Lil Red 1999 Ford Escort Zx2

In reply to slowbird :

Well managed to make janky lil less janky.

side note, 

This morning needing a specialty tool to do one job and not having that said is frustrating as berkeley! When I was younger I had a garage full of tools. 3 tool boxes, 40 gallon compressor with plethora of air tools, mig welder , floor jacks, stands, engine stand/hoist. Needless to say it was great garage for mechanicin’

Well after years of living in apartments, starting family and moving.  I’m down to very much smaller collection. Today I needed a pair of snap ring plyers for one task and go and behold nothing..

Anyways after that nonsense time for Janky

Went to get my borrowed jack stands back and the mofo said they got stolen. He forgot to put them inside and next day they’re gone. So then you get stuck with this setup:

Moral of this story is not to be stupid jackass and pay more attention to the details so you only have to do a job once...and be careful who you loan your tools to, so your not the one getting screwed over.

When I got the car,  the shifter was already F & F modded, think it had 17 or 22 gears idk. Dealt it with for awhile lazy I know . Well when I swapped over the short throw I got from junkyard I didn’t pay much attention to the bushing that holds the shifter in place which resulted in this 

As you can see the one on the bottom was  two. Thankfully I have extra linkage from my junkyard run. Even installed some high performance parts too

So lubed everything up and swap out linkage was fairly easy,  until I was bolting shifter into place and looked down.

Well again folks research ahead of time. When you install a short throw on a zx2, The pivot ball will rub the heatshield. Well easy enough, get rid a of one bolt, bend some metal and voila.  

Car drives much much better. Small things can make huge difference!

Snuck out for few to tinker again. Nothing major but since my shifter issues should finally be over I finally put on another junkyard score 

Black trim piece with leather boot. Looks much better then original with its 80s square rubber boot 

Also was having issues with my door opening/closing

assummed the door hinges were just sagging, which everything does with age.. 

turns out door panel was snapped into place over the weather stripping. Few mins with flat head much better.

Probably won’t be much updates for a bit. Only issue I really want to address is finding a rear bumper.

Well not much to update. Roasting tires in 1st is fun!

But past few days I’ve been getting a noise I’m hoping is something belt driven. Too tight to do screwdriver/ear method to determine if it’s a tensioner or water pump. Weird part is it’ll make noise one day the next nothing...

One of coming days need to take belt off and see if I can figure it out

Well not much for an update on Janky. Finally went thru the tank of 87 and filled with 93. Hopefully will run much better now. But with it being in the 100s daily I don’t push the car much.

But fear not. I know the masses come to watch me work. 

So after long hot day, after long hot week, and for some reason after  I volunteered to work tomorrow I came home looking to relax in the AC on my week old $2000 couch my FIL tells me his truck smells funny....whew

So I go do a fluid/visual check and see coolant seeping out of the shaft seal on the water pump. Well berkeley. Well after dropping the news to FIL I am informed he is going out of town tomorrow and needs his car.........berkeley me, what’s about to happen next I can not make up. 

Wellll lets start this story off  with me saying I’m not a  professional mechanic. But, I grew up poor as E36 M3. When a car broke down, there wasn’t an option to take it to the shop. You figure out a way to fix it. So you know the situation, you buy the parts,  I’ll fix it for you...

The vehicle you are wondering what I’m working on is this:

This is a wonderfully spectacular 2007 Mercury motherberkeleying Mountaineer. White trash champagne, premier model equipped with a 4.0 V6. 

So I run to local parts store, got the pump, gallon of full concentrate coolant, and fan clutch tools. Well homeboy took 18 minutes to find the the water pump, I was listening to a JRE podcast and zoned out, we both forgot about the fan tools. We’ll get there...

So back at home I popped the hood and tried to get to work. But after 37 seconds of assessing the job at hand I get smacked in back of head by the hood. 

So after tweety bird left with all of my foul mouth I remedied the situation. 

After that you drain the coolant from bottom radiator and fill into old milk jugs. Remove coolant reservoir, P/S reservoir, upper hose, radiator shroud, w/p pulley. And then comes time to pull the clutch fan. 

Well berkeley me I forgot to get the tools. Back to parts store, get the specialty tools, find out their tools don’t work. Go back out to different parts store and voila. After hour of specialty tool sourcing bullE36 M3 I got the fan off in a hot minute. 

At this moment we are here 

Standard procedure here. Clean surfaces and put everything back in order. Go get my gasket maker and the devilish heat wave has cooked my gasket maker into a solid form, sweet. 

So back out to the parts store. Again. 

Thankfully after all of this everything went back together smoothly. 

Well ol’ Janky still puttin along!

Awhile back I found a S/R model in JY and grabbed what I could fit in my hands with little time I had. I planned to go back next day to nab the rest. But..

When I finally did have a chance to go back, car was already pulled and crushed. Doh. Really sucks since I still wanted to get the rear sway bar, rear disc brakes, lightweight UDP, and an whole MSD ignition. Although I probably lucked out not wasting money/time with the MSD stuff.

On Sunday I went to do my weekly fluid test and broke my jimmy stick. WTH, first time for everything. Looks to shiny tho might have to rub grease on it. 

Ive also had a drip from the lower radiator hose that I’ve been ignoring. Figured wth $15 hose 15 mins of work right? 

Well the clamp on block side was just in the righ,ughh wrong orientation.  After struggling with 3 different pliers, screwdrivers and shoving my hands into the dark dimensions of a 20 year ol greasy hell I conquered pissed off ego and bloody meat sticks.

Obviously I had to remove AC compressor to allow access .Was easish enough. Except for the 2 of 4 bolts the creaked and popped like 2 old farts in wrestling match.

Well after an hour got old hose out. think I got my pennies worth out of old one 

The worst part is the filler neck on radiator sits at about 20 degree angle. And since I’ve never owned a funnel I Proceeded to spill coolaid all over my driveway. 

Need to drive it around the block now to burp the system and hope the radiator cap won’t crack  under pressure since it’s the oldest component next in line.