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SirTanon's 2003 Mercury Sable LS Premium

6K views 16 replies 6 participants last post by  sirtanon 
#1 · (Edited)
Well, I've had the car now for a while, but I figure I'll start the thread and start from the beginning, since I have recently done a bunch of stuff, and am in the process of doing a bunch more stuff.

Bought this Sable in November of 2009 after my 2000 Taurus was totaled. It had just a hair over 75,000 miles on it when I bought it for $4400 from a local used-car lot. Near as I could tell, it was previously owned by an older couple, one of whom was retired Air Force. Seemed to have been taken pretty good care of, but had a few problem spots, including poorly-done tinting (bubbles, and one really BAD line up the back window). At some point, the previous owners had had a towing hitch professionally installed in the back. Since the car had been originally purchased in.. North or South Dakota, I think, don't remember which.. I would imagine they used it to tow a trailer behind them during their move, but who knows.

It came with Leather, power pedals, power driver seats, Climate Control, and Mach (one of the main reasons I bought this car), and for the most part, I just drove it as a regular daily driver for a few years, never really giving much thought to upgrades, modifications, or maintenance, beyond the typical normal stuff like oil, tires, coolant, brakes.. I guess it was enough, because the car, for the most part, has been a steady driver the whole time, nearly 100,000 miles later.

A couple years ago, a car in front of me kicked up a chunk of truck tire which ended up going through my front fascia and did a number on my A/C (destroyed the condensor and quite a few other parts in cascade). I got it fixed, but it never really ran as cold as it had before the mishap.

Pretty much the same day, I noticed that the windows were not working either. Eventually replaced the fuse, and it worked again.. for about a week. For months after that, I chased the issue, replacing at least a dozen fuses. Sometimes, it would work for 2 weeks, sometimes not even a day. Eventually, I got sick of going through fuses and I just lived with it. For 2 years.

Then, about 6 months after the windows stopped working, my CD-changer broke. Would no longer eject the CD cartridge, would only say "No CD" etc.. I could not get it to eject. As things were going, I was beginning to just get tired of chasing gremlins, so I just stuck with radio, and eventually picked up an FM modulator that I hooked up to my phone. This got me by.

Recently, maybe 5 or 6 months ago, I started noticing that if the car sat for a while - maybe a day - without getting used, or if it was colder than about 50 degrees overnight, when I pulled the car out, after shifting in to first gear, the car would go fine for about 5 seconds, then slip out of gear for a second, followed by a hard shift back into first - usually with a bang. It only happened once in a while, and only the one time in the day.. then it drove fine for days. I learned to just mitigate it by being very attentive and starting out very slowly in the morning.

.. but it got old, and I started wondering if it was going to get worse. It also got be back on the notion of chasing gremlins, and since I now have my new Altima, I can afford to leave the car in a partially-disassembled state.
One night I took it upon myself to pull the CD changer and take it apart. Sure enough, it was JAMMED - HARD. I was able to take the CD out, but it was gouged very deep. The mechanism was ruined too.. so I went to the JY the next day and was lucky enough to find an 04 Taurus with the changer. It also gave up its driver door window controls so I could test my power windows.

The 6-CD changer did the trick - awesome! I THOUGHT the window controls fixed my problem, but about a week later, while I was cleaning my interior, I noticed it had gone out again. This lead me to look at the dome light, since it always went out the same time my windows did. A set of LED Festoon lights from Amazon, and I'm back up and running. Wouldn't you know it, the incandescent bulb was pulling too much power and blowing the fuse!

Anyways, I was back on the tranny issue, and that brought me here. Go figure - you guys gave me the bug, big time, and now I'm looking at fixing, cleaning, and upgrading things I would never have looked at before.

.. alright, all that said, here's where I am with my car. It now has just under 174,000 miles on it, I still drive it

Done so far:

Fixed CD changer
Fixed power windows
Replaced dome light with LED
Cleaned up my headlamps - Gotta love emery paper and toothpaste :D
New windshield
Vacuumed, cleaned, and shined up my interior
Fresh wash and wax
Patched broken windshield washer hose
Replaced cabin air filter - man the old one was SCREWED UP
Fine-tuned my A/C charge - works much better now

Here's what's coming soon:

Oil and filter change
Trans pan drop/filter/flush - Don't think it's been done since I bought it.
Coolant flush
Trans vent fix
Clean the engine bay
Replace more lights with LEDs
Add additional LED lighting to the trunk
Sax mod for my intake

On my list for 2014 (hopefully)

LED footwell lighting
Replace gauge cluster lights with LEDs
Centennial headlight mod
Fix all the body imperfections - scratches, scuffs, scars
Spoiler?
 

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#2 ·
This past Saturday/Sunday, I was able to do my oil and coolant changes. I must say, it's REALLY unpleasant doing these here in Phoenix between May and September.. it was 100+ degrees both days, so even though I did my best to do them in the morning/evening, I was still dealing with upper 90's or more. Ugh.

So I did the oil on Saturday evening. It had been almost exactly 3000 miles since my last change, and the last 400 miles or so had been with approximately 3 oz of Trans fluid and 1 oz of MMO mixed in with the oil. OH MY GOD, was the oil DARK - and I mean it was black. Changed the filter as well, and put in a Motorcraft FL820s. New oil was 4.5 quarts of Valvoline Max-Life 5w30 and 1/2 quart of MMO. There's a bit of a lifter tick going on in the front bank, so I'm hoping the MMO helps to quiet that down after another change.

