kishy's 1985 Country Squire

[tikitiki65]

Cool road trip!!
Hope to take my wagon on one some day.
Maybe even a Lemons rally

[gadget73]

Its not a proper hooptie unless you have to use ratchet straps, zip ties, coat hangers, duct tape, and/or hose clamps to hold some critical thing together.

[87gtVIC]

The detachable trunk pan made me chuckle.

[kishy]

The above work was lead-up to a bit of a road trip...went camping with some friends a bit north of Parry Sound, ON. Second time to the area, I don't recall if I had mentioned the last time I went. Map.

This was approximately a 1200km round trip, with approximately 20km of it being a rough unmaintained seasonal road typically reserved for trucks and off-road vehicles. The wagon handled the trip extremely well, with the following exceptions:

1. As the weather turned cold during this trip, the fast idle is becoming more of a priority.
2. The vibration at highway speed is still there, but not on all road surfaces. I think I'm going to throw some money at a set of decent shocks and see if it helps. Driveshaft balance might need to be looked at as well.
3. My poorly installed trunk pan fell out after bottoming out taking the car through a water crossing. Ratchet straps successfully put the car back in operation. The fuel tank thankfully stayed close enough to where it belongs that all continued to work. As I do not like this particular trunk pan, it is not getting installed any better than it was previously...I need to find a properly good one (which this one never was) before I invest any meaningful effort, time or money into how it is attached to the car.

Fuel economy according to the Tripminder was very respectable (19-25MPG) when the car was driven sensibly. However, for most of the trip I was driving in the 11-15MPG territory. It is what it is.

It's one hell of a head-turner. A whole lot of things like passengers seeing the car then grabbing the driver to make them look at it too. Fun stuff.

Found a great deal on a rooftop carrier that is reasonably aerodynamic and fits under my carport, for $100 new on clearance. Excellent piece of gear and freed up a lot of interior space considering I was hauling a fair bit of gear for the whole camp, which overall was 9 people (all previously acquainted and confident in our pandemic exposure risks).

[packman]

That was the way my battery tray was in the '86 CV. I ended up bolting up a JEGS universal battery tray in its place. I was even able to use the stock bracket to hold the battery tray.

[gadget73]

same issue with the door release on the Conti. Non-sealed button, can't imagine why that would ever get crusty inside. On the plus side it makes it easy to take apart and fix. I gave the contacts a light wipe of spark plug grease when I put it back together. Figure that might help fight off future moisture / corrosion.

[kishy]

Worked on a few things today:

Wire brushed the rough areas of the passenger rear quarter (spare tire area) to knock loose all the rust chunks. Patched from the inside with some galvanized sheet steel I had around, with windshield urethane and rivets. High tech repair. Somehow didn't think to take a pic of the result, but it's not actually horrible. Brushed, rust primer, primer sealer, then the urethaned and riveted panel on top.

Put a spare where it belongs, along with other helpful items. Discovered that a piece of metal I have scrapped is probably the correct bolt thing to hold the spare to the jack...kind of annoyed about that.





Swapped the cruise servo so the 85 original is back in this car. It is verified to work now too. Nice tip about the cable. Cruise is a little lazy in this car which I am sure is a vacuum symptom but can't be bothered right now. It holds speed fine, but the initial engagement has lag time that my others don't seem to have.



Found the other cruise module pigtail. Swapped the connector so now the wires stay in reliably. Of course I forgot to note the part number from the good one...maybe I can get a pic of it already installed at a later time.

Fixed the fuel door popper. Issue was the button. Had to file some corrosion and crap off the contacts and this got it to work.



Came up with a battery hold-down solution. The metal which normally runs under the battery tray and forms the connecting point for the hold-down J-hook is completely gone, as it was rusty junk. I reinforced the plastic with some sheet metal and now the J-hook grabs onto that. Took this opportunity to install a group 65 battery, as I had previously altered the tray to accept one, and have found one of my group 65 hold-downs.

[gadget73]

The wheel in the Conti is a bit off so I understand about it being annoying.

[kishy]

Put in some light highway driving today, cruise is working as it should. Happy about that.

Not happy about how far off I managed to make the wheel. I seem to have corrected it though. Loosen the nut a couple turns, firmly turn the wheel against the column lock, and find there is actually significant rotation available despite it seeming like there shouldn't be. It had been at the extreme right end of the available rotation, and I cranked it back to the extreme left, which seems to have brought the wheel back to centre again.

Out of an abundance of caution I'm going to check if the tie rod ends seem to have adjusted themselves (if alignment shop didn't tighten the sleeves enough, basically), but it feels like it's back to how it was. I was enjoying having a properly set up steering wheel so it was super upsetting (even if that seems like an overreaction) when I found it no longer that way.

