kishy's 1984 Town Car

[DerekTheGreat]

Agreed, Lacey Spokes or Turbines are the way to go. The wire wheels only look right on cars with that ASC installed rag top.

Half a liter of oil for 2,500 miles is great. My '88 would've drank close to two quarts, unless the oil was just changed. I would not run 85+ mph. When on vacation, I'm in no hurry to get there. Actually, I find myself in a hurry to be back behind the wheel and driving.

I've never had an incandescent bulb fail prematurely. You kids and the trouble you go through for LED's, you can keep 'em.

[kishy]

I haven't really done a whole lot with this car since the road trip besides driving it, and it's been doing alright. The diff howl remains as it was, but there's a distinct sensation of a bump at approximately wheel speed which is what I was describing when I mentioned a possible flat-spotted bearing. On the right type of road surface at the right speed, it goes beyond just being audible and can actually be felt. Something is wrong, but I haven't the slightest clue how to find it since everything checked out OK with the axle opened up.

I had a friend drive the car while I walked/lightly jogged beside it on both sides to see if I could find the source that way. Absolutely nothing audible from outside the car. I'm operating on the assumption this is a rear end problem because the howling sound drew my attention back there, but I suppose the every-tire-rotational-thump-sound could be up front. The tires are quite aged now and could be the source but I have doubts that they could transmit such an exact type of noise all the way into the interior.

Last month, I threw some refrigerent-like chemicals into this AC system and it's been cooling well enough since then. This is an unmolested R12 system and the system was low but not empty, so I mixed refrigerants which is generally a no-no. It's a bit weak at idle, but gets genuinely frigid when in motion. Between what seems to be a weak fan clutch, original-design tube-and-fin condenser, and the mixed refrigerants, I can't ask much more of it. It's doing about 12MPG in my leadfoot city driving with the air on, which is...well...not good. But if that's the price of comfort, take my money.

Also last month, I had both of the AliExpress ludicrously bright LEDs in the cornering lamps die. This has become a trend, all of them are dropping like flies everywhere they've been installed, which is really too bad because nothing else on the market seems to perform like they do. I bought a pair of Auxito white 1156 to go in their place, and they are adequate but nowhere near what the mystery Chinese bulbs have been.

[gadget73]

personal opinion but I think the lacy spokes are better looking wheels anyway.

[kishy]

Cross-posting from the road trip thread:



I recently returned home from a 2500-mile trip in this car, for which all of the recent activity in this thread was meant to prepare the car. That list is summarized as follows:

• 95-97 brake swap
  • the mandatory components: knuckles, ball joints, upper control arms, hubs, rotors, calipers, pads (initially using rotors and pads previously used on the wagon).
  • also, replacement of front coil springs as the originals were saggy
  • also, replacement of inner and outer tie rod ends with sleeves, and the idler arm.
  • also, replacement of the brake master cylinder and some pieces of brake line to facilitate deletion of the combination valve on the frame rail
  • alignment as necessitated by above
  • subsequently, upgraded rotors and pads to more performance-oriented parts
• Replacement of speakers because music on a road trip is important
• Replacement of dew wipes all-around, and window channels where not already done
  • and vent visors on the outstanding two doors where not already installed
• Assorted door mechanical improvements such as window track lubrication, window motor "refurbishment", lock actuator replacement, and lock rod bushing replacement
• Replacement of the heater core, and the HVAC door hinges
• Replacement of the TV bushing
• Installation of a hardwire kit for the dashcam I was already using
• Installation of assorted Town Car emblems that were missing for years
• Repair of the wheel centre caps to try to avoid them disappearing in the mountains
• Repair of air line to Air Lift helper bag in one coil spring
• De-fogging of the headlamp lenses
• Repair of the in-cluster temperature gauge
• Installed a phone mount
• Replaced transmission fluid and filter
• Installed an auxiliary transmission cooler
• Fixed a giant vacuum leak
• Identified that the O2 sensor had failed and replaced it
• Replaced the sun visors
• Replaced the fan clutch as the several-year-old part on the car seemed to have failed
• Replaced the power steering fluid and somewhat tightened the steering gear
• Fixed the tailpipe hangers and added chrome tips to dress it up (and also hide the fact that the pipes are different lengths)
• Replaced air filter
• Changed engine oil and filter
• Put the original Town Car grille on the Mark VI header panel to increase confusion (also because it looks better in my opinion)
• Re-gapped the existing spark plugs
• Changed diff oil and inspected diff for signs of failure re: growling noise - found none, put it back together
• Big thorough wash and polished the brightwork - which was done with a 10 year old bottle of Turtle Wax Chrome Polish. While some of the aluminum seems to be anodized and only cleans up so much, some of it is legitimately chrome plated (such as the lower bodyside stuff) and takes well to polishing

