VicCrownVic's 1989 Colony Park - Large Marge

[87gtVIC]

I see the pictures! First go around earlier today did not work for me either though.

Nice work. If you didnt crack the good windshield I can guarantee you the glass guy would have for you. lol Nice job doing it yourself.

[sly]

Yup... pics are fixed. Nice.

[VicCrownVic]

The rear (center) window motors have been quite slow, even after making sure everything was lubed well. So, this past weekend I took apart all 4 doors on my '89 MGM to grab window motors. Since only the driver door had ever had window motor work done (no holes drilled the other 3 doors) it was the only one I grabbed before it started getting dark. Although externally worse looking, the window motor from my '89 MGM driver door works much better in the passenger rear of Marge. Eventually I'll dissect the slow motor from Marge. The window motor from my '89 MGM had a remanufactured sticker on it and the plugs inside were still intact but cracked so I swapped in the 7/16 nylon bearings that I had put into Marge's window motor.

Disappointment this morning as I noticed a water drop on the inside of the windshield on the passenger side. There is a small leak at the top that I will have to investigate, try to fix, and try to figure out what happened. The driver side that had WAY too much urethane applied has no leaks, so maybe it wasn't way too much. The passenger side had what I thought was more correct volume of urethane, but there may be a stop/start seam in the urethane where it is leaking. It doesn't look like a substantial leak, but any little bit can cause rust/rot issues and if it freezes during the winter can crack the windshield.

[VicCrownVic]

I put the hose on it Thursday or Friday evening and identified where the leaks were. 2 spots were leaking less than 6 inches part on the passenger side. Saturday at my parents' place I was able to identify the 2 leaks with an air gun (like pictured below) with a medium sized wand attached. The air was escaping between the windshield and urethane. meaning majority of the urethane was above the windshield rather than making contact with it. (My fault for following the factory butyl, but perhaps I should have put that side on rather than having my brother lift that side of the windshield onto the car.)


The windshield being factory tinted along the top is too dark for me to be able to see whether the urethane made good contact, unlike the clear sides that I could see great contact. I was also able to confirm from the inside that there was quite a bit of pinch weld seam with no urethane between it and the windshield at the 2 leak spots. So, put a bit of the urethane pinch weld primer inside and out and, with my pneumatic caulk gun, slathered urethane over the areas in question on the outside. I used a plastic scraper to knock it down enough to get the trim on razored off any that was on the windshield and not covered by the trim. On the inside I put painter's tape on the windshield so that I didn't have to mess with razoring off the excess not hidden by the trim. Forced the urethane up into the void with the caulk gun and plastic scraper. I haven't put the hose on it yet as I wanted to make sure it was completely cured, but I think I got it taken care of. I'll test it sometime this week.

[VicCrownVic]

It rained a good bit today, so since I was working from home I was able to check out the windshield and no leaks were found. So I can finally end the windshield chapter of this story.

[DerekTheGreat]

...You want to come by and fix the windshield on my truck? I was just going to put some tape over the gap, I think rust has compromised the adhesive, again.

[VicCrownVic]

I'll have to grab the pneumatic caulk gun from my parents' place, we'll have to find some time.

I had the day off today so I hit up a couple of JYs. Didn't find much but I did get 2 more '98-2000(ish) Mountaineer center caps off a 2000 Mountaineer. I also grabbed 12 of the required lug nuts to mount these centers. Now Marge's temporary steel wheels (HPPs will be going back on next year with new tires) have center caps on them.
Needs a wash pretty bad, but it's 4:30 here which means it's starting to get dark, lol.

[87gtVIC]

Those look right at home on there.

[kishy]

My friend has spotted you out in the wild (and, naturally, sent a photo to me).



I've been slacking on my Michigan junkyarding because 1) they keep not having anything relevant to me and 2) I really need to not buy a bunch of crap I don't need.

[VicCrownVic]

They sure did. I was probably only there for about an hour and a half. Didn't walk out with much. A dash trim piece for a project in the '98, door strikers with intact bushings for the '98, and an HVAC control head for my youngest brother.

I parked way out there and there was I gigantic dually pickup hiding me when I arrived around 11am.

I did see an aluminum driveshaft in an '09 CV. Rear end was out so all I would have had to do was slip it out of the trans tailshaft. I thought about grabbing it but didn't need it.

