My 1987 Mercury Grand Marquis

[sly]

Generic stuff should work fine. Anything that's a U shaped type clip on weather seal should do the trick.

[87GrandMarq]

That doesn’t look bad at all. I actually think I’ve tried that one too. I called a few places a couple years ago and the only place I could get some paint locally was Napa in the next town over. I might try that out on a few spots when I motivate myself to go up that way.


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[slack]

Well yeah, shit, 34 years is a looong time when you think about it. The fact it hasn't been scrapped is a big deal. I never thought I'd see my '85 in a bone yard, but there it was. All ghettofied too, guess it was a mercy kill.

Haha. Good point! I guess it's just interesting to me because my CV led such a boring life. It lived and died on LI and never left Suffolk county. This one looks to have migrated up from Florida all the way upstate and has been banged around a bit.

Could just use bulk trunk weather seal and ultra-black the ends together. Install the next day.

Oh! That's a good idea. I'll definitely look into that. I have my leftover seal from the CV but I guess I should keep that intact if possible. Do you think just picking up some generic stuff on eBay would work?

Nice work. Came out great.

Thanks!

Slack what color did you use to paint that rear panel? It actually came out pretty good. Compare it to the under side of the trunk, the paint is a lot brighter than the old, weathered paint on the outside.

Funny, my 87 was also in an accident on the passenger rear side. The gap between the trunk lid and quarter panel is smaller than the other side, otherwise it’s hard to tell.

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I used Rustoleum Almond gloss enamel. It's not a perfect match but works more than well enough for where I painted.

Here's the can:


From afar.. can't really even tell in this pic. Paint ends just past the seam:


Up close on the other side. You can see the color difference a bit better here.


I wouldn't use it somewhere large and visible but for something like this... it works perfect. (At least for me)

[87GrandMarq]

Slack what color did you use to paint that rear panel? It actually came out pretty good. Compare it to the under side of the trunk, the paint is a lot brighter than the old, weathered paint on the outside.

Funny, my 87 was also in an accident on the passenger rear side. The gap between the trunk lid and quarter panel is smaller than the other side, otherwise it’s hard to tell.


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[87gtVIC]

Nice work. Came out great.

[sly]

Could just use bulk trunk weather seal and ultra-black the ends together. Install the next day.

[DerekTheGreat]

Well yeah, shit, 34 years is a looong time when you think about it. The fact it hasn't been scrapped is a big deal. I never thought I'd see my '85 in a bone yard, but there it was. All ghettofied too, guess it was a mercy kill.

[slack]

Too much time has passed to do any editing of my previous post.

I did some more digging about the tail light differences. From what I can tell from eBay, the two foam version is much much more common. I wasn't able to find a single "single foam" version in the current or sold auctions. Maybe that's a single year one off thing from 83 or something?

So that leads me to believe the one on the side with the quarter panel repair is original and the passenger's side is replaced.. or possibly both have been replaced. This car must have had an interesting life in the past 34 years.

[slack]

Trunk Rust Proofing / Leak Fixing

The trunk has been leaking since I got the car. I finally got around to patching it up similar to how how I did it on the Crown Vic when that had the same issue. This leak isn't that bad but it definitely needed to get done. We're in for some heavy rain tomorrow into Thursday so it should be a good test to see if this actually worked.

View of the before with all the tail light stuff removed. Notice that the little filler piece is still on the driver's side. That's because whenever the previous owner had the rear quarter panel repaired, the body shop glued that to the rear quarter panel so it will never ever come off without ruining it.


Not too terrible from afar but up close it's a bit more chunky. On the inside, all the paint was flaking off and under it was all surface rust.



I grinded down all the rust and then cleaned everything. After that, I coated that whole back panel with POR15 inside and out.


I patched the small holes and breaks in the seam sealer with regular water proof caulk sealer from home depot. Then hit the whole thing with a layer of Rrustoleum. It's definitely not a perfect match to the light color of the two-tone paint job but seeing that this area is 99% covered, it doesn't really matter. The spray can enamel actually came out much better than I thought it would have.



Color match looks closer here:



Like I said before, the driver's side was hit bad at some point. When I had the tail lights off, I noticed that there were two different types. The one in the top image is from the passenger's side which may be original. The bottom one is fro the driver's side. On the outside, they look the same but the foam weather stripping is different.



