Marquis de Sad - 1997 Mercury Grand Marquis
Posted: Mon Apr 01, 2024 6:29 pm
I have acquired a 1997 Mercury Grand Marquis for a transmission test subject. It's got a 4R70W, which ought to be pretty easy to control.
I bought this thing from a kid in Oklahoma City on January 20. I failed to sufficiently "buyer beware" and only gave the title a passing glance. As it turns out, it was not only not notarized (Oklahoma is one of 8 states that requires it), but even worse was signed by someone other than who I was buying it from. I just glanced at the signature and saw it started with the right letter. Then followed a long goose chase in which the kid I bought it from and his dad were quite uncooperative, and my local DMV here in Kansas were even less cooperative. Luckily for me, I found a receipt in the car with the phone number of the guy who signed the title. I ended up hitting the road at 3 in the morning on March 23 to drive 4.5 hours to OKC to meet up with him at a tag agency. Everything went smoothly for once, and I walked out with an Oklahoma license plate, and should be getting a title in my name in a week or two, fingers crossed.
In the intervening month, I did some work on it to get it to a relatively usable state. The driver door hinge was so worn that the top of the door was hitting the rear door. Both rear window regulators were broken, and the driver's side one was failing to keep the window up, so I replaced it so I wouldn't need to keep the thing inside all the time. It also looked like it had backed into something at some point. I pulled the sheet metal (relatively) straight and replaced the left tail light and heckblende.
Now I need to replace most of the stuff in the front suspension. I waited until I had a tag to dig into that just in case things really turned south and I couldn't even keep the thing. I replaced the tie rod ends the other day, and it already drives a lot nicer. Today FedEx dropped off a set of eBay control arms with ball joints, so one of these days I'll replace those.
Today I got my Proteus plugged into it for the first time, with the stock PCM handling the engine, and everything transmission-related wired to the Proteus. Looks like the stock PCM and Proteus can share the same crank signal just fine, so RPM input is a go. The vehicle speed sensor input, however, has a lot of noise for some reason. It's reading anywhere from 7 to 25 MPH sitting still. I seem to recall something about putting a resistor in series with VR+, so maybe I'll try that next.
I bought this thing from a kid in Oklahoma City on January 20. I failed to sufficiently "buyer beware" and only gave the title a passing glance. As it turns out, it was not only not notarized (Oklahoma is one of 8 states that requires it), but even worse was signed by someone other than who I was buying it from. I just glanced at the signature and saw it started with the right letter. Then followed a long goose chase in which the kid I bought it from and his dad were quite uncooperative, and my local DMV here in Kansas were even less cooperative. Luckily for me, I found a receipt in the car with the phone number of the guy who signed the title. I ended up hitting the road at 3 in the morning on March 23 to drive 4.5 hours to OKC to meet up with him at a tag agency. Everything went smoothly for once, and I walked out with an Oklahoma license plate, and should be getting a title in my name in a week or two, fingers crossed.
In the intervening month, I did some work on it to get it to a relatively usable state. The driver door hinge was so worn that the top of the door was hitting the rear door. Both rear window regulators were broken, and the driver's side one was failing to keep the window up, so I replaced it so I wouldn't need to keep the thing inside all the time. It also looked like it had backed into something at some point. I pulled the sheet metal (relatively) straight and replaced the left tail light and heckblende.
Now I need to replace most of the stuff in the front suspension. I waited until I had a tag to dig into that just in case things really turned south and I couldn't even keep the thing. I replaced the tie rod ends the other day, and it already drives a lot nicer. Today FedEx dropped off a set of eBay control arms with ball joints, so one of these days I'll replace those.
Today I got my Proteus plugged into it for the first time, with the stock PCM handling the engine, and everything transmission-related wired to the Proteus. Looks like the stock PCM and Proteus can share the same crank signal just fine, so RPM input is a go. The vehicle speed sensor input, however, has a lot of noise for some reason. It's reading anywhere from 7 to 25 MPH sitting still. I seem to recall something about putting a resistor in series with VR+, so maybe I'll try that next.
