kishy's 1984 Town Car

[kishy]

Today was one of those progress without progress days.

I picked up bolts (plated, stainless couldn't be had locally) to take the place of the cat-to-manifold studs, and unfortunately hadn't banked on the extra gap the 90 TC manifolds introduce because of the tapered end (vs the stock manifold, which is flat), so the bolts for that side were too short. Great. They do fit the original manifold, of course, since that's where I got my bolt length from.

Looking at it and thinking about it, I think the original manifolds are going back on. With all new hardware it won't be the end of the world to take them out down the road if needed. Knowing myself, though, I probably will never actually do that...

I redirected my attention to the tailpipes, since it needs to be done, even if I'm working backwards.
I "made" a hanger for the driver side using a bent universal hanger, and since they're direct-fit tailpipes, the passenger side one fits with the factory hanger. I need to come up with something better for this but at least I've got the pipes over the axle, positioned correctly.

Likewise, I need to figure out a permanent solution for the hangers in front of the axle, but I'm thinking once the H is in place it might hold everything together and "just work" which would be cool. What needs to happen here will become clearer once the manifolds and cats are in place.






The pipes were quite low here, I've since adjusted that, and will make sure they're not too low when it's all together.

[sly]

The super sweet smell wears off in about 10-20K miles. Mine no longer have the super metallic sweet smell that fresh aftermarket cats make. Took me about 4 years to cover that mileage in the Mad Marquis and probably 3 years in the RVC.

[kishy]

Progress, with progress!

As mentioned here, I have opted to reinstall the original manifolds, without gaskets as they came off. This may prove to be an irritating mistake, but we'll see. I didn't want to deal with the bigger, more annoying issue of the 90TC driver side manifold, and didn't want to waste the gaskets unnecessarily. If I had bought cats for a SEFI car this would be a non-issue, I would be using the 90TC manifolds and would have eliminated the heat riser valve. Speaking of which, the vacuum line is still unhooked, which will be a real pain to diagnose later if I don't note it here now.

Spark plugs: all of them were identical, with what I understand to be a healthy grey-white look to the electrode. They don't have a lot of mileage on them so I wasn't expecting them to look awful, but it's nice to see they look good. Of course, I'm keeping the 6 non-broken ones, probably to put in the wagon when the time comes.

The cats went onto the manifolds beautifully. They truly are direct fit. The air injection tubes were very close to the right locations, so it didn't take much to connect them, though I did fully remove the pipe to maneuver things around and eliminated one of the hangers off the torque converter inspection cover bolts.

I forgot to mention, with regard to my past thread "Prolong life of new exhaust", I have concluded that the Lincoln is no longer a winter beater and will not be exposed to conditions that will kill the exhaust too far prematurely. What I did do, and whether it will help or not is impossible to know, is hit the flanges that meet up with the cats and the 2" of pipe after them, inside and out, with VHT primer (3 coats) and black VHT paint (3 coats). Since the flange welds are one of the first spots to rust catastrophically on these types of pipe, I'm hoping this will provide some protection, and further hoping that when the engine is running in the next few days, it will be enough to cure things further.

I used some bolts I had lying around (to be replaced with bigger, stronger, better ones for final mounting) to bolt the H-pipe to the cats, and then wiggled it all around so it lined up OK, then tightened the bolts into the manifolds to lock it all in place. I've now got the mufflers hanging in place, but nothing is clamped down or tightened, just as a mock-up. Trying to decide if I want the mufflers towards the front or rear, since they're shorter than stock I have little extension pipes (Walker 41947) making up the difference. Future me would appreciate putting the mufflers toward the front, since it'll free up room for a U-joint press. I still also need to figure out a better solution for the muffler hangers, as nothing is really stopping them from just drooping down and putting the tailpipes into contact with stuff.

To-do: buy some hardware, clamp stuff up, fit hangers, then fire it up and see how it sounds. Exciting.































As mentioned, everything is just in a mock-up stage right now. Plenty of adjustments to be made.

And yeah, my #7 plug wire routing is "unique"...it's the best way I've found to ensure that pesky 7/8 misfire/crossfire can't happen at all.

[DerekTheGreat]

Man, you are industrious. Just looking at those pics is making me tired and it's only 6:30AM, I practically just woke up haha.

