What did you do with your Thunderbird Today?

I drove Lazarus a couple of times before I inherited it, but not many. One, I remember hitting a curve like about 90, and it was smooth as glass. I went to best buy and bought a soundblaster 16 card, and a dvd rom drive. ~ $350,iirc.
So, w.e.c., the shock is popping, or is that a broken spring?
 
Grog6 said:
I drove Lazarus a couple of times before I inherited it, but not many. One, I remember hitting a curve like about 90, and it was smooth as glass. I went to best buy and bought a soundblaster 16 card, and a dvd rom drive. ~ $350,iirc.
So, w.e.c., the shock is popping, or is that a broken spring?
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The spring seat is breaking away from the shock
 
if those shock bodies are big enough for inserts, you can fix it while you upgrade; just don't weld on the shock untill it's empty. :)
 
On today's episode of what'd you do, I jerry rigged a way to hold my sct in the dash. I wish I could take it apart and 3d print a nice bezel for where the radio used to live, but that voids the warranty 🙄
 

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1997ThunderbirdLXV6 said:
Today, I filled up, and my mpg was a solid 2.5 mpg better than it has been recently with mixed driving. That last tank had this added, and it really seems to work; the car runs more smoothly, too.

View attachment 18197
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Try buying $11 a tank better gas and see if you get the same results.
 
Chandar8 said:
On today's episode of what'd you do, I jerry rigged a way to hold my sct in the dash. I wish I could take it apart and 3d print a nice bezel for where the radio used to live, but that voids the warranty 🙄
Click to expand...

I have a plan for Gold Bird to do something very similar, but I will be using the ash tray for that.

I am outsourcing the 3D print job though.
 
CDsDontBurn said:
I have a plan for Gold Bird to do something very similar, but I will be using the ash tray for that.

I am outsourcing the 3D print job though.
Click to expand...
I could do it myself, but unfortunately cracking open the sct voids the warranty. I am debating doing it anyway just to make it look nicer because it annoys me greatly. I lovingly call this car shitbird, but I want it to be getting nicer as I do things to it
 
We need to send SCT an email and ask if they sell a programmer that fits in a DIN-E radio slot. If not, I can see probably a flasher for every ford licensee, because 99% of cars sct software programs has that size radio.
I'd throw down a couple hundred, but not the $450; we all already have a tuner, so what existing customers'll pay is limited.
 
Grog6 said:
We need to send SCT an email and ask if they sell a programmer that fits in a DIN-E radio slot. If not, I can see probably a flasher for every ford licensee, because 99% of cars sct software programs has that size radio.
I'd throw down a couple hundred, but not the $450; we all already have a tuner, so what existing customers'll pay is limited.
Click to expand...

I considered at a time buying a locked X3 or X4 and discarding the casing entirely putting the rest behind a tinted translucent plastic in the lower DIN slot. I don’t know how the current devices are with the LCD screens but the older ones with the multi row VFD displays are simply that, a separate display that connects to the “motherboard(I’m not a computer guy but that sounds right), so you could simply run ribbon cable between the pins to connect it and orient the display any position you want. Best part is you don’t need an unlocked device since that only inhibits the ability to load tunes, not datalog or check codes any device locked or unlocked still can do that.


But don’t you have a W&S infocenter collecting dust??? That’ll do the same thing lol
 
I do, and it does log some stuff. It's very similar to the xcal, in that it's a PIC microcontroller, with associated circuitry. In reverse engineering the infocenter, it occurred to me that the memory capacity of the pic chips is huge now, so it could read a bunch more stuff. I'd love to talk Scott into building one more run. The hard part is the connectors they used. IIRC, they sold them for $600, but I've never seen those connectors for less than $1500.
That may be why there was one run;I've been screwed by a supplier.

I tried to talk to Winston once, but he didn't want to talk when I mentioned source code. Their code-fu is strong, lol. We won't recreate it. We'd need their complete cooperation. :)
Matt, if you have a blue one with a plug, it's probably a standard display. Do you remember how many pins? There are two kinds, a two-row and a single longer row.
The infocenter uses a two-row style, and digikey sells a huge one for ~$100 in single quantities.
I'd be totally happy with a obd2 reader/display that I could program what I want it to display.
With what's in the infocenter, you can directly monitor everything the eec sees. Every sensor, every eec input or output, Directly, from the wires.We don't really need that. So hat lowers the cost to: boards, housing,displays,OBD2 connector, and wire.
With effort, we might be able to make 10 units for $2000. Minimum I'd say 1k, ordered from china. We'd sell 10, They'd sell millions, lol.
 
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Grog6 said:
I do, and it does log some stuff. It's very similar to the xcal, in that it's a PIC microcontroller, with associated circuitry. In reverse engineering the infocenter, it occurred to me that the memory capacity of the pic chips is huge now, so it could read a bunch more stuff. I'd love to talk Scott into building one more run. The hard part is the connectors they used. IIRC, they sold them for $600, but I've never seen those connectors for less than $1500.
That may be why there was one run;I've been screwed by a supplier.

I tried to talk to Winston once, but he didn't want to talk when I mentioned source code. Their code-fu is strong, lol. We won't recreate it. We'd need their complete cooperation. :)
Matt, if you have a blue one with a plug, it's probably a standard display. Do you remember how many pins? There are two kinds, a two-row and a single longer row.
The infocenter uses a two-row style, and digikey sells a huge one for ~$100 in single quantities.
I'd be totally happy with a obd2 reader/display that I could program what I want it to display.
With what's in the infocenter, you can directly monitor everything the eec sees. Every sensor, every eec input or output, Directly, from the wires.We don't really need that. So hat lowers the cost to: boards, housing,displays,OBD2 connector, and wire.
With effort, we might be able to make 10 units for $2000. Minimum I'd say 1k, ordered from china. We'd sell 10, They'd sell millions, lol.
Click to expand...

Now a days the connectors should be able to be 3D printed if one wanted to go through the hassle, and actually only the female one is needed as the other one is simply the same 104 pin connector that’s in every OBD II dash harness of 90s-00s Ford’s.

The info enter setup is pretty trick in that it doesn’t use the datalink connector but literally picks up the raw signal data inline of the EEC to every sensor and actuator and calculates independently of the EEC. Is all of that really that necessary or useful? …Eh… but it’s a really interesting piece of physical club history, the big dogs of the forum had them in the day. I’d use it as is limited tech and all just because.
 
At long last Supergordo and I have taken care of the crank wiring. I dont remember who said to check it for the rpm drop, but thats exactly what it was.

Ignore the random crap jingling around shitbird


 
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