This all started last year during the height of the COVID19 pandemic. Used car prices went crazy and my VW dealer offered me WAY more money than my 2017 GTI will ever be worth again. That coupled with not driving much do to a lot of tele-work forced me to sell it. I have 2 old pickup trucks to drive so it wasn't a big deal.
My original plan was to eventually replace the GTI with a Chevy Caprice PPV. The prices on those PPV's went crazy too so that was not a good option. That lead my to the P71 Crown Vic which is still very inexpensive and a lot of car for the money.
Why an old Police car???
I love cars that have good handling, braking and V8 power. I learned a long time ago that cop cars had better suspension, brakes and engine power than their civilian counterparts. They also get heavy duty cooling and charging systems to make them very, very reliable as a daily driver.
This one has 111,000 miles and 2,700 idle hours on it and runs great. It was repainted and has no antenna holes in the body. It came with the spot light and prisoner cage.
The spot light was rusted out inside and didn't work so I removed it. I also removed the top half of the prisoner partition. Since you can't operate the doors or windows from the back seat it was a serious trap hazard!
I've owned a couple hundred cars in my life but never a FORD. Hopefully this will turn out to be a good one. I checked it out yesterday and it needs an air filter, front brake pads and an alternator. All pretty easy stuff.
The plan for this car is to do some suspension upgrades to make it handle really good. Then put an SCT tuner in it with a "Moe's Speed Shop" tune. And we will probably do some exhaust work to make it sound like something.
All this stuff is pretty cheap for these cars so it will be good fun without a big price tag.
Do you have a code reader? Should be pretty easy to see what is causing the CEL.
You will be lucky if it is just an oxygen sensor. Broken manifold bolts and faulty catalytic converters are also common on cars that have seen a lot of WOT action.
Do you have a code reader? Should be pretty easy to see what is causing the CEL.
You will be lucky if it is just an oxygen sensor. Broken manifold bolts and faulty catalytic converters are also common on cars that have seen a lot of WOT action.
I don't have a reader but sometime this week we will find out what the deal is. This car was owned by Carrol County MD, probably the corrections department for prisoner transport. No sign of drunk, puking people in the back seat like a normal patrol car. Probably not much high speed action in this one's past.
Are you upgrading the tires to meet your performance expectations? Nice rig...sounds like you found one that isn't all worn out. Enjoy!
Thanks! Yah the nice ones are getting harder to find these days.
The tires on it are pretty new so we will leave them on for now. But, now that you bring it up, these cars share components with the late 90's mustang, including wheels. Might be able to upgrade to some fancy wheels for cheap in the future!
I learned a long time ago that cop cars had better suspension, brakes and engine power than their civilian counterparts. They also get heavy duty cooling and charging systems to make them very, very reliable as a daily driver.
These alternators are different than any that I have seen before. They have a clutch inside them that will allow them to keep spinning for a while when the engine shuts off. Not sure why they have this but it might have something to do with it being 200 AMPs. This one actually still charges good, it just makes bad sounding noises.
Today I ordered rear pads and rotors. I figured I'd get a set of front rotors too since they looked OK, but not great. I also ordered a new set of lug nuts because the tapered faces on all of these look badly beat up.
All in All, not to bad. I don't mind putting all new brakes on a nice car that has over 100,000 miles on it. The rest of the car is great and it's a lot more fun through the turns than either one of my pickup trucks!
It's all PA registered now so we have 10 days from the day it was registered to get inspection stickers on it. It has an inspection appointment next Friday. Hopefully we can get it through on the first try!
Don, the reason for the one way clutch on the alternator is so that it does not chirp the belt on firm shifts. The older Crown Vics would loudly chirp the belt on the 1-2 shift because the engine RPMS change quick and the rotating mass of that big alternator would cause the pully to slip on the belt. My '98 would do that loud enough that it almost sounded like it barked the tires.
At 100,000 miles that car is probably due for shocks, spark plugs, fluids front to rear, etc - but you are wise to focus on getting it stopping good first.
Don,I Enjoyed "Da' Video"! One word of advice: get that CEL healed and have atleast 75 to 100 miles of varied driving on her before you take it to be inspected. In Ohio,that's what you need for our vaunted E-Check Baloney Emissions Test. The 3 most common fails here are: Faulty Gas Cap,Faulty Fuel System Evap Components,and then the dreaded plugged or dead catalytic converter along with the O2 sensors. Don't fail,stay off their radar... Good Luck!!
When you clear the codes, it deletes all the emission data. You need several cycles before you allow testing as they will draw a blank and you will have to return to get re-tested after it rebuilds the data.