Anyone have any idea why there's a difference? The passenger's side's foam is SHOT. Holy crap. The previous owner put more of that tacky crap they did on the one rear light bulb to try and hold the foam on. Needless to say, it didn't work and I've already lost one bulb because that side gets water in it.

Are there any good replacement foams that I can try to replace it with?

[87gtVIC]

That is funny right there. Started the job but never finished with the windows.

[slack]

So, there's definitely a repaint job going on with the rear quarter panel. I noticed this shortly after the last post I made due to the pin stripe being so off.

View from a distance. Notice the color compared to the door isn't 100% match and there's weird "drip" looking marks.


Up close. ooh boy does that look bad. haha You can see where the darker tan doesn't even fully cover where it's painted and the lighter tan bleeds through. Not to mention the pin striping difference.


Even closer view of that mess:



Not too much progress but I did get around to changing out one of the back window motor gears and replacing the door panel. The original door panel had some serious damage and warping at the bottom where it was all folded up and didn't attach to the door anymore.

The previous owner told me that his mechanic told him that "he thinks the rear window motors just need gears.".. Well, that's exactly the case. There was NO GEAR in the motor! Someone took the old bad one out and reassembled everything without the gear! Why go through all the trouble of getting the motor out to just put it all back together without the gear?

This is what I saw when I popped the gear housing open:


New gear went in fine. I found out those plastic cylinder things actually get jammed up in with the gear to make it fit extra tight. Hopefully the front motor that I left them out of doesn't take a crap super quick with them missing.

Grabbed the door panel off my door from the Crown Vic and put that in. Looks much better. I unfortunately didn't take a before pic.


I still have one more window motor to go on the passenger's side rear. I'm guessing that one is also literally missing a gear. I ordered four gear kits total so it's just a matter of finding a little time to do it.

I also picked up some KYB Gas-a-justs for all four corners as the current shocks are SUPER shot.

[slack]

Those mirror screws are always stuck. Drilled my share of them out as well. There is a similar screw head called a pozi drive with square tips instead of angled. Ford should have used that, which is designed to grip instead of slip. Phillips is way overused!

Great progress otherwise. Always good to use recycled parts!

Thanks! Glad I'm not alone with the bad luck on those screws. I replaced the ones on the CV probably because of the same reason. (It's been so long I can't really remember.) One of the "new" screws on it also almost stripped out when I was stripping the door for the dew wipe strip!

So, I finally got around to cleaning the outside of the car for the first time since picking it up as well as 303ing everything. The clear coat on the trunk and the top of the rear quarter panel is completely trashed. It looks like it was a repaint job. Judging by the tail light lens piece I found in the quarter panel and the broken glass I found in the door panel, I'm guessing it was in an accident at some point. The trunk is probably from another car because it definitely looks like it was cheaply repainted.

Any suggestions on what's the best way to make this match again? Sand down and re-clear coat?

No flash:


Flash:


Also, I got a new hood emblem from WagonMan a week or so ago and never posted the pic of it. Looks much better.

[Tiggie]

Those mirror screws are always stuck. Drilled my share of them out as well. There is a similar screw head called a pozi drive with square tips instead of angled. Ford should have used that, which is designed to grip instead of slip. Phillips is way overused!

Great progress otherwise. Always good to use recycled parts!

[slack]

Got around to swapping some more Crown Vic parts to the car. The GM's front door lock actuators are toast as well as the window motor gears all around (passenger's side front is still "okay"). Thankfully, my CV parts are all good except for the driver's door window motor gear.

Before I did that, I swapped out the fuel filter with a new one. The old one was pretty crusty. Word of warning with the Duralast replacement ones, the retaining clips they supply you with suck. They're super flimsy and are a pain to get on right. I ended up reusing one of the old ones. (Of course, after finishing up with that, I went through my tool box and found a whole box of brand new clips... figures. )

Old filter:


I bought the Dorman window motor gear set as the motors themselves seemed to still be fine. I figured I would pull the motor from my 89's door, replace the gear in that and then put that into the GM's door and put the GM's motor off to the side. Well, that didn't work out exactly as planned. I found out that mid 89 there was a window motor type switch that Ford did. Anything after 05/89 has a different style motor that has a smaller motor section and larger gear section. The Dorman kit I got was for the older style so it didn't fit. The plastic gear is different between the two and the older style having a smaller plastic gear, doesn't reach the worm gear.

