kishy's 1984 Town Car

[kishy]

Yes. You can tell that some of the involved dimensions were, for starters, shared between the Ford/Merc and Lincoln cars, as well as never changed for the whole 79-91 run, mainly from the back support on the battery tray to the rad support. Works in our favour, of course.

I'm going to stock up on those hold-downs.

Picked car up from tinting today. Had a good chat with the guy. Young guy, one man shop, does long days 7 days a week tinting and wrapping cars for dealerships and some high end stuff...he has an excellent reputation.

Unfortunately, my car being in the condition it's in (weatherstripping, mainly window channels) limited exactly how perfect he could finish the job, mainly because the fixed part of the rear window channel that is mounted to the glass was de-flocking all over the tint every time he tried to put it on. There's some dirt trapped under the tint as a result. Short of taking the glass out of the car I don't see how it could have been avoided, so I don't fault him for it. Looks good and it wasn't a show car to start, so...it'll do. 20% on all except the windshield which was left bare.









In retrospect I should have brought it to him after replacing the window channels, but the really problematic part is not replaceable anyway (rear of rear door windows), so the result would have been about the same. I'm pleased with it.

[79lincolnlover]

Ready for summer cruising!

[gadget73]

I really do want to figure out the deal with that rear window slider thing. The Continental has the same thing. Kind of a shame Mustangs weren't four door, then we'd have a solution to this. I've never had rear glass out, so I really don't know what exactly that part is.

[kishy]

If I were to guess, it probably has something to do with keeping the window aligned properly. But I haven't studied it that closely.

On the subject of Lincolns, which I think you can comment on...can you think of a thread where you might have discussed front spring options? Discussions came up on Facebook about this.

Moog 9046 covers 80-83 Mark VI, 81-90 (inclusive) Town Car, 92-02 Crown Vic, 91 LTDCV, 91-2002 Grand Marquis. Moog 9114 covers only Town Car, 86-00.

These are very weird application lists, because I would expect the springs to be unique to the box Lincolns due to the unique weight distribution they have relative to Ford/Mercury boxes, or aeros. I could maybe see the box Lincolns sharing springs with the aeros because of the heavier 4.6, but...I dunno.

Specs are highly similar between 9046 and 9114 so the fact they both exist in parallel is weird to me.

9046, 9114
Thickness - 0.68", 0.70"
Free Height - 16.25", 16.56"
Inside Diameter - 4.04", 4.07"
Installation Height - 11.50", 11.50"
Load - 1955 lbs, 2080 lbs
Spring Rate - 421 lbs/in, 422 lbs/in

I expect that in a given car these would be pretty much indistinguishable from each other...

[87gtVIC]

Tint looks nice.

[kishy]

Tint looks nice.

Thanks. It has minor issues up close as mentioned, relating to troublesome window channels, but it's a big upgrade.

Unfortunately it does look like my car has one or two active coolant leaks, and it does look like they are between the timing cover and block. This is not surprising, because the gasket sealing technique I used on the timing cover gasket (Permatex ultra copper spray on the gasket) has proven to not hold up against coolant, so it was only a matter of time.

Hoping to push that out a little closer to the next oil change interval, but I'm aware that gasket blowout is a possibility.

[gadget73]

The spring difference is Signature vs non-Signature. The Sigs are something like 200 lbs heavier than the Cartier and 300 or so more than a base model. I doubt you'd ever be able to tell the difference between them in practice. The 9114 should be a very tiny bit higher than the other in the same car, but probably not enough to care about.

Ford actually had quite a list of different springs that could be installed per car, and it could be different on each side depending on equipment. Nobody makes the full array of OE stuff though. I don't even know the specs, the master parts manual just translates the spring tag code to a full part number.

[kishy]

They warranty swapped the rad!
The CarQuest brand radiator has changed since I bought that one. The old one was quite generic looking, only marked with its country of origin and the part number.

The new one is actually a Spectra Premium CU547, but it came in the CarQuest branded box for part number 433547. Cool. It weighs more, is visibly thicker, has bigger tanks, and the trans cooler fittings don't look like flimsy garbage. Cool again. Still Chinese, but substantially better by a reasonable evaluation. This will go in the wagon.

