Tan Panther

1989 LTD/Crown Victoria wagon I traded a pair of step vans for last fall. 5.0 automatic. Southern car with 68k miles on it and almost completely rust free. Roll up windows and manual locks.  No third row seat, but it does have the all important air conditioning. 

Not sure what I'm doing with this one yet. Caliper is sticking on the driver's side, and the OD in AOD is DOA due to the notorious kickdown cable bushing fiasco. I have another one from the seller to swap in, eventually.  It's a really nice driving automobile; almost as nice as my old Roadmaster Wagon, but without the accursed Optispark issues and oil leakage from every orifice. I would like to lower it a bit eventually, and swap some larger diameter flat faced steel wheels on it with a matching or complimentary color to the body, and upholstered the front seat. And then Road Trip the heck out of it. 

Great car, I had a 1990 CVPI with the 351W. Your engine if it is in good shape now is good for about another 200K of smooth riding.

Be glad you have the 302, the 351W was hardly any quicker and suffered VV carb, oil cooler leak and intake manifold gasket woes.

The OD is a weak point, get a shop to rebuild it, replace the OD band and no worries. You can probably find CVPI suspension parts /heavy duty sway bars, springs, police-rims like I had -but the ones are there now look nicer... etc...online, junkyard or Rock auto. Better handlers than the Chevy police car of 1989. 

Might be able to find a front bench seat or police 60/40 seat and swap the whole thing over.

Nice! I had a 79 LTD sedan, drove it from 86 to 2000. Last year for the C4, first year panther. 

Loved that car. P71 suspension parts were all over the junkyards back then. Built the 302, with ported E7 heads, performer intake, 260 cam, roller rockers, headman shorties, 2 1/2 inch duals. Remember when flowmasters were the thing?

I put a wide ratio gear set in the C4, then retained the 2.26:1 rear end gear since I did a lot of highway driving. 

I believe that your car has an aluminum rear bumper. I was looking for ways to save weight but the wagon's was a lot wider than the sedan bumper. 

I do remember finding a wagon that had aluminum rear drums, but I couldn't get them off the car. 

Between this wagon and the Roadmaster, which handled better and absorbed potholes better? I'm debating between the two...

In reply to DirtyDiesel:

I still don't have a ton of miles on this one yet, so it's difficult to compare. But the RMW is hard to beat;  it is tied with my '73 Imperial for best Road Trip car. 

I think that a Coyote engine and gearbox out of a F150 will fix that pesky AOD issue.

Pete

I would be hard pressed not to duplicate blaze86vic's T-5 manual sedan with that car.  I do love me some wagon. 

Cooter said:

  it is tied with my '73 Imperial for best Road Trip car. 

When I was in high school back in the early 70s, my girlfriend's dad had a '71 Imperial.  I got to drive it a few times, it was a great road trip car.  With that 440 engine it would really move.

In reply to Ian F :

While ordinarily I would be all about a third pedal, most of the long trips in this car will be done with my wife, and while she is good at driving a manual trans, she doesn't really enjoy it. We spend a lot of time driving on the Epic Road Trips, and regularly hit the west coast from Chicago in two days. I would rather she was driving something she enjoys if I need to take a break from driving .

She loved the RMW, but she hated when it made her walk...

Been fixing little stuff on the Panther over the past few months.  Found a crack free dashpad for $35, but have been stymied on the driver's side rear sidemarker. These wagons are tough to find in the JY out here. I thought I hit paydirt a week ago, only to find that I was looking at a Mercury. No dice. 

This yard had a Ford Crown Vic LTD wagon (yay!)

But when I got to the driver's rear quarter. (sadpanda)

So, a few updates are in order.  Found a driver's side marker lens on eBay, and my FB friend sold me that dashpad for $35.  The lens was almost as expensive as the pad, but much more visible.  The original pad is decent, but the area around the speaker holes is rotted out.   This one doesn't have that problem, but it was really dirty, and the foam behind the speaker perforations is crumbling away.   I need to figure out a way ro reinforce that before I swap dashes.   

Also, I REALLY need to drop the fuel tank and swap in a new sending unit.  It hasn't worked since I got the car, and I have been setting the trip meter and topping off when I get about 100 miles on it.  



Well it bit me last weekend. I only had 46 miles on the trip meter. At first I thought either I lost fuel or the coil was overheating, but when I added a gallon of gas, it started up after a couple of tries, and drove over 6 miles back home without a hiccup.   I'm guessing either someone was siphoning gas on my block or (more likely) the vent for the tank is blocked, causing the pump to shut off early when I thought I was topping it off.

Oh well, at least it gave me over an hour to relax and take a few glamour shots of it while I waited for my wife to retrieve me in her Prius.

Man I want one of these for a tow rig in a weirdly bad way. It's a shame I would refuse too use the hatch like a truck 

Torque thrusts look perfect on it!

Thanks, Doc.


Oh, and since it wasn't mentioned here.  

The TP even made it into print in my most favorest magazine ever-
 

It's nt just a pretty face in front of our store.   We also do a little Mid Century Modern pickin' with it.  It doesn't fit as much as the Sprinter, or get the MpGs, but it does it with much better style.

Been looking for this thread since your IG post!

Have fantasies about that car with a 5spd. Hnnnnggh.

yupididit said:

Been looking for this thread since your IG post!

It was gone for a bit.  As I find my posts again, I am trying to update them, and re-add them to my watch list.