What did you do with your Thunderbird Today?

I went out and started pulling the fuel rail off Lazarus, I'm swapping it to the red car due to dirt dobbers, lol. I'll clean the rail and use it on lazarus when I get it back together.
If I pull the bolts up, will the heads and manifold come off in one piece? They're kinda glued together...
 
Grog6 said:
If I pull the bolts up, will the heads and manifold come off in one piece? They're kinda glued together...
Click to expand...

My back is aching on your behalf just at the thought of that.


But no it won’t work, the heads need to clear the dowels which being at a 45° angle means you can’t pull straight up. The other factor is the bolts nearest to the towers cannot be fully removed… this can be overcome with rubber bands or cut hoses to elevate them(which is how you change the heads individually) but all together seems like a recipe for disaster

Why do you want to pull the heads anyway?
 
I'm going to rebuild the engine and heads.
Thought was to lift that off with the engine puller, and cut the rtv on my workbench, rather than in place. I have tungsten wire to cut it with. I need a wire coathanger to feed the wire with. I haven't seen one since the 80's, lol.
I'm kinda glad it wont work, pulling the fuel rail was bad enough.
Are there any projections on the head/manifold joint? All I remember was the plastic tabs on the gasket. The wire will cut plastic.
 
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How much RTV did you use? If it’s just the dab for a PI swap you should have little resistance getting the manifold off the heads
 
Well, it was badly pitted when I broke the og manifold, so i converted to the pi manifold to avoid the og gasket outline, that was deeply pitted. I filled the pits smooth, let it dry, and set the gaskets into a layer of black rtv, on both sides. It never leaked again. Almost 500kmi. There's enough rtv it should cut ok. :)
Yeah, that was a bush fix from hell.
 
I have no wire hangers anywhere, so I stripped a piece of romex wire, and I'm going to go see if I can cut it.
 
IMG_5097.jpeg

Even though I’m having reverse issues, I got it off jack stands and took it for a ride. Only cause I’m having a new garage door put in soon and I needed to be able to move the car out.

But, Man does it feel good to drive it.

I did notice that shifting into 5th has a little resistance, so that definitely confirms my suspensions of the 5/R fork being NFG.
 
I changed (again) the role of my front inboard = grille-adjacent lights.

The evolution so far:

1. Parking lights; amber:
The stock setup which is sort of a waste of a 3157 type housing.

2. DRLs and parking lights; white:
My first time installing a relay. Good, but almost too bright for DRLs with Sylvania Zevos.

3. DRLs, turn signals, and parking lights; amber:
There's a how-to thread here:
1997ThunderbirdLXV6

Thread 'How-To: Amber Daytime Running Lights (DRLs)'

In my series of How-To articles which nobody may need, but they're my contribution to site growth, here is information previously posted yet somewhat buried in the What [...] today thread.

My usual disclaimer: I'm not a professional, know nothing about electricity, and don't make any recommendations.


 Intro

To provide some background, DRL requirements are published here:

Federal Register :: Request Access

www.ecfr.gov www.ecfr.gov

DRLs can be white, clear incandescent, selective yellow, yellow or amber. Each DRL optically combined...
This provides dual turn signals in conjunction with the outboard lights.

4. Supplemental high beams and parking lights; white:
This was a bit of a controversial mod. I felt the high beams could use the support of supplemental lights to fill in the area closer to the car; this was beneficial with Sylvania Silverstar Ultra bulbs. The amber DRLs moved to the outboard lights.


And here is my new setup:

DRLs and turn signals; amber:
Yes, the inboard lights are no longer parking lights!

This may upset the purists (of the cat eye look?), because it does alter the lighting esthetics a bit.

Here's my reasoning: I want to have a turn signal that goes off>bright>off>bright for maximum visibility. Since the corners have to also be side markers (and consequently parking lights), they go dim>bright>dim>bright with headlights on; the turn signal becomes less noticeable. That leaves the inboard light to modify by removing parking light functionality.

Now I realize there would be a much more elegant way to accomplish this: use a relay to turn off parking functionality during turn signal operation (using the cornering light as trigger). I just don't feel like going there right now; it might be a future mod.


DRLs

20260418_183500.jpg

Headlights On
(Note inboard lights completely off.)

20260418_183041.jpg
 
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I finally plugged up the defunct heater core, for no particular reason other than that I think I occasionally hear a whistle through it.

20260421_174245.jpg


Unfortunately, in the process I broke the vacuum line which runs from the piece between intake and brake booster to the HVAC check valve. Apparently after 30 years, these lines have turned to glass.

A bike ride to Autozone and $12 later, I had it fixed. I had to concoct a new center support because that piece also broke.

20260421_174308.jpg
 
Interesting your core has the tubes parallel, I’m used to 3.8 cars having them splayed out in a V
 
Seeing this reminds me, I had this idea that I should sand and polish the writing on my intake ("3.8 fuel injected"). On earlier years, the writing had a machined surface with the rest of the intake painted black, but on mine the whole thing is just dull aluminum.
 
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