It's been about a year since I put any work into the 1988 Mecury Colony Park station wagon, but because the Pacific Commodore Expo NW is coming up, I decided to perk it up for the long trip to Washington state. Wednesday at the Mooney Shell service station, the mechanics charged up the a.c., this time injecting a dye into the system to see where it is slowly losing its freon. Right now, the a.c. is really cold, because the system is full. Also they started work on the tailgate repairs. Ever since I bought the car, the tailgate would never lock (well, maybe one time), the tailgate window would not slide down, and though the tailgate opened as a door, it never flipped down to being a tailgate.
First, the mechanics thought the latch was the cause of the non-locking problem. Also the power locking mechanism (the actuator) did not work.
They investigated the tailgate's power window. The former owner had blocked the lowering of the window with aluminum blocks; the mechanics removed those blocks and found that the window motor was bad (or to be more exact, the bearings in the motor were destroyed). The rod(s) that the window slid along were dry (unlubricated) and rough. Also the window itself had 8 holes in the bottom which were supposed to house plastic grommets; only 2 of the grommets were still left.
So, by the end of the day, they needed a latch, a window motor, a door actuator, and more grommets. The next day I came back. They had worked on the tailgate for another couple of hours. The hard-to-find latch did not need replacing! Because the window had been blocked from lowering down, they discovered that it had not been fully raised. When raised another 1/8 inch or so, the electric interlock worked and the key was then able to lock the door. One mechanic, Donnie, was still tweaking the power window mechanism when I arrived. Over and over, he powered the window up and down, checking and adjusting the mechanism(s). He had lubricated the rods so that the window smoothly moved, and he had installed replacement grommets he had fabricated (original grommets were no longer available). Finally, he grinded away any excess metal from his repairs before putting back on the interior vinyl door panel.
There was no time to put in a new door lock actuator, because I had to leave to visit my mother, but I was very satisfied. The "Magic Doorgate" now worked perfectly through its three functions -- door opening with window in up position, door opening with window in down position, and door flipping down as a tailgate with window in down position.
Truly,
Robert Bernardo
Fresno Commodore User Group -
http://www.dickestel.com/fcug.htm June 9-10 Pacific Commodore Expo NW 2018 -
http://www.portcommodore.com/pacommex August 11-12 Commodore Vegas Expo v14 2018 -
http://www.portcommodore.com/commvexP.S. Other tweaks planned for the station wagon - replace lower and upper radiator hoses (upper being easy to change, lower being more difficult to change), replace the ignition coil with an Accel ignition coil (easy to do), and change the full-service spare to a mini-spare tire (impossible to remove the full-service spare out of its storage compartment unless two people tackle it).
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