My 1989 Crown Victoria.

[gadget73]

you weren't trying to run it in with the smaller nut were you? Thats not strong enough to install the sending unit. Have to use the big one.

[slack]

You strong man you!

There had to be a defect in that part. My father who over tightens EVERYTHING TO DEATH did not break his when installed on his mustang.

Yep OEM style from a ford 5.0 block.

Haha I wish!

Well that's a relief. Yeah it seriously snapped apart without even trying.

you weren't trying to run it in with the smaller nut were you? Thats not strong enough to install the sending unit. Have to use the big one.

Nope. I screwed in the big nut first and then after that was tight, I screwed in the little sending unit. I actually screwed it in about halfway by hand to make sure I wasn't cross threading the thing. :\

[slack]

SunPro proves to be awesome! They asked for a copy of my receipt and my full address and will be sending me out a new sending unit within 48 hours no questions asked! Now that's some good customer service!

[sly]

yeah... that had to be a defect... those things are hard as hell to snap like that usually. mine went in fine using the supplied adapters.

[slack]

So, last week I went and picked up the oil pressure sending unit extension from David. (Thanks again!) I didn't get a chance to install it yet. I'm waiting until I have to do an oil change. (Probably within the next week or so).

Sunpro's replacement sending unit did come in the mail earlier this week so I was able to get around to installing the Temp gauge yesterday! It works great! I currently have it run around the door. I'm waiting on going through the firewall until I have the Oil Pressure gauge hooked up and tested. I pulled my key on power from the radio. Right now the light is linked to that. I plan on moving that over to a line from the ashtray light so it will dim with the dimmer a little later.

Here's some pics of the replacement sending unit before the install and the gauge just sort of floating around in my cup holder after all was said and done.

[packman]

Thanks! Yeah, I really wanted to get the poly bushings in when I was doing this but there was just no way it was going to happen on single Sunday. Getting the parts before hand and painting them was a good idea. How much did they JY charge you for them? Sorry to hear about the brake fitting. I always hold my breath when working around those things. haha



Thanks! That's exactly what happened to us. We really started to think "there's no way this is going to work". Thankfully it did. lol

Also, I finally gave the car a real wash for the first time in the almost two years I've owned it. I've only ever used the self car washes before on it. (They're not the best). Came out better than I expected!

Sorry for the late reply. They charged me $150 for the front suspension and rear differential.

Packman

[slack]

Good to know. Thanks! That's way cheaper than I thought it would be. So that was both upper and lower control arms for both sides and the rear diff?

[slack]

I've been getting code 34 when I run my codes lately. (both KOEO and KOER)

I've been trying to track down the EGR issue.

Things done:

• I verified that the valve holds pressure.
• I cleaned the valve and the intake where it mounts to.
• I re-ran rubber vacuum hoses instead of the brittle plastic lines from the plenum to the egr solenoid and from the solenoid to the egr. (I kept a little bit at the ends as a coupler for the rubber vac line and the rubber end fitting)
• I cleaned the connectors to the solenoid and the sensor.
• Verified vacuum from the plenum to the solenoid
• Verified voltage on the solenoid and sensor.
• Cleaned out the solenoid. (Removed "dust" filter)

I just was not getting any vacuum to the egr from the solenoid ever. (I read it should go up to 5lbs at throttle?)

Just for kicks, I picked up a new solenoid and installed it right now. Haven't checked vacuum yet. I'll have to get back to that.

New one installed:


Old one:

[slack]

Disassembled the old solenoid. None of the passage ways are clogged. Everything that I can access appears to be fine. Maybe the coil on the inside was shot? Or maybe it was okay. Still have to test the vacuum to the egr.

[slack]

So, I ended up running the vacuum line from the plenum directly too the new EGR solnoid. I was getting codes for the AIR stuff. Looks like there is a leak in the smog system so I just bypassed it. I'm now getting vacuum at the EGR valve. I think I'll keep it like that for this tank of gas and see if my fuel economy improves. From what I've read here, the smog stuff doesn't really do much of anything so it can basically be deleted completely out of the car.

In other news, I attached my oil pressure gauge and did a fresh oil change. I should have some pics tomorrow or so. The new gauge seems to be working okay. I get around 50psi on cold idle and around 25psi on hot idle. Once I start driving and have a steady foot on my throttle on hot idle, it will goes back to and stays at 50psi. Good to know I have decent oil pressure!

[slack]

Fuel economy is up with the EGR back to getting a vacuum. I've been getting between 18.5-19.5mpg lately! Thank god. Getting 14mpg was killing me.

