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  1. #51
    FEP Senior Member Patrick Olsen's Avatar
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    Forgot to add the picture of an oil sample. (Note the "USED COOLANT" marking on the bottle - it was the only clear bottle I had handy! )



    I'm still amazed at how black that oil is after such short run time!

  2. #52
    FEP Senior Member Patrick Olsen's Avatar
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    - Started pulling some more out of the interior. Someone on FB expressed interest in the big Futura/Z7 B-pillar panels, so I took them out this evening. I was worried about breaking clips or something like that, but I was forgetting that's not how cars were made 40 years ago! No need to worry about shearing off some little clip or locking tab or something that holds a panel in place but can't be seen and can't be released without some magic tool and tiny little fingers to operate it. Instead, the Zephyr just has exposed screws - grab a Phillips head screwdriver, remove the screws, remove the panel. Tadaaa!!!

    So, I removed the rocker sill trim and the upper door opening / roof line trim, unbolted the shoulder belts, then removed the sail panels (b-pillar panels, rear interior trim panels, whatever you want to call them). I was somewhat surprised to find that the interior trim piece above the doors is metal - I would've thought it was plastic, like its counterpart rocker sill trim.







    Interesting to see the original color of the carpet (where it hasn't been sun faded) under the rocker sill trim.




    - I also bought some front and rear bumper mounts / shock absorbers from a guy on FB. I'm thinkin' I want to "tuck" the bumpers in a few inches, but I wanted to have some spares on hand before I try butchering the ones I've got.
    '89 GT convertible - not a four-eye
    '82 Zephyr Z7 - future track car

  3. #53
    FEP Senior Member Patrick Olsen's Avatar
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    - Got pretty much all of the interior trim stripped out - everything but the dash, A-pillars, and kick panels.





    As you can see, the headliner is just hanging - the only thing keeping it in place is the dome light. I couldn't figure out how to get the dome light out, though! I didn't want to break it, so I left it like that. So, what's the trick on releasing the dome light?

  4. #54
    FEP Senior Member Greywolf's Avatar
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    The dome light pulls down and back out of the retainer, which sort of pops into the hole in the headliner. If you can get behind it, you can unplug the connector from the dome light assembly. If it's all hanging on the dome light wire, you won't have enough slack to pull the dome lamp out, and you'll probably need someone to hold the headliner up to give you some wiggle room.

    I don't have a headliner; I was hoping to make a template from my old one and it basically dissolved before I could. Any chance I could get some measurements before yours goes away?

  5. #55
    FEP Senior Member Patrick Olsen's Avatar
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    Got it, thanks! Not sure if I did it as you described, exactly, but I got the clear cover to pop off (without breaking any of the clips), then unscrewed the dome light from the roof. With that removed, I was able to remove the headliner. Now I need to peel off the insulation on the roof, and remove the side brackets that hold the headliner up.

    I shot you a PM about the headliner dimensions - I can definitely help you out with that.
    Last edited by Patrick Olsen; 09-03-2018 at 07:18 PM.
    '89 GT convertible - not a four-eye
    '82 Zephyr Z7 - future track car

  6. #56
    FEP Senior Member Patrick Olsen's Avatar
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    Oh, and how does one remove the A-pillar trim pieces? It looks to me like the bottom of the A-pillar trim slips underneath the top of the dash, which would make it impossible to remove the A-pillar trim without removing the dash. That seems silly, and definitely isn't the way my Mustang's A-pillars are set up. Is there something I'm missing?
    '89 GT convertible - not a four-eye
    '82 Zephyr Z7 - future track car

  7. #57

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    Not missing anything. The dash pad has to come off first
    1978 Mercury Zephyr boxtop 5.0 EFI T5Z 8.8
    1999 Ford Contour 2.5 V6 5 speed
    2016 Ford Focus ST 2.0 Ecoboost 6 speed

  8. #58
    FEP Senior Member Patrick Olsen's Avatar
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    Alrighty then, thanks for the confirming that.

  9. #59
    FEP Senior Member Patrick Olsen's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Patrick Olsen View Post
    Then took it to the local scrap metal yard so I could put it on their scale (the real reason for taking it out) - about 2845# with 3/4 tank of gas. Not too bad!
    I've been weighing stuff that I've pulled out of the interior as I go along. So far I'm at about 58# removed, with a bit more than half of that due to the back seat. That doesn't include the headliner, which is out but I haven't weighed yet, so figure another few pounds for that. Obviously there's more to pull out, and there's plenty more to add in (roll cage and subframe connectors being the two big additions, I think), but it's interesting to keep a tally as I go.

