In December I had got started on installing the "cat eye" driving lights. I still need to get them working. I got involved removing the best stock light set from the certified '97 blue "beater". They were in good shape and wanted to get the "made in China" Euro style that never fit right, off of it. The internal vacuum metalized insides was starting to bubble up a bit. I took the worst set off of my '98 Green 5.0 junk donor for my '65 5.0 Mustang Fastback project and put the worst lights on the beater.
Any of you guys and gal, with a '98, tell me if yours has the 3 wire and return fuel set-up on a 5.0 or the later '98 style. 2 wire camshaft sensor and non-return fuel. I wanted to look at the build date to see what month and year that my 3 wire is, but the driver's door has been swapped.
Back to the '97 white 4 door. Mid-June, I had to do an emergency quick repair swapping the rear brake pads. I don't think that something is floating properly on the left side. I've been doing a lot of running back and forth in my wife's truck, this one, and I'm seeing what all that it needs. The shifter cable suddenly had a problem, a recently new cable, that made me think that the two T-30s under the dash worked loose. Nope! The lower cable housing popped out of the bracket attached to the transmission. I got it popped back in to the bracket for now and spread the tangs out a bit. I was test driving to Wal-Mart to get something for my wife who is recovering at home after some health issues. On the way there as I was looking at the cruise switches that I was going to take out of the beater, the cruise control system made a loud pop and quit working. I did the diagnostic test and sometimes button 4 wouldn't light up. I put in the new switches and it still wouldn't work. I took the red switch off the master cylinder that didn't have the factory recall "pigtail" and swapped with the beater including adding the pigtail. This still did not make the cruise control system work.
I could hear the old servo respond at times but decided that it had to be the problem and mechanically broke internally. Electrically energized and made noise. I swiped the servo/cable assembly off of the beater and now the cruise control works again. The blue beater no longer has cruise. It is getting sold as soon as I can get it cleaned out, swap a driver's seat and back hatch. Then I will be done with it. It has served us well and we have probably driven it 100k miles.
I'll do a milage check Monday on the white '97 while I have the instruments out to do a full bulb swap. One or two are burned out and I imagine that the others are old. Ford didn't make it easy to pull the bezel to get the instruments out. You have to slide out the stereo and remove the kneecap buster panels. I suppose it could be worse.
Forgive me, no interesting pics!
