kishy's 1985 Country Squire

[kishy]

Not mentioned above, as part of taking the car out on the road for the first time of the season, I discovered the washer fluid pump had quit working. I am fairly sure I recently threw out what would have been a viable donor (Ranger reservoir, taken off when upgrading it to a larger one), so I had no spares anymore. Local parts store was able to supply one for 18 bucks, tax-in, and I put it in tonight.

No interesting pics, kind of a boring repair honestly. I got the old one out, found it did not want to turn by hand, but after putting a little more force on it, it became free and feels about right. I'll hang onto it as an emergency spare for the next one to give me issues.

[kishy]

As noted in my junkyard thread, in February I took some rear interior plastics from a derby car partout (89 Ford wagon with blue interior). Tonight, I set about installing most of those items.

Before:







Swapping it out:











I am fairly sure the blue is not the same, but I'm not really bothered by it. The less chalky finish is a huge improvement and contributes to the overall trend of making the car nicer to be in and near.

I do also have the cargo area mat, which after a quick cleaning will go into the car. The tailgate door card requires new fasteners before I can install it, but that's also coming soonish.

[VicCrownVic]

Looks good to me even if the color match isn't perfect, it looks much nicer.

As a former wagon driver, and we had 2 in the family at the time, I'm all too familiar with the chalk dust that those panels turn into. Any ideas on how to mitigate that?

[friskyfrankie]

Wonder if several coatings of 303 Aero Protectant would work?

[Tiggie]

Much improved. I keep mine in the 88 slathered in armor all or some other oily product, and it must help.

[kishy]

I'm thinking perhaps a UV-resistant spray, maybe Scotch Gard if there is a variety of it appropriate for hard surfaces. That plus window tint (was aiming to maybe do that this season) should keep those parts nice enough for the foreseeable rest of the life of the car.

The 'new' pieces are already faded on top but haven't gone chalky yet, so there's still hope to save them.

Got the cargo area mat cleaned:





Again, not perfect, but really...uh...transformational.

[friskyfrankie]

The 303 is UV resistant so maybe you can test it on a small area and see how it does. Let us know.

[gadget73]

UV-blocking window tint would be a good idea all around. The seats and carpet fade pretty badly from UV too. The velour seats all turn a grey color on the side, and the blue carpet especially gets a bunch of shades lighter.

some tint wouldn't make the AC performance suffer any either.

[87gtVIC]

That is a huge improvement. Nice score again on those panels. Definitely put them to good use.

[kishy]

I looked through my cans of Scotch Gard and none of the varieties I have are suited to hard surfaces. I did take the opportunity to spray Antsy the Anteater with the UV protective variant, so Antsy can ride on the dash again. As a refresher about the significance of Antsy, he came with the car (2017 pic):



Freshly Scotch Garded and ready for adventures:



Unfortunately this product is quite smelly so I'm hoping that will fade quickly.

I think I have at least one 303 product somewhere, as well as another detailing product specifically for plastics that helps with sun fading, so I have some options. A proper UV-blocking tint would be best regardless.

Continuing with small projects that help clear up my pile of parts, last night I sanded/primed/sanded/painted one of my recently acquired spare tire mounting hooks, and today I've now installed it along with the intact spare tire lifting strap/harness thing.









This should reduce some rattling noises related to the jack not being held tightly in position. Obviously, the 98-02 aluminum donut is not a perfect fit in the space either, but it works.

[jaywish]

The tint can be clear with additional UV protection if you like.

[kishy]

Got a tint quote. $550. I was expecting more than typical car rate of mid-200s (maybe 350) but that's quite a bit higher. I'm going to call around for some more quotes. If that ends up being what it costs, so be it, but that's not cheap.

