kishy's 1991 Grand Marquis

[jaywish]

Fluorescent dye in coolant often works.

[kishy]

Fluorescent dye in coolant often works.

Yeah, suppose it would. I had just sort of assumed that the full complement of usual leaks were all seeping very tiny amounts and that would have accounted for it, but I'm coming to realize the coolant loss seems to be intermittent, and maybe accelerated during short trips vs longer trips where less is lost. Water pump is definitely suspect. It was new a decade ago but that doesn't mean much. It does have a lifetime warranty for which I have the paperwork, though, so if it does let go, I'll be pursuing that.

As for the loud noise, I loosened the alternator and checked the water pump, alternator, and steering pump by hand. They all feel about right. No idea what it was.

[kishy]

Yesterday, this car was the recipient of a long-overdue window tint installation.
As I did with the 84 Town Car, I opted for 20% VLT, which I find to be on the edge of being too dark, but not actually too dark.
In conditions where I may use the mirrors to back up at night, rolling the windows down is helpful.
In conditions where I look out the back window to back up at night, it's really not an issue.
Unlike that car, I spent a little more money and went with a ceramic tint, which should offer UV blocking and heat rejection properties.

I used a local shop which is held in high regard for the quality of their work, plus a friend-of-a-friend is the owner's son and did some of the work on my car, knowing he'd be hearing about it if it was a shit job, which you'd like to think wouldn't matter but it's hard to be sure sometimes. The installation looks to have been done well and there are no defects I hadn't already been expecting - e.g. combination water and UV damaged interior materials that disintegrated when they pulled things back around the rear window.







Phone white balance completely lost its mind here. The street lights are very yellow on that road, and those headlights are not nearly as cold as they look in the pics (note how not-red the taillights also look).

[kishy]

Today, a friend with an '05 Sunfire stopped by so we could try to diagnose a front end suspension/steering noise. He had to go take a quick shift at work from 12-3, so we had a gap in the middle of the work where I decided to wash both of the Grand Marquis: 83 first, then 91.









I really do love this car.

Later in the evening, installed LED reverse lights. I was a little put off by the performance of red Auxito LEDs as tail/stop/turn lamps, but the issues I had with them in that application (hot spot, washed out colour, insufficient delta between tail and stop) do not apply to reverse lights, so I gave white Auxito LEDs a shot here. They seem to work well for this task, their light is pretty truly white, and they throw a good amount of light, which is welcome with the tint now installed.

These were the final outstanding exterior lights that I planned to convert to LED, now done. I'm hanging onto the amber incandescent bulbs for the front turn signals.

While installing those, I realized something. The tail lights on this car are not a matching pair. There is an internal painted surface which blocks light from exiting the top of the lens on the right side, and that is not present on the left side. I'm wondering if this is a model year-specific change and my car has one non-original tail light, e.g. 88-89 do not have the paint and 90-91 do, perhaps.

[jaywish]

I can see why you love this car.

[WagonMan]

I have an NOS right hand lens. The inside is frosted,(rough finish). WagonMan

[WagonMan]

Stupid site won't show pic. WagonMan

[87gtVIC]

Car is looking great. Funny finding things out about a car years later! And now that you see it,it must bug you.


I too have had problems with posting pics lately.

[gadget73]

yeah the host is being glitchy and I don't know why

[friskyfrankie]

yeah the host is being glitchy and I don't know why

Also slow too - on and off but usually on.

[DerekTheGreat]

Did you have the windshield tinted too? I'm a fan of ceramic tint, I noticed a significant improvement with the A/C's performance after I had the Town Car's windows tinted.

[kishy]

This car has been faithfully serving daily driver duty, occasionally split with the Acclaim since that became mobile. The car just works, and I'm pleased that I chose to revive it this year.

My yearly cottage rental vacation with my mom is approaching. My current intent is for this to be the car for that purpose. Fallback is the wagon, which is turnkey ready-to-go if it becomes necessary. The one weak point for this car to pull that off well is the soft rear springs, which compromise its ability to do the ramps at the ferry dock when fully laden with vacation stuff. Sedans are also inherently less convenient with the liftover height thing, but it's not the end of the world.

Tonight, I put a set of Air Lift bags in the springs. They should help with that problem.

I also checked for axle shaft play as this car has a minor oil loss issue at the axle seals (and some brake weirdness to go along with it). If I found catastrophic wear I was prepared (and equipped with parts) to fix the problem, but I found what seems to be an acceptable amount of wiggle (more on passenger than driver, but still very little) so I think I'm leaving it alone for the moment. I still haven't sorted out how I'm dealing with the rear end in this car, or multiple of them - I have all sorts of upgrade parts (different gears, limited slip carriers) but don't have a roadmap for where I want things to end up. Easy button is just fix what it has and figure it out later.

