My Rides

[kishy]

Will the Town Car grille fit in place of the Mark IV one? I like the look.

I don't know for sure yet but am going to be investigating this. The Mark VI one "feels like it looks wider" but I'm pretty sure it's just an illusion.

[DerekTheGreat]

I see what you mean.

[kishy]

[DerekTheGreat]

That is cool. Looking good once again and I really dig the hideaways. Wish it was always an option up until they killed the box TC. Are the covers vacuum operated? If so, what did you tie into to make yours work?

[sly]

Looks good.

[kishy]

I'm very pleased with it. The paint match to the doors is incredibly close. Apparently they had their paint specialist from out of town come down to help get the blending right. It took a few tries.

There's no mistaking the fact that there's a distinct line (A-pillars) where the paint goes from 0 years old to 32 years old, but I think if I attack the rest of the car with my detailing products arsenal I might get it to be pretty nice. I also need to pull the pinstripes off the whole length of the car as I'm not necessarily fond of them.

The headlamp doors are vacuum operated. Part of this swap involved installing the gigantic vacuum reservoir that goes between the fender and frame rail, in front of the driver front tire. There's a capped off port on the vacuum tree on the firewall; that port is the vacuum feed on a Mark VI. I have a leak though, the doors open within a half hour of shutting off the engine. Need to troubleshoot further.

Also, the vacuum line harness thing that goes through the firewall doesn't fit properly because the EEC-IV mounting bracket is in the way. I need to take the ECM out and hack things up a bit to get the grommet into the firewall where it needs to be. Alternatively I may look for some sort of electronic vacuum solenoid (like the emissions solenoids?) and get the vacuum junk out of the interior.

[DerekTheGreat]

Looks damn good.

Yeah, I bet if you put some elbow grease into that paint it will help. As long as there isn't too much a difference between the color shades that is. From the pics it seems all you need to do is boost the gloss of the old paint up a tad, which shouldn't be an issue if that's the original paint. These things were clear coated from the factory. Are your pin stripes tape or actual paint?

Pics of this gigantic reservoir? Post video of headlight doors in action? What cues the vacuum motors into opening?

[kishy]

The Mark VI headlamp switch is the "normal Ford headlight switch" but with an extra extension off the end with a vacuum valve. This valve is what operates the light doors.

There is also an electronic valve box which is how autolamps can open the doors, since the headlight switch is not physically operated with autolamps.

Off the top of my head this is how it goes. The lines are colour-coded in the car, but I don't remember the coding, so this will have to do as a symbolic representation:



There might even be a way I can use the autolamp box to operate the doors exclusively and not use the light switch at all. Provide its electrical inputs out under the hood and clean up the setup considerably.

The stripes are tape and are on top of the (thin but present) factory clearcoat. I'm thinking a little heat gun treatment will take them off, but I will need to be gentle.

[DerekTheGreat]

Interesting. From your diagram there are lots of opportunities for leaks... Props for getting it all to work right though. Need to update your sig now haha.

Tape eh? Sounds like it was repainted at some point. My car was, well there was damage that was repaired on the driver's side and the shop wasn't competent to hire a striper so they removed the original painted stripes along the sides to replace them with tape. Stripes on the hood were still of the painted variety. I had them all redone when I was forced to paint my car some two years ago.

Heat will help and you won't need much of it but I wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't all come off in one piece.

[87gtVIC]

Looks fantastic.

You may end up with ghost stripes if the pin strips can be removed.

I love pin stripes. When I first saw the repainted front end I thought I cannot wait till the all the stripes are put back!

Whatever gets done....its all looking good. Nice work.

[kishy]

Generally I like simple understated pinstripes. These, however, scream "malaise era" and are quite obnoxious.

That, plus the fact that they are on an existing well-defined body line, is why I don't see the need to replace them. If it looks too plan without them or there's significant ghosting I'll look at my options for new ones. Matching the existing ones would be tough and they're a little rough in places anyway.

