After Hours Alternator Change
It’s become time that I make the Town Car I picked up for $600 something I can take down the road to get to work. This thing’s never going on Bring a Trailer, but you could have done a lot worse I think.
The car sat for a year or two before I bought it. The guy I picked it up from told me he was putting little bits of gas in it and firing it up somewhat regularly and I believe him. I rented a car hauler with a winch to pick it up since I was anticipating it not running, but, it was able to drive up on to the trailer.
So it runs. On the outside, it doesn’t look too bad either. The only rust on the car is on the front fenders - frame is rock solid. The paint is mostly decent but the passenger side has some peeled/peeling clear. The interior is mostly there, most of what’s missing (pillar trim, sunroof cover, lil bits) I have - it just isn’t installed. The seats, dash and door panels are all in really decent shape. The seats definitely have some wear and the leather isn’t in perfect shape, but, there’s no gouges or rips. And it’s a Cartier, the seats are super plush and comfy.
Overall it’s really just a decent, almost 30 year old $600 car. When I first found and bought the car, I had a more exhaustive list of projects and priorities for it. There’s been a variety of factors that have since made me reconsider.
Tonight was kind of the officiating of that. I knew squirrels had made a home out of the car, I was just hoping it was essentially under the body some how. Most of the walnuts I had found were in the engine bay several times which I’d clean out. I had never checked the trunk until tonight. The trunk’s where all the action was, for sure…
Discovered that tonight after I swapped out the alternator. I had the car started and figured I’d make sure the trunk still opened and closed (I had changed the closer motor in the Fall) and I wanted to just check it out. Was pretty bad.
I vacuumed it out as soon as I saw it and just threw everything away except that jug of vinegar - I can wash that down easy enough and I just don’t care about anything else in there anymore. As soon as I can I’m going to get all that carpet out and scrubbed and sprayed out. All the wires seem alright at least. Just has to be scrubbed out really good. I don’t think they got into the actual interior of the car - I think they busted up through the quarter panels and could just easily get into the trunk. You can’t see it great, but pre-infestation all the carpet going upright was in place tight and that’s all pulled out. If it ends up sitting outside next winter again I’ll definitely be preparing a little better.
Before this revelation though, there was the surprisingly pleasant experience of swapping out the alternator. I’ve done quite a bit of work on my cars, but for whatever reason I’m not sure I’ve ever done an alternator. I changed mine tonight in the dark with a headlamp, ninja toe-ing through the disaster my garage is, back and forth for different tools, in under an hour. Having the alternator out also gave the shop vac hose a clear shot to another cache of walnuts. But overall it was nice! It’s right up top in the front of the pretty massive engine bay and the belt tensioner is easy to get at with a breaker bar.
Made me realize I don’t need to make this anything more than a neat choice of beater. I did pick it up first and foremost because I wanted a Panther platform car - body on frame, rear-wheel drive with a solid rear end, ford modular v8. My hypothesis is I could get this to be something I could definitely take to work and probably anywhere for less than $2500 all in. I have some ignition coils I need to put in yet that I’ve ordered, I did the trunk closer motor and now the alternator so I’m currently around $750.
Originally, I wanted to go a little more all out. But now, I’m probably going to lean more towards treating this thing like an old truck that I keep running with mostly the cheapest parts I can find. We’ll see how that goes. One of the projects I’m torn on is the sunroof. I am not completely convinced I have all the pieces for the track and I know it was installed wrong the last time it was messed with. Parts are not everywhere for it either like they are for the 98+ models. I might mess with it myself more, maybe bring it somewhere or I might just seal it up.
The next project I will be doing though is hacking an aux input into the oem stereo and swapping out any bad speakers. As usual, my priorities remain unshakably on point.