What did you do with your Thunderbird Today?

1 step closer to making a duckbill spoiler. Guy made the end plates, but had to bring them back home to make the middle one for extra support. This is a 10” version which I think is waaayyy to big, unless your into that sort of thing.

The actual acrylic needs to be trimmed in the middle to grab the curve of the trunk. The ends are sticking up way too much because of that.





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Chingon1 said:
1 step closer to making a duckbill spoiler. Guy made the end plates, but had to bring them back home to make the middle one for extra support. This is a 10” version which I think is waaayyy to big, unless your into that sort of thing.

The actual acrylic needs to be trimmed in the middle to grab the curve of the trunk. The ends are sticking up way too much because of that.





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Get some strut rods. They look cool.
 
I visited a guy and acquired a couple pieces of lost Star League technology.

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The console in particular -- 94-95 SC metric -- is very damn hard to come by and I'm delighted that I managed to dig one up.
 
Stanley said:
I visited a guy and acquired a couple pieces of lost Star League technology.

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The console in particular -- 94-95 SC metric -- is very damn hard to come by and I'm delighted that I managed to dig one up.
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That’s awesome, I’ve found the Canadian 200kph clusters but never once the 220 ones in almost two decades.
 
Yeah. When I went looking to buy one I quickly realised that it's not a matter of how much it would be but of finding anyone who would be selling one at all in the first place. It's not a high-demand item per se, since most Bird owners are Americans and want Imperial, but that means that the usual suppliers--all American--never carry it. It was like looking for phone-button bezels.

Now to clean it up and start switching in LEDs.
 
Stanley said:
Yeah. When I went looking to buy one I quickly realised that it's not a matter of how much it would be but of finding anyone who would be selling one at all in the first place. It was like looking for phone button bezels.

Now to clean it up and start switching in LEDs,
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To illustrate how rare that is, I even once cougar with the phone bezels! I still have the switches
 
I was tempted to try and find a phone bezel to go with it just to have the impossible rare pairing. But it's not like the buttons do anything any longer (as I understand it), and in any case I find the buttons break up the clean lines.
 
1997ThunderbirdLXV6 said:
Replaced the black O/D button with the chrome button (which had been glued to the old wood bezel).

I decided to keep the piano black bezel at least until I find a new good wood piece to work with. Probably indefinitely, because totally flat wood trim pieces are very rare.

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Just get a piece of wood with similar grain, cut it out and stain it to match.
 
Yeah I think you're getting too hung up on finding wood from a junkyard source. Check out if you have a woodcraft nearby or have a specialty lumber supply if you want something exotic looking, flat wood is EASY to find. cut it to shape, fill grain stain/dye and clearcoat
 
I hear you. I don't see myself replicating that high gloss 90s wood trim finish though.

Plus I'd like to find someone with a Glowforge. That's that laser cutter which would produce a more perfect result than my drill and dremel.

I also really like the piano black, so I'm in no rush.
 
Yeah I have to say the glossy black is a big upgrade as is, so it’s not really necessary to keep refining it.

Ventilated seats would be interesting, I don’t know anything about them but don’t they have to be perforated?
 
XR7-4.6 said:
Yeah I have to say the glossy black is a big upgrade as is, so it’s not really necessary to keep refining it.
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Exactly. And I just raised it up about 1/8" to close the gap between the bezel and that rubber gasket. I'm happy with it.

XR7-4.6 said:
Ventilated seats would be interesting, I don’t know anything about them but don’t they have to be perforated?
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Well, mine are cloth. It was really just a wild idea that came to me with all this heat.

I have never taken one apart, so I don't know how exactly they're set up. I should take a closer look at one next time I go to the junkyard. I think they were standard on the 1st generation MKZ.
 
1997ThunderbirdLXV6 said:
Exactly. And I just raised it up about 1/8" to close the gap between the bezel and that rubber gasket. I'm happy with it.



Well, mine are cloth. It was really just a wild idea that came to me with all this heat.