Took the wagon in case I needed the room for a good silver aero/whale hood, but there were no good silver hoods. The hood on the '98 has some minor issues and is an aftermarket part.

[VicCrownVic]

Friday was around 50 degrees Fahrenheit, and I needed to move some stuff, so Marge got the job. I found out that she's a real oil burner and the red replace engine light doesn't work... I may have not checked the oil, but I threw some in when things didn't sound right and everything sounded normal once the oil was at the proper level, so it should be alright. DerekTheGreat Grand1, this explains why the oil was low when I picked Marge up.

Didn't need the heat since it was so warm on Friday evening, but knowing it was going to get cold again the plan was to do my first car work in my own garage and replace the heater core.
It was too late Friday evening by the time I got to the new house, so Saturday morning I grabbed the known good heater core out of The Ice Car. While I was grabbing the heater core, a bald eagle was watching me. Not the best picture since I had to zoom in as much as the cellphone camera would go. I was maybe 30 yards from where that eagle was sitting.


Wife wanted to go get some stuff from Home Depot, including a new faucet for kitchen sink. After all that running around, installing the new faucet, and working on some other house stuff, it was getting late so I didn't bother with the heater core until Sunday. I've said before that I didn't want another per-'90 box because I didn't want to ever do another heater core job on one, but I might make an exception for a wagon. Doing this job had me questioning that exception. It took me 5.5 hours. I can do a '91 in 2 hours... So many freaking screws on the pre-'90 dash but having been into pre-'90 dashes plenty in the past every screw, nut, bolt, and Christmas tree clip found its way back to where it came from.
It was worth it in the end when I felt that hot heat like a box should have. Sunday evening I headed back to the old house since there is plenty of overlap time to be out of the old place. We're doing a very slow move during the overlap time. Back to the heater core, I had even put the plugged clear line for ATC back in place, but I think Phil was right and something isn't right with the ATC, so next drive I'll plug that clear line again and see how it does. On the drive back to the old place I turned on the auto setting, and the fan lowered speed and temp dropped which I thought was good because it was getting quite warm in the car. 25 miles into the drive I turned the heat back to full blast and it was not coming out even warm. My first thought was I've clogged my good heater core (at least it's not new) or maybe coolant is low (still should verify this...) 15 miles after that when we got back to the old house the heat was coming out decently warm again so it may not be a clog. Either way more to come on the heat situation when I get back to it.

I'm not sure if I noticed when I had the dash pad out to do the windshield job, but the underside of the dash pad has a date written on it of 8-4-89. So either the date the dash pad was installed in the car or the date the dash pad was made, but I'm thinking install date. (This is only 8 months before The Scab, a '91, was built.)

[DerekTheGreat]

Eeee, I figured after we added oil (and found there wasn't any on the stick) you'd be checking it on a regular basis. How many miles did it go before needing some? I've never met a LoPo which didn't have a drinking problem. I get maybe a month or 1,000 miles out of each change before my engine falls off the wagon and begins drinking.

~6 hrs for a heater core job sounds like a record. Who lit a fire under your ass?? Would've taken me all weekend or multiple weekends.

[Kodachrome Wolf]

I found the heater core job to be similar to the later dashes with the exception of the nut under the speedometer and no floor ducts to deal with.

I remember when we swapped from ATC to conventional HVAC in Nick’s ‘89, I think we had the dash down in about 40 minutes. Purposely tried speed running that.


Good luck in trying to sort out the ATC. I think the consensus I’ve seen around here is the temperature sensor is what gets sour, but someone has made a post on how to take it apart to clean and repair the innards to get it working again.

[friskyfrankie]

I found the heater core job to be similar to the later dashes with the exception of the nut under the speedometer and no floor ducts to deal with.

I remember when we swapped from ATC to conventional HVAC in Nick’s ‘89, I think we had the dash down in about 40 minutes. Purposely tried speed running that.


Good luck in trying to sort out the ATC. I think the consensus I’ve seen around here is the temperature sensor is what gets sour, but someone has made a post on how to take it apart to clean and repair the innards to get it working again.

Wouldn't mind seeing the post on how to disassemble the ATC sensor and effect the repair!

[Kodachrome Wolf]

Wouldn't mind seeing the post on how to disassemble the ATC sensor and effect the repair!

I think the core of the thread starts off around page 3, but it’s covered here: http://www.grandmarq.net/vb/forum/te...-vacuum-switch