problems problems problems

well its me again, aint posted in a while. well as a few of you may know i bought my 97 tc last spring. everythings been lovely. well about 2 weeks ago i had to park my baby. i was drivin, and all of a sudden my brake pedal got mushy and the pedal went to the floor on me, got lucky tho and i still had brakes (just barely) enough to get me home. well i figured that my pads must have really been worn down, and that was the reason for my pedal goin to the floor. so last weekend i put front brakes on it thinking that would solve my problem. i knew the car would be needing brakes because i didn't put none on since i had bought the car. well luckily i caught it just in time because the pads were worn really low, so thankfully the rotors were good.


so after i get the front brakes done i get the tires back on and the pedal response improved none. so i think for a minute and pop the hood, and the brake fluid was exceptionally low. check around the master cylinder/brake booster and no leaks (thank god). so i top her back off and begin to pump the pedal, and i feel the firmness coming back. well then it gets mushy again and after laying out in the snow and ice covered drive way i say f**k it and park it. well after i park it i discovered a huge ass puddle of brake fluid all over the driveway. so now i know i got a line leak at the left rear wheel.


well anyway, a week and a few days later (today) i get her pulled in the garage (very small/limited room) and jack her up to do a lil inspection. well since the car took up all the space up in the garage it left almost no room for me to manuever around.

turn the airide switch off and begin to jack up the car, which was took almost 20 minutes due to limited handle sweep, because the ass end of the car is so long the jack handle is almost to the floor, it prolly only had 15 degrees of sweep at the most, which was a pain in my ass.

well i get the car jacked up and pop the wheel off, and see that the brake line is pretty corroded and rusty, and its leaking about a foot in front of the rear left tire. the brake line is on top of the frame rail between the frame and the body.

well aparently it appears that the brake lines are ran along the driver side and cross over to the right hand side where apropriate. i also notice that there are 4 of these brake lines, and that they look very hard to get to. on top of that the others are rusted as well, and i'm sure if i remove 1 the others will prolly begin to leak on me. so now i know that i need to run all new brake lines from front to back.

so now i get ready to get to buiseness, and back the car in the garage in order to close the door and fire up the torpedo heater (its the middle of winter here in michigan, and we have rather hard winters) . well i wasn't really wanting to spend 20 minutes jacking up the car, so instead of using the diff. pumpkin as my jack point i use the frame rail in front of the rear wheel. well i quickly see the body going up and the rear wheels going no where, and then i look at the rear end and notice my air spring just about stretched to its limit and think to myself NOT GOOD. so as quick as i could i let the jack down a lil and re jacked the car up by the rear sway bar mount.

luckily i didn't fuxor up my air spring lol. but anyway after deciding that these brake lines will be a hell of a head ache, i said fux it and parked my shit. has any one ever had to re run the brake lines on these cars before? i've done it before on a lot of gm's, like in my other posts i mentioned this is my first lincoln, i refuse to call it a ford, its in a class of its own lol.

but the way the lines are run seems very complex compared to the many other cars i've had to do this on. also, in what $ amount ballpark am i looking at for this repair? am i just crazy in my thinking about how hard this really is? im going to need to run new lines front to back no doubt, as i'm sure the other lines will go not too long behind this one going off of how much rust there covered in. on another note, since i bought the car i had thought i had drums in the back, but today i found out i have discs all the way around :iceslolan. i thought the only tc's that had the disc brake rear end were the versailles edition, the cape edition, the grand touring edition, and a few other special editions. how many TC SS have the disc rears? although on my dealer badge on the trunk lid it does say centennial edition???????? if anyone has any tips/suggestions i'm all ears. sincerely, jason

Hi Jason

I'm a Michigan boy myself. I hear ya about laying in the snow bank doing repair jobs. Yes the Lincoln Town Car brake lines are a complicated mess. I brought my Lincoln down from MI when I moved to KY. I have the same problem with the rusty brake lines. I made a quick patch to keep the brakes working, but I no longer trust them to drive the car on the road. I only use the car now days to test Lincoln TC parts for my business, so no big deal. I am rebuilding a 96 Crown Vic that I'll have to run some new brake lines on, same deal as yours. One line poped on the VIC and I haven't goten around to fixing it yet. I guess my sugestion to you would just try to carefully repair it with a patch. It's no time to be doing a full line replacement in an unheated garage in MI. You will need a double wall flare tool to make a good splice into those lines, but you know that. Good Luck

haha yea, i don't think i could get away with a patch as its leakin like a siv, i'm prolly gonna try to put this off either till it warms up a lil or we hit spring (which seems as tho it will never get here:uhoh: ). yea michigan sucks, it was so cold while i was out there messin around i was feelin like a block of ice. so hows the weather in ky right now? i'm sure it can't be worse than around here. thanks for the reply, sincerely, jason

Hi Jason

I guess the word patch wasn't exactly what I ment. A splice would have been a beter choice of words. If you can go back to a spot on the line that is not swiss cheesed, cut and flare the end then add a replacement section that would get you going again. That's how I did mine. I went from the brake junction block on the fire wall to about mid point under the car. The rest of the brake lines and fuel lines look very crusty. I was very careful not to disturb things too much while I was under there. I'm not sure where my Crown Vic lines are leaking yet, that will have to wait till spring.