[Kodachrome Wolf]

I wish I was as handy as you are with exhaust. Any time I touch mine outside of replacing the cats to h-pipe gaskets, it starts trials and tribulations. There’s a reason I’m going to let a shop weld up my tail pipes to the mufflers on the wagon, I’ll never the couplers to work right since the system came off a junked car.

[kishy]

"Industrious" and "handy"?! There I was thinking I was putting together quite the hackjob lol.

Seriously, thanks. It's the first "real" exhaust work I've done (I did some true hackjob work on the Ranger, though). It should at least be better than it was once all the finer details are worked out.

As an aside: Walker 40492 is the H-pipe for the Lincolns. On account of the longer rear floor section, the mufflers are located further back. This pipe can still be purchased from various places.

Walker 40483 is the Ford and Mercury H-pipe. It's shorter. It isn't as simple as just a length thing though, because the extra length is before a bend towards the end of the pipes where they kick up a bit higher then enter the mufflers. Unfortunately, it's a little harder to get 40483 and I suspect it's discontinued.

What I'm trying to figure out (and really should mock up before I bolt the Lincoln together, but probably won't) is how the placement of the mufflers will look on a Ford, such as my wagon, using the Lincoln H-pipe. What I'm thinking is the shorter mufflers should make it no big deal at all, in which case I have at least one (wagon) and possibly two (wagon + 2dr) more 40492 to buy (I already have one 40483, intended for the 91). I might do a Mustang setup on the 2dr, I'm not sure what the plans are for that yet.

[Kodachrome Wolf]

If I have the time to actually mess around with finishing the wagon's exhaust, I'll snag some pictures. I've got about 70% of a 1990 Town Car exhaust underneath it. Essentially it's the '90 exhaust manifolds, gutted (unfortunately) catalytic converters, then H-Pipe with mufflers.

I've got to sort out some small issues, namely properly affixing the passenger side down pipe. Had to bust off both studs, then while replacing them one of them free spins, so it's not properly attached, so it doesn't quite meet the H-pipe right... It's a flippin' mess. Just not a priority to fix since it still needs top end work anyway so it really hasn't been driven, but I'll get to it one of these days since I need to get it off the to-do list. Once those issues are fixed, I'll take it to an exhaust shop and have the tail pipes welded on.

Getting off my rant however, the Lincoln stuff lines up generally well underneath it. The factory passenger side hanger meets the muffler where the old style attachment point would be. Whatever extra length is there must be oh-so negligible in the long run.

[kishy]

90TC also uses the same H-pipe as the true boxes, so there's no reason it shouldn't fit. Just sounds like it needs a little tweaking to get it right.

I already have another set of the same direct-fit cats on hand for the wagon (wasn't thinking with my brain, so it's another car I'm stuck with the heat riser valve and original manifolds on due to that purchasing decision). The question is what H will I use...and I really don't see why the Lincoln one won't work. In fact, I'll go ahead and order one. Maybe I'll order two. RockAuto, as usual, is mopping the floor with everyone else for the cost to my door on these.

The tails are nice because it's one piece over the axle and out to the back of the car, but the issue with the wagon is the extra length and interference with the spare tire well. If that unobtainium driver side, side-exit wagon tailpipe could be sourced somewhere I'd definitely grab one along with the matching passenger side one (which can be bought, but for too much $ in my opinion).

Anything I can do to avoid custom fab at a shop makes it more appealing to me.

I do know this: this complete scenario with the Lincoln exhaust is being repeated a few more times in the next couple years, because rather ironically, the Ranger is the only vehicle with intact exhaust at the moment.

Speaking of the heat riser on the wagon: I think it might have something to do with the "sounds like a tractor" exhaust note on that car. But the wagon will have its day in the spotlight where I figure that out.

[DerekTheGreat]

LoL yes, industrious. Makes me feel like I need to get off my ass and turn those wrenches better. Exhaust works you did looks good to me.

[Kodachrome Wolf]

As far as wagon tail pipes go, I’m just going to essentially duplicate the standard single exit but for the driver’s side. I know the factory dual models exited at the bumper, but essentially the over-axle pipe plus whatever angle exit is required should work good enough. Outside of here, I doubt anyone would be able to tell a difference, plus, it’s less pipe to run.

[kishy]

LoL yes, industrious. Makes me feel like I need to get off my ass and turn those wrenches better. Exhaust works you did looks good to me.

I attribute my work ethic on this project to how frustrated I've been waiting for the weather to cooperate.

