kishy's 1985 Country Squire

[kishy]

After some further reflection, I think I agree that both the battery + cable, the battery itself, and the dashcam hardwire kit are all suspect. Unfortunately my load tester broke so I can't really do a meaningful test with the battery that doesn't involve swapping it into some other vehicle. The ignition switch will be next to check if all of that seems to come out OK, but when they start falling apart they have a specific feeling to them, and this one doesn't have it.

The battery cable was a newer part (actually looked brand new) when I got the car, but is oddly twisted and bent so it could have many broken strands within.
The battery is a 2 year old Costco Kirkland battery and is still within its free replacement warranty, so testing it is a priority.
I am aware of the shortcomings of the hardwire kit and I fully remove the camera from the car if it's sitting longer than a few days, but it isn't clear to me that the hardwire kit can't consume a small amount of current on its own. I'm not sure what method it's using to drop the 12V down to 5.

I will try to warranty-replace the load tester, then load test the battery. If it falls on its face immediately, we know it's got a couple dead cells.
I also placed a RockAuto order for a pile of battery cables needed for various upcoming projects, and included appropriate items to fix this car if the cable ends up being the problem.

The main body ground has always been a little suspect to me on this car because it has always seemed like the voltage that makes it into the interior is a little saggy, but the engine controls (which have a dedicated ground) have never given me grief on this one.

[Mainemantom]

Do you have a hydrometer for checking battery cells ? Pretty inexpensive but they work.

[gadget73]

voltage drop test across the cables will tell you all you need to know. If it reads more than millivolts with just the key on, its bad. Shouldn't be more than about a tenth of a volt per foot when cranking.

[kishy]

Sometimes, I need to follow that K.I.S.S. rule. The positive battery terminal was dirty, and my battery brush is too worn to scrape it nicely. Fortunately, I just bought a box of battery cables, so I was able to replace it easily and it behaves flawlessly now. It also doesn't look like a disaster anymore. Well, the cable at least.









(yes, backwards battery, but that's how you put a group 65 in these cars without doing stupid things to the cables)

2023-03-05, 92,000km, new positive battery cable.

[87gtVIC]

That was a nasty looking cable fore sure.

[DerekTheGreat]

Yah, I expect better from you. :P

Careful of that spark plug wire hanging out dangerously close to the exhaust manifold..

[kishy]

In July of last year, I visited Cherry Picked Auto Parts in Toledo, OH. I bought a number of items from a 1980 LTD, including some very nice front turn signals and corner marker lenses. Tonight, I decided to install those on the wagon as the amber colour is much richer compared to the sun-faded ones on my car. One of the bezels was broken, so I had to transfer the lenses out of it, and that proved to be challenging as the screws weren't happy about turning. This also serves to let me throw out the broken bezel as it is no longer storing the lenses for my eventual use.







As it turns out, the junkyard '80 had two left-hand turn signals, with the one on the right side being installed upside down. This is not the "correct" way to do this but it works well enough.

I recently bought a set of 4 LED headlights via eBay, which had been mentioned in 87gtvic's interesting findings thread. They are a little underwhelming - not totally useless but not really good either - but I'd gone down the headlight rabbithole and did some research which prompted me to look at better options. I was looking at Grote, specifically 64J61-5 low beam and 64J71-5 high beam, but eventually stumbled on the fact somewhere that United Pacific also rebrands the exact same lamps and often for a few bucks less. I ended up with 34131 low beams and 34132 high beams, with a silver face.







These seem pretty decent. Lots of aluminum in the housing for heat sinking, reasonably constructed internals, glass lens, thermostatically controlled lens heater for winter use, firm cutoff line, reasonable (not great but reasonable) optics. The design of the optics is very similar to the LED headlights on a few of our fire trucks at work. This car isn't "in season" yet but I'm looking forward to putting these lights through their paces soon when I start driving it again. I do wish the high beam spread was a little more...better...but these should be highly functional.

[friskyfrankie]

Are the faces of the headlights you installed glass or plastic?

[packman]

Headlights look awesome!

Question: is your battery tray still intact? I noticed in your battery cable pics that the support bracket was missing.

[kishy]

Are the faces of the headlights you installed glass or plastic?

The bodies are aluminum and the lens is glass.

Headlights look awesome!

Question: is your battery tray still intact? I noticed in your battery cable pics that the support bracket was missing.

