kishy's 1984 Town Car

[kishy]

"..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.

I would have preferred to use the 3G original pulley, but I had belt clearance issues. Something, I don't know what, is different about the belt drive between 84 and 91. 91 can take the same alt and belt, without swapping the pulley. 84 and 83 I had to swap the pulley to get it to fit. I'll see what I can come up with. I'm leaving work early today if all goes as planned, to take advantage of the nice weather and try to fix it.

Yeah, she's oily...it's all on a to-do list in my head, which I'll get around to someday.

I have a feeling I'm going to turn the alt replacement into a water pump reseal and p/s pump swap party. I'll put my junkyard p/s pump on the car, then I'm not pressured for time to rebuild the one off the car.

This alternator has had a "whine" since I put it on, and at least some Google results suggest bad rectifier diodes can do that, so here's hoping a simple 1:1 swap (+pulley swap to the replacement) gets it back in business. If it blows up another alternator, I'm going to be pissssssed.

[DerekTheGreat]

What alt was on it when we drag raced TC's? You didn't blow it up then...

Oil good, no rust.

[87gtVIC]

I like the use of lap joint band clamps. They are just SO nice.


I think a couple others have 3g alts with stock sized pulley on it. I was planning on going that route to (by taking off the 3g pulley and putting the stock size back on) because I have an under drive pulley on the crank and was concerned about charging issues. All is fine though, just worried about overworking the alt....

[sly]

3G likes the smaller 2G pulley on a stock lopo. So I wouldn't think it should be an issue. There's probably some bad mojo in that alt. Probably shorted rectifier diodes. If you try fixing it again, check for current draw on the charge cable with the car off. That's usually dead rectifier.

[kishy]

What alt was on it when we drag raced TC's? You didn't blow it up then...

Oil good, no rust.

I'm pretty sure it was this alternator. I did the 1G>3G swap in April of last year, and the Detroit meet was in August I think?

I like the use of lap joint band clamps. They are just SO nice.


I think a couple others have 3g alts with stock sized pulley on it. I was planning on going that route to (by taking off the 3g pulley and putting the stock size back on) because I have an under drive pulley on the crank and was concerned about charging issues. All is fine though, just worried about overworking the alt....

Yes, the lap-joint clamps are awesome, but depend largely on the diameters of the pipes being true to what they claim to be. In this case I have mufflers that are 2" ID but in reality have a little extra, and pipes that are 2" OD but in reality seem a little undersized, so they don't work quite right. There are small exhaust leaks at each joint as a result but I'm really not bothered by it, considering that previously, 100% of the exhaust exited under the car beginning at holes in the cats, holes in the Y-pipe, and finally the end of the Y-pipe which was where the exhaust ended. Big improvement.

I don't like the U-clamps because they make it near-impossible to DIY rearrange the exhaust later. In this case I had no choice for the extension pipes onto the tailpipes due to the bend and hanger being where they are, but the mufflers being swappable (with some work) is a nice feature.

I only thought to swap the pulley because I knew others had done it, so I didn't expect to blow anything up, especially considering that the CFI lopo never sees north of 4k RPM.

3G likes the smaller 2G pulley on a stock lopo. So I wouldn't think it should be an issue. There's probably some bad mojo in that alt. Probably shorted rectifier diodes. If you try fixing it again, check for current draw on the charge cable with the car off. That's usually dead rectifier.

This car has had battery discharge issues. It had those issues with the original 60A 1G, which went 'bang' and died to be replaced with a reman 1G which no longer had discharge issues.
Then after putting the 3G in I was pretty sure I saw discharge issues again, and stuff like the battery terminal arcing when being connected, even though no loads in the car were turned on.

As I believe you saw on the FB group, I found the source of the 'pop' and burning smell - the voltage sensing terminal for the regulator had burned off inside the connector. This renders the regulator garbage even if it still worked otherwise, and I replaced the melted connector with another from the parts stash.

I swapped the alt for one I had in the garage, this one I believe is a T-bird example because it has the favourable clocking we like (not the ones I search for typically). I'm seeing 14.3V with the new-used one, and no more whine, so it seems this was overdue.

In doing so, I resealed the water pump and swapped in the junkyard power steering pump. I am now well-acquainted with the pulley puller (what a pain that is), and the bolts have anti-seize on them, so everything should go smoothly when it's time for the rebuilt pump to go back in (realistically, months out - I do not work efficiently). The junkyard one showed evidence of leaking around the reservoir seal, but did not look like it had shaft seal leaks, so with any luck it will leak a lot less than what I was using.