This day last year was my first lawn-mowing of 2017, which means not only had it been dry and warm, but both of those things for long enough for the lawn to come back to life by this date.

As far as wagon tail pipes go, I’m just going to essentially duplicate the standard single exit but for the driver’s side. I know the factory dual models exited at the bumper, but essentially the over-axle pipe plus whatever angle exit is required should work good enough. Outside of here, I doubt anyone would be able to tell a difference, plus, it’s less pipe to run.

That's kind of what I'm leaning towards. The sedan tails are cheap by comparison to other options. Birdofprey did it here, just building a passenger side tailpipe, but the same could easily be done to match up the passenger and driver sides together: http://www.grandmarq.net/vb/showthre...-Wagon-Exhaust

If I could get a result even half as pretty as his, I'd call that a success. I have a welder, but I don't have any sort of meaningful experience with welding. Maybe that will be my inaugural project as a welder. I'll of course go into detail on that when I get to that car.

[DerekTheGreat]

Yeah last weekend Ash and I were talking and she told me by that time I had already mowed the lawn once which means I would have had to change the oil on that thing and get all the other equipment ready for storage. We're both ready for the weather to turn and it looks like we're over the hill.

[gadget73]

I'm overdue for my spring prep work. Been spending all my time on the cars, still need to swap at least one battery on the boat and get the mowers ready. They are currently blocked in with two donorcycles though, so I haven't been able to do anything. Neither bike is mine, and I'm not going to mess with them.

[kishy]

Last night, I did things!

I tried to clean up that mess I came up with for operating the headlamp doors (re: the appearance that there is a capacitor somewhere holding the low beam relay engaged for a short time after turning the lights off). Made it worse, now they don't close. Probably a better failure mode than being stuck shut, at least.

I replaced the battery negative cable (from block to battery), and replaced the corroded length of ground wire specifically for the ECM harness that joins to the battery negative terminal. Still need to replace the ground from body to block, or add a second one, but I don't see a rush on that since it isn't corroded, just undersized relative to the charge cable.

Did oil and filter change, and chassis lube. 187,833km. It was a little low on the dipstick and I figured a seasonal change wouldn't be a bad idea even if the mileage is low (and I'm not sure what it was at, but it was likely close anyway).

I did observe that coolant seems to seep from the water pump stud adjacent to the passenger side water passage. The leak is not between the timing cover and block, but does seem to be between the pump and timing cover. This makes sense because I removed the water pump and timing cover together as one when I replaced the timing set, hoping to avoid re-sealing the pump again. It would appear I'm going to need to do it anyway.

Finished the exhaust! Some minor adjustments to the hangers will be needed but it's all mounted, attached, and if there's an exhaust leak it's too small to worry about.

It's pretty quiet. The car is now the quietest it's been in my ownership of it. That being said, it does have a decent low burble at idle and it does sound like it breathes better on rapid acceleration. I currently have the heat riser capped off to hear the magic a little better at cold starts (the vacuum operated one is normally open, unlike the thermal spring ones).











But all is not good:
After some spirited driving last night, I heard a 'pop', all the lights flickered, the AMP light came on, and everything got dim. Babied it home with no accessories on and hazard lights instead of park/headlamps. Verified battery was not charging.

I was hopeful that the regulator had maybe popped and the rest of the junkyard 3G was OK, so I went digging in the parts stash and found a 3G regulator. Installed it (not easy to do when alt is in a car, particularly a CFI car, the ignition coil is behind the alternator), started engine, and I had 14.9 (!) volts. Cool. Went out for a drive again, and first hard acceleration onto the expressway, the same 'pop' happened followed by AMP light and dimming lights. Parked it because 1:30AM is way too late to be messing with that stuff.

I'm not sure what to do about the alternator. I have another 3G on hand, I can swap it on the assumption that the rectifier is bad, but would that be consistent with my problem? Since I did touch electrical stuff (negative cable) it's got me second guessing myself a bit.

Worth noting that the 3G is wearing a 1G pulley which is quite tiny, is it possible I'm over-revving the alt?

[DerekTheGreat]

"..parked it 'cause 1:30AM is too late to be messing with stuff.."

Sounds like yeah, maybe you're over revving it. What would I know though?

I like the factory oil coating she's giving her self. Looks like your pinion seal is also contributing to anti rust purposes haha.