VicCrownVic's 1998 Mercury Grand Marquis LS

[VicCrownVic]

Later than us, even. Had our cars done about three weeks ago, thought we were really pushing it. Now I might intentionally schedule this late, doesn't seem to snow around here until mid or late November at the earliest anyway. Of course, I had to touch up spots that were light or not hit at all. Used four cans of Fluid Film between both trucks, love that stuff.

I probably scheduled it 3 weeks ago and that was the earliest available slot. The Rochester Hills location is the busiest of any Krown location this time of year they were telling me.

[VicCrownVic]

Exactly 4 years ago today I bought this car. So I guess 1 leap year ago. I should go get a picture of it after work if I remember to commemorate the occasion or something.
I've racked up roughly 53K miles in that time. At the moment the biggest issue I have is the battery seems to be getting weaker/not holding its charge as well as it should when parked for a couple days. I'll have to check for unreasonable parasitic draw, but may just opt to swap batteries with The Scab since that battery was brand new last year.

[VicCrownVic]

I actually remembered.

[VicCrownVic]

Front right brake was starting to make some grinding noise. I had a set of pads that I bought for this car 4 years ago (didn't install them due to finding sufficienly thick pads already on this car). These pads were in with the rest of the parts for the big brake conversion on The Scab, so I'll need to get new pads for the big brakes on The Scab, but most likely those pads will end up on Marge before I ever get around to big brake swapping The Scab, lol.

So last night the first job on this car at the new place was new brake pads. The outboard pad had tons of life left, but the inboard was the source of the noise with just about no pad left. I figured I would find a terribly chewed up rotor, but I think I caught it early enough as the rotor wasn't badly grooved.
The root cause seemed to be sticky slide pins. I cleaned the crap out of the slide pins and the holes where they slide. Put my good slide pin grease in and new boots on the slide pins. Brakes are working great again with no noise now.

[DerekTheGreat]

That's the kind of work I like to do, mostly pretty obvious and the satisfaction of a job well done at the end of it.

[VicCrownVic]

On the way home on Wednesday evening my cooling fan decided it didn't want to do its job. I first noticed my AC not coming out cold, then my temp gauge going up. I of course was on the Van Dyke Freeway heading north sitting in traffic due to stupid construction having it down to 1 lane. I pulled into an emergency turn around and found the Efan not running. Banged on the relay and no dice, then it started to boil over so I shut it off and tried to think about what I was going to do. As I was sitting there someone pulled into the turn around next to me. I looked up and it was my boss. Told him I think I need a fan relay, so we went and got one not far away, but took a bit of time due to traffic. Put the new relay in and the fan didn't come on right away but my temp gauge was way down. Wiggled the fan connector to be sure and it came on and stayed on so I wasn't sure if it finally got hot enough to kick the fan on or if the fan connector was the issue.

Boss left because I told him I should be good and I was going to just stop in at my Aunt's place not even 1/4 mile from where I was to be sure everything was good with the car. Temp gauge went way up again so as soon as I got in my Aunt's driveway checked the fan which was not running so I shut the car off to let it cool down. She was not home and my wife told me she thought Aunt was on her long shift that day. Since I told my wife I had broke down my whole family knew I was stuck including another Aunt in Kentucky, lol. Mom called said she would call my uncle, uncle called and I was hmming and hawing trying to decide what to do. I figured by the time he got there to tow me it would be super late and I could make it work by then. Well, at that point my aunt who was actually on her short shift that day showed up. She said she had a hose if I needed water, which I replied that I might but I need to get the fan going first.

I found that I could keep the fan going if I held the connector, so the earlier issue was not just the car getting up to temp it was indeed the fan connector that was the issue. Disconnected the fan connector and found a little melty going on and the middle blue wire terminal seemed a bit pushed in and burnt.


So, I took the red comb off and you can really see the middle terminal metal is darker like it's burnt, but as seen above melt going on on all terminals. I pried the terminals closed more in an attempt to ensure they were making a good connection assuming that was the issue. It was indeed the issue and the fan seemed to be working. So I hopped in with my Aunt following behind me. We made it 2 miles before I had to pull over, but as soon as I did the temp gauge went down. Went another mile or so and the same thing. I realized at this point that I should have taken my aunt up on the hose offer because the only explanation that made sense was air in the cooling system.


So we left the car there on the side of a dirt road and went to a store nearby to get some distilled water. Came back and put less than 2 gallons in then on our way again. Sure enough the temp gauge was staying normal and my terminal squeeze job was still holding to run the fan. When I got home (~40 miles) I was going to swap the 2002 fan in since I had one that I bought 3 years ago and never installed. I wasted a ton of time looking for it before I finally remember that I had taken it to my parents' place when I had issues with the fan relay last year. I didn't touch the fan last year once I found the old relay worked when I hit it, but looking back I think the fan having issue this year is likely what caused the original relay to have issue in the first place (the fan issue may have started before then but not with symptoms that were obvious to me). Luckily I only live 10 miles from my parents so even though it was after 10:00 I checked if mom was still up then went over and got my fan. It was after 11 by the time I realized the swap was going to take me longer than I wanted to stay up and 5:30am was not far off. So I rolled the dice on my terminal squeeze job to get me through 1 more day. Luckily that worked out. So finally after work yesterday I completed the swap. Work from home today so taking some time to update things here.