I was able to use it in the GM's motor no problem. The kit is pretty decent, it comes with a new metal gear, new o-ring gasket for the gear shaft, new plastic gear, some grease and these plastic cylinders that I'm not sure what they were for. I probably messed something up by not using them because I couldn't figure out where they were supposed to fit.

Anyway, here's some pics comparing the two.

Plastic gear. Top is the early style, bottom is the newer style. (Also, you can see the plastic nubs from the CV are mostly worn away which was leading to the window not wanting to go up/down)


Metal gear that drives the lifter assembly. Greasy one is from the 89, dry one is from the kit. Also, the newer style had a lock ring (you can see it just under the gear from the kit) that kept things from shifting. The one from the GM didn't have that.


Bottoms of metal gears. I want to point out that the 87's didn't have that hollow section like the new gear has.


New style window motor (gutted):


Old style window motor:


They seem like motors themselves are interchangeable as a whole as the three mounting holes look to be in the same spot. I only had the gear set for the older style so the old one went back in (with new gears).


While I was in there, I also swapped over the lock actuator from the CV. The one that was there was the original so I had to drill out the pop rivet. Other than that, it was a quick swap there.

I also wanted to swap over my dew wipe strip & trim from the CV over as that one was replaced and is in great shape where these are all cracked and busted.


Should have been a super easy swap as I had the new trim that just needed to be popped on. There's the acorn nut by the edge of the door, the one screw under the vent window and one more trim screw all the way to the other edge of the door. All those came out without a problem. Unfortunately, I also needed to get the mirror off to get the trim out and the new one back in. Well... of course that didn't work. The screws ended up stripping right out (even after coating them in PB blaster.). I guess I'm going to have to drill these stupid things out to swap the dew wipe trim.


I have other more pressing "TO-DO's" on the list, so I put the door panel back on but didn't bother with the moisture barrier for now.

Also, I hate the stupid brittle plastic door control switch panel. I have 3 sets now from my first GM, my CV and this GM. They all have broken screw points or lock clips. The one from this car ended up breaking the door lock clip as well as one of the other screws for the door lock switch. I put my CV's in there because I had repaired it with some plastic filler a few years ago. The face of it is more beat up than the one I replaced but at least it works..

One final mildly interesting note in this novel of an update is that I found some broken glass in the bottom of the door. I guess the glass that's there isn't original.

[slack]

parking brakes are one of those things you either use all the time, or never use. If they don't' get moved on a regular basis the cables stick and then the brakes drag.

the detent thing is on a spring that welds to the hinge itself. Its a fairly weenie weld and sometimes it cracks off.

The hinge does unbolt from the body and the door, its not welded on to the body. 3 on each side if I remember right

Lower hinges are easy to swap. Mark around the original hinge with a marker both on the door and body. Use a floor jack to hold the door up in the open position. Unbolt old hinge, remove and replace with new hinge. Line up new hinge with marks on door and body. SLOWLY close the door and make sure nothing is binding or hitting. You may have to adjust door to fender, (on door side) or door height,(on body). WagonMan

Thanks! Glad to know it should be a simple swap. I checked out my door "pile" from the CV and I see the bolts on the door I need to take off to get the hinge off.

Had a little bit of time this afternoon so I ended up doing a little bit of a tune up:

• PCV Valve
• Distributor Cap
• Rotor
• Spark Plug Wires
• Spark Plugs

All went without fine without any issues. I actually remembered the passenger's side spark plugs being more of PITA than they really were. They weren't bad at all.

Spark plugs I pulled all look pretty normal. Two of them have some oil on the outside. Cylinder 1 and 8. I'm guessing 1 had some because I made a mess doing the oil change the other week and spilled a ton of oil while filling it up. 8 might be due to a failing valve cover...who knows. I'll have to check.

All of them were gapped well over 0.60. Maybe due to wear or maybe just gapped wrong. The ones I put in I gapped them on the tight side of 0.50.



The rotor I got was the only one Autozone seemed to have. It works but I'm not really happy with the construction on it. The one I pulled (which was pretty worn) had a nice bent flat spot to keep good contact on the bottom of the cap, the Autozone one is just a bent metal piece at a 45 degree angle.

In any rate, the car seems a bit happier with the new plugs and such.