kishy's 1985 Country Squire

[Mainemantom]

Good reminder to others to keep a spare TFI module in the vehicle. I have had many go bad, some on the road. Need to bring the special tool to make the switch easily. Glad you got the car going.

[DerekTheGreat]

Yeah, nice diagnosis. My '85 would sometimes die at random at stoplights too. Before I figured out that it was probably the TFI module, I ended up selling the car. (Least I don't think I ever fixed that..) I got lucky in the sense it always fired back up.

[kishy]

Thanks folks. Indeed, there are some items we should carry as spares because they're relatively easy roadside fixes. The diagnostic tree is certainly not for everyone, but having the parts to enable a roadside fix while being walked through diag on the phone is still beneficial even if you're not great on the diag side of things.

Last night, I pulled the module off, cleaned up the surface, put on some new thermal compound, reinstalled, and timed it. I will continue running the E3xx module from the spares kit, and just put another of my known-decent parts in the spares kit to replace it. The history of this part is not known and maybe it will prove unreliable, but at this point I don't really have any issues taking that gamble because it wasn't too bad as far as roadside fixes go.

I also set about putting a spare fuel pump relay in the kit, but ran into issues doing this. I did not have any junkyard-harvested green Ford original fuel pump relays, but I did have two junkyard-harvested green third party relays, as well as a yellow one that fits both the ECM and FP relay sockets (no keying).

Testing shows that the two green third party relays run the fuel pump at all times except when the key is in run. This means the terminals are incorrectly mapped inside the relay. The yellow relay does nothing at all. I think these were all harvested off EEC-III cars, so perhaps the relays between III and IV are actually quite different despite the same connector and keying.

[gadget73]

don't have a wagon but a pickup with a cap has similar airflow characteristics. I can tell you from experience with mine, the back window gets filthy very quickly, and I suspect a functionally similar spoiler to blow air across it rather than serving as a big low pressure area for crap kicked up from the tires to stick to would be a huge help. I drove to Ohio in February and I'd get maybe 60 miles down the highway in the intermittent snow/slush/ick before the back window was too dirty to see anything but headlights through.


I've had two EEC-IV breakdowns. Once was a TFI module on the Towncar the day after a massive overheat caused by a water pump gasket failure. The other was the magnet in the pickup on my Mark VII. Both times got the same fix, I called someone for a spare distributor and stuck it in on the side of the road. Apparently I ought to start carrying a distributor.

[gadget73]

oh and there was that one time I thought I had a TFI module failure but it was the gear fell off the cam. And the time I thought the fuel pump crapped out but it was the inertia switch. Fixed with a tow and randomly bumping the wires and noticing the connector was melted respectively.

[DerekTheGreat]

Whenever I road trip the Town Car that's exactly what I do, carry a spare dizzy and timing light. Fortunately, I've never needed it.

Yes, Chrysler wagons from the mid or late 60's started having spoilers as standard. Back when advertisements actually demonstrated useful or practical things they showed their cars going down dirt roads alongside the competition. Then they compared the dust left behind on the rear window- the Chryslers were always cleaner or spotless: (Fast forward to about the 4:30 mark)

[TecNickal]

I remember how happy I was to see that Spoiler still hanging out at that yard. What a lucky lucky score. And all the fasteners came out without struggle.

A very well traveled, international roof spoiler - congratulations and enjoy sir!

I also keep a spare TFI and spare EEC/Fuel pump relay in my car with toolige as needed. Requirements for a box body Ford!