Once I got the new fan in last night I topped off the coolant and started the car up. It took a bit before it finally got up to temp to turn the fan on which had me a little nervous when nothing was happening at first. The new fan is a bit quieter than the old, but it's working. I'll share some info on the later fan retrofit later. The main reason I already had the fan (bought in March 2021) was this post here: https://www.grandmarq.net/vb/forum/t...14#post1209714

[VicCrownVic]

Stupid rodents!
Possibly rabbits, maybe groundhogs, maybe racoons, or even a possum, not really sure what, but something has been chewing at the undersides of my cars. (Apparently they like eating oil. )
My ABS light came on a day or two after I replaced front pads on this car. Code showed no signal from right rear WSS. I've been ignoring it but finally ordered the sensor along with a few other parts I needed for Marge. Parts showed up today so I decided to tackle it after work.

I got under the car and saw what looked like someone had taken a flathead screwdriver and randomly scraped all over. I saw the same thing on the oily front of Marge's trans oil pan over the weekend and thought it was strange, but now seeing the same thing all over the underside of the '98 was a real WTF moment. This is when I found the reason for no signal from the WSS, the little bastard(s) chewed through the wires for the WSS.

New WSS is in and ABS light is now off. Now I have some investigating to do on The Scab which I've been chasing a crank-no-start (no spark) condition. I'm wondering if something got chewed since ECM from my '89 and the dizzy and coil from Marge would not start that car but Marge ran no problem with those parts.
I also need to check my O2 sensor wires on the '98 since the check engine light came on, around the same time as the ABS light, for a catalyst efficiency code. That may not have been rodents but I'll check it out probably/hopefully tomorrow. Marge spends the most time in the garage so was not hit as bad as the '98 and possibly The Scab since they spend most of their time outside. Although now that I've reorganized things and regained my second bay I'll have to reconsider outdoor parking.

Hopefully whatever smelled like something dead to the east of my property the other day was whatever attacked my cars, LOL



The chewed off connector end of the WSS:
And where I had pushed the connector end through from the topside, you can also see the other end of the wire going to the sensor there.

[DerekTheGreat]

I ain't never seen nothin' like that before. F'n hate rodents.. Damn varmint ruined perfectly good Krown. Sure looks to have spent a lot of time chewing around, hope it died.

[Tiggie]

Ewww. X2 rodents with cars are a really bad combo.

[VicCrownVic]

This car got a break this week as Marge took on DD duty since the weather was nice enough.
I've had the CEL since around the same time as the ABS light for the RR ABS WSS (stupid animals). As noted in a previous post the ABS light was already addressed. I had pulled the code for the CEL, although I don't recall what code it was it was for catalyst efficiency low on bank 2. In hopes that O2 sensors would fix the issue I bought 2 new downstry sensors and finally tackled them today. Pretty easy actually. The bank 2 sensor did have some build up on somewhere between 25% and 50% if it so we'll see if that's all I needed or if I actually need new cats.

[VicCrownVic]

Hit enough drive/run cycles with proper O2 sensor readings and the CEL finally went out. I didn't clear the codes after replacing the O2 sensors because I wanted the PCM to register enough proper data to shut the CEL off on its own, which it finally did. Now I'm code free again on this car.

[VicCrownVic]

I installed the wire harness for my gauge pod after work today. Ran it from the d-side kick panel to above the mirror. Then I decided to "test fit" the gauge pod which turned into just installing it.
All wires are connected at the gauges, but nothing is connected at the kick panel.
Packed weekend for mother's day so that all I'm getting done for now.

3 years and 4 months later I finally installed the oil pressure sending unit. According to the gauge I'm running mid 80s PSI at idle. I haven't gone for drive yet to see how it does while driving.
I figured while I was changing the oil today would be a great time to install the sending unit. It worked out as I needed to get the oil filter out of my way to better see what all was going on in the cramped space around the oil pressure switch.

The only gauge left to install the sender for is the trans temp sender. After installing the oil pressure sender, I'm glad the work for the trans temp sender is all top side. The sender will be installed inline before the trans cooler.

I also found that I had a broken rubber muffler hanger isolator which I found while greasing u-joints. I had one (that I could find, pretty sure I have a couple more) on hand so I swapped that good one on.

Earlier this week P0430 returned. I cleared it and it has not come back yet. I'm thinking the landscape brick that was rolling/bouncing across M59 a few years ago, which hit my D-side cat (since I had nowhere to safely go to avoid it) is likely the reason for that code. That cat has quite the dent which I'm sure means a significant portion of the innard of that cat is destroyed.

Krown appointment is set for the 18th of this month.

[DerekTheGreat]

Thanks for the Krown reminder.

[VicCrownVic]

Last year I waited too long and nothing was available for about a month when I booked. I was surprised to see plenty of openings when I booked my appointment. I guess I am ahead of the game this year. If I had room in my schedule, I could have already had it done since there were openings.

[DerekTheGreat]

We're going to have three vehicles to Krown this year. Greeat. Need to bribe a friend to waste a day and drive one of 'em if we want them all done on the same day.