Oops, I did it again. I bought a new car. (1986 Ford LTD wagon)

Topic: Oops, I did it again. I bought a new car. (1986 Ford LTD wagon) (Read 5445 times) previous topic - next topic

Re: Oops, I did it again. I bought a new car. (1986 Ford LTD wagon)

Reply #15 – November 23, 2023, 02:05:10 PM

That's awesome!

Re: Oops, I did it again. I bought a new car. (1986 Ford LTD wagon)

Reply #16 – February 27, 2024, 09:02:33 PM

So, a little update.

Life and winter has hampered progress, but here's where we sit at the moment.

In the bay with the 2015-17 intake.

All with the hood closed.

I went to a 96-04 Kmember, as I needed a little more drop under the oil pan. Still needed to clearance the back of the Kmember to get the pan down and foreward.

I have about 1/4" between the oil pan and the rack, but as you can see, the pan is still tucked up under the K-member

Right now I'm sorting out motor mounts. I have a couple ideas on what I want to do, but we'll see which one pans out. Ironically, I may wind up welding the factory mount pads back on, even if they're in a slightly different location.

The only real clearance issue is the u-joint on the steering shaft with the DS exhaust manifold. I think I can make it work OK with a little engine placement, a spendy steering shaft, and some clearancing (meaning grinding).

Re: Oops, I did it again. I bought a new car. (1986 Ford LTD wagon)

Reply #17 – October 21, 2024, 08:29:30 PM

Since the other site is down, I'll update here.

Been going in circles this past few months trying to work between several projects.

This one needed to get the K-member mods done and I accomplished that. (Pic of it in primer)

Relocated the FCA mounts inboard 3/4", since I was going to use the SN-95 arms, and the stock width between the control arm mounts was the same between the LTD and the Mod K-members. I was going to have fender contact if I tried to leave them as-is.

I talked myself into thinking that I needed to clean up the engine bay before I dropped the drivetrain back in the car, so I needed to address that, and got it knocked out this past weekend.

I need to remove a bunch of un-needed wiring and do a few more things, so it wasn't a bad idea to strip everything out.

I hit it with a couple rounds of scuff and clean with some grey ScotchBrite pads and treated any remaining corrosion areas with some Corroseal.

The primed and painted it with some Seymour MRO paints.

Next task is to get the drivetrain back in the car and out of my way in the garage.

Re: Oops, I did it again. I bought a new car. (1986 Ford LTD wagon)

Reply #18 – October 22, 2024, 10:58:01 AM

Wow! What a difference for the engine bay!

Re: Oops, I did it again. I bought a new car. (1986 Ford LTD wagon)

Reply #19 – October 22, 2024, 02:46:40 PM

its amazing how good of shap that lower rad core support is in. you amaze me with your quarky appreciation for the odd fox box platforms. im sure you will turn it into a gem!

Re: Oops, I did it again. I bought a new car. (1986 Ford LTD wagon)

Reply #20 – October 22, 2024, 06:58:51 PM

Quote from: jcassity – on October 22, 2024, 02:46:40 PM

its amazing how good of shap that lower rad core support is in. you amaze me with your quarky appreciation for the odd fox box platforms. im sure you will turn it into a gem!

Well, there is a bit of damage hiding on the bottom rear of the passenger side of it, but nothing I wanted to mess with. This is a car that is going to get DRIVEN, so I wanted to make sire things were sealed/fresh.

Truth be told. If I didn't have the '83 TBird, I'd be building up another 80-82 Box TBird/Cougar XR-7 in its place.

Re: Oops, I did it again. I bought a new car. (1986 Ford LTD wagon)

Reply #21 – November 09, 2024, 07:57:36 PM

Fighting for time, but I finally got the drivetrain and K-Member installed in the car today.

Not 100% happy with the motor mounts in the end, but I'll investigate more if I have problems.

Re: Oops, I did it again. I bought a new car. (1986 Ford LTD wagon)

Reply #22 – November 09, 2024, 11:49:27 PM

I've got to say, what some of you guys are able to do is really amazing. On the farm, I build and fabricate stuff all the time, but comparing my talent to yours is humbling. Well done! Thank you for posting.

Re: Oops, I did it again. I bought a new car. (1986 Ford LTD wagon)

Reply #23 – November 16, 2024, 05:59:19 PM

Back at it for a bit today. mainly sorting out wiring details and a couple other bits.

Trying to sort out all of the needed wiring I need to save or repurpose from the LTD stuff. Need to save things like power feeds, AC control stuff, and separating the lighting wiring from the other stuff that's not going to be needed.

For the lighting, I'm planning on doing an H4 conversion, like I did on the TBird, and run the headlamp power from the battery, through relays, and just use the old circuits from the headlight switch as triggers.