In other news, my Mevotech pitman arm I installed back in the Fall decided it was time to die already. (Not even close to a year). I've heard bad things about Mevotech but didn't really read up on them until I already installed the arm. The ball joint on it was completely shot. It caused my car to wonder all over the road. I took a pry bar to the joint on it and the ball lifted almost halfway out of the cup. :o

I picked up a Moog pitman arm to replace it. I also had a new steering gear box laying around that I've been meaning to install as well as new hoses to the power steering pump. This past Saturday I finally got around to swapping everything out. It all went really smoothly actually because the old stuff had been leaking, it kept all the fittings nice and oiled and rust free.

The only issue I did run into was the steering yolk retaining nut. It's not a 12mm like I saw when searching this forum. It's actually a 7/16 spline nut. Anything else will strip the living shit out of it. I had to run out in the middle of the swap to pick up a set of spline sockets just for that nut.

Anyway, here's some pics of the process as well as a quick write up. Sorry for the quality, my phone is old and these were taken at night. (Started around 8:00pm). The nice thing was with all the suspension upgrades and larger tires, I didn't even have to jack the car up to do this job!

First thing I did was remove the nut and lock washer from the old pitman arm. I used a good 5ft long fence pipe to get this thing off. I didn't pry the old pitman arm off because I didn't need it but I did need the nut and washer for the new one.


After that was off, we used an impact gun to get the castle nut off the balljoint on the control arm because it was just freely spinning.

Following that, removed the two high and low pressure lines from the power steering pump. The high pressure line requires a line wrench and the low pressure line is a hose clamp.

To remove the steering box, there's three bolts (around 19mm?) in the driver's side wheel well that need to come out. We attached a ton of bungies to to the thing so that it wouldn't come crashing down when all the bolts were out. (It's pretty heavy.)

After the bolts were removed, you just have to take out that retaining bolt I was talking about that clamps the steering shaft to the gearbox and pull the gearbox assembly out of the car. I went through the bottom, I don't know if it's easier through the top (or possible) but it wasn't bad.

Here it is with everything removed:


Also while we're at it, here's a pic of the oil pressure sending unit installed using the ford extension.


To get everything back in, it's basically just the reverse of the removal.

Gearbox goes in, clamp to steering shaft. Then hoses from gear box to pump. (I used this time to flush out the power steering pump and make sure it was nice and full with all fresh Type F transmission fluid.) After that pitman arm is installed and pressed on to the gearbox using a huge socket and a long fence pipe as a breaker bar. All in all, not too bad. I wish I remembered what the size of the nut on the pitman arm was... It's definitely well above 1inch though.

Also one thing to note, the replacement power steering hoses are NOT 100% the same shape as the old ones so fitting them in requires a little bit of finagling.

Here's a couple blurry bad pics of the new stuff installed:



And the new pitman arm. I hit it with liquid wrench as I was pressing it on for some extra lubrication. (I don't think it was required though).

[miamibob]

Why was the EGR not getting vacuum??

[slack]

There must be a leak in the smog pump vacuum lines. The manifold vacuum goes to the EGR solenoid and that goes to the EGR. Where the manifold vacuum comes in, it also connects to vacuum lines that go to the smog AIR solenoids also on the passenger's side fender. I'm thinking there's a break in one of those. Once the manifold vacuum was plugged right into the EGR solenoid, the mpg problem stopped.

I should also mention I was getting the AIR injection codes (I think 94 and 44?) as well with everything hooked up. At first I wasn't getting these codes, just the EGR codes. I must have broke one of the brittle vacuum lines there while trying to diagnose what's going on. I haven't checked lately but I'm pretty positive I still get all the codes currently (EGR and AIR). I haven't messed with it more because my gas mileage is back to where it should be.

When I have more time, I'll come back to it unless someone else has any other ideas what it may be?

[miamibob]

Need to check this myself as my '87 is getting around 12 MPG/city! What's the best way to check it?

[slack]

For me, I made sure that I had vacuum coming from the red vacuum line that comes from the intake manifold to the EGR solenoid. Then I went and checked if I had vacuum ever on the green line at the EGR itself on the intake. I had a vacuum on the red line (pretty strong too) but absolutely nothing ever on the green line (regardless of throttle or engine temp).

I unplugged the extra couplings that the red line connects to and put it straight onto the bottom port on the EGR solenoid. After I did that, I then got vacuum at the green vacuum line at the EGR.

I'm not sure this is text book correct so someone feel free to correct me.