The trip covered mixed highway conditions ranging from flat and straight to curvy and mountainous, covering elevation changes from 1500ft to 6000ft to zero and lots in-between. The trip theoretically including speeds up to 105MPH, and the car hypothetically excelled at speeds around 85-90MPH - which is easily its happy spot for covering lots of miles.

Economy averaged 17 US MPG across the whole trip with a low of 13.7 and a high of 23.2.
The 13.7 low is probably the result of just not fully filling the tank beforehand and missing a half gallon or so. The next-lowest tank was 14.4 and that number showed up a couple times.
I'm content with the economy it achieved.



The diff growl continues as it did before. I do suspect from some of the noises I can get out of it at some speeds that a roller in a bearing is flat spotted, but it's hard to be sure. It's also quite possible that an axle tube is not at the correct angle and the growl is the combined unhappiness of all the parts that get thrown off by that happening.

Oil consumption was about a half a litre across the whole trip. Considering that the car leaks a lot, this is very acceptable to me and I have no concerns.

TV proved itself to be low in the first half of the trip and some adjustments were made to try to improve this. The trans behaviour was really good aside from those early concerns.

I did eventually lose one centre cap, and took off the other rear one after I noticed that had happened. The wire wheels, which have zero venting through their face, are a bad choice for spirited mountain driving. The brakes get hot and then they stay hot for a long time. I don't know exactly how much heat dispersal happens through the holes of a typical wheel but it must be more than the absolutely none that these wheels allow.

The tires were a concern as they're fairly aged (both in time and appearance), but they did alright. I definitely found their limit quickly in the tight curvy spots and adjusted my speed accordingly. Most likely, when this car gets new tires which it does need, they will go on the car's original "lacy spoke" wheels instead.

[DerekTheGreat]

I use Eagle One's "Nevr-Dull" chrome polish. It is a massive chore.

Great photo of the over-hood view. Cannot describe the positive feeling it instils while driving, it's someone one has to experience.

~18mpg is good. Whatever you did was worth it.

Can confirm, RainX works. Needs to reapplied every so often and you need to be going over 60mph in order for the water to fly off. I used it for years with the Firebird, as the wipers didn't work for the longest time. The orange RainX window wash fluid achieves about 80% of the original product's effectiveness.

As a short guy, I prefer female bikes or a bike with that top bar lowered. I busted my grapes once on that bar, which was all it took for me to write off "male" bikes.

"..What makes a man, Lebowski? Is it being prepared to do the right thing, whatever the cost? Isn't that what makes a man?"
The Dude: "Hmmm... Sure, that and a pair of testicles."

[Lutrova]

....Polished the chrome. All of it. There's a lot of brightwork. Oof....

What do you use to polish? I was under the impression these cars have a mix of chrome, stainless, and anodized aluminum, and the anodization seems to prevent any improvement from polishing.

[kishy]

Used this car to haul my bike to a park with a good mixed-use trail. Got my first bike ride of the year in. Good stuff.
Probably a women's frame but I don't care, there's a nostalgia factor, it's an 80s-vintage bike and is the one my mom carted me around on in a child seat when I was a toddler of pre-biking age.



As for the car:
KOEO 11,11, KOER 44
Running smooth, driving straight, sounding and feeling good.
Mixed condition 130km test loop yielded 17.6 US MPG. I'll take it.



Cut out some crispy windshield butyl and stuffed some RTV in the resulting gap. Might help, might not.
Clipped the reveal back on.
Polished the chrome. All of it. There's a lot of brightwork. Oof.
Washed it.
Bleche-Wite for the whitewalls. Rim cleaner for the spokes.
Rain-X for the windshield. Never done that before, will have to see if it works like everyone tells me it does.
Hitting the road to meet up with the group for breakfast before the trip in 7 hours.

As an aside: I really like how this road trip pattern is forcing me to catch up on the to-do lists with these cars. Maybe the 2-door will be next year. It would fit the pattern.

[kishy]

Last night I achieved most of what I set out to do.

