Yesterday, I planned to chase down the gremlins that showed their ugly heads on the car's first drive home from the body shop last weekend. I decided I was going to reinstall all of the door inner components first, and the door glass also. I wanted to do this so the car is sealed up and I can start wet sanding and buffing without worrying about getting anything inside the car.
Of course, my ADHD brain kicked in, (oooh! look shiny!) and I did the assembly stuff first, before the diagnosis of the car's issues. I installed all of the window and door mechanisms and adjusted and lubed everything to make sure it all worked smoothly and sealed up properly. While doing this I decided to go with the new door lock cylinders instead of the originals, the original's stainless covers looked really worn and did not clean up as well as I had hoped. Of course, that meant that I had to swap out the ignition cylinder to match the new door cylinders. While looking for the lock cylinders, I found the hood locks, so.... I installed the hood locks. When I got back to the ignition lock cylinder, that led to tearing the upper column apart and see why it has not been able to go to the accessory position, And of course, all of the regulator and window track parts needed to be cleaned and prepped before installation. I even removed the old felt that was worn on the upper guides and reinstalled new felt on them so the new glass doesn't get scratched. Eight hours later, I realized I had not yet started to diagnose the issues I went out to the garage to diagnose that morning. I just thought I would give you a glimpse inside my ADHD brain and how it works, this stuff happens all of the time, haha.
Anyways, I did have time to diagnose why the coolant gauge dropped to nothing on the drive home. The new temperature sensor I installed when I dropped in the engine had failed already. It's fine, I'm not sure why these China parts get such a bad name, I mean this sensor had probably two hours maybe three of run time on it, so it was probably overdue to fail, lol.
I ordered the new actual Motorcraft sensor (a little more, but allegedly made in USA) and that's all of the diagnosis and repair I had time for before I had to clean up and take my wife out last night.
On the high side, I did get the doors and windows all assembled and adjusted, and swapped out the ignition cylinder and fixed the accessory issue, and got the hood locks installed (kind of) so that's something I guess, lol.
The tach and the speedo still don't work and it still won't start hot, and I still have no idea why, but the glass looks nice, right?
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I installed the hood locks, it was supposed to be a 5 minute distraction, but they would not line up with the strikers underneath. The locks are about a 1/8-1/4 inch too far back and hit the back of the opening in the brackets. They will latch but do not seat flush, they are sitting high at the front of the cup because they are reaching forward. It is frustrating, because I measured a few times before I cut the holes. The holes in the outer skin are directly above the inner skin cut outs, I am confident that their positioning in the hood is correct, I did trial fit them when the car was assembled for final body work and blocking. They fit perfectly then, all I can think is we assembled the car, the fenders ended up the 1/8' -1/4" forward, The hood then followed to line up with the fenders so the hood is off a little from the trial fit. I am not going to move the sheet metal, I like the way everything lines up now. My plan is to remove the brackets and relieve a little off of the back of the opening and refinish them and reinstall and it will be fine.
The hood locks look awesome though, they will look even better when they latch properly, haha.
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