1984 Ford Thunderbird

The old 'Bird just got too tired. I donated her on December 2, 2001 to a local trade school that specializes in body work. It was an appropriate donation. The 'Bird was just too. Too smoky from leaky valve cover gaskets that wouldn't seal, too annoying from the headliner falling down on my head and from the driver's side window that wouldn't roll down, too worn out from all the little bits of maintenance it seemed to constantly need, and too much. One too many cars when we're moving house. She's gone. Martha, and Dave, thanks for the ride. We had it for 2 1/2 years and we loved it every minute.

It needed work (well, duh...). All it really needed was a battery to get it going , but reliability was a ways off yet. Very soon after the battery was replaced, I also replaced the alternator and voltage regulator. They had gone south trying to charge a dead battery. I think they were also the original ones on the car. We had some idle quality problems and some heater control problems as well. We took the car to our main guy for stuff I don't won't and can't do. After this fixup work and our mechanic's attention, we drove it to Chicago, Illinois and back without a problem.

Our 'Bird has the 3.8l V6 under the hood. Inside the car the instrumentation is sparse (where's the tachometer?), but it has power locks, driver's seat and windows. The ride is very quiet and isolated from the road and its noise.

It needs its third set of valve cover gaskets soon. I'm having a hell of a time getting them to seal. I think the next step is to get some new valve covers. Does anyone have any other ideas? I've had them off and I've pounded the mating surface flat, but I still get leaks next to the firewall.
Mmmm SMOKEY!!!

3/20/01
The 'bird went to the shop again this week for what I thought was yet another valve cover gasket. True, one of the gaskets was leaking slightly, but not the two quarts a week rate that I was seeing. I sort of had a feeling that something else was wrong, but I thought I'd let the pros handle this one. Sure enough, one of the valve cover gaskets was leaking and it was replaced. The bad news was that the front main seal was also pretty near gushing oil from a big leak. That explains the rapid oil loss, no? Well they had a fix for it and to my shock and pleasant surprise, it was less than $200.00. Thanks, guys! We're back on the road and the 'bird just seems to get newer and newer.

3/12/01
It's going to have to go back to the shop. It's still smoking something fierce and now it's losing oil from a leak somewhere. I suspect that the valve covers are just to munged up to do anything with them, so I'll be looking to getting them replaced very soon. I'm also getting quite tired of unsticking the driver's side window because the guides and grommets are all worn out. I hope these things come as a kit. If not, then it'll probably cost me and arm and a leg to buy them all individually.

3/1/01
The 'bird went into the shop this week. There were a couple of things that needed being done and I just didn't have the time or inclination to do them. We finally let a pro have a crack at the perennially leaking valve cover gaskets. I've done the job twice, and I'd failed miserably both times. I know when I'm licked. The passenger side door had also packed up about a month ago. Yes, it's been a very long winter and a car really needs two doors. The door would not open because it was stuck locked. The automatic locker on that side hadn't ever worked since we got the car, and it suddenly jammed locked--hard enough that you couldn't turn the key in the lock. Not good. The problem turned out to be the solenoid in the door. Now that it's fixed, the door not only opens, but the power door lock also works again on that side. That's really nice. It wasn't cheap to have that kind of work done in a shop, but I really dislike door work (too many sharp edges), and we had the money to do it. It's done and we're glad.

12/14/00
Could it be that it's been more than 6 months since I've done anything with this car? It could be. Wow, that's quite remarkable. Anyway, the problem we've recently addressed manifested itself this summer when I loaned the car to my friend Paul. He told me the master cylinder was needing to be filled pretty regularly. Fine, there must be a leaky wheel cylinder or perhaps I didn't tighten one of the bleeder screws all the way when we did the brake job.

Well, the truth is that the brake line to the rear brakes had sprung a leak. It was pretty scabby with rust and it just let go. Since the weather up here is quite cold presently, I decided it was going to be well worth the money to take it somewhere to have it done. The shop managed to save one of the wheel cylinders, but had to replace the other. A new chunk of line from the master cylinder to the rear wheels and a wheel cylinder and I have good brakes again. Yaay! The total damage was about $100.00 LESS than they had originally quoted me, but this was because they were able to get one of the bleeders open. The total cost was right around $220.00 parts and labor.

It works nice and I'm not cold. Sounds like a deal to me...

4/5/00
The passenger front tire is giving me grief with a quick leak. I think I finally scuffed the sidewall to bits when I curbed it at a friend's place about a week ago. Nuts. I took the tire off and went to Tires Plus where they told me that it was kaput. I had them replace the tire and I stuck it back on. I had them do it up with the blackwalls out and now I've got to do the other three. I'll get to them soon. I also took a quick (hah!) jaunt up to North Suburbia to the mega junkyards to pick up some parts. This winter, gorillaboy (that's me) broke one of the headlight enclosures with the ice scraper. I found this enclosure and a couple of the funky rubber hub covers at Anoka Auto Wrecking. The hub covers are plain Ford ones, not the cool bolt-patterned Thunderbird ones, but they'll do for now. I expected to pay quite a bit for these three items, but the guy got me for only a fiver. How cool is that?

2/17/00-2/20/00
The Thunderbird gets Brakes and Struts. This was a lot harder to do than I thought. Thankfully, my buddy Jon is a wizard in the shop. The brakes went fine as we were replacing everything. The struts went on fine, as well. We ran into problems on the second night when we found the driver's side spring had been broken into three segments. Broken springs are bad and you can't just button it up and let it go, so off to the parts store I went to score some springs. It's a good thing the local NAPA warehouse is open until Midnight. That's so cool. The springs weren't too steep price-wise either.

The first night of spring-induced pain went pretty slowly. Getting the busted one out was easy, as there weren't very many big pieces left. However, using the compressing tool we were using (not quite the right one) made the new spring installation a nightmare. It got done. It wasn't fun. My back still hurts.

The next night's fun was to do the other side. That was going to be helped along by us renting the right tool. It seems that Checker/Schucks/Kragen auto stores rent tools at all their locations. They've bought out our local Big Wheel/Rossi auto parts stores and so far this is a good thing. The Broadway Avenue store looks more like a check cashing place than an auto parts store, but they're still there in a cruddy neighborhood and for that I salute them. The rental policy is set up to sell the tools, but if you have your act together, you can rent any of them for $5.00/day. Unfortunately/fortunately for the renter, if it's late, you own it. Fair enough, I say. If it keeps the Broadway store open a little longer, I'll deal.

The spring compressing, removing, compressing, installing, positioning, and finally decompressing took tons of time and was difficult, but with the help of our good buddy LEVERAGE and some air tools, we got the job finished by a reasonable hour that evening. Now the Bird runs straight, true and smooth. This is good.

2/26/00
The shocks are in and work fine. It was an easy job. Ford saw fit to install a rubber protector over the lower shock mount in back. That kept the bolt and nut in reasonable condition. Air tools were a must and I ended up buying a couple of sockets to replace a couple of cheapies I broke. Just call me Gorilla.

3/20/00
The bird is still running fine. My wife has been using it as she loves the new ride. It's spit and coughed a couple of times, but I'm not sure it's anything serious. She has the cell phone, just in case. I added the webring stuff today. If the ring has brought you here, welcome to the site. There's much more than just the 'Bird stuff. Click on this Consolidated Diversions link, or click on the logo at the bottom of this page to hit the front door of the site. Thanks for stopping by!

This Thunderbird Webring site is owned by Tim Holtan Want to join the Thunderbird Webring?
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