the very least, turndowns might help send the noise in a better direction, with proper tail pipes being a better solution. But before I try to do anything with tail pipes, I want to figure out if these mufflers are the ones I'm keeping on it (Walker SoundFX), or if I'll go to the Summit turbos like I used on the other cars. I'm leaning towards the Summit mufflers.

Today, I swapped the shocks. 103394km. I used Gabriel Ultras (not willing to subject myself to the Monroe disappointment on this car), my first time using Gabriel shocks. Made in Mexico, decent-seeming construction. Standard hardware instead of metric but I'll survive. Anti-seize, oil spray, and zero winter mileage helped this be an easy job, even the rears.





Initial impressions are good. The harshness is definitely reduced. It's still there somewhat but the initial impact of hitting a bump is softened and that's what I wanted. I guess we'll see how they do over time.

While under the car I noticed the left rear tire had a nail in it. The nail was at a pretty low angle and the tire hasn't lost a bit of air, pretty much ever, so I figured it didn't fully go through.



Unfortunately, I was wrong about that, and the tire deflated. Better in my driveway already in the air, than on the road. The car is now sitting on a spare and I'll get the tire fixed as a loose carry-in. These might have road hazard coverage where I bought them so I'm going to try that first, but even if I have to pay for a repair, it's a super viable repair on a tire that's in good shape so it'll be well worth having done.

[friskyfrankie]

Had a similar tire issue and since I have a quality tire plug system I just did it myself. Several thousand miles later and still no issues.

[VicCrownVic]

If I ever get around to finding the squeak in my dash I'll let you know what I find. I drove my wagon this morning and it sure was annoying for the bumpy half mile by my house where the squeaking is constant.

Funny, I also have the Walker SoundFX (for '90-'91 since I converted my muffler hangers, pretty sure the only difference is the hanger arms) and have yet to reinstall my tailpipes but will eventually reinstall them. I don't think the sound is that bad, but it's also not great.

[gadget73]

where I've had the most squeaks from on my cars has been the screws through the defrost vents. If they miss the little tab and just sit next to it, they squeak something awful as the screw rubs against that tab.

[kishy]

As it happens, Canadian Tire has a 6 year free flat repair warranty on tires purchased and installed there - which these were, in August 2020. Free repair done and the wheel is back on the car. They dismounted it and used a patch-plug from the inside, which is my preferred fix, so that's cool.

The SoundFX mufflers are fairly quiet (too effective) at speed. At idle, they drone something awful - but my idle speed is elevated on this one to make up for all the fast idle stuff still being broken and missing. Swapping mufflers to ones I like more would give me a sound I prefer when driving, and putting on turndowns might help cancel some of the drone by changing the direction the sound exits from. If that doesn't get me where I want to be, tail pipes will happen.

I think I had previously narrowed down the squeak to either being the dash pad itself, or something else which stops squeaking with the dash pad not in the car. Hopefully that means I can find it without actually dropping the whole dash. But if I have to, I will, because it's absolutely maddening.

[friskyfrankie]

Since the repair was covered, that is the best option. Now if you had to pay full price.....

[kishy]

This evening, I managed to tackle the two other items on the list identified recently:

Exhaust. I removed the Walker SoundFX direct-fit mufflers, as well as the factory muffler hangers (one of which is original to the car and one I had previously added). I installed two of the same Summit turbo muffler that I've used on the 84 and 91. I used small extension pipes to get from the now-too-short H pipe to the mufflers, and I used turndowns that I bought in-store at an AutoZone some time ago. I used U-bolt clamps because there wasn't much of a way to make band clamps work as desired for this setup, and I used a couple universal hangers at the same location the factory muffler hangers used to be.

Results: the quality of the exhaust sound is better (though, not as good as on the 84 or 91) but the awful drone at idle remains basically unchanged. Next up to try to make it go away is fixing the fast idle mechanism, because I have all the stuff to do it.



As for the dash squeak: I'm pretty sure I found it.
It's this spot where the plastic of the dashboard itself was contacting the A-pillar trim, which left behind a witness mark.





There is normally an air gap between these parts, but the dashboard was mildly sagged from the highest position it could be mounted in.
I loosened a few dashboard fasteners, jammed it up as tight to the firewall as I was able to, and re-tightened everything.
I also used a utility knife to shave some material off the A-pillar trim piece, and verified once reassembled that there is now an air gap between these parts.

