VicCrownVic's 1991 Mercury Grand Marquis GS

[sly]

The turbines look decent.

[VicCrownVic]

Derek, that's pretty much why I parked it. Although the frame and underside aren't quite as bad as you might think after seeing how bad the body is. But yeah... a bit beyond reasonable repair.
The Ice Car is catching up in the amount of body rot though.

The turbines aren't terrible, but they aren't great either. That picture was taken at a decent distance. Those are actually the original wheels off of The Ice Car. They have some nasty old dry-rotted Michelines on them, so I swapped them for the steelies with brand new tires (at the time) that were on the '89 (a couple sets of tires ago).

The '89 served me well. Dad bought it for $200 somewhere on the east cost (NH or MASS, I think) drove it all the way home and then drove it for a few months before rebuilding the engine then I got it as a HS graduation gift. About a decade and 111K miles later when I parked it, it had seen better days.

[DerekTheGreat]

Your dad gets super deals somehow. There's no need to put dry-rotted in the same sentence with Michelins lol, I've never known Michelins to not dry rot.

[VicCrownVic]

Yep, like the Tortoise wagon he's driving now that replaced the Tortoise you was.
My '89 he got at an auction. I guess $200 was too steep of a price for derby guys so they let him have it.
Dad does find some great deals on good daily drivers, but they usually are just bad enough that you wouldn't want to sink too much money into them.

Between rain and other crap going on, no progress was made this past weekend on the car front. Hopefully I'll have The Ice Car back in action by mid to late October.

[DerekTheGreat]

Why bother with that when you've got the Scab? Back-up car?

[VicCrownVic]

Yep. Backup plan/winter driver until I get the Yukon's engine rebuilt.

[DerekTheGreat]

Back-ups are good, why we have that GMC.

[VicCrownVic]

Almost there!

Only one pic, but flight 306 has landed.
I still need to reconnect many things and put all kinds of new fluids in, then this car should be running next weekend.

[DerekTheGreat]

Flight 306? So the engine out of the rotten car is now going in the Ice car?

[VicCrownVic]

When that engine was rebuilt 13 years ago it was bored and is now a 306. Still a boring stock DD lopo, so it's not really special but I know where all 111k miles came from and how it runs. I repainted the oil pan and regasketed things down to the oil pan gsket and head gaskets. I found that the gaskets looked great but I wanted peace of mind so it got new gaskets while it was out. Everything inside looks as great as I expected. The outside could be nicer but this is just a rotten DD. So from the rotten car into the slightly less rotten car.

[DerekTheGreat]

Redoing gaskets was a good idea. I also like peace of mind. Redo all the crumbly rubber stuff too. Thought my car needed brakes so I bought every damn thing that bolts to backing plate. Used work stuff to pretreat & powdercoat the drums and it turns out the pads are like new. Don't know what's making the noise in reverse, probably a hot spot on the drum but they looked ok when I had them off.

I mention this because I learned that the Irish parts store is phasing out our brake parts. Not sure if all of the chain parts stores are but that's what they're doing. If you ever need rear brakes (before I do) I've got stuff.

[gadget73]

make sure you don't have a groove in the backing plate. Sometimes they wear a "step" under where the shoe sits and it will make noises when it moves on and off of the worn spot. Usually things move around in reverse. Also make sure the shoes are on right. I want to say its short shoe to the front, but honestly its been a long ass time since i was into a set of drums. My truck was the last one, and that has been done exactly once in the 15 years I've owned it. The Towncar hasn't had drums in about 8 years now.

[DerekTheGreat]

You are correct sir, the primary shoe is the smaller one and sits towards the front. I didn't even look at the backing plate but you're probably right. Hasn't made the noise lately and it's only when backing out of the driveway.. Too lazy to open it up again right now

[VicCrownVic]

It's Alive!

It's alive!

No muffler yet, so here's a couple of crappy cell phone videos (I have no idea what I was doing, LOL):
http://vid45.photobucket.com/albums/...psb7i458go.mp4

http://vid45.photobucket.com/albums/...pscblfx4br.mp4
Needs a tach...


Lower intake going on last weekend:


I didn't notice it until looking at this pic, but the exhaust looks like it needs some adjusting:


And a couple of not quite finished engine bay shots:

[DerekTheGreat]

No A/C, bummer.
Expect a phone call from me when I get a donor HO engine for my car and my original engine blows up

You going to make that your DD again? How does it run? I couldn't watch videos as the Nazi's at work are not letting the video go through.