General Comments:
I will never own another Ford or Lincoln product again after owning this car. Junk does not adequately describe this car. Ford must have used engineers from a preschool class to design this vehicle. Run, do not just walk away from one of the cars at any price.
I found out about this vehicle the hard way. Shortly after I purchased the vehicle, the hydraulic fan pump started making a noise and the hydraulic hose to the cooling fan ruptured. This hose is $350.00 and a dealer only part. Then the pump was also bad. $566.00 and a dealer only part. The fan motor also needed to be replaced at $400.00. They wanted over 1,000.00 in labor to do the repair. The excuse for this is the heated seats draw too much power and the only fix was a 2,000.00 hydraulic fan. It's funny that high output alternators can be had for about 30.00 over the cost of a normal one.
The reality is that much of this car was designed to fail, and certain tactics like using special fittings on the parts require you to buy overpriced parts from the dealer. I got around this nightmare with a simple fix. I went to Autozone and bought a generic 18" electric fan. I removed the fan shroud, then cut out the factory fan from the shroud and mounted the new fan inside the shroud. I then purchased a generic adjustable fan thermostat, set it to come on at 150 degrees and wired it up. I removed the hydraulic hoses, the hydraulic reservoir and the hydraulic fan pump pulley. I then got a custom length serpentine belt and installed it, bypassing the place where the hydraulic pump used to be..
Now the car has no cooling issues and works great. The fan that I chose only draws 10 amps so there are no power issues. Even a 16" electric fan will cool this car. Do not allow Ford or Lincoln to prosper by building junk at your cost. I spent a total of $200.00 on this repair and the car has NO cooling issues. Or you can take it to the dealer and pay thousands, so that this system can fail again in short order.
18th Dec 2009, 18:27
Next time buy a Towncar.