OK, time for a little update. First, some background for what's to come. My son was graduating this past week. We had family coming in from all over. Some coming in by car, RV and air. We had to handle housing, logistics, clean the house, and transportation for several of them. Our current complement of (usable) vehicles is an Expedition (holds 7), srt4 (4), my daughter's PT (4) and a couple of crossfire's (2 each). On Tuesday, the srt4 broke hard, running on 2 cylinders. Uh oh. Yesterday my V8 Crossfire decided to eat all the belts. The Merc? Forget it. My Dad calls about 2 pm. He's 225 miles east of me, and has had a blowout on the RV. Cannot find a tire. He needs me to find a tire and bring it to him. It gets better! We had people arriving via air at Pensacola, 45 miles WEST at the same time. We needed the expedition for the people coming in by air. At the same time, I needed to drive to Tallahassee (160 miles east) and pick up two RV tires (think semi truck sized), and bring them the 65 miles further on to the truck stop my parents were stranded at. My only other available vehicle was my son's 6spd crossfire. Needless to say, RV tires are not fitting inside a Crossfire, let alone two of them.

Sooooooo.....

While there are a myriad of 'better' options out there (like rent/borrow a pickup), we just cannot back down from a challenge. Son and I look to the merc. Afterall, we *had* driven it a whole 5.8 miles, so far. Still, iIt had, ahem, some issues. Cowl is all off, wipers out (waiting for windshield appointment that was supposed to happen the next morning), rearview mirror, ton of the interior ripped apart for radio, right tail light broken. Get after it! Started work on it about 8pm, and we ran wires for the radio (ripped out the Comand/MOST completely). Son finished running wires for 4 channels, and two spare pairs, two Fakra cables for GPS & radio, and a backup camera RCA cable. (I know, why are you worrying about the radio? Well, this was already all apart, and it was better to finish the job than to put it half-baked back together, only to take it all apart again. Just finish!) I attacked various other messed up things. Got the car buttoned up at 4am. Slept 3.5 hours, got up, got in the car, drove to the next town, ran through a car wash (first real bath in over 3 years) and gassed up.

Got on the interstate, and car did fine the whole way out. Check engine light came on at the end, but I brought SDS with me. SDS said high IATs and failing O2 sensor. Looking like the new Bosch 010 intercooler pump was not running, and an O2 sensor should be replaced. No show stoppers. Car just survived trial by fire, and succeeded in a 225 mile run! Dropped the tires, made sure they got mounted, and that my parents were good to go, and then turned around drove home. Car ran awesome for about 200 miles. Then a nice orange 5.0 Mustang came zipping by, and I couldn't not take advantage of that. Zipped up to super-legal speeds, and tucked in behind him. Within a few miles, I noticed that the engine sounded a little off. Slowed way down, and listened. Car had developed a miss, and when I got to my exit and slowed down, the CEL turned on. Drove the few more miles home with it running a bit rough. Made it, though!

At the 225 mile mark, and delivered rescue tires!


255/80-22.5R tire!



Got home, hooked up SDS, High IATs (pump not running), P0300 misfire damages, and Cylinder 5 misfire. The next morning, I swapped the #5 coil with a spare, and the misfire went away. Still need a new O2 sensor and need to figure out the intercooler pump issue.

Took Donna for her first ride in it, and she immediately found all the flaws. Picked at them. Ugh. Hard to explain to her that it is a diamond in the rough, and a work in a progress! The rear spoiler was still not on the car, the HVAC display was very dim so as to be unreadable, and the remote keyless entry did not work. Consulted with @Deplore and he helped knock down a couple of the issues. The HVAC display being dim turned out to be a disconnected windshield rain/light sensor. The remote not working was traced to a fuse blown in the rear SAM module. Replacing the fuse resulted in another blown fuse. Cause? Alarm siren has leaked batteries and is shorted out. Sound familiar? It should! It's the same unit that is in our Crossfires. I simply disconnected it, and put in a new fuse. This time it didn't blow! Tried the remote, and bingo! Door locks work! Put the rear spoiler on the car, and buttoned up a few other minor items. Now it looks a little better, too!



Going to address more cosmetics soon. The driver's door panel is broken, and the handle has the peeling chrome that is reminiscent of the Crossfire door handles. Windshield replacement has been rescheduled to this coming Thursday. I need to think about paint correction and protection next. Doing that will really clean up the looks of the car.

BTW, this car has mid-length headers, no front cats, a 168mm lower pulley and a couple of other minor mods. The whole thing sounds flat awesome - far better than my V8 Crossfire. Looking forward to the Needswings headers I now have in hand for the Crossfire!