I have never taken one apart, so I don't know how exactly they're set up. I should take a closer look at one next time I go to the junkyard. I think they were standard on the 1st generation MKZ.
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Nor have I but I'm always interested in how anything/everything works so If you check it out be sure to document :)
 
I heard the damndest thing today, that I'd never heard. The original name for the tbird was to be the beaver, before marketing got involved.
That was a Jeopardy answer today, at noon.
 
Grog6 said:
I heard the damndest thing today, that I'd never heard. The original name for the tbird was to be the beaver, before marketing got involved.
That was a Jeopardy answer today, at noon.
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The Mustang was originally supposed to be called Cougar. Fucking perverts.

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There's me a logo for my grill!. I need to see if my artist buddy can make me a wax copy of that. I'm hoping to get a furnace that can melt aluminum.
 
Stanley said:
I visited a guy and acquired a couple pieces of lost Star League technology.

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The console in particular -- 94-95 SC metric -- is very damn hard to come by and I'm delighted that I managed to dig one up.
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Hey! I have those mud flaps on my Cougar! (I know, T-bird flaps on a Cougar? Long story) Picked them up a junk yard years ago. I might suggest taking a black plastic trash can and using the T-Bird flaps as stencles and make your own flaps. Preserve those T-Bird mud flaps... They are very rare!

Here is a pic of the stenciled mud flaps from a plastic black trash can. They lasted for years until rocks, road debree, whatever hit them hard enough to crack them. So I just stuck the T-Bird ones on. I bought some Cougar mud flaps on eBay last year. The SOB on eBay was selling the mud flaps for 89-97 Cougar, turned out to be for 98-2003(?) new Cougar. I sent him a nasty graham after returning the flaps....


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My wife is handy at Adobe Illustrator and volunteered to do up some vectors for me because she knows my love of this car. So I'll have scalable images and should be able to do newer flaps eventually, since there's lots of places that will add custom images to generic flaps if you send the images to them.
 
I replaced the wood trim forward of the shifter. It used to be a sanded down Mk4 Jetta piece. I had it for a while, but I wasn't entirely happy with it for two reasons: the top edge wasn't rounded off which made it look unfinished, and it was stuck on with tape which seemed to suffer from summer heat.

My new donor is once more a 1st generation Navigator. This piece is rounded off top and bottom, and it's screwed on.

I wouldn't like for this spot to be "naked", so something had to be done.

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Cleared all my stuff out of the Edge today. The dealer that did the transmission swap was clearly inept. The LF CV already had to be replaced becasue they let them hang from the hubs while the transmission was out. The RF is now clunking. The front subframe also has a clunk. The driveshaft joints are clunking, too. On top of that they did not bolt the downpipe up correctly, so it's throwing multiple codes and leaking exhaust from under the hood. And just for even more fun, after I filled it up earlier this week, it would not restart for half an hour due to vapor lock.

My Edge is the oldest vehicle in our company fleet, so they've decided to replace it and relegate it to spare duty once it is fixed. What we're replacing it with is TBD, but I'll be driving the owner's old RX350 again until then.

As far as how this relates to what I did to the Thunderbird today, I had to move it out of the garage so I could work on the Edge in the air conditioning.
 
Derphound01 said:
Cleared all my stuff out of the Edge today. The dealer that did the transmission swap was clearly inept. The LF CV already had to be replaced becasue they let them hang from the hubs while the transmission was out. The RF is now clunking. The front subframe also has a clunk. The driveshaft joints are clunking, too. On top of that they did not bolt the downpipe up correctly, so it's throwing multiple codes and leaking exhaust from under the hood. And just for even more fun, after I filled it up earlier this week, it would not restart for half an hour due to vapor lock.

My Edge is the oldest vehicle in our company fleet, so they've decided to replace it and relegate it to spare duty once it is fixed. What we're replacing it with is TBD, but I'll be driving the owner's old RX350 again until then.

As far as how this relates to what I did to the Thunderbird today, I had to move it out of the garage so I could work on the Edge in the air conditioning.
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A/C in the garage is a must. I had a window A/C sitting in the shed not being used since we got central AC in the house. A couple weeks again i installed it in the garage window so I could be cool while working on the cars. Not the best cooling as it is old, but works enough that its night and day between the two garages. Good call Derphound! (what's a derphound anyway?)
 
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