Hello,

It's been awhile, but back to work on the LTD. My plan for dealing with the body sheet metal was to start at the easy section and work my way back towards the corrosion. But I did tackle another problem along the way (one of the many niggles to be sorted out).

So the fuel tank filler neck seal was on the list to be sorted out. It was leaking when I filled the tank. I put a new O-ring in there but it wasn't quite right obviously. It appears there are two different kinds of seals used on 3rd gen fuel tank filler necks. One uses an O-ring and the other uses a lip seal. The tanks are physically different and one seal is not interchangeable with the other.

This seems to be the more common type fuel tank it uses the lip seal.

This one. However the fuel tank in the LTD has a tank with a recess in the opening to hold an O-ring. I went through about 75 dollars worth of O-rings (Mc Master) before I finally found one that fits properly.

This is one of those seemingly simple problems that turns into a multi-day way more expensive problem than it ever should be. But this did the trick.

Next was to start removing the rest of the detachable parts off the main body shell. It still had two complete doors on it and so I removed the door innards in order to make them lighter.

Next I removed the new tail lamp assemblies.

So now I can just remove the deck lid and the doors when I was ready to block sand the entire body before paint.

Next the windscreen had to come out.

At first the glass seemed useable, just a few nicks and pits as one would expect. However....

The glass is starting to delaminate around the edges and hasn't spread beyond the side trim yet. But it will. So I shall have to buy a new windscreen for the car. I'll keep this as an emergency replacement.

It may be hard to tell but Ford went pyscho on the staples and nails into the roof for the top in the front as well.

Before I get deep into the repair I wanted to remove the dash and steering wheel.

All this had to come out. I'd leave the column as that could be covered to protect, but I still need to move the car, of which it moves under its own power.

So the process started, then I found something amusing then disconcerting.

So this is the back of the instrument panel. You can recognize the radio on the left, speedo in the middle and the fuel gauge on the right. The thing in the middle of the speedo and fuel gauge is the voltage regulator, which is nothing more than a high speed flasher. However this one is a virgin and was never connected.

The jittery electrically noisy flasher/voltage regulator works in this case because the fuel gauge is thermal electric and buffers out the current pulses with the thermal mass of the bi-metal needle mechanism and heater in the gauge.

Um there's one screwed into the dash frame.

I guess someone was hungover at the factory the day this one was put together. Too funny.

Now for the irritating portion of discovery. Rodent damage and a possible shorted ignition coil at one time in its life.

The right turn indicator never worked and my natural assumption was a bulb. Um no, the wire was chewed clean through. And you can see the beginnings of a nest of insulation behind this. There was no feces so the rodent never really settled in.

This seemed to be the extent of the damage from rodentia. Whilst this is unfortunate it is still better than newer cars where the wiring insulation is soy based and is very yummy to animals. This new biodegradable insulation was phased in around 2000 and is apparently a huge problem for newer cars and trucks. As if overpriced cheap disposable vehicles aren't expensive enough to have these kinds of problems as well. But I digress.

The next problem I noted was the tape on the main harness was melted.

It looks like the ignition resistance wire was the hot one (pink top one). I can only surmise the coil shorted at some point early in the cars life as this LTD still sported the yellow top Ford coil.

I had already planned on replacing the entire harness anyway as I am redesigning the electrical system somewhat but this is just another reason why you cannot trust an older car without completely going through it.

Continued in next post.