This is all of the front end light wiring. I'm going to remove the extra bits from the cornering lamps that aren't used and remove the headlight plugs, as I'll be replacing them with a new, uprated harness.

This pic may cause some folks a bit of stress, but there's a method to my madness.

Seeing as I'll be needing to add relays, etc for fan(s), lighting, fuel system, I thought I'd go a different route instead of piecing together another aftermarket set-up (like on the TBird)

I picked up a fuse box for a 2011 Mustang and will use that, to take advantage of some of the wiring and circuit protection already being in place.

The extra circuits/relays I can repurpose to run things like the lighting circuits, as well as repurpose some of the unused J-case fuses to replace the fusible links on the power circuits I need to reuse from the LTD.

Gonna be a little tedious to sort through, but I think I can manage it

To finish up, I bolted the later intake on with the throttle body. Just to have something fun to look at (and close up the intake).

Re: Oops, I did it again. I bought a new car. (1986 Ford LTD wagon)

Reply #24 – November 21, 2024, 08:27:50 PM

While digging through the wiring, I did a recheck of the steering shaft to manifold clearance, which was a little bit of an issue when placing everything.
Well, the new MM steering shaft made things worse (the u-joint is bigger than the stock one) and I can't/don't want to move the engine any more to the pass side. The contact is basically right on the connection to the manifold outlet and the pipe . I'm gonna need like another 1/2" of clearance, which I don't have without a lot of rework of things.

Pondering ideas, I went looking into what aftermarket exhaust options there were. Looking around ebay, I found these---for $100

I thought, for that price I can afford to gamble on modifying them. Seeing as I have to custom build the connection between the manifolds and the X-pipe, I have a little bit of freedom. The X-pipe was another $100 Marketplace find for an SN-95

Two ideas.
The first is to cut right between the and the collector, on the angle. I think I can possibly rotate the outlet towards the engine a bit to gain clearance.
Option two is to cut the off and add a section of pipe to clear the steering shaft and then add a connection below that.

Either way, I'll also be adding a flex section at the front of the X, to give these thin-walled headers a bit of protection.

My evenings lately have been pouring over wiring diagrams, sorting out what needs to go where. Luckily, most of the engine and transmission/starter/charging wiring is all contained in the existing engine harness. I really only need to focus on the "body" harness connector.

41 wire connections that most of which I'll probably be using. the MAF sensor wiring comes into this, as well as the connections for the FPCM and the EVAP stuff (Yes, I'm keeping full emissions stuff on this) and the DataLink (OBDII) connection. I've put together a chart with all of the terminations and whether they're a "Cabin" or "Engine Bay" connection.

I made the discovery that I already have a power feed for the Volvo electric PS pump, since the Mustangs used an electric PS rack. Both also are controlled via CANBUS, so I got to wondering if I can use the Ford signal to control the pump (based on speed, or what-have-you). Haven't sorted that detail out yet. Worst case, I have a little stand-alone controller I can use and set to a constant assist value.

Anyway, this stuff is fun, right?

Re: Oops, I did it again. I bought a new car. (1986 Ford LTD wagon)

Reply #25 – November 25, 2024, 08:56:38 AM

My mind went right to that Engine Master episode where they start denting up the pipes to clear the steering column to see the changes on the dyno.

I wonder what that engine with a cross over pipe will sound like?

Wiring makes me shudder.

Re: Oops, I did it again. I bought a new car. (1986 Ford LTD wagon)

Reply #26 – November 25, 2024, 09:54:55 AM

If the interference wasn't right at the stupid connection point, this would be a whole lot easier.

Got a bunch of TXL wire on the way so I can start connecting the dots.

Of course the weather is supposed to get frigid here this weekend. Going to have limited time to work on this anyway, we'll see what I can get done.

Re: Oops, I did it again. I bought a new car. (1986 Ford LTD wagon)

Reply #27 – November 25, 2024, 06:10:53 PM

So I had about an hour to work on this today (and the weather was decent)

Quickly pulled the DS manifold off and confirmed my suspicions that the contact was going to be even worse.

I took the cut-off to the

My thought to use the angling of the bend there to rotate the exhaust away from the steering shaft isn't going to work. It does move the outlet away, but the interference stays about the same. Going to have to extend the outlet past the steering shaft a bit, and then make the connection.

Re: Oops, I did it again. I bought a new car. (1986 Ford LTD wagon)

Reply #28 – November 26, 2024, 12:18:24 AM

Maybe???

Re: Oops, I did it again. I bought a new car. (1986 Ford LTD wagon)

Reply #29 – November 26, 2024, 08:23:18 AM

That lower section is telescoping (This is the fancy MM conversion steering shaft).

Shoving the upper portion into the receiver on the column more may allow for clearance of the u-joint, but the lower section still needs to angle more.
I need to toss the rack in there to see exactly where things fall, but some sort of modification is going to be needed.