VicCrownVic's 1998 Mercury Grand Marquis LS

[VicCrownVic]

Later than us, even. Had our cars done about three weeks ago, thought we were really pushing it. Now I might intentionally schedule this late, doesn't seem to snow around here until mid or late November at the earliest anyway. Of course, I had to touch up spots that were light or not hit at all. Used four cans of Fluid Film between both trucks, love that stuff.

I probably scheduled it 3 weeks ago and that was the earliest available slot. The Rochester Hills location is the busiest of any Krown location this time of year they were telling me.

[VicCrownVic]

Exactly 4 years ago today I bought this car. So I guess 1 leap year ago. I should go get a picture of it after work if I remember to commemorate the occasion or something.
I've racked up roughly 53K miles in that time. At the moment the biggest issue I have is the battery seems to be getting weaker/not holding its charge as well as it should when parked for a couple days. I'll have to check for unreasonable parasitic draw, but may just opt to swap batteries with The Scab since that battery was brand new last year.

[VicCrownVic]

I actually remembered.

[VicCrownVic]

Front right brake was starting to make some grinding noise. I had a set of pads that I bought for this car 4 years ago (didn't install them due to finding sufficienly thick pads already on this car). These pads were in with the rest of the parts for the big brake conversion on The Scab, so I'll need to get new pads for the big brakes on The Scab, but most likely those pads will end up on Marge before I ever get around to big brake swapping The Scab, lol.

So last night the first job on this car at the new place was new brake pads. The outboard pad had tons of life left, but the inboard was the source of the noise with just about no pad left. I figured I would find a terribly chewed up rotor, but I think I caught it early enough as the rotor wasn't badly grooved.
The root cause seemed to be sticky slide pins. I cleaned the crap out of the slide pins and the holes where they slide. Put my good slide pin grease in and new boots on the slide pins. Brakes are working great again with no noise now.

[DerekTheGreat]

That's the kind of work I like to do, mostly pretty obvious and the satisfaction of a job well done at the end of it.