Thank you.
The metal support which goes underneath the battery tray, as molded into the inner fender, is absent. The bracket that the hold-down J-bolt goes into was rusted apart so it had no structural value. We (you and I) actually discussed how I addressed this issue in this same thread in 2020:

(snip)
Came up with a battery hold-down solution. The metal which normally runs under the battery tray and forms the connecting point for the hold-down J-hook is completely gone, as it was rusty junk. I reinforced the plastic with some sheet metal and now the J-hook grabs onto that. Took this opportunity to install a group 65 battery, as I had previously altered the tray to accept one, and have found one of my group 65 hold-downs.

That was the way my battery tray was in the '86 CV. I ended up bolting up a JEGS universal battery tray in its place. I was even able to use the stock bracket to hold the battery tray.

Not a particularly great solution on my part, but it was a functional way to provide a place for the J-hook to grab onto.

[packman]

My bad. This freakin 2-minute goldfish memory is killing me. Totally forgot about that.

[kishy]

With the weather steadily shifting in the right direction, and the likelihood of any further road salting being just about zero, the wagon has hit the streets for 2023.



That 79 has seen better days, but it's still hanging on.

Leaks requiring attention: coolant (minor but exists, and not sure where from), ATF (at the re-O-ringed fittings in the rad). Engine oil also, oil pan gasket seems to be suspect, but I don't put a lot of priority on that. A dry oil pan will rust, this one at least certainly won't be rusting through any time soon.

The headlights are performing well. I was getting a lot of high beam flashes as I had them aimed before, so I dropped them down a bit and so far I'm pleased with them.

Today, I set about replacing the Y-pipe with an H-pipe and installing mufflers. This has been without a muffler for a while now. I'm holding off on swapping the cats for now, but since I'm using all direct-fit parts it shouldn't be hard to do that later.



Results:

• Installed small rear sway bar from K-code axle that I have hanging around. Whole axle may eventually go in this car but sway bar was possible with minimal effort and time.
• Painted H-pipe flanges with VHT primer and paint to hopefully extend the life of the H-pipe
• Removed Y-pipe, and installed H-pipe (Walker 40483 direct-fit, discontinued, I've had it on hand for a couple years) to existing cats using stainless hardware and gaskets coated in RTV
• Installed driver side muffler hanger (scrapped 83 TC take-off)
• Hung mufflers (Walker 18182 SoundFX direct-fit) using stainless hardware
• Found Walker H-pipe too short; is a direct fit part but isn't designed correctly. Fortunately, the lap-joint band clamps I had on-hand to use for this were adequate to bridge the gap left by the pipes being too short. Stuffed the clamps with RTV as is customary for me and cranked them down tight. For better long-term stability, the gap should be taken up by a short length of pipe on each side.
• Packed some exhaust patch putty into the small cracks and holes in my cats to try to buy me a little more life out of them

Tailpipes will be a custom job, perhaps done by taking a couple of my collected used tailpipes and modifying them to be side-exit wagon tailpipes. But until then, this is more functional than what there was before.

Sound is pretty tame, definitely less fun sounding than the 84 Town Car. I was looking for the option that would be quick, easy, and cheap, and direct-fit mufflers to bolt right onto the stock hangers were a requirement to hit those goals.

[1985crownvicltd85]

Nice job.

Did you happen to record a video of the exhaust and how it sounds?

[87gtVIC]

Neat roof rack on the 79!

nice work on your exhaust.

[kishy]

Nice job.

Did you happen to record a video of the exhaust and how it sounds?

I have not yet. I'm trying to decide if I can even live with it. Cruising at any normal driving speed is really quiet inside the car, which isn't a problem but I might have hoped for something a little mildly raspy on acceleration which is lacking.

The problem is the drone at idle. It's astonishingly loud and annoying. I don't even know that a phone camera would pick it up adequately. I'll see if I can slap something together to demonstrate it. The acoustics might change a fair bit once it gets tailpipes but the idle drone is absolutely obnoxious. I drove through to the top of a multi-storey parking garage and at those low speeds it was intolerable. I'm thinking stop-n-go traffic would be the same.

Edit: I tried to record videos of a few different perspectives, and the phone mic doesn't pick up the drone at all. All other sounds of the exhaust are exactly like any stock fully-muffled vehicle, inside or outside of the car. Whether I keep these mufflers or not is going to come down to if tailpipes cure the idle drone.

Neat roof rack on the 79!

nice work on your exhaust.

Yeah, the roof rack is something. Based on the license plate, this is most likely a 1-owner car, and I wonder if in the owner's younger years maybe the car went on some adventures like long distance road trips. Or maybe the roof rack is only for boring reasons.