Feeling sick to my stomach, and can't sleep tonight. This car sold for $479 on eBay today. The entire car hobby is in serious trouble if this is what people are willing to pay for such a rare car. The engine alone is worth more than this.
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Seeing that it's not worth anything, it's going to get parted out and sent to the crusher.
Back at it with some small progress. Decided to modify a set of speaker grates several weeks ago and got around to buttoning up the passenger door. I've never been a big fan of how these speaker grates were designed by Ford. One of my originals had a broken rib or two and then the other had a broken mounting tab on the backside. Also a little bit of an odd discovery ... my 85 grates have a single vertical bar on the backside of the drivers side ribs and the passenger side has three of these vertical bars. My drivers side had the broken ribs and I think the additional bars on the passenger side grate help to stabilize these and prevent this problem. I pulled a set off of an 86 and those have three vertical bars on both grates (an improvement over 85). Unless you are super careful/gentle, it's very easy to break the mounting tabs on the top backside of the grates, if they are not already broken ... in my own opinion, they are almost a one time use only part as far as these tabs are concerned. Usually when I find these in the junk yard, the tabs are already broken. The 87/88 grates are very similar but a screw was added towards the top of the grate. Again, I'm not overly impressed with the location of this mounting screw. It seems too high and is located on a relatively thin piece of the grate. Often when you find these grates, they are cracked around this screw ... that might be from over tightening, but I still think Ford could have done a little better in the design of these. So ... I decide to try to do a little improvement using both "designs" if you will. I took a junk yard set of 86 grates and drilled and countersunk a mounting screw location that was in an area of the grate that had a little more "meat" to it and wasn't as close to the edge as the 87/88 design. From there, I took some adhesive and glued a sizable fender washer to the back side of the grate. I then painted it to match using interior paint from LMR and installed it. Overall, it came out really well ... not overly wild about having a screw to look at where there wasn't one before but when compared to the 87/88 design, it think it looks just as "factory".
I ended up painting over mine for a sportier look, but it was a bit of a process. My pictures are not the best but I ended up switching from the thin body side moldings to the thick ones to accommodate the ground effects. My original moldings were starting to pull away from the car around the wheel wells, nothing serious, but the usual thing you'll see or find with these cars. I ended up pulling all of the molding off of my car and a donor car with the thick molding. I then removed the top and bottom metal backing strips from all of the thick molding that I was going to reuse on my car. In addition, I also peeled away all of the protective clear covering that is on top of the chrome strip. In many cases, this will discolor or get cloudy and sometimes it will even crack or peel around the edges. When I peeled that all off, I just lightly sanded the entire molding to scuff it up for paint. I'd like to re-do them since I rattle canned them close to 20 years ago, but they are still going relatively strong. I bought the automotive grade 3M gray double sided tape to re-adhere them back to the car.
It was plugged into the corresponding 4 pin connector, but that particular wire did not lead anywhere. It doesn't appear that it ever did either. It looks just like mine ... same length and a clean cut/termination like someone just cut it with a pair of cutters. I decided to just shrink wrap the end of mine and then tape it to the other wires running to that connector ... just odd as there is a wire in the corresponding connector and you'd figured they wouldn't bother putting a wire in if it wasn't going to lead to anything.
Well, I was able to answer my own question to some degree. Managed to find another '86 5.0L EFI Cougar that was relatively new to a somewhat "local" UPull It yard. So ... I pulled myself a spare engine harness ... and ... it has the exact same connector with a black wire that goes nowhere.
As you follow the harness to the driver's side, it terminates at several different connectors that mate to the chassis harness behind the black plastic cover around the stater solenoid and ignition coil. In my photos, I have the wires exposed and pulled out of the loom due to trying to find where the loose black wire goes. The connector in question has a red arrow on it in the last pic.
Hoping a few more pictures may help to clarify. The engine computer harness leading from the computer, through the firewall, runs across the length of the firewall from the passenger side of the car to the driver's side. This particular harness is out of a 1986 Cougar EFI 5.0 car, I think this harness was a one off for this year and was then slightly modified for the 87/88 cars.
Is there a corresponding wire in the plug that connects to it and if so would it be easy to chase out? If you find it going to something then it may clue you in to whether or not it needs to be connected on the other side or if it was for a differently optioned car.
Yes, there is. I'll post a pic of the corresponding plug below. The "broken" black wire on the male connector goes to the black wire with the white stripe in the female connector shown in the pic.
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what year harness is that? they like to change wire colors between 86 and 88
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Is it a mustang harness?
So ... things get a little "interesting" in this regard. My car is an 85 and has all of the original chassis wiring (headlights, dash, interior body back to the taillights) ... BUT ... the engine harnesses (small harness on the actual engine that goes to the injectors and a lot of the sensors, plus the main engine harness that this smaller harness plugs into and then goes to the computer) is out of an 86 5.0 EFI Cougar. I specifically searched for one of these harnesses in salvage yards because it is a direct plug and play into the chassis harness when converting from a TBI 3.8 V6 to an EFI 5.0 V8. The only wiring modification I had to make was the addition of the mass air. The 87/88 Tbirb/Cougar engine harness as well as the Mustang harness are very similar, but they would not have been a direct plug and play with the chassis harness.
I can't speak with certainty regarding the 83-84 cars, but my 85 was originally a column shifted V6 C3 auto and is now a floor shifted V8 AOD. I believe the 83-86 center consoles are full length to the back seat (assuming that 83/84 is slightly different than 85/86 at the dash connection) and then the 87/88 center console is shorter in length and basically stops at the arm rest. Even though I have an 85, I used the 87/88 vintage center console in my conversion.
Thanks guys. I assumed it was a ground being a solid black wire and figured that I'm relatively "ok" since I didn't have any issues prior to finding it (that I'm aware of). Just curious as to where it goes if it indeed goes anywhere. I'll have to snoop around the next time I'm in the junk yard to see if I find anything different.
The connector itself connects to the chassis harness in that big hodge podge around the starter solenoid and ignition coil on the driver's side just behind the battery, that isn't really my issue. The connectors/connections themselves are all good. I was just poking around and found this loose wire. I guess what I'm trying to find out is where this wire should go? Does the wire run out of this connector and to another one or does it just run through the engine harness to the computer? If so, I didn't locate the other end of it.