Drained the diff. Took out the pin, side gears, and spider gears.
Poked around extensively. Found nothing that really worried me. Everything seems to mesh well, nothing wiggles around badly (the pin is a little worn, but nothing undue for its age, and really it's just markings in the surface with no depth). There is absolutely no pinion looseness. There is no play of the carrier in the housing.
Slapped the cover back on, filled it full of new oil. It'll do the trip growling, and it'll like it.
There was no metal stuck to the cover where the magnet was (and I did stick a stronger one on it several hundred km ago), and the oil was not glittery.

Replaced the u-joints. The front one on cars with the dampened yoke is a pain. Actually all of the small ones are a pain. Couldn't tell you the sizes but these cars have either a "small one" or a "big one", and the big ones are easy while the small ones just suck.

Greased the brush holder for the cruise control slip rings. No more annoying clicking sound when steering wheel changes direction.

Fixed the driver window. Lubricated all the tracks, adjusted how the window channel was fitting, seems to be ok now. Issue was main glass binding up, and as soon as it encounters a lot of resistance, that is what forces the vent glass to start moving. If the vent glass starts going up when the main glass is not fully up yet, bad things happen.

Verified EGR cooler plumbing vs the wagon, which itself I had modeled after this car, so in any case it's set up in a way that doesn't not work.

Things I didn't get done:
The dash squeak. It's minor. I think it might be some interaction between the right side A-pillar trim and the dash pad since it started after I re-did the dashcam wiring, but was silent after the heater core job up until that point.
The jingling sound. I have absolutely no idea what it was. Vague hints of the sound the exhaust heat valve made before I bent it years ago. Side note, the manual says you're supposed to lubricate that thing, and as I recall it was shockingly frequent. I bet none of those ever got done even one time.

Today is hopefully a zero-car-stuff day. But if I do anything it'll be stick some gasket maker (don't judge me) around the windshield and try to clip the reveal back on.

Tomorrow remains big wash day, and hopefully no mechanical stuff.

[gadget73]

Got my closeout fan in and its the same 4 boss one that didn't work for you. I guess now that means I need to install the stupid thing to see if it works.

[DerekTheGreat]

Well, neither one of us were there to know the actual, straight dope from the 70's. The PCV system used on my truck is the same thing they've been using since draft tubes were banned, works just fine. It's design and maintenance. The original engine from 1989 (essentially the same thing) burned a quart of oil every 300 miles and had just 224k on it. The current engine in my truck is a design that dates back to 1955 or 1957, (Just like the original) but was actually produced in 1995. It's now got ~200k on it, 60 of them from me. Oil consumption is the best in our fleet, behind the LS1 Camaro. It hasn't changed in the seven or eight years + all the mileage. Neither has the MPG. But I keep up on the thing. It was a giant PoS when I got it.

I'd wager people weren't any better at keeping up on their cars back then as they are now. That they simply ran them until they didn't work. The value was such shit that many stashed 'em in barns for "someday" and then forgot, died or both. My mom once sold a Torino GT because it had bad brakes. So it's shaking real bad or overheating because of lack of tune? F it! Keep running it! Get another pile of shit for $200-$500 and keep rolling. That is exactly how my mom "did" the car thing while we were super young.

[Arquemann]

Over time, you will. You didn't think I was implying immediate danger, did you? I'm convinced there's a few key reasons why carb era engines were typically done by 100k with a ton of ring ridge. I remember being in high school and pulling the cylinder heads on my 53k mile 318 equipped 1969 Plymouth. There was already at least 1/16th of an inch of ring ridge already.. I'm not getting into the classroom lecture of how and why, I'm simply saying that if it's running fat, you're not going to get as many miles out of it and that you are indeed washing the cylinder walls down, slowly but surely.

I'm convinced the key to getting 300k+ miles out of an engine lies in it's design and then proper engine oil. diligent OCI's & making sure they're not running fat. If you can smell it out of the tail pipe even with a cat and everything is warmed up, it's too fat. If it's not running fat enough to see black smoke, you'll still get 100k+ out of it, but I'd wager not 200k+ before it starts burning oil and returning lower than desired compression numbers. Hell, even if it is running that fat, it'll probably still put up with it for awhile. I wish I had the time, skill and resources to conduct such a study.