[kishy]

My aforementioned vacation was last week, and the car for the trip was indeed the 91 Grand Marquis. I returned Saturday evening. The destination was a cottage rental on Pelee Island, the southenmost inhabited part of Canada, where I stayed with my mom. We did Thanksgiving dinner there, enjoyed the last summerlike weather of the year, and I finally finished the Lord of the Rings books.









Good car.

The Air Lift bags seem to be negatively impacting ride height (too high when lacking a bunch of extra weight in the trunk) and ride quality (spring rate) when at 0 PSI. They have enough stiffness to have these effects, particularly being paired with new springs, as they are. I'm not sure yet how I want to address this.

Then on Sunday, I attended a car show put on by a friend at Carbon AC - a sports bar (of the membership variety) in the Detroit neighbourhood known as Carbon Works. The car show was a success, raising some awareness and patronage for the club, and the car owners all seemed to enjoy networking together. Good mix of 50s to current, with about 15 vehicles attending.

Took this nearby:



The car is due for an oil change, probably. Most of the current oil has been in for about 8000km - some having been replaced due to consumption on the roadtrip, but none very recently, and the level on the stick is getting on the lower end. The oil is Rotella T6 so the oil itself is certainly capable of a longer change interval, but it's looking mighty used now on the stick, so I'll change it shortly. As an experiment in oil consumption, I'll be going from the current 5W40 to 15W40. The move from 10W30 to 5W40 did wonders for the oil pressure at idle, so we're definitely sticking with 40 viscosity here. It won't be winter driven so the 5 vs 15 doesn't bother me any.

As for the axle business, today I drained the axle oil, and replaced the axle shafts, bearings, and seals. It's actually sitting on jack stands, empty, overnight because I wanted to be sure my RTV was dry. Previous change was 2016-05-12 at about 215k km (prior to that, 2012 at 169k). Today, the odometer shows 230,321km.

The left side axle shaft was certainly reusable, but the right was in the early stages of being eaten. Nothing to catch a fingernail, but putting a razor blade across the wear mark shows light coming through. Reusable with a repair bearing and truthfully would probably be fine for a while with just a new bearing, but I had the shafts already, and I was here already, so that's that. Most likely I will be here again sometime to put a limited slip carrier in, but I'll likely keep the 3.08 gearing. I thoroughly cleaned the shoes and drums before reassembling.



Revisiting some history here:
Quite some time ago, maybe 2016, I replaced the rear brakes on this car, including the drums. They gave me some issues after that which may have been related to the drum machine finish, or shoe arching, or I dunno - they would click when breaking, like rapidly grab and un-grab. At some point I got them adjusted in a way that made them seem to behave alright and that was good.

More recently, the rear brakes, and especially the rear right, has been extremely grabby. Very on-off, like locking up and dragging the one tire down my driveway when just trying to slow for crossing the sidewalk and dropping onto the road. After a couple stops, it begins working more normally. This symptom can be a telltale of shoe contamination from axle oil, and when I looked, I found there was very minor but definitely existing oil loss from both seals. That's what spurred on the axle repair today.

So with any luck this will put the brake issues to bed. The drums were turned fairly recently, so if there's anything else to look at if problems persist, it'll be the shoes.

[sly]

The Air Lift bags shouldn't have any effect on lift when empty since they have no ability to support. I would think the new springs (or shocks if they're new) are more at issue there. When I put the cargo springs on the 88, the rear was higher, yes, but was bouncier as well due to the soft ride valving in the shocks. I put 4 inch lowering F150 shocks on it that had rebound stop valving and it sorted that, but made the ride pretty stiff without about 200# or more in the trunk. Considering the lack of rear sway bar, I actually liked that since the rear tended to act like it had a bar now. The new springs may be a bit too stiff.

[kishy]

The Air Lift bags shouldn't have any effect on lift when empty since they have no ability to support. I would think the new springs (or shocks if they're new) are more at issue there. When I put the cargo springs on the 88, the rear was higher, yes, but was bouncier as well due to the soft ride valving in the shocks. I put 4 inch lowering F150 shocks on it that had rebound stop valving and it sorted that, but made the ride pretty stiff without about 200# or more in the trunk. Considering the lack of rear sway bar, I actually liked that since the rear tended to act like it had a bar now. The new springs may be a bit too stiff.

I am aware that this is the theory, but I assure you, it's not how it's happening. It sat low with a given load on the new springs for the last couple months, and it now sits high with the same load on the same springs, but with the bags added. They're messing with the spring rate even when at 0 PSI and not expanded into the coils. I believe this is because they're tall enough to make contact at both the top and bottom when the spring is compressed to ride height.

I believe this effect could be mitigated by removing the valve cores when I want to leave the bags at 0 PSI. I ran them into the trunk, so there would be no risk of pulling in dirt or whatever.