I'm going to need to review the Mark VI headlamp setup from its EVTM in more detail. I think I must be overlooking something stupid about how I've got the doors set up.









Driving this to work tomorrow. If it behaves completely, I'll pull the insurance off the Ranger early next week.

[DerekTheGreat]

Oo I spy mostly translucent coolant! Noice.

Yeah, we've had to use that puller multiple times in the past couple weeks. Was a PITA on the original pump, goes much nicer on the Reman pumps we've been slamming on but those are junk. Speaking of our woes, I drove her truck up to the ice cream stand last night and I couldn't sense any extra effort when turning left. Pump is pretty quiet until you want to turn and then "aaAaAAARRRRRGH!!!" That noise along with serpentine belt noise or exhaust leaks still embarrass me despite years of effort trying not to be embarrassed by said noises. I like beat up cars, just not beat up mechanically.

[kishy]

Yeah, I had flushed the whole thing when I replaced the rad back when I got the car. It's picked up a bit of an orange tinge, but I might have used an orange universal antifreeze at some point (I have seen ethylene glycol antifreeze in orange but can't remember if I ever bought any).

I'm pretty sure the heater core has a very small leak, since the interior faintly smells like antifreeze, and has on-and-off the whole time I've had the car. Since I think the vent selection hinges are broken in this (sound familiar?) I need to get in there anyway. I'll likely bypass the heater core as a temporary thing.

Still feeling regretful that I didn't clean RockAuto out of the brass heater cores when they were $17 back in 2013. Spectra one looks to be pretty reasonably priced at Autozone, I may grab one when I'm over there if I attend the junkyard run tomorrow...

I really think you should consider the thoughts in the other thread that your p/s issue may not be the pump. The pump makes noise in response to a load condition.

---

The drive in to work was exciting. I've gotten used to driving with my foot completely on the floor most of the time (Ranger). I got the tires to spin a little in a couple spots. Didn't reach for the shifter or hit the invisible clutch once, though.

[DerekTheGreat]

My heater core is leaking too. Wasn't 100% sure until road trip confirmed. I really haven't driven it since I got back. Need to bypass since now I can't afford to do it for awhile.

You could be right but why is the pump quiet on our box stuff? I drove her truck and I think the box is fine, it's not unusually tough in either direction, seems to turn easy, like 1 finger. I'm going to try a different fluid, Mercon V today. We put Valvoline type F in the last one and this time we just had parts store type F and it didn't look the same coming out of the bottle, that's for sure. Parts store stuff is almost as thick as gear lube.
Devil's advocate here is the service manual, which states if the rotor thing starts to wear out that'll cause noise. These pumps are all reman, maybe they just slammed new seals on, painted & shipped it as good. I dunno, as always, I'm learning things the hard way.

[kishy]

I can't say that it is or isn't the pump in your case lol. I do know that (for example) every Aerostar I've ever heard - quite literally every one, going back to my childhood when they were new - has made that distinctive "C2 pump being a little overworked" sound. It isn't necessarily a wear issue in the pump, or a wear issue at all.

The only type F I've ever used was bought to be used as power steering fluid, and I believe was Shell. It was thick, poured slower than common Dex3/Mercon formulations do.

I figured I'd make this image for my own (and maybe anyone else's) future reference, starting with the Walker image for the Town Car exhaust system as a basis and then heavily altered:



$ in Canadian. It cost more than I had ballparked in my head, mostly because I bought things from multiple vendors at different times. Still quite a bit less than a custom shaped system. Those figures are excluding shipping (let's not go there) and after any applicable discounts.

Something I realized during the install is that the tailpipes are not exact mirror images, either due to a QC issue at Walker, or due to design inconsistencies from one side to the other. If you were to mount the pipes using the welded-on hangers, the ends of the tailpipes would not line up with each other (not even close, really) and this seems to relate to the length of pipe after the hanger, rather than the hanger being placed wrong (e.g. it seems to be right relative to the axle, the pipe is just too short). I used a universal hanger on each side to make it a little more adaptable.

[87gtVIC]

I wish I made up a diagram for the various jobs I have done to my car. Going to be fun when things start needing to be replaced.


I absolutely HATE pulling the power steering pump pulley off and pressing it back on. HATE IT.

[gadget73]

Had to do it on the Conti this week in order to do the AC compressor. The front bracket for the AC bolts under the PS pulley. Its an annoying job but with a good puller its not so awful. I bought a good one because the loaner at the store was broken and what they had on the shelf was a POS. Mine is a Lisle and the two sides of the clamshell thing that grabs the pulley hub actually bolt together with the handle that keeps it from rotating. Works very nicely.