I wouldn't call an SEFI car "smog ridden." Even CFI. Fueling, EGR and timing are all computer controlled, (provided the vacuum side of it all is also OK) so you can get them both to run right and feed the engine the proper fuel mix, probably most essential at cruise.

Trouble with aftermarket EFI will be finding parts and support for those systems in ten years or so. I imagine you'll be forced to convert to whatever new option exists at the time the aftermarket system fails, if one even does.

Carbed engines are more prone to flooding and generally distribute and atomize fuel much worse than fuel injection. Irregularities are what contribute to cylinder wear. Pre-PCV engine were clapped out after 100k miles because the lack of proper crankcase ventilation meant the oil got absolutely filthy and degraded very quickly. Possibly the biggest thing is that oils have come a long way since the 70's. After the fuel crisis, an insane amount of R&D has been done and is being done with engine oils for better protection, longevity and emissions. Thinner, lower tension piston rings, EGR, forced induction and fuel quality and a dozen other things also contribute to cylinder wear.

Almost all late 70's and 80's and american engines are smog ridden as in they flow like shit, have low compression, run hot with relatively low timing, up to 4 huge cats, complicated measures for emissions control, and yet make low power and still drink alot of fuel.

Aftermarket EFI can last long, depends what you choose. Something like Holley Sniper is very much prone to be made obsolete, if the manufacturer stops making parts for the older kits and/or remove backwards compatibility. That is the case with propietary stuff.
DIY stuff is a different case, Link, MaxxECU, Megasquirt, Haltech to name a few. They live on compatibility and support. In most cases, only the ECUs are propietary. So if it conks out 10 years later, most likely the new model will work with little to no work. Megasquirt is pretty ancient, but it still has great support and works fine with new stuff.

Holley Sniper has now existed as long as Ford's EEC-IV did. Obviously OE parts supply ought to be better than a single aftermarket company, but a whole lotta stuff is NLA for box panthers already. Crucial things too, like the ATC temp sensor.

[DerekTheGreat]

You're not gonna wash off your cylinder oil film doing 15 mpg instead of 18. You'd be fouling plugs, blowing black smoke and running like absolute garbage way before there's any risk of cylinder washing. That happens mainly on a flooded and/or cold engine...

...And an 80's smog-ridden 302 is far, far from an efficient engine and some antiquated engine management piled on top. Anything more modern will beat these things in power and fuel efficiency. Put a Coyote in one of these, triple the power and still get better mileage. Or put in a 2.3 Ecoboost and double the power and mileage.

GM TBI conversion kits exist, but aftermarket EFI is quite competitive now.

Over time, you will. You didn't think I was implying immediate danger, did you? I'm convinced there's a few key reasons why carb era engines were typically done by 100k with a ton of ring ridge. I remember being in high school and pulling the cylinder heads on my 53k mile 318 equipped 1969 Plymouth. There was already at least 1/16th of an inch of ring ridge already.. I'm not getting into the classroom lecture of how and why, I'm simply saying that if it's running fat, you're not going to get as many miles out of it and that you are indeed washing the cylinder walls down, slowly but surely.

I'm convinced the key to getting 300k+ miles out of an engine lies in it's design and then proper engine oil. diligent OCI's & making sure they're not running fat. If you can smell it out of the tail pipe even with a cat and everything is warmed up, it's too fat. If it's not running fat enough to see black smoke, you'll still get 100k+ out of it, but I'd wager not 200k+ before it starts burning oil and returning lower than desired compression numbers. Hell, even if it is running that fat, it'll probably still put up with it for awhile. I wish I had the time, skill and resources to conduct such a study.

I wouldn't call an SEFI car "smog ridden." Even CFI. Fueling, EGR and timing are all computer controlled, (provided the vacuum side of it all is also OK) so you can get them both to run right and feed the engine the proper fuel mix, probably most essential at cruise.

Trouble with aftermarket EFI will be finding parts and support for those systems in ten years or so. I imagine you'll be forced to convert to whatever new option exists at the time the aftermarket system fails, if one even does.

[kishy]

That is indeed nerdy. And I do appreciate it. So the sound is probably actually there, but my silly imperfect biological ears don't pick it up properly.

Changed the fuel filter last night. Last done 2016, about 38k km ago. Not really a huge deal but I have a handful of them on the shelf.

Spent some time with mom today, took care of some stuff for her around her house. After that, poked around with the Town Car.

