Prudence, my 87 Town Car

[jaywish]

To me the main advantage to the inline fill valve is the ability to run the car for as long as you want to wash/flush out all old fluids. You could leave the rad petcock open and rad cap in pressure release position or just take it off all together. I just make sure the water pressure is not high by turning down the sillcock if necessary. After you need to drain as much water as you can. Then add straight coolant to 45-50% of system capacity and top off with distilled water.

[gadget73]

yeah those are generally part of a flush setup. Not really where you need to fill it from, though being able to let the air out while you fill it makes life easier. You can get the system pretty completely filled without having to deal with it dropping as soon as the thermostat opens and burps a bunch of air out. On stock cars I've just unhooked one of the coolant lines at the throttle body as an air bleed. All gets you to the same place honestly.

[Lutrova]

What I can probably do then is relocate that valve to where the TBL lived, since the hoses are already split at that point.

I believe my hoses are currently hooked up opposite of what the shop manual says at the heater core. Are those cores one way, or does the direction not matter?

Also, I've seen conflicting info on bleeding the PS pump. Some say to use a vacuum pump at the reservoir, while others say to Jack the front wheels up and turn lock to lock several times. Thoughts?

[gadget73]

doesn't really matter, just route the hoses so they don't cross in a dumb manner. The flow in the core itself is basically U shaped. If you lay the two hoses in there you'll see one arrangement where it looks like they fit better.


Last time I had a pump completely off, I filled it then turned the pump by hand several turns until the level dropped. Fill and repeat until it stops dropping by a bunch when turning by hand. That should get the bulk of the air out. At that point just put the belt on and start it. Run the wheels back and forth a couple times, top up as needed. If its still foamy you can just shut the engine off and let it settle out. I've never done it with the wheels off the ground but I don't really suppose it makes a lot of difference.

[Lutrova]

Took the heater core out yesterday. Spent about four hours to remove the heater hoses, unbolt the dash, and wrestle the plenum out. It amazes me how much of the dashboard is ductwork for the HVAC.



You'd think there'd be a better way to house a regular point of failure like a heater core than to put it inside such a large piece. One silver lining, though, is that I recovered a couple dash pad screws that fell into the defrost vents. Also found were a couple of cheap lighters.





The core itself didn't look nearly as bad as I expected it to. In fact, it looks pretty new. Model no. 0399002 traces back to a "Ready-Aire", which apparently started production in 2005. So less than 17 years old. The point of failure, best I can tell, is right where one of the pipes joins the core. Seems like something that could be re-soldered. The rubber pad that wraps the core was damp, but otherwise there wasn't coolant pooled in the plenum. So I probably caught the leak pretty quick.

[friskyfrankie]

Good job! I've done a few of those and to me, they are a major pain in the ass. I think they built the car AROUND the heater core! My issue is ensuring that any vacuum lines and plastic connectors you encounter along the way remain intact. Perhaps, in your case, the tubes were not soldered correctly, from the factory, creating your leak. Seems to happen a lot with these aftermarket cores. The OEM's usually leak from the fins. Probably electrolysis is the main culprit!

[Arquemann]

For those that might know:

-Does the manual climate control replace that vacuum actuator with a mechanical linkage or is the same vacuum actuator just controlled with manual vacuum control?

(Just pondering the ease of a possible atc to manual temp control conversion)

[Lutrova]

-Does the manual climate control replace that vacuum actuator with a mechanical linkage or is the same vacuum actuator just controlled with manual vacuum control?

Check out this link at about 15:30. Not a great view, but it looks like the non-ATC cars use a mechanical linkage. I bet it takes the place of the ATC temp selection cable and just routes differently via some brackets.

[gadget73]

yep, cable pulls the door directly, no vacuum thing at all. The ATC plenum itself is slightly different because you get a split level feature. There is a door within a door to allow air to come out the defrost and floor vents at the same time, but thats not related to the ATC vs non-ATC temperature control.There is a fan speed switch and a recirc/fresh air valve tied to the blend door. You could remove or leave them as you see fit. A little creativity with some metal and a cable ought to get you a manual temperature control without too much bother though.

[Lutrova]

Things were going pretty smoothly, which meant it was time for a a major derailment. I felt compelled to clean all the dirt out of the plenum, if only to save myself from breathing some of it later. Well there are four blend doors in this thing: one between floor/defrost, one at the heater core, and two at the panel to floor/defrost junction. The heater core and floor/defrost blend doors are pretty robust. They hinge off of a metal rod that connects to a padded plate.

Not so for the panel doors.

