double--negative 405 Posted December 24, 2011 Report Share Posted December 24, 2011 The wagon got some rear ball joints today. And added puddlelamp mirrors and wired the light in the inside (1996) door panels on the '99 wagon. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Bull Geek 812 Posted December 25, 2011 Report Share Posted December 25, 2011 I didn't know the wagon's had ball joints in the rear! Good to know. Do you use the same ball joints from up front in the rear? Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Spridget 498 Posted December 25, 2011 Report Share Posted December 25, 2011 Battery finally quit. Of course I was already running late for work. When I got home in the morning I jumped the battery and moved the car out of the street. I'll deal with it later. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
double--negative 405 Posted December 25, 2011 Report Share Posted December 25, 2011 I didn't know the wagon's had ball joints in the rear! Good to know. Do you use the same ball joints from up front in the rear? Yessir. Gen 3 & 4 wagons use the same ball joints in the rear as the front. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Brian_05_SEL 1418 Posted December 25, 2011 Report Share Posted December 25, 2011 I installed Mr. Gasket coil spring spacers into the rear. It does help a little with keeping the outside-rear corner from squatting during hard turns. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
double--negative 405 Posted December 26, 2011 Report Share Posted December 26, 2011 Just thought I'd post whore a little. The front door panels was two panels tore apart and built into one. No map pockets or net. I'm a cheap ass modder. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
2000_Gold_Taurus 61 Posted December 26, 2011 Report Share Posted December 26, 2011 I changed the oil, replaced the drain plug, checked for leaks(found none), and checked fluid levels-topped up the windshield washer. Routine maintenance the way it should be! Quote Link to post Share on other sites
ilh 9 Posted December 27, 2011 Report Share Posted December 27, 2011 (edited) Well, I've been lurking for a long time and I'll explain why now... this is gonna be a long-ass post. Mid-november I'm just taking it easy at home, Tuesday afternoon at about 2:30 and Rick (hes the fellow that dispatches all of us tradesmen to jobs) calls me up... "Are you available for work?" Yup! "Do you have snow tires on your car yet?" Well, no, why? "We need more guys in Revelstoke and it's about -5 up there these days... so you're going to need snow tires. You want to go?" When does it start? "You'll start driving tomorrow, so you can start work on Thursday." Oh s**t. Let me get to the tire shop and call you back. I RIPPED over to my buddy at the tire shop, had 2 Hankook winters put on to the tune of $400, and called Rick right back saying I would go. Revelstoke, by the way, is a small town 7 hours away from Vancouver... Approximately 450-500 miles away. The car ran flawlessly all the way there, all week through and on the way home, I'm halfway home, doing 75mph on the highway 20km from Boston Bar (pretty well between Bumf**k, Nowhere and s**tsville, Nowhere) and POP! Car starts missing. Badly. Oh s**t. I knew what had happened. My car had blown another ******* plug out of the rear cylinder head. It did this about 7500 miles ago on a different cylinder at another terribly inconvienient time... Last time was 1030pm on a Montana highway... This time it's 4pm on a BC highway... It's about -8, thinking about snowing, and it's getting dark, FAST. It's going to be about -15 overnight, sleeping in my car is suicide and no way in hell am I sleeping at a greasy motel in Boston Bar overnight. I had BCAA (the Canadian equivalent to AAA) but even still, it was a 230km tow... Cost me $265 to get the car home. Would have been over $750 without BCAA. (On the bright side, I made about $1900 in 5 days for the trip including LOA.) So then I got out the heli-coil kit out and prepared to helicoil my engine... but realized it was next to impossible to have it be reliably done so I didn't put the inserts in... Then I found the Timesert kit for Triton engines... Ordered it up and waited for it to arrive in the mail... Gentlemen, I can't stress this enough.... The Timesert #5553 is the best $500 I have ever spent on tools. The kit is brilliantly designed and even a monkey could repair an engine with it. And no, I swear to god, they did not pay me to say that. The insert has a flange on the top, Loctite in the middle, and it cold rolls into the cylinder head at the bottom of the insert. I have no doubt that this repair will last for a very long time. So I slapped it all together, turned the key... My car ran like a bag of s**t. Misfire, misfire, misfire. Took me all week to figure it out. Sometimes it would run pretty good... but then 20 minutes later have a flashing check engine light, no power, so bad you'd have to pull over. I tried everything... swap coils, swap the new plugs for old ones, new intake gaskets, clean the MAF, re-tune my car back to stock.... After a week of screwing around after the repair, my friend Mike came to the rescue... The answer was a weak COP. It ran just well enough that it did throw a P0305 misfire code, but not a P0355 coil failure code. We put in a spare coil, and turned the key... Perfect idle. My car broke down on November 19th... Today is December 26th. I retuned my car back to 93 Octane Performance, got in, turned the key and drove the snot out of my car tonight for the first time in over a month. It felt so good to be back in my own car without a worry that it would break down again. Edited December 27, 2011 by ilh Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Rusty 279 Posted December 27, 2011 Report Share Posted December 27, 2011 It felt so good to be back in my own car without a worry that it would break down again. That's about the best damn feeling in the world. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Bull Geek 812 Posted December 27, 2011 Report Share Posted December 27, 2011 2000 DOHC's--Chugging plug's like nobody's business. I'm 2 for 6 on my car. How about for you? Joining an AutoClub for the tow service is well worth the time and trouble. Glad you got it back on the road Ian. Wonder what Ford did on the 2000 cylinder heads to cause threads to strip so easily. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Scuba9898 20 Posted December 27, 2011 Report Share Posted December 27, 2011 Nick Im 6 for 6 right now : \. Learned a lesson from buying crappy vehicles. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
