New to Mark VIII's and have a few questions.

fat nick

New LVC Member
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Oct 27, 2010
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Location
Hampton
Sold my beater 94 Ranger with 221k on it and bought this car for $2350. 97 LSC 152k, the body is in beautiful shape, not a dent in it. Small scrape on the front bumper about 2 inches long.

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The interior of it looked like the leather had never had conditioner ever taken to it. The carpet were pretty nasty too. Although nothing was missing from it.

I took a mixture of water and shout and a scrubbrush and went to work on the carpets. Also took a degreaser and water and brush and scrubbed the leather seats. They were downright disgusting!!! And applied some leather conditioner onto them.

Only issues with the car are:

Will not blow hot air, a/c works, also blend door seems to act funny, hit a small bump on the road while on auto it will switch to something different. The tilt will power up and down but not telescope out. And the passenger seat will not go forward and back, but every other way.

Small leak looks like power steering, everything else is tight and quiet.

It has a suspension fault that comes on, every once in awhile I'll have to pull over and turn off and back on my suspension because the lr bag will deflate and rub the tires on bumps (It has 17x9 with 275 wide tires on it and huge spacers to bolt it to a Mustang wheel). So I'm guessing it needs a sensor maybe.

Got a brother who is a Ford tech so hopefully parts can be cheap.

I'm going to sell these Mustang wheels and use the money to take the stock chrome snowflakes and put some tires onto them since I work for Firestone and get tires CHEAP.

I know stock are 225's on these. Could I run wider all way around so I can still rotate and not have to worry if the lr bag leaks down it would rub the tire?

Also looking to see what kind of performance mods I could do to wake it up. I want to do a sct xcal3 custom tune with slight mods. Definately needs some manly exhaust on it. Recommendations? Thanks.
 
Well For OEM parts always check with Max at 5 star ford. Compair his prices with what your brother can do.

Gen II Mark VIIIs tend to have Blend Door issues ... motor goes out .. PITA but it can be done.

Air Ride ... have car pump up then turn off the Air Ride switch in the trunk. See if it goes down ... If car stays up for a few days to a week then bags are still good. If it goes down with the air ride off then it's a leaking bag.

Click on the link in my sig for American Air Suspension and go to the trouble shooting page and see if you can find any answers there.

Good luck ... welcome to the world of the Mark VIII.
 
Welcome to the forum buddy! Shame you have those HUGE spacers! Looks awkward, get rid of that set up just as you said & get yourself a nice set of wheels in our lug pattern. Snowflakes aren't the most attractive wheels out there for our cars(even if they are chrome). Volvo wheels fit, Jaguar wheels fit, & plenty aftermarket wheels. DO YOUR RESEARCH! Good luck, ask away & we are always a mouse click away!
 
Speaking of the blend door how much would it be to have one replaced?
 
5-750 usually..Call around to acouple local dealers..the part is only 50 bucks.
 
+1 on turning off the switch for your air ride, see if you have a leaking bag.
Plus your car looks like its in 4x4 mode, it might not be venting.
I would keep the wheels.
Snowflakes suck.
Do a hub swap.
As for mods.... j mod, get a x cal2 and a tune, then 4.10s
It will wake that car up.
As for the blend door, if your can turn a wrench and you have a afternoon, you can DIY
You can move the arm by hand to get heat for a temp fix.
Search it.
 
49 degree night with low humidity I was excited to take it to the last track night of the year to run it. Didn't work out, looks like my first mod is going to be suspension swap next week. While traveling 60 miles to my local dragstrip I was 1 mile away when the line for the front bags came disconnected. And with the huge spacers in front any faster than 15mph would scrape. Limped it a few miles til I pulled over and attempted to pull up on the fender at the same time it tried to pump. Came right up. So I eased back home to where it's at now.

If I'm gonna swap suspension this early might as well look into hub swapping to keep my wheels as I like them. I was going to get rid of them first because with stock wheels at least if I had suspension issues for a bit it would still be driveable.

What's the cost to do a swap so these wheels would work?
 
49 degree night with low humidity I was excited to take it to the last track night of the year to run it. Didn't work out, looks like my first mod is going to be suspension swap next week. While traveling 60 miles to my local dragstrip I was 1 mile away when the line for the front bags came disconnected. And with the huge spacers in front any faster than 15mph would scrape. Limped it a few miles til I pulled over and attempted to pull up on the fender at the same time it tried to pump. Came right up. So I eased back home to where it's at now.

If I'm gonna swap suspension this early might as well look into hub swapping to keep my wheels as I like them. I was going to get rid of them first because with stock wheels at least if I had suspension issues for a bit it would still be driveable.

What's the cost to do a swap so these wheels would work?

if the air works i wouldnt swap it, doesnt sound like you have a leaky bag, sounds like you have a bad hose connection, put the hose back in and get a replacment clip for it,
youll have to do a search for the hub swap, its been gone over countless times
and i concur that Snowflakes are CRAP... takes forever to clean them... and even when theyre clean they still look like crap ( spider-man wheels FTL!)
 
sweet ride

Thats a good looking Mark.I have the same wheels on mine and love them.The hub swap is not that bad a do and parts are reasonable.
 
Fat Nick, what state do you live in? If it's Virginia and you live in Hampton, I'll be in Virginia Beach around Christmas time and would be willing to do your blend door actuator for a much smaller fee than the dealerships would charge. I can do it in less than 2 hours. All the dealerships around me automatically bill it as an 8-hour job, no matter how long it takes them. Last time I did it, I did the heater core at the same time and was done in less than 4 hours. I even already have a brand new blend door actuator.
Let me know how that sounds.
 

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