kishy's 1985 Country Squire

[gadget73]

so solenoid issue, thats good to know. Looking in an old book I found that covers that system, EGRC is normally closed, EGRV is open. apply 12v to flip states. they don't pass or block vacuum as appropriate that has to be the bad one. I did have an EVR on my 86 act up and flushing it with some WD40 fixed it. i think it was just sticky or dirty, not sure if the same fix would work on this setup or not.

[kishy]

The solenoids checked out as far as I could tell re: pass or hold vacuum at appropriate times. I believe the fault is that they aren't responsive enough to operate the valve to the computer's contentment, which would support possibly being a bit sticky. This also goes along with the lack of audible clicking.

It would be interesting (but not likely for me to actually do) to hook up a scope and record waveforms of what the computer commands vs what the EVP sees on the working arrangement and also the non-working arrangement during the KOER test. I expect the non-working would just resemble a lazy version of the working one.

[kishy]

As described in a thread about that subject (details at the link), but reiterating here as it relates to this car, May 11-16 2023 I took the wagon on a road trip. The first destination of the trip was Deals Gap, with intent to take the car on the famous US 129 "Tail of the Dragon", together with a group of friends in various cars. My car easily earned the most attention out of the group, and it also exceeded my expectations for how it held the road and stood up to what I would describe as significantly spirited driving. I made the car work hard, but it did everything I asked.

The second destination of the trip, breaking off from the group, was to approximately Atlantic City, NJ, for social reasons, after which I drove home.

The only real problem the car presented during the trip was about 2/3 through Pennsylvania on the return trip, giving me a very concerning transmission slip on a 1-2 shift going WOT around a corner onto an onramp. I actually thought I lost the trans when it happened. But I let off, the gear engaged, and we were back in business. The 1-2 shift on this car has occasionally felt a little soft when the trans is hot, so this is something to keep an eye on. However, it has not repeated the big slip since that one time, and the 1-2 shift is typically firm, so it should be good for a while. It is possible, as the shift and slip happened coming out of a corner, that the fluid went away from the filter pickup opening and the trans lost fluid pressure for a second. I'd sort of prefer to assume that.

Summarizing some of the recent posts in this same thread, the following are items I fixed/improved/addressed prior to this trip, and with specific intent to make the car better for it:

• Exhaust: manifolds, cats, H, mufflers, O2 sensor
• Ignition: plugs, wires, cap, rotor, coil, newer revision TFI
• Leaks: coolant, oil, transmission fluid
• Power steering fluid changed
• Changed the fan clutch for one that works
• Oil change and complete chassis grease ahead of change interval
• Front sway bar upgrade and rear sway bar addition
• Brakes: rear shoes and turned drums, which then expanded into bearing replacement when deemed necessary, and front performance rotors and pads, and performance brake fluid
• How could anyone forget: fixed the EGR

Which, laid out like this, is a very extensive list of work. An objective analysis would probably say that using the car for the trip, with it needing that investment of effort, may not have been the smart choice. But I enjoy this stuff, so reason tends to go out the window.

Of course, one of the perks of taking your car through the Dragon is being captured by the local photographers, who have created a bit of a local tourism industry surrounding their photography. In addition to my photos posted in the thread linked above, I paid for a few shots of the car taken by those photographers.

129slayer
Freebie; they featured me on their Facebook page:


Paid: this is not the exact same shot as above, because I wanted to toss them a few bucks but didn't want to do so for a photo I already had a usable-size copy of from the Facebook post.


129photos
My passenger, Sarah, waved in this one.


killboy, the original Dragon photography outfit




Is this service worth the money it commands? Debatable, but these guys invest a fair bit in their work, and I was in a position to do it, so...shrug.

The driving in the photos was not particularly spirited. I kinda wish there'd been a photographer at one of the corners I ripped through a little on the hotter side. I feel like body roll and tire sidewalls would be telling a story. But that being said, the upgrade to 30mm front sway bar (no, not all wagons were built with them, evidently, as mine wasn't) and the addition of the rear bar really kept the car quite flat.

[DerekTheGreat]

Hmm, you take better photos than they do.

[87gtVIC]

Neat. The killboy ones are well positioned.

[jaywish]

I always recommend a trans cooler on the older fords.

[kishy]

Hmm, you take better photos than they do.