I had been discussing the exhaust project with my friend Dan and he asked why I did the H-pipe but not the cats, since I have new cats on-hand. I explained my hesitance to put new cats on the car while its idle speed is not correct (RE: broken screws in throttle body assembly), and that it looked likely that I'd SEFI swap this one, and then swap the cats at that time. Somehow, the decision-making process wheels started turning, and I decided to put the new cats on it anyway.

I took the car to my friend Ted's house, who has recently installed a hoist. I brought with me a pretty comprehensive kit of parts, tools, and hardware, and yanked the old cats off with relative ease. However, when it came time to take the remains of the studs out of the manifolds, one of the passenger side ones broke off in the manifold. At the same time, I had realized I needed longer bolts, so Ted worked on trying to weld a nut onto the remains (difficult because it broke below the surface of the manifold flange) while I drove his truck to the store for longer bolts.







While driving back, I had a lightbulb moment: not only do I own two sets of 90 Town Car tubular manifolds, but they've been resurfaced at a machine shop, one pair is already primed for VHT high temp paint, all their threads have been chased nicely, and I'm going to need to swap the driver side manifold anyway in order to add the second O2 sensor for SEFI.

So I arrived back at Ted's house and told him to stop. I drove to my house, picked up the 90TC manifolds, as well as the cats I'd purchased for the 91 Grand Marquis. There is a converter fitment difference between CFI and SEFI cars due to the exhaust butterfly valve on the driver side, which I discussed briefly in the 84 TC thread when I did its exhaust. Indeed, putting them beside each other, the cat for the 91 has a taller downpipe than the cat for the 85.

I painted the primed manifolds, re-chased the threads, and set about pulling the cast iron beasts off the engine. This went smoothly and all hardware was reusable. I used an old O2 sensor to plug the currently surplus hole on the driver side manifold, put the cats up with new 7/16-14 bolts, and started fighting with the H-pipe and mufflers to get it all lined up properly.















As happened with the 84 Town Car, it appears Magnaflow direct-fit cats do not fit exactly correct. When snugging everything up, it all tries to pull to the driver side of the car, angling the H-pipe towards that side. I can't think if a way to fix this other than some sort of spacer at the flange between the cat and H-pipe on that side, but doing so would make the flanges no longer sit flush. We made spacers for the mufflers out of 2" square tubing to push the mufflers forward from their hangers which helped take some of the weirdness out, but it's still pretty weird. Very close to the floor in one spot and the mufflers are kind of pointing different angles. Not too stressed about it but I might hate it a bit more when it's time to get tailpipes put on. I did bring a set of take-off sedan tailpipes to mark them where they should be cut to convert them into wagon tailpipes, and I will probably use those same pipes for that project. For now, it still exits from the mufflers.



Results are as follows:
The drone at idle has changed into a burble. My interpretation of this is that the cats were restricted. Backpressure was never measured though so I have no point of reference.
The exhaust is noisier inside the car at all speeds, but I'm not too annoyed yet. Still need to see what tailpipes do to the noise level.
Throttle response seems about the same off idle, but it feels like it pulls better leaning into the throttle once already at speed. It seems like I can get more out of it without needing to push far enough for a downshift.
Too early to have any numbers for fuel economy calculations, but it was absolutely abysmal before. Before touching the exhaust, it got 14ish US MPG highway (80ish MPH), but curiously the same in the city. The sweet spot for fuel economy was 50MPH where it would do 20-21. At all speeds it seemed quite a bit worse than the 84 TC which should be about the same in all respects. I believe this is symptomatic of restricted cats but I welcome any counterpoints.

I also test-fitted the police steel wheels which are currently on the wagon on the front of my 91, which has the 98-02 brakes up front. They absolutely do not fit. The wheel can be snugged up to the hub using the lug nuts, but it is locked solid against the caliper and can't turn. This validates my previous decision to use 95-97 brakes on this car, because I knew 15" wheels were in my goals for it.

I observed that the trans cooler line fittings leak not only at the rad, but also at the trans. I might just buy the Dorman (or whatever they are) whole fittings so I can get it to stop leaking for a while, until I can come up with a better game plan.



