kishy's 1984 Town Car

[87gtVIC]

Did not bother with paint or anything like that as it's a piece of metal that flexes, doesn't make any sense to waste the effort and material.

[kishy]

Holy crap. The body roll. It's gone!
I've really pushed it taking cloverleaf ramps at speed and it absolutely will not lift up the inside rear corner anymore. Incredible. Sway bars for everything!

I did some test fitting that can be categorized in that fun space of "Just Because You Can Doesn't Mean You Should":











And I tried to re-take a photo I've taken in January 2017 before the Mark VI nose job, but didn't get the perspective quite right. Oh well. I think I like the new one better anyway.



As a reminder:



Oh, yeah. 2.5 ton aluminum/steel floor jack plus a full tank of gas has helped the feel and height on the Air Lift bags a decent amount, so I'll just make a habit of carrying heavier stuff.

[jaywish]

Sway Bars really make these cars worth driving and don't really degrade the comfy ride.

[gadget73]

The stock coat hanger / nothing combo really handles poorly, bordering on scary at times.

[sly]

yeah... the stock skinny bars on the aeros are so much better than the no rear bar setup on the boxes. With fatter bars I bet it's really nice.

[jaywish]

yes going from the skinny bar to the thick bar on the TC is very good.

[ForzaChampion15]

Yeeeeeahhh, that damned header panel swap...I have oodles of 4656 hanging around, but not a single spare 5006. As it happens the lamps on the car were 4000s, which dates them to the 80s I'm pretty sure. Yikes.

The Hella E-codes from Summit are on, and not a moment too soon, because the second 4000 burned out as I was leaving to go get bulbs to put in the new housings. They cast what I'd call very even light with a great cutoff. It's not just all a big puddle of light right in front of the car anymore. I used Sylvania's "basic" 9003 bulbs, nothing fancy, just needed functional lighting.

I had to cut some metal out of the headlight buckets so the rubber boot on the back of the Hellas would fit in place, which is important because the lamp is not watertight without the seal in place. I also had to move a couple terminals around as is documented elsewhere already.

While in there, I also moved the diodes for the headlamp door setup to the trigger side of the relays instead of the switched side. In doing so I've introduced a new weird problem. I'm suspecting the headlamp door box must have a capacitor in it because now something is back-feeding the relay for the low beams keeping the lights on for about 5 seconds even if autolamp is off (keep in mind I did the latter of Sly's remark below)



So, since the second method with the diodes is not working optimally I'm going to tap into the wire in the dash and clean up the wiring under the hood where my relays are. Clearly there's a reason Ford did it how they did it and my homebrew wiring hacks are revealing the bugs that motivated them back when the circuit was designed.











Still need to perfect the aim but things are working well, I'd say.

Okay so someone on the LincolnsOnline forum directed me here as I'm interested in doing a Mark VI header panel swap on my '88 Town Car as I like the look. I know it was a couple years ago that you made the post, but can you give me any directions or tips for the procedure??

[kishy]

Okay so someone on the LincolnsOnline forum directed me here as I'm interested in doing a Mark VI header panel swap on my '88 Town Car as I like the look. I know it was a couple years ago that you made the post, but can you give me any directions or tips for the procedure??

Welcome, and yeah, for sure. I meant to do a big write-up and never finished it...it's in a Word document somewhere on my laptop. I'll prioritize finishing that and get it posted up.

Are you planning to keep the 85-89 skinny bumpers, or will you be swapping the car to the older bumpers too?

Aside from redundant reverse lights, the big bumpers do look OK on the newer ones...my friend spotted this in Arizona:



Not a fan of the weird retrofit opera windows, however.

[VicCrownVic]

Welcome, and yeah, for sure. I meant to do a big write-up and never finished it...it's in a Word document somewhere on my laptop. I'll prioritize finishing that and get it posted up.
...

I've done that before. Takes me way longer (months at least) to put a write-up together than to do the actual job. Proof-reading, editing pictures (adding arrow/circle highlights and notes), going back to get better pictures if needed and if reasonably possible.

[ForzaChampion15]

Welcome, and yeah, for sure. I meant to do a big write-up and never finished it...it's in a Word document somewhere on my laptop. I'll prioritize finishing that and get it posted up.

Are you planning to keep the 85-89 skinny bumpers, or will you be swapping the car to the older bumpers too?

Aside from redundant reverse lights, the big bumpers do look OK on the newer ones...my friend spotted this in Arizona:



Not a fan of the weird retrofit opera windows, however.

Gonna keep the stock bumper, just wanna get the pop-up look going. As for the opera window, I plan on doing a hard top conversion eventually, so no more opera window. I like what the base model's rear window style better.

[ForzaChampion15]

Any luck on that write-up or has it been lost to the ages on your hard drive? XD

[VicCrownVic]

I've done that before. Takes me way longer (months at least) to put a write-up together than to do the actual job. Proof-reading, editing pictures (adding arrow/circle highlights and notes), going back to get better pictures if needed and if reasonably possible.

Oh and life in general. I know the new job has been keeping kishy quite busy lately, but I know he will get it done eventually.

[kishy]

Any luck on that write-up or has it been lost to the ages on your hard drive? XD

As it happens, I found the start of it I had been working on. All I need is an evening of bad weather to keep me out of the garage and that ought to do it...lol

Oh and life in general. I know the new job has been keeping kishy quite busy lately, but I know he will get it done eventually.

Yeah, there's that. I've banked a crapload of overtime since December. It'll come.

[kishy]

The Mark VI swap write up is nearing post-readiness, but not quite there yet.

Today, ran into some stalling issues when returning to idle after a drive. I am almost positive that these issues come back to an intermittent TPS failure. In fact the CFI cars even had a TSB for no-starts due to TPS that would get stuck at non-zero positions. Will restart and idle fine if I play with the throttle a bit before the restart. I need to experiment further here.

While organizing the garage I stumbled upon something I had kind of forgotten I had: the metal seat frame, uncovered and unfoamed, from an 89 Grand Marquis. This was it, the moment I'd been waiting for...the chance to fix my Lincoln's driver seat!

As mentioned previously (here) the driver seat back has some sort of internal failure which makes it lean to the right, as structural issues are not keeping the right hinge (which is free to move however it wants, no latch) connected to the left hinge (which has the latch mechanism for recline).

I opened the seat back, removed it, removed the seat cover with foam still hogringed to it, thoroughly washed the seat cover (in doing so removing that butyl adhesive stain from the windshield I carried home for the wagon), put the seat cover on the donor seat back, and put it back on. What an incredible improvement.

The seat bottom is still broken (either the metal netting the foam is suspended by, or the foam itself has broken down) but this has really improved things. I also have the seat bottom from that same donor car and will study what's necessary to swap that in at a later date. The Lincoln has a switch of some sort to know when the driver is seated for the automatic locks but I'm sure it wouldn't be terribly hard to swap over.

[gadget73]

does it seem like there would be a relatively easy way of adding more foam into the center lower back area? Either mine is degraded or these seats were designed for hunchbacks but it honestly kills me after driving for a while if I don't have a towel stuffed behind me for lumbar support.