kishy's 1984 Town Car

[MelvinH365]

I'd love to run Lacy Spokes on one of my cars but I've had such a hard time finding any that are in even reasonable condition. I do have a fairly nice set of the factory wire wheels with center caps I'd be willing to trade for a nice set of lacy spokes if anybody is interested in the Metro Detroit area.

[kishy]

Ah, this car.
Of all the cars that have ever been made, it certainly is one.

Calling back to some previous remarks:

...
As for this car:
After a good highway run, it stalled while stopping to shift to reverse to back into a friend's driveway. It had been a little maybe-misfirey on the residential streets getting from the highway to his place, and the stall is something it's done on rare occasion that it has always recovered from without incident, so I initially thought nothing of it. Just CFI idle management issues, maybe.
...
I replaced the module with the spare in the trunk. Started, idled, revved, test drove OK. Drove home, again with some highway, and drove it hard to see if I could break it again. It did threaten to stall at a couple stop lights, so I found a parking lot and did the self-tests. The only code was for thermactor (maybe 44?) which is expected as the pump is absent, but it was idling fine at the time of the test.
...

Some priorities for this one before it sees regular use:

• It has a coolant leak of considerable severity. I found coolant on top of the timing cover so I know the places to look at closer when it's time.
• It has an oil leak of considerable severity. Nothing new about this. Bellhousing/back of engine, probably needs an oil pan gasket and maybe a rear main seal. I don't remember if this has decent (PermaDryPlus) valve cover gaskets or not yet.
• Needs tires and I want to transition back to the lacy spokes on this car. But I have a set of aging (but less aged than those on the car now) tires on a set of HPPs that I'd like to get more mileage out of before they're done, so those may go on here for a while.
• When I did the front brake work (95-97), I didn't have a set of hub dust caps handy, so those are absent. I have since pulled some in the junkyard so I want to make sure they make it onto the car.
• I had previously identified some weirdness with how this was running particularly when fully warmed, so I want to sort that out.
• Replace the driver door latch (have part) or otherwise fix the problems with the door lock that seem to trace to the latch
• I'm considering modernizing how the headlight doors are controlled e.g. electric vacuum pump and solenoids, or maybe go a step further with electric actuators, but I do like the "whoosh" sound as they operate. Moving away from dependence on engine vacuum would allow the doors to stay closed (or re-close) as vacuum bleeds off when parked. They'll stay closed for about a day as they are presently.

In consideration of the tire issue, from a recent derby car partout I had obtained a set of decent (not like-new or anything, but very roadworthy) Tiger Paws on pretty clean turbines. I do not have Lincolns caps for turbines, however, the old tires were pretty well into the danger zone so the turbines have now gone on this car in order to give it fresh rubber. It isn't regularly being driven but I'd like to work towards it being back in the rotation.



I didn't say it looked good, just that the rubber was roadworthy. When I put those on, I also tossed on a couple hub dust caps as noted in the reply above. Things were looking rustier in the hubs than they had been before, so I'll be sure to not let the caps escape me for so long going forward.

As for how it runs: at one time, this car was an excellent runner. However, it has been weird in varying ways probably since the Tail of the Dragon trip. The car is not as quick off the line as it has been at its peak, and in most driving conditions it seems to require more accelerator pedal than it used to. Aside from seeming to be down on power, in 1&2 it feels reasonably smooth, but it's got a bit of a tremble at idle that it didn't always have. In 3&4, it's a bit jerky. Now, as we went back and forth over, I did modify the fan clutch so it hooks up a little more, so I'm sure that is eating a couple hp...but jerky is going to be a misfire, not an engine load thing.

In an effort to identify what might be causing this, I have tried the self-tests. KOEO on-demand and keep-alive both came back pass. KOER, the test quits partway through (but at a varying exact stage in the test each time). Basically, it begins the test, typically it will get to the point of beeping out the cylinder count, I might get to step on the brake pedal, and sometimes I might manage to get the dynamic response code and then goose the throttle, but then the engine abruptly chokes or coughs and the computer does not output anything additional. The last time I saw this symptom I believe it was with the wagon and I believe I had narrowed it down to the test refusing to run if the idle speed is too high, but on this car the idle speed is unchanged from a time when it did successfully run the KOER.



The first thing I thought I'd try was swapping the computer. I have oodles of them, after all, and it isn't particularly hard to do.
Swapped that out, found the new computer fails in the exact same variable way.

I cleaned up the battery terminals including the dedicated ECM ground.
I checked out the TPS with an analog meter and it seemed to check out OK.
I checked vref and it appeared to be a pretty solid 5V.
Still, no KOER.

Opted to swap out the engine harness tonight. This might seem a little extreme, but I had one in my garage, and they aren't really hard to take out. Made a couple small repairs to the "new" one, swapped it in. In the course of doing this I broke my TPS, so I put a new (actually new-new) one on, and then checked it out for good base voltage and sweeping nicely.

Now I've got a 22 (MAP?) in the KOEO - I think as a memory code - and the KOER still abruptly ends.

Truly odd. I thought for sure that whatever is making it abort the KOER would be contained within the computer or the harness, but clearly not.
Not sure that I like that weird code 22 hanging around now, but I also may just drive the car on these parts for a while and see how it behaves.

[gadget73]

weird misfires and rough running especially under higher load / lower RPM I've often had be ignition system related. Bum plug wire, fouled plug, something like that. Its still an engine from the 60s under all of that 80s stuff.

[kishy]

Uh, well...I just took it out for a spin and I can confidently say the car has its balls back.
I thought it was strange that it was once able to do little one wheel peels taking off from traffic lights, but that it gradually lost the ability. It's back.

Driveability is pretty solid right now. Something I touched was a problem. Definitely wondering about that TPS, because the way it broke was that one of the wires yanked out of its crimp. On closer inspection it looks like it may have been mostly severed when it was crimped from new.