My 1987 Mercury Colony Park

[Brown_Muscle]

For what it’s worth my 351 has 3/4” heater hose in stock form.

[Kodachrome Wolf]

Took care of a few minor things over the last few days.

I managed to put every vacuum line on wrong to the dash pots controlling the air doors. Wondered why I couldn't get any heat on the floor. Solved that real quick. Also went about solving the exhaust leak at the engine. Kept hearing ticking from the driver's side bank. Tossed some header gaskets on (Percy's Seal-4-Good), and the tick was still there. Looked at the insulation and there was a darkening spot very close to the down pipe. Loosened the clamping plate, adjust the pipe some, and ran it back down. Hey, it got quiet! I can live with that.


Today the headlights got back on their horse-hockey with the left turn signal. So the symptoms that I can now see are 1.) If the lights are already switched on, the two cluster bulbs on the left side go out when the signal goes on, 2.) If you switch the high beams on when the issue is occurring, the two cluster bulbs go out and the turn signal indicator comes on at half intensity, 3.) The high beam circuit engages with every turn signal flash with the left signal engaged, 4.) The left indicator on the cluster will never illuminate.

Unplugging the headlight relay harness does not "rectify" the issue, as the indicator does not come back. However, I have a sneaking suspicion about the cluster illumination and related nonsense. So I swapped a number of incandescent bulbs in the cluster for LEDs, mostly just the ones doing illumination. I can't remember if I swapped the high beam indicator though. Why is that relevant? About two or three years ago I put an LED on the high beam indicator, and for some reason the high beam circuit would remain latched on, even when cycling the switch. I could never get the high beams to come off unless I removed the bulb. Toss an incandescent bulb in and everything was cool. Now I don't understand why this is an intermittent issue lasting only for select periods of time, but I think I need to revisit the cluster bulbs since this issue never occurred until after the swap.

This afternoon I knocked out an oil change. Wound up with a lot of $2.99/qt Amsoil from NAPA a few days ago, so I used the 10W-40 in the car and a FL-300 my friend didn't want for his Cobra because it had a very small mar on the can right at the base.

I am very serious this was all $2.99/qt. I wouldn't have purchased it otherwise, but they had it on their closeout rack, so I got plenty of oil for the cars here at the house. I am definitely not a "boutique" oil purchaser. I've usually just stuck with Shell, Mobil, Valvoline, or Motorcraft.


Also took care of the idler arm. Either a Ford part was put on at some point between 1987 and now, but I kinda suspect the original idler was still hanging on at like 335K.




Looked pretty typical to every other -'02 OE idler I've seen with mileage. The sleeve was a little stubborn since it stayed on the stud, but some penetrating oil and a pair of channel lock made it leave its home.

Slapped on a older Moog idler I've had laying around for a minute. Purchased it when I worked at the parts store since it was even cheaper than the house brand at the time.


Might need to get the alignment checked now. There's a pull to the right condition, but the tires also might have worn a pattern in them anyway. They're worn on the outer shoulders. I'll probably get the car scheduled for tires in November anyway. These Firestones are a mix of late '15/early '16 date codes and they're starting to show their age. I wasn't very impressed by the FR710s anyway since they were a harder compound than the Affinity/Precision Touring series, but those had just been discontinued when I was needing a set of tires for this car, so I ran with a whitewall I could get then. Firestone doesn't offer shit-for-nothing anyway now, so I'll just order the Nexen nPriz AH5 P225/70R15s I've been running on the '97. Fleet size tire with a decent compound and whitewall? It's a win-win!

[Kodachrome Wolf]

Did a little tinkering to get the shift indicator working again. When Nick and I did the heater core, we did disconnect the shift indicator, but it seems a bit too much stress was placed onto the indicator chassis itself while handling the cable on removal and installation, and it turned into several pieces internally.



That was the original indicator to the cluster. Being a 1980 cluster, it did have one unique trick, which is the fact the indicator just used a metal sleeve for the AOD shift pattern that covered the original SelectShift pattern. I swapped the sleeve onto an '88-'89 indicator chassis I had available, so it looks like nothing happened. Plastic of the '88-'89 unit also did not have the harsh yellowing of the plastic and cracking around the screw hole for the cable, so I suspect it'll last considerably longer.

I also pulled all the LED bulbs from the cluster and swapped the original bulbs back in, sans color filter for now. I'll be curious to see if the back feed condition returns, so I'll keep monitoring that to determine if it was just one of those oddities that don't make proper sense.