A Grand Marquis far from home - Life with my 1988 Mercury Grand Marquis GS

[DerekTheGreat]

Thank you, Tynnerstroem! It's been the longest DD I've ever owned, been a great PoS!

If you're dead-set on the GMT400 platform, I strongly advise the 1992-1994 Tahoe. The Vortec engines are great when they run right, but nightmares when they do not. If you're not dead-set, a GMT800 (2000 - 2004ish) is where it's at. I cannot praise the LS engine and ergonomics of that platform enough.

[Tynnerstroem]

Im about to head north for a week of skiing, and every time I love that my skis will fit sideways in the trunk. How could one ever downsize to a smaller car after getting used to this?

[GMUE03]

You really do get spoiled with the trunk size on panthers. I looked at a Chrysler 300 the other day and was really shocked on how small the trunk is for such a large car.

[Tynnerstroem]

GMUE03 I hear you on that. We’ll have to get into Suburbans today to get something similar.

The car celebrated what I suspect is 125 000 miles today while commuting to work. I say that because there’s no way it’s only done 25 000, but 225 000 seems equally unlikely. The clock had (1)16k and change on it when I bought it so soon about 10 000 miles during my ownership, which this June will be two years. Here’s to many more!

[DerekTheGreat]

Reminds me of when I took a picture of my Townie's odometer right after it rolled over. Of the people I've talked to who drove new cars in the 70's, 100k miles really was the life expectancy of the average car. Wild that most cars didn't get an extra digit until the 90's though.

[Tynnerstroem]

This ole gal mainly sits now, as I'm driving the Town Car mainly and this car is being prepared for sale.


You may recall from the earlier days of the thread that a machine car wash tore off the C-pillar trim at the bottom of the vinyl roof. Well I found a smith who dabbles in aluminum for the custom car circuit and got the one that was damaged repaired to the point where it looks good. I'll have to repaint it and find new clips but that's going back on soon. Other than that I found the car developed a nasty oil leak this winter, to the point where it would smell of burnt oil at idle and would drip in the garage. Looking at the valve cover gasket it was quite easy to see why.




I have an alternator swap coming up, at which point I'm replacing the A/C belt with one that allows me to bypass the smog pump. The front main seal also leaks pretty heavily - can I just do that in the driveway or does it need to be handed off to a shop?

[Arquemann]

Front main seal is a simple job, just the pulley and damper to remove. A generic pulley puller works fine for the damper.

[Tynnerstroem]

Arquemann does it require any special tool to get the new seal back into place? Could you show me a generic puller like the one you used? These are jobs I haven't tried before so I need to know what tool to buy haha.

[Arquemann]

Installation tools:
- Hammer (or equivalent)
- Piece of pipe etc. (optional)
- Block of wood (optional)

I used a puller similar to this: