Road ready
The winter was long and hard on the old triple white fox. At some point late last fall or over the winter I noticed a spot of fluid under the right rear tire. I thought nothing of it. Perhaps, I thought, it was just a residual spill from an earlier jug of motor oil that I had in the garage which sprung a leak. With that cleaned up and the car back in use I was surprised to find some fresh fluid under that same tire. I thought it was a possible brake line problem and immediately took it in for repair as this seemed beyond my abilities.
It turned out that it was beyond me. The fluid was not brake fluid but from my rear end. Apparently the rear axle seal had developed a leak that traveled to the wheel. The worse news was that axle leak had saturated the brake which also needed to be replaced.
The good news of all of this is that the car is now mechanically ready to hit the road. The shop did a once over and everything appears to be in order. The only thing that I could kick myself over is that if I only knew the rear end was going to be worked on I would have considered it the perfect time to upgrade the gears. That’s one change I want to do but can’t seem to justify the expense on its own. Darn.
My major remaining task in getting the car ready for the trip to Carlisle is to integrate my iPod into my factory stereo w/CD. I figure I need that to keep me going on the 6 hour trip. I’m afraid an FM transmitter is just not going to be good enough. I want to do this of course without any non-reversible modifications such as wire splicing and so on. I think I’ve got some ideas on how to accomplish it
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John,
It is a shame they did not call you when they were working on the brake/axle so you could have decided if you wanted to upgrade the gears. One of the reasons I upgraded the gears was due to my limited slip rear not being as tight as it should (when compared to a friend who just had his rear end rebuilt). Also, while it was apart I had all of the seals and bearings replaced, just in case (was recommended by the shop). Out the door it was just under $1,200 – parts and labor for all (3.73, rebuilt limited slip, new bearings and seals).
As for the iPod, I do not have the CD player, but I do have the cassette player. I found that the cassette adaptor works great with the iPod. The only thing is that you hear the tape drive when listening to the iPod (no different than listening to a cassette). So that said, if you have a premium cassette radio (working) you may want to swap out the radio for the trip and listen to the iPod. As you know the CD Radio can always be slid back in. BTW – the adaptor came from Radio Shack and was less than $10.
Good luck!
Bummer on the rear end. Glad to hear that it is ready for Carilse. As I started to read I though, oh no, John’s not going!
As for the radio, I have Sirius with the FM transmitter and to be honest, out of my 3 cars, the Feature has the best reception. With the road noise due to the rag top, the sound quality to me is limited.
One MAJOR upgrade I made to my system is replacing the factory “premium” speakers. I finally replaced the door speakers a few weeks back and what a difference. I got them at Crutchfield and they give you adapters to hook them up so there is not splicing. In all it only took a short time to replace the rear and dash, the doors required taking off the door panels which was only a few more screws.
Anyway, good luck and see you in a few weeks!
@Kevin, I wish it had happened differently. The place I took it to was a local Ford dealer since I didn’t want to drive too far with a “brake” problem. It was not the place I would have chosen to have my gears upgraded. I was going to ask you about the cost of your upgrade work. Thanks for that.
I actually do have a factory cassette player which I think is premium sound. It came from a 1993 Ford Probe when my brother upgraded his stereo when the car was practically new. I think the face plate might be a little different at the edge. I used a cassette adapter in my old Explorer for my portable XM Radio receiver and I was totally pleased by the sound. I was OK with the tape drive sound. Thanks for the idea. I’ll be posting shortly about what I came up with.
@Ken, didn’t mean to scare you!
I started to replace my speakers a few years ago. I ordered them from Crutchfield because of the “freebies”. I did the rears and actually have replacements for the door speakers still in the box. Once I found out that I had to pull the panels off I stopped. My experience with such things is that something always breaks when I take something apart.
For example, my passengers side window switch is dead. I pulled it out to get ready to replace it and the found both slots on the thing that the switch plugs into that the screws pass through are cracked. I don’t know if it is a result of the force needed to get the screw starting to loosen but I totally regret starting the repair. This switch is almost never used! When I was working with my stereo I put my elbow down on the center console and knocked my never broken ashtray door out of alignment.
To top it off I needed a piece of cable to complete my iPod integration so I went into my box of car stereo parts and pulled out a “spare” part. I haven’t done car stereo replacement in any of our current cars so I figured it must have been from a car we don’t have any more. So I snipped off the the connectors from both end and used the wire. As soon as you mentioned the free Crutchfield cables I thought, “oh $h!T”.
All – Ken is correct about the speakers. I have replaced all 6 of the speakers with new speakers from Crutchfield. The diference is very noticable, especially at highway speeds. The door speakers were the hardest of the bunch. Even though the speakers were listed as “exact fit” I had to enlarge/modify holes on the door and rear speakers. Total time for the relacement – less than 2 hours. The wiring from Crutchfield fit perfectly.