Re-gapped the spark plugs. All 8 look pretty decent. All 8 were at about 0.054, vs spec of 0.048-0.052. Given how uniform they are, it's possible they haven't spread and I just gapped them too wide last time around. Re-did them all at about 0.049. Should have absolutely no impact on anything but it's done.

Swapped on a pair of coated+drilled+slotted rotors and Power Stop pads that I had forgotten I bought. This is the same setup I went with on the wagon in anticipation of heavy braking on mountain roads, and I loved it on that car. Followed the "bed-in" process as described in the packaging. This thing stopped acceptably on the basic 95-97 parts (which were previously enjoyed as it was), but now it really stops.



Ground down the steering stops. This fixed that horrendous noise I described recently. The noise is the 95-02 caliper bracket lower bolt head rubbing on the steering stop, and it occurs a fair way before fully at lock (which itself is pitiful on the aero/whale setup compared to the box full lock angle). The steering stop design must have changed after the box years. Grinding it off gets a decent result. Car can once again U-turn inside a pretty tight residential intersection.





I reattached a dangling piece of bumper trim on the front, which I believe had originally been a victim of the Honda Accord which initiated the Mark VI swap to begin with. I added a ton of thoroughly heated hot glue to the back of the plastic bumper strip, then poked a small wood screw through from the inside of the bumper itself at one of the holes that already exists, with the screw going into the glue. Seems to be working. Also seems to me that if the glue lets go of the plastic, at least the chunk of glue will hang onto the screw instead of sending it directly into my tire tread, hopefully.

Took a quick look at the differential: verified the pinion has no lateral play, and verified that its rotational lash is acceptable. The final diff-related activity before the trip will be checking its oil level, but this one doesn't leak, so I'm expecting it's about where I filled it to previously.

One of the ludicrously bright AliExpress LEDs in the cornering lamps failed. I had a new one so I put that in. That's the second or third one to die. I've kept the dead ones to pursue maybe repairing them at some point.

I need to examine if I've done the EGR cooler plumbing properly. I suspect I tee'd the cooler line into the wrong heater hose. I don't have a great mental map of the coolant flow inside these engines. It also appears the clamps I selected kind of suck so I may have to revisit those.

I have 3 days remaining prior to departure on the trip. Loosely targeting goals as follows:

• Monday
  • Grease steering wheel slip rings and clean wheel
  • Dash squeak
  • New symptom with driver power window - main glass not moving properly which is screwing up the whole thing pretty effectively
  • Identify a new jingling sound (yeah, I dunno)
  • EGR cooler plumbing
  • Check diff oil / add as required
  • Maybe try to sort out the windshield leak - if not this day, not before the trip.
• Tuesday
  • Hopefully, nothing on the car at all. Need to do some not-car-related stuff before I go.
• Wednesday
  • Exterior wash including thorough attention to chrome/brightwork and wheels/tires.

Should work out well, I think.

[gadget73]

here's some nerdery you may appreciate. The Fletcher-Munson curves explain why it sounds thin and tinny at low volumes but normal at higher ones. Basically at low sound pressure levels, the human ear is much less sensitive to low frequencies. The usual fix for this in audio gear is to boost the bass at the bottom end to compensate for how our ears work. Fair guess the sensitivity of those speakers is different enough that the factory loudness stuff doesn't quite get it done. If you feel like meddling with it, I can send you the schematics of the volume control circuitry with the resistor and cap that controls that.

[kishy]

I'm all over the place on this car but that's fine.

The driver door lock has an incredibly irritating problem. Power and manual locking and unlocking works fine, including by keyless entry, but if the exterior door handle has been lifted while the door is locked, the door will not unlock unless done so by operating the interior door handle.

So, close the door, use keypad to lock the car, walk away.
While away, someone tries the door handle. It's locked, they can't get in, they walk away.
I return, I enter my code, the keyless module operates the unlock circuit and the actuator tries to move the mechanism.
The lock rod only moves about half of its travel before it just stops. Something in the latch mechanism binds up and won't let it move any further. The key is unable to overcome it and encounters the same sudden firm stop about halfway through its rotation.
Use keypad to unlock remainder of car, reach through and use interior door handle to open driver door.
When doing this, the lock rod moves the rest of the way and the condition is cleared.
If the exterior handle was not touched while locked, the unlock works correctly every time.
Having observed this phenomenon with the door opened up, I can confidently say the fault is inside the door latch, but I don't know what the fault is. Most likely a junkyard latch will be part of how I solve this.

