What did you do with your Thunderbird Today?

I like the evenly sized speedo/tach, seems more like sports car, where the big central speedometer says "commuter". It's too bad Ford switched to the dumb canbus system to run them but the late gen 4 clusters would be a cool retrofit into a 97

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If they would publish the comm protocols, people could make adapters. Both the steering pump, and alternator projects would benefit that, lol. I tried sending sequential commands, but it stops communicating after so many wrong commands. I'm sure that's to stop people from doing what I was doing. I'd love to have one of the cars that had those for an afternoon; I can capture the data while it's running, and see what commands they use.
 
Beautiful, Matt! Is there a source for the weatherstripping? I remember seeing a link for both the door seals and the Webasto moonroof, but the guy at webasto hasn't answered my email.
 
Know anyone that has a car with one?That would be willing to take data for me? If we got a dash working, it might make the rest easier. We can hook a bus pirate to the canbus, and cross reference datalogged parameters from an xcal. :)
 
XR7-4.6 said:
I like the evenly sized speedo/tach, seems more like sports car, where the big central speedometer says "commuter". It's too bad Ford switched to the dumb canbus system to run them but the late gen 4 clusters would be a cool retrofit into a 97

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While that would have been neat, that instrument cluster gives me trypophobia. No thanks.
 
The coolest gage set I've seen was from a honda or toyota; it's lens made it projected at infinity, so your eyes didn't have to refocus to look at them.
B said he had a fusion; I have the hardware to read it, so a converter might be possible. I need to get a converter board for the bus pirate; I've been using a pic board to do comms on my stuff so farThat's way more complicated. Too bad it doesn't have electric steering, and a mitsu alternator, lol.
Those seem to be m white whale, lol. all I've done so far is start the pump at full speed, and make the alternator boil a battery. :)
 
Finally changed the oil on it today!

Tightened up the drive shaft bolts (trans shop only snugged them - goodbye "thunk" whenever putting the car in gear!) and zip-tied the e-brake mechanism (it was rubbing against the exhaust) on the Mark VIII too.
 
I've had problems multiple times on multiple cars with those loosening, even with thread locker. One of those things i would constantly check. Then I rebuilt my rear diff and put a chromoly pinion yolk on with billet caps and arp bolts. Upgrades it to a 1350 u joint as well. Don't have to torque the bolts as much either, so far they have never backed off.
 
Im not sure if theres visibility issues, but it looks good
 
It matches the ZX2 needles. I like it.
 
Did a quick patch job on the driver side rear window pillar. For whatever reason the passenger side is in perfect shape. Driver side had the typical plastic deteriorating. One of those little things that has been bothering me about the car for years.

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Looks okay for bondo and rattle can; better than it was at least. Would like to eventually find a good condition replacement.
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Nothing today, but...

I found a solution to a problem:
I love my new gauge look, but the ZX2 tach needle is a bit too short which looks funny.

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Today I realized that the '98 and older Windstar needle should be perfect.

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Unfortunately, there's never a Windstar around when you need one.
 
Somehow, there's still one driving around Knoxville.

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Seriously, they are around. Just bad timing: local junkyard had one which they crushed this morning. All the others are '99+, which have a different cluster.

There's no urgency to it; I'll pick one up whenever it becomes available.
 
I rarely have free time to work on my car lately, so progress on anything has been really slow. Today I thought I would finish installing wire loom over the speaker cables in the visible portion of the trunk and wrap up the manual portion of the sound system tuning. Well, I did both. Then I noticed the right rear speaker wasn't outputting any sound. I checked the wiring at the amp and the speaker terminals, then swapped the left and right rear speakers. Now there was no sound from the left rear speaker.

One of my old Pioneer TS-A6857 speakers is dead. Well, it was a cheap factory replacement grade coaxial anyway, only rated up to 50W RMS. I don't remember what I paid for them 15+ years ago, but it definitely wasn't much. I'll be getting a replacement pair that's a better match for my amp. It makes no sense to get the Alpine R-S68 again like I did for the front because I don't need pivoting tweeters in the rear, and I'm applying a -6 dB level adjustment on the head unit for the rear channels to enhance the front soundstage.

Since I want something with a true 6x8" frame instead of a 5x7"/6x8" combo, I'm looking Kenwood's way now. I won't be working on anything for at least another week though since I'll be on vacation. I'll probably order the speakers toward the end of the trip though.
 
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Rodeo Joe said:
Put it away for the winter, I'll deal with the cam sensor issue in the spring.

Joe
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Possibly the same based on forecasts, been driving it regularly up to today though. I'm going to need to look at the diff as my next project, its chattering pretty good in turns but especially right ones, it may just need more friction modifier or one of the clutches broke a tab. Guess I'll try the former first.

Oh yeah last weekend I used a bunch of leftover padding from the new carpet install to insulate the noise from the shifter area and it worked great! Naturally in whack a mole fashion the diff noise is now bothering me lol
 
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