This has been the coldest winter so far in the 4 years I've been down here, reminds me of MI. Although it didn't really start geting cold untill Jan. Usually the winters are mild, I was still riding my motorcycle this Dec. try that in MI ha ha. It's a warm 37 degrees today, so I am headed out to the shop to start work for the day. Good luck

well i beleive i had a heart attack and shat my drawers at the same time today. just to see how much the dealer would charge me to run the new lines for me, they quoted me $ 1300 :banghead: :screwy: :eek: :lol: . i could not beleive this. the guy said that in order for them to do it, they'd have to seperate the body from the frame to get to the lines???? is that true????? i had to call bullshit on that. after that i called another place and they quoted me 700. still to high. called another place they quoted me 600. then another place said prolly around 4 bills. no place other than the dealer mentioned anything about having to seperate the frame from the body. any advice on how i should go about this???

Hello Jason

The reason the dealer is so high is that they would replace the whole complicated assembly. Brake, fuel, air suspension line. The reason they are saying they have to seprate the body is that the lines have all sorts of crazy bends. It would be difficult but I believe it could be done. No mechanic at a dealer would do it that any way, but they would charge you for it. That's just the Ford pricing procedure. That's so funny, if they did try to loosen the body mounts most likely they would break every bolt on a Michigan car. I just took the body off a 93 Town Car Yesterday. That car was a rust free TN car and got them all off, breaking only one. I have taken those bodies off before and broke every single bolt.

You can do this job yourself, don't pay out all that cash. The thing about brake lines is, a lot of people think they have to be bent exactly like the original. Not the case, and no way can the factory bends be duplicated exactly. Just bend them by hand, you don't need any fancy tools for bending. Buy a double wall flareing tool if you don't already have one. You will need that for making the last section of line the correct length. Buy the longest sections of lines at the auto parts store. Be sure to match up fittings lots of different kinds. Run one line at at a time, leave the originals in there and run next to them. Use some zip ties to secure the new lines to the old. If you run into a spot where you think the line will rub on something, cut a slit in some rubber hose slide it on the line and zip tie the ends. When it warms up in the spring you can go back and neaten thing up by removing the old lines and clamping down the new ones. :2cents:

I would go south and buy used brake lines from a salvage yard MYSELF.
YOUR CAR SHOULD HAVE ABS. (NICE ,but Expensive for REPAIR)
I got a one owner NC 1995 excutive Town-car - Like new cond ''NO GARAGE''
We don't have a problem with SALT in NC.
How did the rest of the Body hold up?

1) Isolate line and put some kind of Turnicate for Time being.
90% of breaking is on the Frt wheels.
2) BLEED,and make sure you chk brake fluid.
3) With the ABS ,it might work for time being.
4) At least you wouldn't have to pay for a Tow bill.
For that price,I could sell my car for 2K.
2ND OWNER NC CAR 1995 EX TC with 136K,it doesn't have CANCER.
Excellent cond for year.

BORN+RAISED IN MOTOR-TOWN USA. MCGIVER






MCGIVER

thanks for the tips/info danielsatur. actually, quite amazingly for being in michigan, the only rust on the car is a tiny amount of surface rust on the undercarriage, nothing serious but the usual orangeish haze, and the brakelines. the paint and body is absolutely mint all around, without even 1 spot of rust.

ooopps double post. but too add to the above post, the 1300 quote was just the highball from the dealership. i'm getting ready to re do my lines as soon as the weather breaks, and i should be able to do it at under 2 bills for all new lines. lincoln dealer a.k.a the stealership, bunch of scam artists down there i tell ya

Jason I like that stealership bit, that's great.

I went to the Jag dealership to buy some vavle cover bolts 12 for $6.00 a
BOLT!
NO-THANKS.
What did MCGIVER do?
Local hardware store and bought stainless steel for 50 cents a pieace.
MAN -you don't use bread wraps,you got to use good quality TY-Wraps.

PS. They will last long,because they don't RUST.