O2 pic from the other day:


The tailpipe hanger business:




The two CarQuest fan clutches:
Left is no good, right is good. Note subtle differences like the differing number of round casted details among the fins.


Rivnuts for the shocks:









The other day, I added an extra rivnut + washer + bolt for the driver door card. It was wiggling an excessive amount from road vibrations, and since I attached my phone mount to the door card, I wanted to minimize that wiggle. It seems to have helped. And it's not like the door card is remotely restorable so I don't care if I drill 20 holes in it for added hardware, if I have to.

A different other day, I re-plumbed-in the EGR cooler. Why? The car always ran great with it hooked up, and I had the materials to do it, so it seemed wise to reconnect it. Dorman 47112 is a coolant tee which provides a 3/8" take-off from a 3/4" heater hose, and is functionally identical (maybe even literally identical) to the factory item. RockAuto had them on closeout for ludicrously cheap while I was making a recent order so I bought a handful of them. I believe it's fairly specifically useful for the CFI cars only.



While I was doing that, I noticed the harness take-off for the ECT looked pretty rough. The split loom has hardened from age and heat and sawed its way through the insulation on the green wire to the sensor. I opened up all the harness wrap (whole bunch of yikes going on in there), added heat shrink tubing, taped up strategic spots, and added new split loom as appropriate. The affected section of harness connects to the TPS, ECT, injectors, and TFI module, so it's incredibly important to the car being capable of running. It's also the section of harness most likely to be damaged from heat exposure and is probably the section of harness that develops faults that make a CFI car run like a total trashbag more often than anything else.





With all that in mind, I have test driven the car considerably in a variety of conditions. One thing is holding true since the O2 change, and that is I think it's running leaner. It's definitely a little less perky (remember forever ago when I said this car is astonishingly quick? yeah, not anymore, now it's about on par with the wagon). MPG calculation when I next fuel it up will tell us if I'm just imagining things. KOEO remains 11,11 and KOER remains 44, and the car continues to KOER without difficulty as long as I'm using the dumb blinky light beeper rather than the smart scan tool.

Another hint that it's running leaner is that the cats were being pretty smelly and now I can't detect them in the exhaust smell.



I put a new air filter and new crankcase breather in. 2025-05-09 210,527km. Both were visibly pretty gross.
I pulled two spark plugs on the left side head. Both looked good. Gap does seem to have spread a little. They're at about 20,000km which is pretty low for a change interval (30k miles or 48k km per the manual) so I'm going to re-gap the existing plugs and roll with them. Note to self, buy one Autolite 26 because I have 7 new ones on the shelf. The 8th was used to replace a broken plug at some point in the past. While doing that I pulled the end off one of the plug wires, so I got to DIY-restrip and recrimp that. It's working so I must have done it well enough.

Driving this around in various traffic conditions has revealed that the radio sounds fan-freaking-tastic with the Kenwood speakers. At low volumes they definitely sound a little too high/light/bright/whatever you want to call it, but at a volume level appropriate to hear clearly while driving in traffic with the windows down (which it will now easily do), the sound is rich and full. This is stock premium sound 4-button radio with stock football amp with the Kenwood 6x9s in the package shelf, and Kenwood 5-3/4s in the doors, and nothing in the dash. I am not expecting the sound quality through the cassette adapter to be nearly as good because it usually isn't, but we have a lot of good FM locally which is what's proving it works well.

Today I ran to my storage unit (well, one of them) for a couple parts to be delivered in the course of my upcoming road trip. While there, I also collected the car's original grille (recall, this is a 1984 Town Car, but it's wearing a Mark VI header panel). A long, long time ago it was discussed in this thread that the Town Car and Mark VI grilles have somewhat different profiles, and are keyed to prevent criss-crossing them, probably to avoid factory mix-ups in assembling the cars when new. I prefer the profile and ornamentation of the Town Car grille so I've wanted to put it on the car for quite some time.

I defeated the key, polished the Town Car grille, and swapped it on. I did discover another reason they don't swap for each other: the Mark VI header panel does not have an adequate relief for the hood ornament retaining nut to fit on the inside of the grille bezel (the Mk VI grille bezel is longer/deeper) but a little rotary tool effort took care of that. It looks great. By doing this, I've removed the Mark VI emblem which I didn't much care for, and have converted back to the hood ornament I prefer and which is original to the car.