I've been noticing a steadily worsening mid-throttle loss of HVAC vacuum. This was a recent development. It was so bad as of today that I could hear all the vacuum motors returning to default positions almost immediately after turning the engine off, and any mild acceleration was shifting the temp to hot. Check valve checked out. Vacuum canister checked out. However, vacuum line from check valve to canister did not. Found one break, fixed it, retested, still screwed up. Inspected closer and found a second smaller break. Fixed that one too. Tested that the canister, via the line, can now hold 20inHg for over 5 minutes, so I'll call that fixed. Road test confirmed it's good. Will eventually replace the line, along with the rest of the crumbling mess that is everything rubber and plastic on this car.

Last night into this morning, re-gasketed the timing cover. I hate everything about this job. Drained front sump after (full of coolant) and pulled plug on rear then quickly put it back when no coolant came out (oil only has 1500km on it).

While I was at it, swapped out the water pump for another from my 'inventory', this one has the shaped coolant passage inside the pump instead of being a big hollow cavity like the one I had put on 2 years ago. That pump, by the way, was an AC Delco reman of an E0-revision true Ford part. Still aluminum, not cast iron, so the extra holes in the timing cover are still a concern for leaks. I'm pretty sure this timing cover re-seal job is going to last though. Last time, I coated the gasket in Permatex ultra copper spray, which turned out to be a huge mistake as that stuff has zero resistance to coolant. This time, I lightly dressed all oil-sealing areas in Ultra Black, and the circle around each coolant passage with the water pump stuff. It was allowed to cure in place overnight before I filled it.

So far, so good on that front. But I discovered the oil pressure switch has such a severe leak that I can literally watch it drip. I have one in my parts stash, just need to find it.

[DerekTheGreat]

Nice job. I still need to change the oil and redo the gasket thing for the low oil indicator light. Poor Townie, I feel like I'm neglecting it and being a bad owner.

[kishy]

Back in September, I picked up four decent condition wire wheels. They're the faux wire wheels that came optional on box Lincolns. Solid chunk of wheel with no actual holes through, and fake spokes, but...they look good. I only got two centre caps with them, so I've been on the hunt for another two since.

LSE_Dave hooked me up with a pair of what you might call B-grade ones, but perfectly usable for a non-show-car. Received those today.

Dug out the wheels which have my new-5-years-ago Toyo whitewalls mounted on them, cleaned those up. Not perfect, but a bit of a glimmer here and there. Tossed those on the car and wow...definitely a good look.

[Kodachrome Wolf]

Those seem more oddly appropriate on that car than the later ones. They look good too.

I think I has to do with the wrap around bumpers and the Mark-series nose.

[DerekTheGreat]

What's that ye say? You need center caps for the spokey bits?

You know, Ashley's car had those too and since they're notorious for flying off I have 3 or 2 lying around...

EDIT: Oh, you already have some. It is a good look for that car. The other optional aluminum wheels (not turbines) would look nice on your Townie too.

[kishy]

Why did I not know you had the caps? Don't you know you're supposed to tell me your entire parts inventory with updates in real time?

If by "other optional aluminum wheels" you mean the "lacy spokes" which look like fancier turbines, it came on those, and I love them. But when the decision had to be made about which wheels to put the whitewalls on, the wire spokes won.

A/C clutch continues to make noise. I can't figure out how to tell if it's doing what gadget said or not. The front disc part of the clutch is not perfectly perpendicular to the compressor shaft axis...which seems to be why it makes noise. Turning it by hand, I can reproduce the sound easily, and it's the clutch dragging, but it's not clear to me exactly why it drags.

The rubber/plastic parts around the centre of the clutch appear to have melted a bit and there's visible oil staining that seems to have come out of the hole where the compressor shaft is. The clutch is an expensive little bastard. A hundred bucks for that, or two hundred for a whole compressor with the clutch on it. I'd rather buy the latter out of those choices even if I just shelve the compressor for however long.

[GM_Guy]

Those spokes look right at home. Keep the tires inflated to at least 35psi, shouldn't have any covers flying off.

Alex.

[kishy]

The covers in this case are only the little tiny centre cap. Everything else is wheel. As it happens, 34PSI is my go-to, and I filled them to that before I rolled them out to the car

I pulled one of them off this morning due to fear of it flying off...need to adjust the tabs a little.

2/4 are mounted with bolts (they came that way and the backing plate has a Ford logo, so...not a kludge). The other two do not, and they terrify me.