adio 10 Posted December 28, 2011 Report Share Posted December 28, 2011 Got some 205/60/16 Firestone Winterforce tires for $350 total installed. Also hooked up a 2 channel amp I had sitting around for my highs, way better than head unit power. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Rusty 279 Posted December 28, 2011 Report Share Posted December 28, 2011 Good deal, man. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Vulcanator 85 Posted December 29, 2011 Report Share Posted December 29, 2011 You'll be happy with those tires. I had them on my old 2wd ranger and they made it handle pretty good in the snow and ice. Sent from my HTC Incredible S using Tapatalk Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Sean T. 222 Posted December 29, 2011 Report Share Posted December 29, 2011 Oooooh! Cool tread pattern, Adio! Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Rusty 279 Posted January 1, 2012 Report Share Posted January 1, 2012 Well, just recently I succeded in burning Marilyn's hood, while blowing some s**t up. Happy new year, everyone! Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Trevor 37 Posted January 1, 2012 Report Share Posted January 1, 2012 Well, just recently I succeded in burning Marilyn's hood, while blowing some s**t up. Happy new year, everyone! lol I love the amount of emoticons we have Quote Link to post Share on other sites
ilh 9 Posted January 5, 2012 Report Share Posted January 5, 2012 2000 DOHC's--Chugging plug's like nobody's business. I'm 2 for 6 on my car. How about for you? Joining an AutoClub for the tow service is well worth the time and trouble. Glad you got it back on the road Ian. Wonder what Ford did on the 2000 cylinder heads to cause threads to strip so easily. Nick - Cylinder #1, by the Haynes manual coughed up at 307K... lucky enough to be able to re-insert it on the side of the road, huck a JY coil in with the same plug and get on my merry way. Was good ever since. Cylinder #2 (rear bank, middle cylinder, impossible to get to) coughed up at ~319K at which point I then kicked myself because I was aware the problem had existed but hadn't done anything about it. I even thought to myself at a drive-thru window "Gee my car almost sounds like it has a lifter tick, better check that when I get home." You'll find this thought curious because of course a DOHC has cam followers, not lifters. What I later discovered this noise was, was a warning sign because high-compression air was leaking past the plug on the cylinder that coughed it up less then 48 hours later. Some say the 2000's are a fine line to torque - too little and the plug walks out, too much and you ruin the fragile aluminum threads. It's also an obvious suggestion that there simply are too few threads on the head - more threads and a longer plug could have resolved this quite easily, IMO. Both of my failures were at 70+MPH and after a full day's driving at such speed... I'm going to throw a wild guess out there and suspect the thermal expansion between the taper on the aluminum cylinder head and the profile of the steel plug has something to do with the matter as well. Mileage has been poor since the repair (18.5MPG) but only because the car's been tuned for 93 Performance and I've been making sure it still has all 200 horsepower Hopefully this week will be better, my wallet has dictated that I revert back to the 87 Economy tune. In better news... The picture is on my phone but it rolled over 321,000 kms the other day. 321,868.8 kilometers is the golden number we're looking for this week.... In American terms, that's exactly 200K miles. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Rusty 279 Posted January 7, 2012 Report Share Posted January 7, 2012 Marilyn is now street legal for the first time in around 2 years. Finally found a 3rd BL spoiler in a yard for her. It's Silver Frost, though, but I don't care. I just want people to stop trying to run into me: Dirty girl: (Is it me, or do the dirt marks look like 1st gen Fusion headlights?) Silver Frost spoiler on: SUCCESS!: Also picked up a freebie for the interior. Chrome lighter from a G2. The socket doesn't work right, so I figured why not put something pretty in it?: Marylin has also accrued about 500 miles in the past two days. Long trips in this car are great Now to relax a bit, then go clean her out inside. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
tRus03 75 Posted January 7, 2012 Report Share Posted January 7, 2012 Rusty, why not just swap the good third brake light onto your white spoiler? With my car, I have two third brake lights-one in the rear window and one on the spoiler. If one goes out, I still have the other! Quote Link to post Share on other sites
15951 2 Posted January 8, 2012 Report Share Posted January 8, 2012 Got the car in mid-November, and have since replaced the tires, put a new cabin air filter in, replaced the fuel filter, a/t fluid and filter, coolant, PCV, new Silverstar Ultra headlights, new IAC and gasket, and new upper manifold instake gaskets. Cleaned the throttle body, Seafoamed it, and more parts are on the way. Not a low maintenance vehicle. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Rusty 279 Posted January 8, 2012 Report Share Posted January 8, 2012 My spoiler was factory installed, so no light in the rear windscreen. Swapping spoilers was easier. You are going to see more colors on this car, anyway, as I begin to replace the hood, doors and fenders that are damaged by either dents or rust. But don't worry, there is paint to be applied sometime in the future. Have you seen the new Ford color, Cinnamon? I have Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Bull Geek 812 Posted January 8, 2012 Report Share Posted January 8, 2012 Rusty...it's two bolts. Just sayin... The master cylinder and new rotors have been installed on the wagon. Also found the reason for the bizaro temp gauge. I mangled up the i/o plastic on the backside of it specifically on the coolant gauge readout. That has now been fixed, and the speedometer cable has been lubed with wheel bearing grease so that should stop the scratchy noise from the gauge. Never knew you could rip the spring right out of the cable to lubricate it. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Sean T. 222 Posted January 9, 2012 Report Share Posted January 9, 2012 bent some rusty undercarriage when we put Rex on the lift, fixed my fog light that had burnt out, and broke my emergency brake cable. all in a good day's work! Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Angrod 280 Posted January 9, 2012 Report Share Posted January 9, 2012 Gave the bull a bath. I missed a few spots but it looks a lot better without all the salt covering it. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
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