VicCrownVic's 1998 Mercury Grand Marquis LS

[VicCrownVic]

Later than us, even. Had our cars done about three weeks ago, thought we were really pushing it. Now I might intentionally schedule this late, doesn't seem to snow around here until mid or late November at the earliest anyway. Of course, I had to touch up spots that were light or not hit at all. Used four cans of Fluid Film between both trucks, love that stuff.

I probably scheduled it 3 weeks ago and that was the earliest available slot. The Rochester Hills location is the busiest of any Krown location this time of year they were telling me.

[VicCrownVic]

Exactly 4 years ago today I bought this car. So I guess 1 leap year ago. I should go get a picture of it after work if I remember to commemorate the occasion or something.
I've racked up roughly 53K miles in that time. At the moment the biggest issue I have is the battery seems to be getting weaker/not holding its charge as well as it should when parked for a couple days. I'll have to check for unreasonable parasitic draw, but may just opt to swap batteries with The Scab since that battery was brand new last year.

[VicCrownVic]

I actually remembered.

[VicCrownVic]

Front right brake was starting to make some grinding noise. I had a set of pads that I bought for this car 4 years ago (didn't install them due to finding sufficienly thick pads already on this car). These pads were in with the rest of the parts for the big brake conversion on The Scab, so I'll need to get new pads for the big brakes on The Scab, but most likely those pads will end up on Marge before I ever get around to big brake swapping The Scab, lol.

So last night the first job on this car at the new place was new brake pads. The outboard pad had tons of life left, but the inboard was the source of the noise with just about no pad left. I figured I would find a terribly chewed up rotor, but I think I caught it early enough as the rotor wasn't badly grooved.
The root cause seemed to be sticky slide pins. I cleaned the crap out of the slide pins and the holes where they slide. Put my good slide pin grease in and new boots on the slide pins. Brakes are working great again with no noise now.

[DerekTheGreat]

That's the kind of work I like to do, mostly pretty obvious and the satisfaction of a job well done at the end of it.

[VicCrownVic]

On the way home on Wednesday evening my cooling fan decided it didn't want to do its job. I first noticed my AC not coming out cold, then my temp gauge going up. I of course was on the Van Dyke Freeway heading north sitting in traffic due to stupid construction having it down to 1 lane. I pulled into an emergency turn around and found the Efan not running. Banged on the relay and no dice, then it started to boil over so I shut it off and tried to think about what I was going to do. As I was sitting there someone pulled into the turn around next to me. I looked up and it was my boss. Told him I think I need a fan relay, so we went and got one not far away, but took a bit of time due to traffic. Put the new relay in and the fan didn't come on right away but my temp gauge was way down. Wiggled the fan connector to be sure and it came on and stayed on so I wasn't sure if it finally got hot enough to kick the fan on or if the fan connector was the issue.

Boss left because I told him I should be good and I was going to just stop in at my Aunt's place not even 1/4 mile from where I was to be sure everything was good with the car. Temp gauge went way up again so as soon as I got in my Aunt's driveway checked the fan which was not running so I shut the car off to let it cool down. She was not home and my wife told me she thought Aunt was on her long shift that day. Since I told my wife I had broke down my whole family knew I was stuck including another Aunt in Kentucky, lol. Mom called said she would call my uncle, uncle called and I was hmming and hawing trying to decide what to do. I figured by the time he got there to tow me it would be super late and I could make it work by then. Well, at that point my aunt who was actually on her short shift that day showed up. She said she had a hose if I needed water, which I replied that I might but I need to get the fan going first.

I found that I could keep the fan going if I held the connector, so the earlier issue was not just the car getting up to temp it was indeed the fan connector that was the issue. Disconnected the fan connector and found a little melty going on and the middle blue wire terminal seemed a bit pushed in and burnt.


So, I took the red comb off and you can really see the middle terminal metal is darker like it's burnt, but as seen above melt going on on all terminals. I pried the terminals closed more in an attempt to ensure they were making a good connection assuming that was the issue. It was indeed the issue and the fan seemed to be working. So I hopped in with my Aunt following behind me. We made it 2 miles before I had to pull over, but as soon as I did the temp gauge went down. Went another mile or so and the same thing. I realized at this point that I should have taken my aunt up on the hose offer because the only explanation that made sense was air in the cooling system.


So we left the car there on the side of a dirt road and went to a store nearby to get some distilled water. Came back and put less than 2 gallons in then on our way again. Sure enough the temp gauge was staying normal and my terminal squeeze job was still holding to run the fan. When I got home (~40 miles) I was going to swap the 2002 fan in since I had one that I bought 3 years ago and never installed. I wasted a ton of time looking for it before I finally remember that I had taken it to my parents' place when I had issues with the fan relay last year. I didn't touch the fan last year once I found the old relay worked when I hit it, but looking back I think the fan having issue this year is likely what caused the original relay to have issue in the first place (the fan issue may have started before then but not with symptoms that were obvious to me). Luckily I only live 10 miles from my parents so even though it was after 10:00 I checked if mom was still up then went over and got my fan. It was after 11 by the time I realized the swap was going to take me longer than I wanted to stay up and 5:30am was not far off. So I rolled the dice on my terminal squeeze job to get me through 1 more day. Luckily that worked out. So finally after work yesterday I completed the swap. Work from home today so taking some time to update things here.

Once I got the new fan in last night I topped off the coolant and started the car up. It took a bit before it finally got up to temp to turn the fan on which had me a little nervous when nothing was happening at first. The new fan is a bit quieter than the old, but it's working. I'll share some info on the later fan retrofit later. The main reason I already had the fan (bought in March 2021) was this post here: https://www.grandmarq.net/vb/forum/t...14#post1209714