My 1987 Two Door Crown Victoria AKA THE BROWN BLOB

[sly]

Drove the car today with the 21 tooth gear. Still not accurate but consistently inaccurate so I will call it a win. 35 on speedo is 30 on GPS, 45 is 40, 55 is 50 65 is 60 etc etc all the way up to 105 on the speedo. BTW that car is SCREAMING at 4K+ at that speed......

Next up is making a metal mount for the amplifier and attacking the dry seam sealer by the taillight panels.

My 88 was consistantly off by 13 with I first got it. I reseated the needle at zero (the shaft has a stop at zero, the needle doesn't - no peg) and it's been dead nuts accurate since.

[gadget73]

The needle will actually come off without much fuss? Thats cool. I never tried it. I figured they were glued on or something.

[87gtVIC]

I messed with the needle of the fuel gauge one day by accident and I have been afraid to touch others ever since. Needless to say I needed a replacement fuel gauge.

[marquisman]

Well, so long is consistent, what more do you want? lol. At least you made some good progress.

[87gtVIC]

I am totally cool with it being like 5mph off.

[sly]

the needles are press fit. no glue.

[tjc78]

I had a brand new car that read 4mph fast. As least it's not the other way.

[87gtVIC]

Got home early today and pulled the amplifier out of the trunk. I picked up some neato 90 degreed metal to make up a new amp mount for the car. If you don't know I have my amplifier tucked in a little nook behind the p.side taillight against the carpeting. The mount I have was halfassed wood thing I made a few years back. Time to upgrade.

Pulled it out then saw the old halfassed patches I put in the trunk years back. I pulled those up (they were only siliconed in) and proceeded to needle scale the area. Yikes. I hate rust.

I replaced all of the bad areas with metal and welded them in. After that I reseam sealed behind the p.side taillight as water was leaking in due to cracking seam sealer. Very happy.

I finished everything off with rust encapsulator. Will seam seal all of the welds when the encapsulator dries up.

Hope to fab up the amp mount sometime this week. Plan is to just mimic the shape of the existing carpeting in that nook. I will bolt it in place then put the carpeting over it and then install the amplifier ontop of it for a clean appearance that will be very solid.

[87gtVIC]

Rust encapsulated the underside of the repair area yesterday and seam sealed the underside today. My god did I purchase the worst foam brushes ever. Two passes and the brushes become oversaturated and flop around.

Today I fabbed up the metal amplifier mount and got that all finished. Had a scare though. Finished up making all of the connections for the amp and fired the car up. I only hear the front speakers. Went to the trunk and flipped the RCA cables around so now only the rears worked. Good. That means the amplifier is still good. So I go into the car and figure out that a setting became fubbared at some point. If I turn on the sub woofer function the rear speaker now worked BUT only as subs..... Had to turn the radio off, hold in the rotary knob and then scroll though a number of useless settings to find that the rear speakers were set to be subwoofers. Changed it and now all is well.

Next up is to attack the drivers side trunk area. Pull the taillight extension out and seam seal the bad areas and find out whatever all needs to be done.

[gadget73]

gotta love layers-deep menus.

[87gtVIC]

One really needs to keep the manual for the radio handy. No way to remember all of the features.


More needle scaling, wire wheeling, metal cutting, welding and rust encapsulating today. Target zone was drivers side trunk quarter panel area. Just like the passengers side the drivers side was rusted out above the body mount closest to the fuel tank. I also discovered while needle scaling that I had a rust through on the lower quarter panel behind the trim piece. I cut it out a welded in new metal. No paint work will be done as the trim will cover everything pack up.

I also attacked the seam sealer behind the taillight and replaced with new.

Tomorrow I will spray internal frame coating on all the bare metal underneath my welds and whenever my seam sealer shows up I will seam seal everything.

[87gtVIC]

Used up the rest of the seam sealer I had available and then internal frame coated all the inside pieces I couldn't get rust encapsulated. The internal frame coating comes with a funk hose and quad sprayer tip. Fucking thing made a mess all over. Had to compound out the paint on the quarter panel the overspray was so bad. Next time I will use more caution.

Inspection time has come and I just calculated the miles ran since last inspection. A whopping total of 18XX miles. It is about a 1000 more than years past. lol

[87gtVIC]

Seam sealed the underside and inside today. Temps are too cold to do any painting. I had in mind to de-scale the trunk pan and frame (gas tank-back) but the rust converter I purchased said do not use below 50 degrees. Gonna rain the next few days so all I did was remove the trailer hitch and DA'd it with 40 grit to prep it for paint stripper. I will coat it with extreme chasis black this time around.

[Louis]

Nice work, as usual.

Your car just keeps getting better and better.

[slack]

Yeah seriously! Awesome job!

Do you have any pics of the "de-rusting" process?