Test drive found that the particular squeak I was trying to solve is gone. The other annoying ones remain, but I think electrical tape on the door strikers will take care of a couple of them. Some of the others are internal to the doors and probably hard to fully eliminate, but all of those squeaks are only quick momentary one-offs, not a continuous vibration squeak like the dashboard one was.

[DerekTheGreat]

You having any issues with exhaust backdrafting into the interior? Any car I've ever driven which didn't have the exhaust exiting at the tail of the car had this issue. That'll cause headaches over time too.

Good job on the interior squeak. I now look for witness marks and try to put stuff back together with felt between the two surfaces.

[kishy]

You having any issues with exhaust backdrafting into the interior? Any car I've ever driven which didn't have the exhaust exiting at the tail of the car had this issue. That'll cause headaches over time too.

Good job on the interior squeak. I now look for witness marks and try to put stuff back together with felt between the two surfaces.

Yes and no. Windows fully closed, no. Windows fully open, no. Windows open in very specific configurations (balancing air pressure, I guess) will make it suck anywhere from none to all of the exhaust directly into the car. The absolute worst is any one window, open in any amount, but worst when only open a little. I don't drive cars with windows anything other than 100% open, generally, so this doesn't bother me. Headache is only half the concern, there's also that whole brain cells thing too.

Tailpipes are in the plans, but because that involves either paying someone or doing actual work, I keep kicking that can down the road.

[DerekTheGreat]

"Doing actual work." LoL. You do plenty of that. There's no shame in farming stuff out, only if the result is mediocre...

My wife is my newfound canary. She cannot stand exhaust smell in any form. I deal with it and have a higher tolerance, but she'll get a headache in minutes from it. We tend to cruise with the windows up, but if the ventilation pulls that stuff in, the windows end up coming down to get it out once we're at speed. Our '93 F-150 will get a new cat as that got stinky starting right after we had the trans or engine put in.

[gadget73]

Exhaust is one of those things I'm happy to farm out after piecing enough junk together. problem is finding someone that can actually do stuff that isn't just the same "buy a pre-bent part from AutoRiellyZone and stick it in there" that I can do. I know a guy who supposedly knows a guy though, so maybe next time I need exhaust on something I can get exhaust that doesn't suck. The Conti is probably going to need an exhaust done before terribly long and I guarantee nobody has pre-bent stuff for that car.

[DerekTheGreat]

That's the problem I ran into when we had the exhaust done on our F-150. I was finally able to find a place that bends their own tubes and doesn't charge a fortune to do it. As a result, they're packed and you need to schedule an appointment in advance.

[kishy]

My friend Spencer in (well, near) Detroit has been talking for years about wanting a Caprice, and ideally it being rough enough that he wouldn't be bothered by daily driving it, citing my wagon as an example of exactly what he wanted. I guess the years of me making fun of him for never making it happen must have worked, because yesterday he bought a 1990 Caprice wagon with a roof dent from a tree falling on it, some rust, some vinyl wood defects, and a missing filler panel. It's glorious. Naturally, I drove him to go get it in my wagon.



After we collected his new car, I suggested we cruise into downtown Detroit and find a spot for some car photos. Just as we got into what you could start to call downtown, on Gratiot Ave at St. Antoine, my car suddenly died and would not start. Pushed it to the side of the road and did some diag.



Symptom is: suddenly died. No coughing, no sputtering, no reduction in power leading up to the event. Would not restart, but did occasionally cough/sputter while cranking. Fuel gauge reading approximately full (it's typically optimistic at the top end of the tank), with 118km driven since the tank was completely filled, and no evidence of a fuel leak so there was clearly plenty in it.

• Spark plug wire removed; stuck a pick in the end of the wire and verified spark would jump from the pick to adjacent grounded metal. This satisfied me that the TFI had not failed.
• Test light at the fuel pump relay connector verified that there is battery voltage into the relay, and that the relay does close when expected and pass voltage out towards the rear of the car. This satisfied me that the ECM is commanding the relay on, and that the relay works, and that there is power supply.
• Inertia switch removed, beat up a bit to cycle it open/closed a few times, reinstalled, found no change. Also used alligator clip test lead to bypass it, no change.
• Poked the test port valve on the throttle body and found only the smallest little dribble of fuel came out. This confirms the problem is fuel.