[kishy]

Quoting myself from another thread:

I spent a ridiculous amount of time reverse-engineering the functionality of some junk

The junk in question is the Mark VI autolamp solenoid vacuum valve box. After I relayed my headlamps, they developed a symptom where the lamps would stay on and doors open for several seconds (somewhat proportionate to lamps-on time, to a point where it plateaus) after turning the lamps off. I concluded that the autolamp box has a capacitor inside, and it was back-feeding the relay to keep the lamps on until the relay fully discharged the capacitor. Neat.

I recently tapped into a wire suggested by sly many months ago, which is the circuit between the main light switch and high beam switch, so I have only one wire feeding the 'lamps on, doors open' input on the autolamp box. This is great, except the doors wouldn't close anymore, and I couldn't figure out why.

After extensive poking at the autolamp box I realized that a function of the Mark VI autolamp relay must be to switch the 'lamps on' wire from +12V to ground when it's time to close the door, instead of just turning it off normally. I mocked up a test scenario with a normal 5-pin Bosch relay where relay terminal 30 goes to the autolamp box, and use the normally-closed 87A and normally-open 87 terminals to flip it between +12V and ground when appropriate. That did the trick, the doors now close, but in doing this I re-introduced the time delay before the doors would close. Irritating.

I then added two diodes (junkyard-scavenged PCM power diodes) to the wires going to/from pins 86 and 87 (both of which are fed from the wire in the dash mentioned above). I had to do this to both wires before they joined together rather than one diode after they join, because the fact that 86 and 87 were joined together is the reason the back-feeding from the capacitor in the autolamp was able to hold the relay closed. Problem solved, all works as expected now. Is it neat and tidy? Oh hell no. But it works and is all fused so I'm not worried about it.

I can better illustrate this with one of my ugly hand-drawn diagrams, as is attached below.



For the first time since doing the Mark VI nose swap, it all works exactly as it should. This paves the way for the write-up I promised ages ago, but which I did not want to write yet due to these defects. It will happen Soon™ now.

Oh, and to formally admit I was wrong on something: there are atmospheric vents inside the autolamp box, where the solenoids (there are 2) vent to outside air. However, they are already equipped with foam filters inside the box, so provided nothing too serious enters the system (my autolamp box is sealed up with RTV in most spots now), it's not a big deal for it to live in the engine bay. I do want to look into an inline vacuum filter solution for the line feeding the whole deal off the intake, though.

[gadget73]

Probably the foam is both for filtering and silencing. I would expect a whistle if it pulled air through without it, and that would of course not be acceptable to a Lincoln owner in 198x. Heck, I added a silencer to the air suspension exhaust port on my 84 because the hissing annoyed me. Salvaged that off a late model Grand Marquis, they have a nice little plastic silencer hidden on the back side of the rad support.

[kishy]

The only time air is exchanged through the filter is when there is a door motion happening - open, or close - due to the opposite side of the vacuum motors re-filling with air as the active side (to open or close, whichever you're doing) is vacuumed down.

The hiss when you're doing that is quite evident already, so I don't think it's much of a noise muffler. The foam is very small.

The valve is a surprisingly complex little guy. The valve which selects between "open" and "close" routing of engine vacuum is itself also vacuum-operated. So it is a vacuum-operated, vacuum-switching valve, operated by electric input to vacuum solenoids. As best I can gather, the "close" solenoid is only operated for a brief split-second, so the device does not really draw much of anything after the doors shut. By contrast, the "open" solenoid is held open whenever the lights are on. If power is disconnected, the doors remain in whatever position they were in last, because the actual valve to choose the vacuum routing requires an active force of vacuum to move it to one position or the other.







As for my testing and re-wiring earlier:







Hint to anyone not aware: you have to scrape the plating off things like fuses, fusebox diodes and similar otherwise solder will not stick.

Took baby out for a drive. Encountered two different 89 Townies on my drive, but dash cam ate the microSD card (too many writes I guess, it's been in service almost 2 years) so no pics.

The sun really shows how bad the paint match is. Ultimately I don't care that much. If the car had been perfect when I bought it, I'd be livid, but the fact is it was (to the average person) ready for the scrapyard so it's way better off now than it was before.

[gadget73]

Thats a pilot operated valve design, pretty common stuff. I'm used to the air version but same basic idea. Wee little solenoid opens a small valve, air pressure through the small valve pushes on another thing that moves the high volume valve around. Vac should work the same but opposite.

and yeah that is something of a complicated mess.