[gadget73]

I know the off-white connector you speak of. The light grey ones also seem more brittle than darker colors.

[kishy]

Good tip about separating the cable from the servo, and also good info about the servo interchange.

The 83 has the connectors molded out of what seems to be a different plastic. Both are grey and kind of slick looking/glossy surface on the plastic. On the 85, the small connector (which is intact) is the same, but the large connector (which is broken) is tan, and looks and feels chalky and brittle.

If I ever get to go to a junkyard again, it'll be an item to scoop up.

[gadget73]

would be nice if the connector shells were available. I know I've got a number of under-hood ones on my various cars with busted tabs and other failed plastic problems.

[87gtVIC]

I went through similar troubles as you after I did my 5 speed swap on getting the cruise to work.

Cruise worked before the swap but not after.

I had to relocate the amplifier to make room for the clutch pedal.

Cruise would not turn on. I check grounds like you though steering wheel, pulled off and cleaned and still found them to be all wonky.

All I had to do was push a wire back in (as the retainer in the connector broke) and I was off to the races again. Those connectors are just brittle as hell nowadays.

[gadget73]

you can actually change the servo independent of the cable. There are two nuts or screws where the cable attaches to the servo. Remove those, slide the cover up, and inside the cable has a ball end that hooks into a clip on the diaphragm. I have a servo from an 86 Tbird on my 84 Continental using the original (and specific) diesel cable.

The 91 one won't work on a pre-88 car though since there is no internal position sensor. Later cars used ECM cruise, so the throttle position was run off the TPS on the throttle body. Stand-alone uses a pot inside the cruise servo itself. You can add the pot if you really want to, but if you look at the connector on a late one you'll see its not fully populated where the early ones are.

[kishy]

Cruise works!

EVTM and shop manual to the rescue, even if I think the problem was maybe something more obvious...

Scenario: car has not had functioning cruise the entire time I've had it on the road. I had removed both the module (amplifier) and servo early-on. I had misplaced the amplifier, so when I reinstalled these parts recently, I used the 85 wagon servo, but the take-off amplifier from the scrapped '83 Town Car. Cruise did not function "plug n play" and needed troubleshooting.

The car had LED tail light bulbs. I swapped one bulb per side back for incandescent, per the strange fact that exclusively LED brake lighting causes period Ford cruise to stop working. It did not fix the problem.

Followed EVTM steps to check the resistance values of the steering wheel, as they are received at the cruise module (amplifier). Found they were very erratic with slight steering wheel movement and values were totally out to lunch. Removed steering wheel, cleaned the tracks and the brushes, finely filed a little bit off the brushes, put it back together. Values more stable with wheel position changes, not quite in spec but closer. Road test showed no fix.

Went digging and found the 85 original amplifier. Swapped it. Road test showed no fix. Now believing the amplifier is not the issue, and in all likelihood both of this item are good (solid state electronics).

Took servo from 83 MGM which is known to work (note: 91 could not be used, this part changed for the SEFI years in how the cable mounts to the bracket). Installed, road test showed no fix.

EVTM says to look at the shop manual for more detailed t/s. Got my 84 shop manual as the standalone speed control system is the same for all years that use it.

Shop manual gives more pinpoint voltage tests, those checked out, amplifier seemed to be functioning and buttons seemed to be talking to it properly.

Shop manual gives a test procedure where you take the amplifier out of the equation and using jumper wires, manually control the servo. Was able to rev the engine using the servo.

While doing the above, discovered all of the retaining tabs to keep the wire terminals in that particular connector of the amplifier were broken off. I did not do this. Connector is super brittle and terrible, oddly unlike the other cruise connector. Pushed all terminals in all the way (as they did not want to until they were pushed in individually). Road test showed cruise works. It seems likely the problem all along was some terminals not making contact in that connector. I will look for a pigtail for it, I'm fairly sure I have one.

The car is still running with the 83 MGM servo, which I will return to that car when I get a chance.











Not a substitute for a scan, just helping sell more copies of this:




The steering wheel is now off-centre by enough that I find it annoying. The alignment tech did a great job of making it be dead-on perfectly in the middle, yet somehow I have screwed that up. Car seems to drive the same, so it seems I somehow put the wheel back on not quite right. I didn't think there was any room for error there, but will have to re-examine it. 85 uses the flat sided shaft, not the splines.

Also, trailer hitches: Curt 13707 is a 2" Class III which includes the wedges for wagons and seems to be the only Class III which specifically states compatibility with wagons. Visually it appears to be shorter, like the class II I took off the car, which might potentially mean the existing holes will line up with it. This is an expensive hitch to source locally, but since I have enough cars to use the hitches I already have, there would be no harm in trying to get one if I can get a deal somewhere. Lack of access to the US is going to hurt for this though.