My immediate thought was the rubber fuel hose inside the tank between the pump outlet and the pump hanger mounting plate. Since I am a Hagerty Drivers Club member and have towing available to me, I called them and was advised a truck was on its way and should be there in 45 mins. Cool. Actual time was closer to two hours, but I suspect the tow operator was optimistic about his availability to his dispatch, and the dispatcher was optimistic about the timeline to Hagerty's service provider, so I can see how that happens. I had the car towed back to Spencer's house - didn't ask Hagerty about a cross-border tow to get it home, I wish I had so I'd at least know if they do it.



Ran to an O'Reilly Auto Parts, picked up a squeeze bulb pump (not getting gas in my mouth, thanks) and a 2 foot length of 5/16" fuel hose.
The hose that came in the package is SAE 30R6 which is not EFI-rated and almost certainly not rated for submersion, so while it's a useful thing for me to have, it would not have been an adequate solution to put inside the tank - or if it had been put in the tank, it would have had to be redone probably sooner than later. While I recognized that I was pretty sure 30R6 was the wrong spec at the time of purchase I did not know exactly in what way it was inferior so I figured I'd take a gamble on it to just get the car home.

Upon arrival, lifted the rear of the car. Had Spencer prime the pump a couple times while I listened under the car. You know how the tone of the pump sound changes when the pump starts building pressure? Yeah, this wasn't doing that, it sounded like the pump was not having to push against anything. I figured that confirmed for sure it would be the rubber hose inside.





Drained the tank using the hand pump through the filler neck (tip: zip tie a bolt to the hose so it doesn't just float on the gas) into a couple small gas cans and donated the fuel to a couple of Spencer's cars. Dropped the tank, opened it up. Found what appears to be a perfectly intact rubber hose. Hooked 12V up to the pump and found it shot out a bit of gas that was still inside it. Wheels in head started turning, but it was around 11pm so I just hitched a ride home across the border with Spencer and wrote up a list of things I should bring when I go today.

Some possibilities I'm considering that may have happened:

• The pump may have seized/jammed/otherwise stopped. Where we were stopped was a very loud area and I could not hear the pump either under or inside the car at that location. We know the pump ran after the car had been towed, but we don't know if the car would have started as we didn't try. The motion of being bounced around on the tow truck could have jostled the pump back into a working state. If this happened, this writes the pump off as trustworthy, but it is impossible to determine if this happened.
• The impeller inside the fuel pump could be slipping on the pump motor shaft, in such a way that it does spin but cannot build pressure.
• There could be an issue with the electrical connectors that deliver power to the pump, specifically the ones at the fuel pump hanger, and above the fuel tank, both of which felt like they did not have very tight terminal engagement.
• Although it does not appear to be the case, there could be an invisible-when-not-pressurized hole or split in the rubber hose in the tank. I looked at it pretty closely and stretched it around looking for such a thing and found none.
• The fuel filter or some other spot in the fuel supply line could be clogged. The filter and all lines were new in 2019. Based on the fact the pickup strainer was intact and not full of junk I do not believe a restriction on the supply side is likely.
• The fuel pressure regulator could be jammed open by debris or its tensioning spring may have broken, in either case causing the system to return all fuel pressure to the tank continuously. This is not a vacuum-referenced regulator, just fixed spring tension which is adjustable with a set screw.

Accordingly, I think the list of supplies I'm bringing back with me is as follows:

• Fuel pressure gauge
• A complete throttle body, maybe two, I've got a bin of them
• A fuel filter
• A complete fuel pump and hanger assembly as I happen to have a wagon one sitting on the shelf. I don't particularly want to replace the pump so my intent is to be armed with parts if necessary, but to prove out that the problem was elsewhere before I go that way.
• Wiring supplies to be able to bypass the suspect electrical connectors
• A pack of fuel line retainers (the duck bill clips) although all that I touched were removed successfully without damage
• blocks of wood to aid in lifting and positioning the tank for reinstall
• clothes I don't mind absolutely ruining
• (all standard tools used in tank removal and needed for reinstall remain at the car currently)

[mitymerc]

Good luck Mang,
keep us posted.