that console Looks great!

 

Spend a few hours this morning fooling around trying to fix a crossthreaded injector line (#2). Couldnt have been a worse line to replace. I am having an issue with fuel literally POURING out of the return line caps... and I've just replaced the o-rings. No idea what the hell.

 

If they were working fine before then either the orings are the wrong size or you have a return line kink/block.

Edit: Well, OR you tore multiple orings badly during install. Use wheel bearing grease! Sounds odd but works wonders and doesn't harm viton at all.

If they are new caps check the inside of the caps for the appropriate hole going out through the nipple. Sounds strange but a member just recently had the #1 cap with only one hole in it! May have been over on oil burners but the point stands.

 

Using -111 spec o-rings. Used wheel bearing grease for install as well. Original caps from before. Thats why I'm confused!

 

It is possible one cap has a small crack in it.

 

 

Got the truck up and running again, on to the next project gentlemen! I snagged a whole steering column from a 2001 Town Car that has the integrated Radio/Aircon/Cruise controls for 100$ including the air bag. Not half bad! Here's some photos of my carnage so far.

Here's how I found it, in the donor car at the local pick-a-part.




Dropped the lower dash trim (4 8mm bolts in the corners, color matched metal plate). Then removed the 5 13mm nuts holding the column to the reinforcement that makes up that side of the dash. Fun part was hacking up the wiring to get this thing out - did manage to disconnect the trans gear selector cable to make life easier. I wandered around a bit, and snagged some brushed aluminum lock ***** (small, I know.) and the steering wheel controls from another town car w/ the brushed aluminum surrounds. See below:




Here's the column out of the car:



I wandered around trying to find another column out of one of our trucks, but didn't have much luck finding one that hadn't already been cannibalized. My hope was to build another column entirely separate from the truck, and install it into the truck.





Here I was trying to figure out how the steering wheel controls operated - I wondered if they were digital or analog based switches - they certainly dont have the amount of wires necessary for each switch to have a wire. I figured out they are analog based switches that operate on the idea that each "button" provides a certain resistance to the radio/EATC/Cruise control module(s). The cruise control buttons are functionally identical in our OBS trucks - they rely on the same design principle and can be wired in the same way. The hard part is the Radio & EATC controls - still trying to figure out how I can make that work. Time will tell!

 

Whoa, that's awesome! I hope you can make it work out. How slick would it be to have modern radio controls on the ol beast?!?

Just make sure the air bag never gets power... edit: wait does the 92 have airbags? Edit: Airbag? LOL

 

Boom, that would be an unpleasant surprise! Diggin the ingenuity !!

 

I think I've figured it out for the radio controls just need more time. The 92 did not have any bags.

Yessir! That's why I've already pulled the inflator & bag out of the horn pad & housing. So no risk of deployment for me - I've worked in collision since I was 15 and would rather not deploy one of these in my face.


Back to the dirty work - The mid-90's Taurus/Sable cars & wagons seem to be a hoard of random parts for my journey to "cool" factor on my truck. These years of T/S cars had what Ford called "redundant radio control" just to the right of the instrument cluster for driver convenience you can see them in this photo here:




And closer up:




My idea was to determine how these controls operated on the T/S cars and retrofit them into the radio I have already modified for Aux-In earlier in this thread - but I dont believe that will work. I was smart enough the pull the head unit, switch bank, and associated wiring from a taurus in 2017 to play with last night, And I determined that the communication between the switch bank & radio on these cars was digital.

Moving forward, I may try to modify the switches on my wheel to directly interface with the board out of the Taurus, to then interface with the taurus Head Unit - which I will have to modify to have an Aux-In.

 

Good evening all,

Had some more time to play around with this tonight. Tested out the Taurus controls on my premium sound head unit with the built in CD player - the damn thing will control that head unit!!! May be a whole other direction I go.

 

HUGE update guys!!!!

Got the switches to work on the original single din head unit!!! See the photos and video. Super stoked!!!

 

Oh man, nice work!!! That's quite the useful mod for sure. Good stuff!

 

I did it guys!

 

Nice!!