Crown Victoria

By | October 5, 2015

So recently my friend has acquired a 2000 Crown Victoria P71, former county sheriff car. He traded his 1993 Honda Accord with 166k miles, rust spot, and a bit of a goofed up interior for it and $190. The guy gave back $10 since he basically gave us an empty tank of gas while my friend put in a nearly full tank a few days ago in the Honda.

It seemed like a solid ride. A little ruff, spot of rust and the hole in the roof still from the removal of the police light bar. He guy said it doesn’t leak, which I don’t doubt, but still gonna leak in water. We traded and he drove off. We looked inside and they left in all their garbage, old clothes, and a bunch of old shit. We cleaned it out, threw out the cigarette butts, and threw in some gas and made our way home.

Along the drive back, I got to drive it for a bit. This was about 30 mins into it, Check Engine light started blinking. We got back home 1 minute before Autozone closed to they scanned the codes, misfire on cylinder 6. It was either the coil or the spark plugs. I swapped the coil between cylinder 6 to 4, then misfire went to cylinder 8 and 5. So, that was strange.

We went in to replace the spark plugs, which was a bit. Two of them wouldn’t come out, since the steel screws where threaded through brass fittings and the brass just spun not getting removed. It wasn’t ’till later someone with a torque gun could remove them and fix it. Then we discovered the real issue.

No compression in cylinder 8.

Looks like this car was driven hard, improperly maintained by one of the previous owners, and ended up blowing the piston ring. Which explains the low trade cost and the want to get rid of it. Guy probably got the codes cleared before trading off on it.

On top of that when a mechanic looked at it, tire rod end was bad, some of the U-Joints where bad, and the steering column. All in all, he spent less then 2k, including the cost of his Honda for sell.

So currently, he has some interior work to fix, put in a CB, get a push bar, a paint job since Indiana law dictates you can’t keep the Sheriff two tone (So for the time being he just painted the doors black so it’s tri-tone), an interior light, upgrade his sound system, oh, and an engine in a year or two when he can afford it.

But even with all these problems, he fuckin’ loves his car. It’s his first true car he paid for himself, so he takes all the time in the world to make sure everything he does to it won’t break it further. Cause last thing he needs right now is for a piston head to shoot through the engine block.

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