Thank you, I'd have to agree they didn't seem to get the right angles, but what works for these cars isn't always the same as newer/sportier stuff. Most were not acceptable, the ones I selected are decent though.

Neat. The killboy ones are well positioned.

killboy is the original, and though he now has photographers doing it for him, I know they try to get the best vantage points.

I always recommend a trans cooler on the older fords.

I have one. It seemed prudent when I started occasionally towing with this car.

---

Story time.

On the weekend, I drove the wagon to my mom's house (away on vacation) to get the Focus. I need to do a couple small tasks to it and also wanted to put some mileage on it feeling out any developing problems. Focus came home, wagon stayed at mom's.

Monday evening 6/05 I dropped off mom's Focus at the oil spray place. I put the bike rack on the back so I could ride my bike home after dropping it off. Tuesday it got sprayed, during the day I dropped by to pay and get the key.

Tuesday evening 6/06 I realized I had made an error, as I had an appointment for the wagon and the Ranger Trailer to get sprayed on Wednesday.
I used the Ranger (non-Trailer variety) to drive to mom's, swapped it with the wagon, drove the wagon home, hitched the trailer, and drove it to the oil spray place.
Picked up the Focus, drove home, all good. Wednesday, the wagon and trailer got thoroughly soaked with oil, and I stopped by in the afternoon to pay and pick up the key, explaining that it'd be an extra day for me to get this one.

Wednesday after work I saw the band Paramore play in Detroit, which was a fantastic show. I used the Focus to get there and back, with no issues surfacing. Way too tired upon getting home to deal with the wagon, so I pushed it to the next day.

Thursday night, I got home from work and promptly fell asleep on the couch unintentionally (with some potatoes in the oven, to boot). Woke up at about 4AM. Full of energy. Empty of potatoes. Turned the oven off, decided to worry about the potatoes another time. Hopped on my bike, rode to the oil spray place (at 4AM), and found the wagon's battery is dead. Dashcam hardwire kit strikes again! Regardless of that, a healthy battery would have lasted longer than just a couple days with that load on it. The booster pack that normally lives in the trunk had been taken out to avoid any potential soaking with oil.

Rode back home. Grabbed booster cables and a lithium booster pack, put them in the Focus. Put the bike on the back of the Focus. Drove to the oil spray place. Yes, at 5ish AM.

Started the wagon. Leapfrogged the wagon+trailer and the Focus back home, breaking the drive into about 5 segments, using the bike to get between vehicles at each step. Efficient? No. But I was awake and had the energy.

Put in my time off for work and proceeded to sleep through the entire day. Not really ideal, but hey, I woke up feeling great. Warranty-swapped the Costco car battery in the evening. Put it in today.

New Kirkland group 65 850CCA battery, manufactured 2022-12, purchased 2023-06-09, installed 2023-06-10 at 97774km.

Not sure precisely when I bought the old one but I'd bet it was in 2019. The price at that time was 129.99 CAD. The same is now 184.99 CAD. Costco batteries are 4 year free replacement, though, so that's cool.

[sly]

wow. Once again, I'm glad I'm not in the rusty places.

[kishy]

New battery has been behaving as you'd expect. Goodly.
That combined with adjusting the shut-off voltage on the dashcam hardwire adapter has been a good thing.

Going back to the beginning on this one, the mileage was always a mystery. Being an '85, it would have a 6-digit odometer in Canada, but it was an American market car and therefore had a 5-digit odometer. When I got the metric cluster for it, I converted the then-showing miles to kilometres and set the new odometer to that, and have largely proceeded as if the odometer had never rolled over. The car shows evidence of sun and salt damage, but didn't necessarily show evidence of a whole lot of mileage, and for the years history was available for, it seemed unlikely to have rolled over unless it was driven a ludicrous amount in just a few years.

With that all being said, this engine produced visible blowby from day 1 for me (oil cap off, watch it puff mildly). It made good compression and pulls hard enough that I wasn't concerned about it.

I recently replaced the oil filler cap as the (some sort of plastic) mesh inside the cap forming the PCV filter was disintegrating. The new cap doesn't fit very well and falls off sometimes, being caught by the PCV hose. While in a drive-through last night after some highway mileage, a large volume of smoke started coming out of the driver wheel well. The oil cap had fallen off, and the blowby was like watching an exhaust stack at a tractor pull.