  10. #60

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    Hey curious...how to do you go about removing the rear seat? I can't tell what comes out first, and I don't want to just start yanking on stuff to break some fastener or something because I didn't know any better.

  11. #61
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    I'm not familiar with your Fairmont specifically, but in every other car I've worked on you push slightly down and toward the rear of the car on the seat bottom (usually pushing against the front face of the cushion). That will release the seat bottom from a couple of clips in the floor. The seat back usually has two fasteners on either side at the bottom that are exposed when you remove the seat bottom. Remove those and usually the top of the seat hooks into place.

    This is the first youtube video I could find: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Vd2gkefPWA
    '89 XR-7 5 Speed
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  12. #62

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    Yep, that.
    Brad

    '79 Mercury Zephyr ES 5.0L GT40 EFI, T-5
    '17 Ford Focus ST
    '14 Ford Fusion SE Manual

  13. #63

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    Wait. What? You're building a Zephyr track car? I love it.

  14. #64
    FEP Senior Member Patrick Olsen's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Str8sixfan View Post
    Hey curious...how to do you go about removing the rear seat? I can't tell what comes out first, and I don't want to just start yanking on stuff to break some fastener or something because I didn't know any better.
    Pretty much as Kevin said. The lower cushion comes out first, it's just clipped into place. In the picture below, you can see the clips circled in yellow; those clips engage thick wire running through the foam of the lower cushion. If you grab the front of the lower cushion and yank up, it'll pop out of those clips, and then you just pull the cushion forward and it's out.

    Once the lower cushion is out, you'll see two bolts holding the seat back in place at the bottom. Unbolt those, and then push the seat back up to unclip the top of the seat back from the package shelf. There are 2 hooks (circled in blue) that hold the top of the seat back against the package shelf.






    Quote Originally Posted by Hammer Down View Post
    Wait. What? You're building a Zephyr track car? I love it.
    That's the plan. I have the car, and I have a bunch of parts. Don't have a drivetrain, don't have a cage or a shop picked out to build it, etc etc. Hopefully I'll make this happen.
    '89 GT convertible - not a four-eye
    '82 Zephyr Z7 - future track car

  15. #65
    FEP Senior Member Patrick Olsen's Avatar
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    Got the A pillar trim out, removed the rear seat belts, removed some insulation from the rear seat shelf, and pulled the insulation off the roof. (Actually, it was pretty much falling off on its own, so I just finished the job.)



    Interesting to see the difference in the fading on the rear center belts - obviously the shorter receptacles are mostly hidden by the lower cushion, so they didn't get much sun, while the center belt got lots of sun!


    I'm up to almost 73# of stuff removed, still not including the headliner. I need to bring that in from the garage and lay it out for measurements.
    '89 GT convertible - not a four-eye
    '82 Zephyr Z7 - future track car

  16. #66
    FEP Senior Member Patrick Olsen's Avatar
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    The car didn't have a whole lot of stuff in it, but I have found a couple of interesting things. A receipt, business unknown. I tell ya, ya just can't get good ruby decanters and glasses for these prices nowadays!



    And a map from the glove box. I couldn't find a date on it anywhere; it lists the town populations with 1970 census data, so that's a clue to its age. I particularly enjoyed the note about the metric system.





    "Within the next 10 years", eh?

  17. #67

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    Yea, I found a 1987 newspaper classified in my trunk last week...Thanks for your help on the seat...I'm on to replacing carpet this week, so that helps a ton!

  18. #68

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    One other question for you Patrick Olsen...what is the size of the torx head on the front seat belt components?

  19. #69
    FEP Senior Member Patrick Olsen's Avatar
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    Either a T50 (regular Torx) or TP45 (improved Torx) will work. I have both, but I used the TP45 because the improved Torx bit design is supposed to be less prone to slipping out under torque. (Not that it really mattered - none of the bolts was particularly tight.)
    Last edited by Patrick Olsen; 09-10-2018 at 07:46 PM.

  20. #70
    FEP Senior Member Greywolf's Avatar
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    Those should be the same bolts on most Fords of that era. I want to say it's a T50 but I haven't pulled them in a long time, it might be a T55? And they're generally pretty tight, so vice-grips may not work. I'm pretty sure it's the same size on my F150.

  21. #71

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    Thank you so much! I just got one ordered on Amazon. I also bought some dynamat knock-off (Noico).

    Can't wait to see what you get done next. I'll try to stop hi-jacking your thread.

  22. #72
    FEP Senior Member Patrick Olsen's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Str8sixfan View Post
    Can't wait to see what you get done next. I'll try to stop hi-jacking your thread.
    There may not be much more in the short term, as I've done the easy stuff. I need to start getting into the mechanicals, which will probably start with the 5-lug conversion. I still need to gather some parts to do that, plus I have some projects on other cars that I think I want to finish up before digging too much more into the Zephyr.

