The Falcon - XR4Ti

The Falcon - XR4Ti 1989 Merkur XR4Ti, I would say this page is about rebuilding, but I don't have either the time or the money to actually do it. so its about the day to day.

I’ve been working on taking the interior out, started thinking half way through I should check what works and what doesn...
11/01/2019

I’ve been working on taking the interior out, started thinking half way through I should check what works and what doesn’t, only to find out that the car wouldn’t start, put my focus battery in it, cranked a couple times, nothing. Tried to jump it from my sisters accord, nothing. Not enough juice to turn the starter. I’ve got a battery on a charger and I’ll try it again with a full battery and a jump later. When the car was cranking the tachometer moved, so I might get lucky and have a working tach this time.

I think I’m going to mix and match the tan interior parts with the gray and black. I’m hoping it will match the two tone ‘80s vibe of the entire car.

Also, found two mouse nests, no mice though. Unfortunately, one of the nests was behind the drivers side vent. The heater and a/c was one of the places I hoped to avoid mice... Oh well.

Here she is! Now I have to figure out where to store the car, since my daily currently sits outside, and I’d like to hav...
10/30/2019

Here she is!

Now I have to figure out where to store the car, since my daily currently sits outside, and I’d like to have garage space for it with winter coming. I really hate scraping windows.

It’s sat the better part of 10 years, so it definitely needs some work (but it’s in pretty good shape all things considered).There’s a coolant leak under the intake manifold that has to be addressed. The brown interior is absolutely trashed, so the black interior I kept from the red car will go in it. The wing has a crack right in the middle, and there’s a couple of paint chips.

There’s a lot to do, and I’m having a hard time deciding where to start. I oiled the sunroof track yesterday as it was super stiff when I tried to open it. Some surface rust on the assembly, but the drains and the actual body work around the sunroof appeared rust free, which is about the best I could hope for from a car that’s lived in coastal Oregon for so long...

Gonna be a long road, but I’m excited!

09/21/2019

So, update.

My red 89 has gone the way of the scrap heap. Ran out of time and money to fix it before my move.

But, my uncle is giving me his black ‘88 in October, since he will be deploying again and has only kept it hoping to one day work on it. He said since he’ll be busy for the foreseeable future, he will just give it to me. So I’ll be starting again here soon. I’ll give the falcon another go.

Had an unfortunate event happen last night driving home. Now my merkur and focus match. Merkur got deer hit in the drive...
03/26/2019

Had an unfortunate event happen last night driving home. Now my merkur and focus match.

Merkur got deer hit in the driver side, focus got deer hit on the passenger side.

Had to call the machine shop to hold off working on it until I get this figured out. Not sure how my finances will look for the next little bit. Honestly might have to get rid of the car. We’ll see what happens next.

Take 2Got good news this morning. The ranger block was 6 thousands out from stock. The machine shop is going to bore out...
03/25/2019

Take 2

Got good news this morning. The ranger block was 6 thousands out from stock. The machine shop is going to bore out the ranger block to match the Merkur pistons as rods, and I'll run the ranger crank as well. Apparently my pistons aren't forged like they should be, but they at least have the proper d shaped dish. I'll just make sure when I start playing with the boost down the road that I have a good wideband O2 sensor.

Also found out why that ranger block was knocking...
The rod cap nuts were all less than finger tight. I don't know if my friend and I just used the wrong torque spec or what, but another few minutes and that motor might well have been toast.

Got the rack taken apart, turns out it was rebuilt before. All the parts look really nice. New seals and hoses should fi...
03/23/2019

Got the rack taken apart, turns out it was rebuilt before. All the parts look really nice. New seals and hoses should fix it.

In the motor department, news isn't so good. Turns out my block has been rebuilt before. It's already at .030 over with some new wear. Shout out to everyone on the turboford page for helping me come to a decision as to what to do.

My friend has a ranger block he isn't going to use. He said I can have it if I can use it. I'll get it taken apart and up to the machine shop on Monday. If it's in okay shape, I'll get it bored to .030 over and drop in the Merkur rotating assembly.

