My 1987 Two Door Crown Victoria AKA THE BROWN BLOB

[87gtVIC]

Futzed around with the car some this morning before the winds rolled in.

After the t moss ported lower intake was installed the AFR readings went all out of wack. Before anything took place my tuner recommened me to set the timing back to 10 BTDC with spout unplugged on warm engine and verify 39/40 PSI at fuel rail with vacuum unplugged. I got 44. Dont know if that is good bad or indifferent.

Anyways programmed in the first new tune and it really made no difference. More work to come on this.


My laptop (a dell xps with core i7) kinda goes wonky screen from time to time while being unplugged from power supply. Hard to tune with this going on so I went out and purchased a cheapo ridged power inverter to combat the screen weirdness.



https://www.homedepot.com/p/RIDGID-1...7100/203904564

Did the job at keeping the laptop powered up so no screen shenanigans took place while datalogging.


Also painted up the modified 1987 crown Victoria front license plate bracket. Modified as I had rebent it to fit the 1979 bumper I recently picked up. I primed it a couple weeks back and just scuffed down the primer today with a gray scotch brite pad and painted it with some ford silver frost metallic paint I had around (left over from repainting the fancy 1979 CV rear chrome license plate bucket) and cleared with with some spray max 2K clear. Its good looking. Used the rest of the clear coat (has a pot life) on the front license plate bracket I was repainting for the Mercedes. God do I LOVE that clear coat.

[87gtVIC]

Played around with the car some more this morning.

Appears as if the wide band sensor or wiring are faulty. When datalogging the AFRs are swinging from 20 to 0. The scale I have set up should only allow the AFR readings to go between 20 (4 volts or lean) and 10 (0 volts or rich). 4volts and 0v are the specs for my wideband gauge.

Video below:




The wide band did on occasion decide to spit out logical/stable numbers on a couple datalogs. Sensor or wiring is the issue....... Other than that things appear to not be lean and all okay as of now. More digging/tuning to do.


My little setup:



How shes looking:




And a shot (shitty shot at that) of the license plate bracket in primer just before paint was applied.



Of course I forgot to take a picture of it all done. Its shiny has all hell. Spraymax 2k clear is great.

[87gtVIC]

A9P David B NEW TUNE2 2018_May_26_09-26-09 40 second idle.zip


I have attached a zip folder with a idle and run around the block data log. You can see at times the afr datalog is reading consistently and at others it like to go full lean and swing back to 0....

[gadget73]

Looks almost more like narrow band output than wideband.

There is some parameter that basically tells the computer how much air the intake manifold flows. You could ask John what it is, but he had to fiddle with that on mine when I changed to the Tmoss intake. Of course the cam and larger injector swap was done at the same time, so lots of variables there.

[87gtVIC]

No kidding. Like a light switch. On or off. lol

In the provided datalogs though you can see at times the thing still reads correctly. Some times it does not. Annoying.

Once things get fully sorted here again with my tune I do once want to have John take a look at things just because. For now I will let my guy take care of things....I did pay for his services here after all and dont want to step on any toes.

[87gtVIC]

Here is the front license plate frame that I had bent up to work for the 1979 center plate mount bumper. She shines.

[gadget73]

Whats different about the mounting method? Looks like you had to bend it to bolt in from the bottom, and I guess the 87 bolts from the front?

[87gtVIC]

They both bolt in from the bottom and the one hidden fastener behind the license plate. The difference is the depth at which they bolt to the bottom of the bumper.

The center mount plate bumpers front license plate bracket sits lower that the off set style type bumper license plate brackets. So when I fastened the 87 style to the 79 type the lower mounts were no where near the bumper. I had to bend up the bracket so the mounting ears would sit flush against the bumper.

center style





And my car:



Visually they look damn near the same. I was quite surprised that the one I pulled from a 1986 CV was not correct for the older center style bumpers.



There appears to be the correct center style bracket for sale on ebay. Too rich for my blood though especially with the uncertainty I have.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/NOS-1979-19...19.m1438.l2649

[gadget73]

D9AZ is 79 Ford service part, the A is Vic for that time period so most likely proper.

Forgot about the offset plate on later ones. Lincolns were always in the middle and used a big plastic mount that is prone to fading and cracking. I get to find out more about that when I transfer the rub strip and plate mount to the Continental front bumper I pulled from the yard. The Towncar bumper came from a car with the front plate mount, which was good because my original one was in bad shape.

[87gtVIC]

Good luck. Not fun at all playing with old brittle plastic. My only suggestion is making sure that the piece you are trying to remove is nice and warm. If it has push in style mounts that are molded into the piece itself the only way to remove it in one piece is attacking it from the backside. Pulling almost always ends in tears.

[87gtVIC]

Been doing endless research on getting this 5speed swap down...the boring part of it...wiring.

I'd like to wire in all of the special doodads if they fit underneath the dash. They all attach to the pedal assembly:

p.side has the cruise control deactivation switch



d.side has the clutch neutral safety switch which consist of two doodads. One (top port (black connector(not pictured))) allows the power to the tfi and the starter solenoid when the clutch pedal is fully engaged while the other (bottom port(gray connector(not pictured))) tells the computer that the transmission is essentially in neutral/not engaged when the clutch pedal is fully engaged.