Some engineer at Ford decided that these two doors (D9AH-18C544-BC) would be made up of a sheet of plastic, crimped down to nothing to form a hinge. Which apparently works fine in normal use, but if a little pressure is applied in the wrong direction the 35-year-old plastic snaps right at the hinge. I did this first to the little door, and then while trying to see if I could just tape it, the larger door snapped off too.



Fortunately, the doors are held to the vacuum actuators by little plastic push pins, which remained intact through removal. The rivets were a real pain to drill out, but the plenum more or less survived.



So now I've got to figure out how to recreate these hinges. It has to be fairly robust because of the force the actuators exert. Maybe a semi-rigid but flexible sheet that could be glued to the face of both sides of the plastic. The plenum side of the door doesn't leave a lot of room to secure anything.

[friskyfrankie]

Things were going pretty smoothly, which meant it was time for a a major derailment. I felt compelled to clean all the dirt out of the plenum, if only to save myself from breathing some of it later. Well there are four blend doors in this thing: one between floor/defrost, one at the heater core, and two at the panel to floor/defrost junction. The heater core and floor/defrost blend doors are pretty robust. They hinge off of a metal rod that connects to a padded plate.

Not so for the panel doors.

Some engineer at Ford decided that these two doors (D9AH-18C544-BC) would be made up of a sheet of plastic, crimped down to nothing to form a hinge. Which apparently works fine in normal use, but if a little pressure is applied in the wrong direction the 35-year-old plastic snaps right at the hinge. I did this first to the little door, and then while trying to see if I could just tape it, the larger door snapped off too.



Fortunately, the doors are held to the vacuum actuators by little plastic push pins, which remained intact through removal. The rivets were a real pain to drill out, but the plenum more or less survived.



So now I've got to figure out how to recreate these hinges. It has to be fairly robust because of the force the actuators exert. Maybe a semi-rigid but flexible sheet that could be glued to the face of both sides of the plastic. The plenum side of the door doesn't leave a lot of room to secure anything.

That sucks. Not sure exactly how to attack that but sorta makes my point about having to monkey around those weak parts on an older vehicle. Just replacing the core is risky enough.

[gadget73]

small metal hinges from the hardware store. Don't have any specific direction, just go wander around until you find a thing that looks right. Split the plenum in half, access is quite good at that point. Drill out all the rivets and remove the 2 or 3 screws and it comes apart.

[Mainemantom]

Yes the metal hinges are the way to go. Use a sharp drill bit so you don't crack the plastic. Make sure you test the vacuum cans before reassembling the units. I have done that job many times, many years ago. It is a painful on the body especially the older we get.

[Lutrova]

I went to Lowes and grabbed a few packets of small bolts, nuts, and washers, as well as a pack of small hinges off of Amazon. Getting the hinge point as close as possible to stock required a little trimming on both the doors and the hinges, but in the end the new pivot point is only about 1/8" off of the original position. The tolerances in the plenum are greater than that, so door travel is unimpeded. The only potential point of failure is the epoxy I used to secure the metal hinge to the plenum side of the plastic hinge. On the door side there's a bolt going through both plastic and metal.





So I got the car back together on Friday, in time for my daughter's baptism the following day. Was able to ferry family around Post all weekend. That was until Sunday afternoon when I was about to drive out of town on an airport run. After a quick stop for gas ($4.95!), I tried starting the car and just got a click. Fortunately, the man filling up behind me had jumper cables. Turns out he actually drove box TCs in New York back in the '90s for a limo service. After a few tries we got the car to start and I drove home to take the Honda instead.

Today I took a multimeter out to the battery. 12.4v at the posts. I think I'm seeing about a 50 mA draw. And this is just after getting a jump and driving three blocks and parking the day before. The battery is an Interstate, group 34, 800 CCA, with a sticker that says 2/16. I wouldn't be surprised if it's finally bit the dust, but I want to be a little more sure about what I'm doing here before taking it 45 minutes away to test/replace.

One other strange thing - When I opened the driver's door to pop the hood the door or light chime started sounding. I believe there's a chime module that exists somewhere behind/under the glovebox, so I wonder whether I may have reattached things in that area in such a way as to make it sound even with the key out? Or maybe the headlight control switch is acting up? The delayed lights off dial has a dead spot in it, so I wouldn't be surprised if it was failing further.

[friskyfrankie]

Why not run an amp test across the neg bat cable and neg post. Then pull one fuse, at a time, and watch for amp drops. Sometimes, that looks good and the issue is either a bad battery (always check that first) or a tired alternator. Let us know what you find!

P.S. Those vent doors are looking good!!