Starting to feel the time crunch. It needs to be running well enough to drive to Utah by about mid June.

03/15/2019

Just ordered a fair number of parts that I know I will need. Engine sensors, thermostat, etc.

Also got a seal kit for the power steering rack. I've started taking it apart and will see if I can get it fixed. The car hasn't had working power steering since I got it. Sure would be nice to have that working.

03/07/2019

Dropped off the motor at Gunn Automotive this morning, let the money spending begin...

I'm still hopeful that it will be in good enough shape that I won't have to get it bored out and replace pistons. If I do have to, I'm leaning towards getting forged rods as well.

It's still strange to think that I have wanted to fix up this car since I was 15, and almost 8 years later it is finally happening.

Got the motor taken apart yesterday. Good news! Only thing I could find wrong was the top compression rings on cylinders...
03/04/2019

Got the motor taken apart yesterday.

Good news! Only thing I could find wrong was the top compression rings on cylinders 3 & 4 had snapped. The inside of the motor looks really clean, no spun bearings, no weird wear marks. I can still see all the cross hatching, and there's no lip on the top of the cylinder walls. Looks really, really good for a 254k mile motor, especially considering the abuse I gave it as a teen, and the abuse I know it saw before I got it. I'm really glad the snapped compression rings didn't score the cylinder walls.

Need to get it cleaned up some, then it's off to the machine shop. I've got 4 months until I move, it has to be running and driving before then. Hopefully I can fix at least the majority of the big problems before summer.

One funny thing, I tapped divots into the pistons to mark which number they were, only to realize as I took the motor apart that they are numbered both on the rods and caps already. I guess I'm just used to the duratec in my focus where nothing is marked. Everything is factory marked on this motor, number and orientation. It's practically fool-proof after rebuilding that awful duratec.

So the pinch weld and rocker panel rust were much more significant on the passenger side. There are 3 sections that are ...
01/03/2019

So the pinch weld and rocker panel rust were much more significant on the passenger side. There are 3 sections that are a little more severe than the surface rust on the drivers side. Two sections near the back under where the cladding was, I'll probably cut squares out around the rust spots and weld new pieces of metal in as per my friends suggestion.

The third spot the pinch weld got hit at some point and bent over a little, it rusted out some. I'll probably just heat it up and bend it back in place, maybe weld a bit of a bead along it and then grind it back down.

The hole in the floor should be a little easier than I expected. It also came from something hitting the car, maybe a rock. But it didn't break metal, just popped a couple spot welds near the jack point. I'll heat it up, hit it from above to get it at least close, and then weld it back shut, weld another plate to it if it makes me nervous.

All in all I think I got pretty lucky. A couple small rust spots and a hole to fix. If I hadn't checked it would've gotten a whole lot worse real quick. Things are looking up for this car.

Did a little research this morning before it warmed up and found out MC2Racing has new, inexpensive, stiffer factory rid...
01/03/2019

Did a little research this morning before it warmed up and found out MC2Racing has new, inexpensive, stiffer factory ride height springs. That'll be one of the first things I actually spend money on, after I get the motor figured out.

Also realized that my struts and shocks have been replaced before. The fronts with KYBs. The rears are toast, the fronts probably are too, but maybe I can get away with running them a little longer.

Side note, the wire wheel I bought 2 days ago is already toast, went out and got 2 more today.

Took out all the fender liners, in pieces. Had to be the most brittle plastic I have ever seen. There was no way to get ...
01/03/2019

Took out all the fender liners, in pieces. Had to be the most brittle plastic I have ever seen. There was no way to get them out without breaking them apart. The rear I will probably just spray with undercoating, maybe add some sheet metal on the back to keep the fuel tank from getting totally coated. Fronts I'll have to figure something out. I think on the Merkur Club of America forum there was a page about using different fender liners from another car. I'll have to look into that later, got bigger fish to fry right now...

What used to be the fender liners, and the piles of dirt that came out of them:

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Denver, CO
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