Yep, that's a lot of calcium and lime deposits on those valves. No telling what carcinogens your parents are ingesting if the rest of the house plumbing is that old. I had the 40+ year old galvanized pipes in my house replaced last year with all new PEX plumbing and even went so far as to have all of the drain lines replaced with CPVC lines. My water now tastes good and all of the drains run fast and clear properly. I was appalled at all of the rust and other crud that was in the cold and hot water pipes. Absolutely disgusting. And Andy is right about copper pipes. I had to replumb my old house in TN because the copper lines had gotten so thin they couldn't be repaired. You could actually take a piece of it and break it like a stick. Copper is SUPPOSED to bend!

 

We stopped drinking tap water 24 years ago; after hurricane Floyd passed through. The tap water was green for over a month after that event. We've been buying bottled water ever since. The tap water is really only used for bathing and washing dishes.

That corner of the basement has 60+ year old plumbing. The rest of the system was replaced (copper) 32 years ago by my Dad. He told me back then that if I ever mess with the plumbing in that house; use compression fittings only. No soldering in a then 80 year old house.

On the vehicle-side of things; my car has a miss at the higher RPMs; right before it shifts into the next gear. When the weather is consistently warmer; I will pull the plugs to see what they look like. Even though they're only 4 years old, I would like to see what the new tune is doing to them. I will also have to learn how to datalog that car as well; to get a full picture.

And, my QA at my job has a 1st gen Saturn. It looks to be in really good shape. I will ask her what year it is.

 

Are you sure since a soft rev limiter can feel like a misfire?

 

It could be the soft rev limiter. I would have to plug my Scantron tool in and run the car to get the RPM readings; as Ford eliminated the tach for the 2005 model. Ford also got rid of the digital gauges for that year (only) as well. :-/

 

It turns out that we didn't need the repair man to come in and look at the washing machine. For reasons that I can't figure out; the new valves seem to make the washing machine run properly. I guess these newer machines have brains; and are apparently quite sensitive to things; like leaky valves

On the car side of things; I have electric cutouts for my Mercury. I just have to uncover the Crown Vic and grab my soldering iron and my crimping tool for that job. I also need to get another SD card for my GoPro so I can get an idle clip of my Mercury.

While I am in the Crown Vic, I might reinstall the ECM; and start thinking of getting that car prepped for another 1st start attempt.

 

Spent last week tiling a couple walls in my parent's bathroom. Meant to tile the long-wall, but it required a lot of work due to past repairs and patches that I was not made aware of. Bathroom already looks 100% better than it did when we first moved in 40 years ago. As such, I took a little time to look at my Grand Marquis. I was going to install the electric cutouts yesterday, since the roads will probably not see much salt moving forward. I discovered that I can only install the passenger side electric cutout; as the driver side cutout is rotated weird on the Pypes Y-pipe. Disappointed, but glad that I will only have 1 cutout to manually open and close. I might tackle this next weekend; along with replacing the brake pads on all 4 corners; and putting the Saleen Mustang wheels back on there. After that, I will start preparing to mess with the Crown Vic again. My goal is to have that car moving under its own power by the Fall.

 

I discovered that my 18 year old brake hoses on my Grand Marquis (at least the front brake hoses) might be collapsing when I take my foot off the brake pedal. Usually happens at the end of my commute in warmer weather; especially when I hit stop-and-go traffic. I think the rotors are heating up enough to soften the old brake hose and making it collapse; thus preventing the calipers from backing off the rotors. The car acts like I'm trying to brake boost it at that point. I got new hoses and decent DOT 3 brake fluid as a temporary fix. I am going to start getting the big brake swap pieces together for this car.

 

Still haven't gotten the time to swap the hoses, but I have collected most of the parts needed for the C5 caliper/GT500 rotor swap. I got C5 Corvette calipers, -4 AN PTFE hose and steel hose ends (well, I had that in stock already), M10 to -4 AN banjo fitting adapter, and M10 x 1.00 Female concave seat to -4 AN male adapter fittings. Now I need to get the stock hubs/wheel bearing assembly, rear calipers (might as well if I am changing out the rear hoses), C5 brake pads, and GT500 rotors. I would pull the brakes off the Crown Vic (same upgrade), but I retrofitted the front suspension from an '01 Lincoln Town Car, which has a different setup. Plus, I already took enough parts off of that car for the daily driver; don't want to turn the Crown Vic into another parts car :-/ I also had to machine out the rotors to fit the '01 hubs. We'll see if I have to do that with the '05 Grand Marquis hubs.