2023-04-22 @ 92,577km, installed Magnaflow 93367 and 93368 direct-fit cats which were purchased by shopping for a 91 Grand Marquis in 2016.
Cats were bought from tdotperformance.ca for $150 Canadian each. They are substantially more expensive to buy today (500-800 dollars typical, and sometimes in USD).

[87gtVIC]

Good thinking on the townie manifolds.

[Kodachrome Wolf]

Definitely liked the Town Car manifolds while I had them.

Looks like someone did converters prior to you doing converters. I'm used to the 2-cat per downpipe deal factory. Seems most of the aftermarket setups do away with the the upper one that makes it more aggravating to get at the manifold studs and do everything in a combination unit. Makes it nicer with a more efficient design.

I don't recall having a fitment issue when I fitted the MF converters on my '87. Wasn't there some air diverter component that was on the end of one of the manifolds of the CFI cars that operated that air cleaner heater cap?

[kishy]

Another thing I forgot to mention: I adjusted the steering box the other day, by a cumulative 3/4 turn, done in 1/4s with test drives in between. The stability when returning to centre is much improved; for example, this cured the overcorrection I'd sometimes do coming out of a curve on the highway. I am not sure that this pump is providing the correct amount of assist; it might be for the wrong car and therefore have the wrong valving in it. I have no interest in swapping the pump since this one doesn't leak, but if the valving can be changed, I might want to do that.

As noted in another thread, it is highly likely that I'm taking this car on the Tail of the Dragon (and the drive there and back), so I'm focusing on a few specific improvements to make that safer and more enjoyable. You'll see a lot more in this thread in the next week or so.

Good thinking on the townie manifolds.

Yes, I'm very fortunate to have broken that stud because it started the thought process that reminded me I had intended to swap the manifolds (RE: prep for SEFI swap).

Eyeballing them, there isn't possibly much better flow (better sure, but not much better), but the O2 sensor accommodation will be required. Plus it's an opportunity to start dressing up the engine bay. Slowly.

Definitely liked the Town Car manifolds while I had them.

Looks like someone did converters prior to you doing converters. I'm used to the 2-cat per downpipe deal factory. Seems most of the aftermarket setups do away with the the upper one that makes it more aggravating to get at the manifold studs and do everything in a combination unit. Makes it nicer with a more efficient design.

I don't recall having a fitment issue when I fitted the MF converters on my '87. Wasn't there some air diverter component that was on the end of one of the manifolds of the CFI cars that operated that air cleaner heater cap?

Single cat per side is the only configuration I've seen on pre-SEFI cars, both US and Canadian sales markets. My '91 does have the 4-cat arrangement like you have described.

You've combined two separate emissions components into one. The "heat riser valve" is a butterfly valve between the driver side exhaust manifold and the downpipe, which closes to force exhaust through the intake manifold (presumably the EGR passage) to warm the intake, I believe for improved atomization. This car did have that. When I changed my plans to use the 90TC manifolds, I also changed which cats I was using. I had both CFI-spec and SEFI-spec cats on-hand, and used the SEFI cats for this job. From a parts fitment perspective, 90 manifolds, cats that fit a 90, H pipe that fits a 90. Yet the fitment issue is the same one encountered on an 84 using parts that correspond to an 84. It could also be Walker's fault with the H-pipe. It is the common denominator, if we ignore the installer being the same guy.

The CFI-spec cats do have a shorter downpipe to account for the valve, so the valve must remain (even if disabled) when using those cats on a car that has its original exhaust manifold on that side.

There is also no stock parts configuration that would allow using the heat riser valve on the 90TC manifolds (or any other SEFI manifold) if you felt inclined to for some reason, nor a way to mate even the longer cat downpipe to the original manifold without the valve present without adding more hardware. There is no "ball end" (as in ball and socket joint) on the driver side manifold of a car that uses that valve.