'83 seems not to be charging, which is annoying. Hitting up a junkyard or two this weekend, might grab some $25 130A 3Gs...

Oil change due for the Lincoln sometime this weekend, and I need to poke around with the headlights. Autolamp is currently inop and I'm not sure why. However even if it did I don't have the magic autolamp vacuum box wired in so they'd be useless anyway.

Also just so it's noted somewhere: 5006 and 4656 do not share the same pinout. The low beams were backfeeding to the high beams until I flipped the low and high wires around in the low/high sockets.

[sly]

The door control module works off the switch OR the autolamp by being in-line with the headlight switch output for the low beams before it gets to the MFS IIRC. That way it stays closed for just parking lights but opens for the headlights, low or high. It's just a signal tap for 12V from the headlamp switch so you should only need one wire through the firewall or if you want to keep from doing anything through the firewall and load it all under the hood, put 2 signal or rectifier diodes rated at least 20V (most are rated way more anyhow) and quarter watt should be plenty and point the line towards the module and the other end of the two diodes to the low and high beam lines to the headlights. You may want to provide the module with a foam filter over the vents for reliability.

[DerekTheGreat]

I went from that:

to this:

Since I didn't have burgundy interior I thought the red & cream stripes were out of place, plus they were shitty taped stripes so that was another nail in their coffin.

[kishy]

The door control module works off the switch OR the autolamp by being in-line with the headlight switch output for the low beams before it gets to the MFS IIRC. That way it stays closed for just parking lights but opens for the headlights, low or high. It's just a signal tap for 12V from the headlamp switch so you should only need one wire through the firewall or if you want to keep from doing anything through the firewall and load it all under the hood, put 2 signal or rectifier diodes rated at least 20V (most are rated way more anyhow) and quarter watt should be plenty and point the line towards the module and the other end of the two diodes to the low and high beam lines to the headlights. You may want to provide the module with a foam filter over the vents for reliability.

See, I had been working on the assumption that the three wires into the module - black, red, and green - were ground, low beam, and high beam, based on their wiring colours (so the diode stuff was already done internally). This is not so, after further research and testing. Black is ground, green is constant hot, and red is "open doors".

I eliminated the Mark VI headlight switch and yanked out the vacuum stuff I so frustratingly installed into the dash, soldered up some magic for the doors (though no diodes yet so they close for the high beams), and RTV'd up the openings on the module. As far as I can tell it does not have an atmospheric vent, it flips vacuum between the closed and open ports keeping the system essentially sealed. That constant hot had me very confused until I found a diagram online. It can probably be switched, I'll have to study it a bit more. http://vintage.mitchell1.com/PClubDa...2/V2825041.pdf

The check valve is leaking so they pop open after a while, but there is no true vacuum leak at least. Grabbed various check valves at the junkyard, will see what I can come up with.

Would the EEC-IV ECM power diode suffice if I break it out of its plastic housing? I should have a couple of those hanging around.

I went from that:
[ATTACH=CONFIG]47402[/ATTACH]
to this:
[ATTACH=CONFIG]47403[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]47404[/ATTACH]
Since I didn't have burgundy interior I thought the red & cream stripes were out of place, plus they were shitty taped stripes so that was another nail in their coffin.

I do like red pinstripes on a black car, but indeed, when it has a red interior. It looks clean without them so it works.





Lincoln oil change done, Rotella T5 synthetic blend diesel 10W30 with a FL1A. Crossed 180,000km today. Did pick up two 130A 3Gs so that's coming soon.

Snugged up the TV pressure at the trans. Maybe 1/8" adjustment. Of course this translates to a massive change in how the car drives. Engagement is a little harsh at this setting so I'll probably scale it back via the adjustment at the TB and see what I can get. It did clean up the really sloppy 2-3, 3-4 shifts, and the 1-2 is rather well defined now. Kickdown is a bit less of an ordeal also.

[Kodachrome Wolf]

Digging the nose rebuild on the Town Car. Looks right at home on there.