    And no worries about "hijacking". I'd rather see comments from others rather than me just talking to myself.

  23. #73
    FEP Senior Member Patrick Olsen's Avatar
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    On a bit of a whim, after mowing the lawn late Saturday afternoon I decided to jack up the driver's rear, pull off the tire, and take a whack (literally) at fixing the one significant blemish on the car...
    Quote Originally Posted by Patrick Olsen View Post
    This is the only real boo-boo; I'm not even sure exactly how such damage would've happened.


    I didn't do anything sophisticated, just went at it a bit with my 3# hammer. I partially removed the wheel well trim - 2 forward-most screws didn't want to budge, and I didn't feel like fighting with them any more since I could already pull the trim away where I needed to.



    I made some progress, enough that I had to bend the trim some to get it back into position. Still some work to be done. I'm not trying to make this pretty, though, so I won't be spending a ton of time on it. Just want to be sure it's straight enough that when I slap fatter wheels/tires on it for track duty that everything clears just fine.

    Here's a before shot, one of the pics that the previous owners sent me back before I bought the car:


    And after this afternoon's work:


    I tried to take the "after" picture from about the same angle to get a good comparison. Looks to me like the picture confirms that I improved things a bit.

    When it was time to put the wheel back on, I found a surprise visitor.

    The wheel/tire had been sitting face up in the grass, so I'm assuming the spider hitched a ride on the back of the wheel when I lifted it to put it back on the car. Fortunately for the spider, it went to the center of the axle rather than "hiding" behind the wheel on the axle flange. [This was outside in the driveway, so I left the spider to go about its business.]
    '89 GT convertible - not a four-eye
    '82 Zephyr Z7 - future track car

  24. #74

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    Kill it with fire!!
    Brad

    '79 Mercury Zephyr ES 5.0L GT40 EFI, T-5
    '17 Ford Focus ST
    '14 Ford Fusion SE Manual

  25. #75
    FEP Senior Member Patrick Olsen's Avatar
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    I still haven't done any real work on the car. But one thing I figured I wanted to do was tuck the bumpers - they just seem to stick out more than needed. Looking at the rear, just eyeballing things it seems to me like it needs to come in 3-3.5". I pulled the rear bumper off a while back to look at the mounts and see if there would be some way to shorten them. I have an idea, and ended up buying a set of spare bumper shock absorbers off a guy on FB so I had a set to mess with; fairly certain what I ended up with is actually 4 front shock absorbers, but that looks like it'll work out OK. The front ones are 2" shorter than the rear ones, but the mounting is the same:





    So right off the bat I get 2" closer to my goal.

    I cut the end off one of the spare shock absorbers to see how they're built. The narrow part of the shock is the pressure vessel, and is welded to the flat mounting plate. The pressure vessel has something inside it - not sure yet what it is. I drilled a tiny hole into it and what came out was white, granular stuff, and it kept coming out for a few minutes. So, not a fluid, but I'm not sure exactly what the stuff is. That pressure vessel has a steel rod that comes out and presses against the end cap of the outer sleeve (the part that I cut off). Once I cut that end cap off, the outer sleeve is free to move up and down the inner pressure vessel (as seen in the 3rd pic below), but won't slide off, so there must be a lip on the pressure vessel that prevents the outer sleeve from coming off. That steel rod is hard - I sliced the end cap off with a sawz-all, and when the sawz-all got to that rod it basically stopped (and killed the blade ). I had to finish the job by cutting around the perimeter of the sleeve rather than slicing all the way through.







    As for the front, turns out that's getting replaced with a combined fiberglass bumper and lower valance that a guy on FB is making and selling. Should have that in the near future. That'll almost certainly end up being modified with some openings in the valance for brake cooling ducts, and probably an opening to help supply the radiator. (This isn't my car, just a sample shot from FB).
    Name:  new front bumper.jpg
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    Right now I've got the rear bumper off so I could mess around with all of this. The entire bumper assembly - bumper, shock absorbers, steel reinforcements on the bumper - weighs in at 35#. The mounts that attach the shock absorbers to the bumper are pretty heavily rusted - I've got those off so I can hit 'em with the wire wheel and throw some Rustoleum on them. (They mount with the 4 bolts sticking up at each end.)



    There's a center steel reinforcement that's riveted in place. I'll remove that for weight reduction, #becauseracecarbutnotreallyjusthpde.


    The bottom lip has a steel reinforcement at each end, not sure exactly why, but it's held on with 2 bolts and 3 rivets:


    '89 GT convertible - not a four-eye
    '82 Zephyr Z7 - future track car

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