A couple of interesting observations:

I've got about 250 miles on it since the change, and the oil is still perfectly clear, so it seems that my additives did their job in cleaning out the gunk.

Before last week, I was seeing a light oil leak - nothing crazy, but it was leaving spots under the car, and I was having to replace about a quart every 5000 miles. I just realized, I haven't seen any new spots in about a week now. Could the Trans fluid have possibly conditioned the leaking gasket(s)?


Ran Prestone cooling system flush Sat night, and left it in overnight, ran it again for about 2 minutes then drained. Pleased to see that the old coolant, while very cloudy and grey, was neither chunky nor brown.

Unfortunately, I snapped the head off the drain petcock while tightening it after my 2nd flush with pure water. Damn plastic. Luckily for me, there's still a deep hex socket in the middle, so I'm still able to use it.

Also, since it was dark out, I took some time and re-replaced some of my interior lights.

Replaced:


which was in my dome light with:


this made a HUGE difference. I then used the removed smaller light and a 2nd, and swapped out my map lights. It's amazing how much better it looks inside now.

Soon, I will be replacing all my gauge lights with:


and a few other lights with:
 
#3 ·
You probably have the ever-so-common oil pan gasket leak the duratecs are prone to. I replaced mine just recently. It's a pain because the exhaust 'y pipe' has to be removed but it's not impossible.

Where did you get those LED lights from?

Oh and.......... :merc::dude:
 
#4 ·
You probably have the ever-so-common oil pan gasket leak the duratecs are prone to. I replaced mine just recently. It's a pain because the exhaust 'y pipe' has to be removed but it's not impossible.
Had, it seems.. Still no new drips.

Where did you get those LED lights from?

Oh and.......... :merc::dude:
Amazon, FTW :D

The big dome light LED (42-mm festoon type)

The smaller dome light LED (42-mm festoon type)

The socket-type LED

The gauge LED

Great prices on all those LEDs too!
 
#6 ·
A few updates..

On May 31, I did a full oil and filter change. About a week prior to that, I had added some Trans Fluid and some MMO to my oil and driven about 400 miles. The oil that came out was pitch black. Strangely enough, the oil drips I had been seeing regularly for tens of thousands of miles had stopped. As of June 4, no drips.

It's now another 3 weeks and about 1000 more miles later, and still, ZERO oil drips. The dipstick is also still right at the full mark, and I have not topped up once. The oil is also a nice clean, golden color. I'm amazed.. it seems that the Trans Fluid and MMO have done something wonderful.. that and the Motorcraft FL820s filter is doing a bang-up job.

I've noticed that I'm now getting a noticeable pulsation and steering wheel wobble under hard braking. I'm going to have to get the front end jacked up this weekend and figure out what's going on.

I'm also hoping to track down the strange Hiss I'm hearing under the hood which sounds a lot like a vacuum leak.. and hopefully get my A/C back in line - To that end, I've ordered a new Sun Load sensor from Amazon. Once I get that in, I'm going to mess with the old one and see if perhaps I can get it working, although I doubt it's going to be serviceable.

Oh yeah, and this happened on my drive in to work today:



Sorry about the blurriness. 175,006 miles - I couldn't take the photo right at 175,000 miles because of traffic and all.
 
#7 ·
Lock up the brakes a few times, see if the front rotors are just glazed. Well, mostly lock them up, don't go tailspinning lol.
 
#8 ·
Agreed. A few 60-5mph panic stop with cool off normal driving time between may fix that.
 
#11 ·
Could be warping. Happens alot on the trucks at work, especially when jamming on the brakes super hard. Mechanic complains his wife does the same thing on her Nissan, then wonders why there is a shudder.
Oil pan gasket DOES NOT require dropping the Y-pipe. Only removing one of the O2 sensors, and some wiggling. Did the oil pump on my Duratec in December, and that's all it took...Plus removing the starter to be able to access all the bolts.
 
#13 ·
Hit 176,000 miles today on the way home from work.

Power windows fuse has started popping again, and I'm finding it when I come out in the morning to head off to work. Not sure what could be behind it, unless it's the increased humidity we've been getting due to the storms.

Shame - It was going great for a good 2 months now. Gonna have to spend some time trying to track this down.
 
#14 ·
Power windows fuse has started popping again, and I'm finding it when I come out in the morning to head off to work. Not sure what could be behind it, unless it's the increased humidity we've been getting due to the storms.
Maybe the humidity AND worn insulation on wire harness through the doorjamb?
 
#15 ·
Starting to think that.

More info. So lastnight I replaced the fuse and it worked. Light was fine with door open or closed. This morning, I came out, unlocked the car remotely and the dome light came on. Opened the passenger door, and the light came on. Tried the pass. rear door and the light came on. No problems so far.

Came around to the driver side, opened the door and got in the car. No dome light. No windows. Fuse had popped. Left it, drove in to work and while sitting in the parking lot with the engine running, swapped the fuse with the door open. Popped the moment it was inserted. Yeah, I know, don't insert fuses with the car on..

I seem to recall from reading forums that this door wiring harness has a habit of doing this. Is this a common thing in these cars? The accordian rubber seems relatively pliable still, but I see a couple of small holes at the bottom of the bend. Is this normal?
 
#16 ·
Yes it's common. Yes the holes are normal.
 
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