Cruise thing is easy. Intercept the output of the stop lamp switch (mounted on brake pedal) and plum it in then out of the cruise control deactivation switch.


black plug (top port) is not too bad either. Just redirect the wires to from the auto tranny mounted neutral safety switch to this plug and Im good.

gray plug (bottom port) requires a bit more work. Looks like I will have to add a pin to my ecu connector (pin 30) and the other half of that is just off pin 46 which is the sig return pin.

all in all not hard. Again, no clue if any of this stuff will fit. Just things I would like to do if it is possible.

[gadget73]

I didn't realize the clutch tied in with the neutral signal feedback to the ECM. I always figured the ECM relied on the neutral safety switch to know it was in neutral and really didn't care about the clutch pedal.

[87gtVIC]

I didn't realize the clutch tied in with the neutral signal feedback to the ECM. I always figured the ECM relied on the neutral safety switch to know it was in neutral and really didn't care about the clutch pedal.

Something to do with rpms between shifts or something along those lines....


Anyways took her out for a spin today, washed the wheels (neighbor mows lawn with weedwacker) and dusted the rest of the car off. Still futzing around with tuning. AFR gauge is LOCKED in on 20 with current tune. Change between other tunes from way back when and I get a 14.9 at idle but it runs like poo. These new tunes and tunes that have worked in the past (before the TMOSS lower intake) all make the AFR stay near 20. I checked grounds on afr gauge, checked power. Swapped wideband sensor....All of that does not matter though because there are older tunes where the afr gauge will read normal now. Its just frustrating. At least it looks good. That's the only thing bringing me back to the car. I really just want to buy a brand new Mustang or Challenger.

[86VickyLX]

Have you tried a fresh air recalibration with your wideband? This is done to reduce bad readings and help the wideband controller compensate for an older sensor. In my case, you unplug the wideband sensor and allow the controller to power up. Turn it off. Then plug in the sensor with it out of the exhaust (in fresh air). Turn the controller, and it should recalibrate. If this does not work, it's possible your wideband is bad or damaged.

[87gtVIC]

Ive heard of this. I will have to check over the manual for the gauge I have, though off the top of me head I dont believe autometer gauges have a calibration function. With different tunes I do get different readings from the gauge though. All readings from the gauge also show up on the datalogger matching the gauge face. Since the gauge is reacting differently with different tunes I am inclined to believe it is functioning, but at what capacity is the question.

Right now with my current set up its reading dead lean. While driving and I get on the gas (hammer it) and let off it goes rich for a couple seconds and goes back to dead lean. All of this is reflected in the datalogs as well.

Thanks for chiming in. I'll check the calibration thing out.

Have you tried a fresh air recalibration with your wideband? This is done to reduce bad readings and help the wideband controller compensate for an older sensor. In my case, you unplug the wideband sensor and allow the controller to power up. Turn it off. Then plug in the sensor with it out of the exhaust (in fresh air). Turn the controller, and it should recalibrate. If this does not work, it's possible your wideband is bad or damaged.

[87gtVIC]

AutoMeter utilizes an advanced calibration method that automatically calibrates your gauge on every startup to assure you of the highest degree of accuracy over the entire lifespan of your sensor (no free air calibration is ever necessary).

From the manual.

[gadget73]

Whats the narrow band sensor have to say? Are they switching or are they pegged lean too?

[87gtVIC]

The lights around the gauge agree with the digital readout.

It may be dinked. Have to contact autometer and test it out/get the gauge replaced. Latest tune he made VERY rich and the car was unhappy and so were my eyes lol. Unfortunately no change in the gauge face readings/datalogs.

[gadget73]

The lights in your Autometer gauge? I would expect that to jive with the broadband since it should run from it. I was thinking more along the lines of what does the ECM get from the narrow band. Assuming you're able to plug in to your ECM and read output from it while driving anyway. Not sure what hardware you are using but I can do that with my QuarterHorse, it just needs the laptop plugged in and the software running. It will let me configure a "dashboard" of sorts that pulls data off the various ECM sensors, including oxygen sensors. It has a simple lean/rich bar graph thing and the pointer flips back and forth. If its bouncing, the sensors are switching.

[87gtVIC]

The lights in your Autometer gauge? I would expect that to jive with the broadband since it should run from it. I was thinking more along the lines of what does the ECM get from the narrow band. Assuming you're able to plug in to your ECM and read output from it while driving anyway. Not sure what hardware you are using but I can do that with my QuarterHorse, it just needs the laptop plugged in and the software running. It will let me configure a "dashboard" of sorts that pulls data off the various ECM sensors, including oxygen sensors. It has a simple lean/rich bar graph thing and the pointer flips back and forth. If its bouncing, the sensors are switching.

I apologize. I didnt know you were referring to the cars stock o2 narrow bands. According to my tuner they are reading rich based of their voltages.


Here is a video I have from the other day. I am not to sure if the things you are referring to are on it.



Here is also a datalog. if you can tell me which header is for o2 voltages that wold be great...thats if I have it selected in the payload for the datalog...

the attached datalog is from when the wideband was scaled to 16 as its highest number.

A9P David B tune9 2018_May_25_12-06-07 14 sec idle 16 lean.zip