 

So, one of the issues I had with my daily Grand Marquis was the wiper motor. A couple years after I got the car (2018), the wiper motor started going off by itself. Never had that problem with any of my past vehicles, so I figured the wiper switch/arm on the steering column was malfunctioning; so I replaced it. That temporarily fixed the problem for a couple months. Then the problem re-emerged. Went to grandmarq.net and asked if this was a common problem? The answer was yes and I received a bunch of suggestions ranging from cleaning the cowl area to replacing the wiper motor. I decided to pull the upper cowl cover off for cleaning. That's when I discovered that the wiper motor sits in a box with a drain hole at the bottom. That box was filled to the brim with soil, broken bits of twigs, and leaves. I cleaned that all out and scrubbed the box out with Dawn. Fortunately, we had a dry spell for a month at the time; so the wiper motor had time to dry. And the problem went away for the time being. During that time, I lost a couple speeds on the wiper delay mode; despite cleaning that box every year. I knew that I would probably have to replace the wiper motor at some point anyways. I bought a replacement wiper motor a couple years ago; but I did nothing with it and procrastinated. Until a couple months ago. The wiper motor started activating the window washer pump randomly; and emptied out the reservoir in less than a week of commuting. Now last year, I skipped cleaning the box because of the exhaust project; so that was the first thing I did. The drain hole was clogged after just 2 years. Cleaned it out and slowed the problem down a little. I had 2 weeks of non-activity from the wiper motor. Then yesterday afternoon whilst taking my Mom out for her physical therapy cruise, it activated on its own, and wouldn't stop. I knew the time had come to replace it.

Started this project yesterday evening and was hoping to be done by now. But as many of you know, a job that should only take a couple hours, takes much more than that. It took me a while to get the wiper arms off. The proximity of the hood to the wiper arm pivots and stubborn wiper arm clips made that a tedious task. After that, it went faster.............until I found one bolt that was covered with soil and other debris. After I vacuumed that out; I discovered that the bolt was massively rusted; and somebody had already tried to extract it (without success). It was getting dark last night; so I figured I would try to finagle the wiper motor out from under the lower cowl. After 30 minutes of that, I gave up, soaked the bottom section of the bolt (and U-nut) with Liquid Wrench, and went inside. Had some things to do this morning and obligations this afternoon; but during the day, I thought about ways to get that bolt out. When I finally got to it (6PM), I tried grabbing it with my rounded bolt extractor. That just made the crusty section crumble into a cone-shape. Scratched my head for a few minutes and went to get my drill. Took one of the tiny HF drill bits that I didn't break and drilled into it a little before the bit shattered. Went inside and found my Dad waiting at the cellar door. Wondered what was taking me so long. I explained the dilemma and he suggested I use his cobalt bits and the right-angle drill. That combo worked and I managed to drill what was left of the hex head off. Pulled the lower cowl off and cleaned it real good. I was going to call it quits as it was almost dark; but I went back out and ran what was left of the bolt out of U-nut that was holding it in place. I am going to Home Depot tomorrow and will get a 1-1/2" long 1/4"-20 bolt to replace the one I drilled out; and I have a replacement SAE U-nut. After that I went into the basement to clean the lower cowl. Then I was going to go back up and eat dinner. But, I decided to install the new wiper motor on the lower cowl. While I was at it, I took the old wiper motor apart and found that the bottom of the circuit board was rusted up pretty good. Maybe that was causing it to turn on by itself. We'll see when I reinstall it tomorrow. Hopefully the reinstall goes much quicker. If you read all of this griping; thank you. Here a few pics...............

 

I'm just wondering why in the hell you waited so long to check it out since you knew it was a problem area for the Merc. Sometimes we're our own worst enemy. Just replace the motor with the one you purchased for it. I'd just toss that old one in the garbage. You might want to open the replacement and make sure it doesn't have all that crap inside it.