Starts, idles, runs, and drives just fine, and still pulls about as hard as I need it to, but this engine is tired. Probably going to throw some 15W40 at it and see if that calms down the rate it seems to be getting past the rings, but I think the clock is ticking on this one. Best reasonable approach is probably a late Explorer 5.0 but I'd rather keep things EEC-IV and from a familiarity standpoint (and pure stubbornness) probably speed-density as well (but obviously I'll take SEFI if I'm doing the work). I'm just not sure there's a combination of pieces that allows GT40 heads and the Explorer cam to work nicely with a stock lopo ECM, and I know the 'good' EEC-IV ECMs are hard to come by and pricey when they turn up.

OTOH, the 91 has the lopo low oil pressure problem and isn't currently a driver pending basically a mini-restoration. That means I have a roller block already in my possession that I could freshen up and maybe throw on whatever the best heads are for a stock lopo, swap that in, then deal with the 91 as a separate issue later. Of course, the 91 is currently a car that runs and drives (but I don't, due to its list of needs), and I don't intend to treat it like a parts car.

This engine spent a lot of time at high temps and high RPM on the NC trip. It's rather likely that I cooked it to death. Not necessarily surprising.

This project will get its own thread when I have some sort of plan for how to move forward. The car remains a driver at this time but I am giving serious consideration to putting back the old cats as the oil consumption has skyrocketed and that's a total waste of new cats, they'll be toast in a couple more months tops if I don't do something.

[gadget73]

un-tuned speed density doesn't seem to play too nice with Explorer type airflow. I tried it, it ran very lean. Un-tuned mass air seems to do OK though.

[Mainemantom]

Have you tried using STP oil treatment ? Many years ago, STP was commonly used. My worst case was using 40w +SPT. The 1962 Mercury 390 motor was really worn out.

[kishy]

Forgot that I can't swap the cats back, as I would also have to swap the manifolds back (re: butterfly valve in exhaust affects cat fitment and I used 90TC manifolds and 91MGM cats).
Car is parked until some determinations are made about moving forward.

Leakdown test is forthcoming once I get my hands on the tool.

Probably going to play with some additives. This might not be wear; a sticky oil ring is a possibility. Poking a camera in the plug holes wouldn't be the worst idea either.

un-tuned speed density doesn't seem to play too nice with Explorer type airflow. I tried it, it ran very lean. Un-tuned mass air seems to do OK though.

That tilts me back towards maybe just stock rebuild. I'm not really in search of more power, it just seemed like a sensible "might as well".

Do we know if the ECM for a non-HO CFI 5.0 is the same as a HO CFI 5.0? Wondering about just throwing a bit of a better cam at it (which I think is all the CFI setup really is, plus a higher volume air cleaner). I'm not even sure I want to ditch CFI. Between the Town Car and this, they've proven it to be a valid and reliable system to me.

Being an 85 it should have heads that aren't the worst heads these cars were built with. Maybe second-worst though. I know a guy who's a bit of a wizard at porting. He'd probably say to start with better heads though.

My friend has a machine shop and builds engines, and has offered to build me something. He is more or less refusing to allow it to be stock though, which makes me more inclined to pay someone else more money, honestly.

Have you tried using STP oil treatment ? Many years ago, STP was commonly used. My worst case was using 40w +SPT. The 1962 Mercury 390 motor was really worn out.

Haven't tried any additives yet, but giving it some thought. Definitely worth trying the pour-in approach before ripping it apart.

[gadget73]

pretty sure its different, and the injectors are also different. Its probably in the master parts manual somewhere.


the cam is less why it sucks than the airflow through the engine. If you let it breathe with better heads, intake, and exhaust the stock cam would do OK, still won't do any high rpm power, but airflow is where the speed density chokes out anyway so it wouldn't really fix the problem.

[DerekTheGreat]

Try Restore engine treatment, that stuff will at least boost compression, which might lead to less blow-by.

[Tiggie]

If it got hot, it possibly cooked the rings. I think it has to get pretty hot for that, however. Also possible a valve stem seal hardened and/or split.

I know you were running it hard, but I feel like it should have been able to take it as far as the temperature goes. If it couldn't, I wonder where the weak spot is in the cooling system.