The Tale of the '89 Ford Tempo — Part 1

It all started on a fateful day, in August of 2002. Nick's family and I went to the Barlow Auction house, in Barlow, Oregon to see what cars were being auctioned off. Most certainly, I did not think that I would be driving home in a (drum-roll, please) 1989 Ford Tempo! The auction garage was filled with a choking cloud of burnt-oil, catalytic'ed to death, 1980's 4 cylinder, ugly car exhaust. And as that hideous Ford rolled into the room, Nick, half-jokingly said to Richard (who was bidding): "$75!" Nick's stepdad, Richard, gave him a look as to say, "Are you stupid?" But he bid anyways. The auctioneer babbled off numbers and a few other poor souls bid on the maroon beast. The $75 mark got passed and we thought the bidding was over. $90 or something. But apparently the bidder who won the bid didn't realize he was bidding (probably slapping at his son, or something) and contested that fact. So the bid went the the previous bidder -- you guessed it: US! So, such is life. We ended up with an '89 Ford Tempo (fuel injected 2.3L 4-cylinder) with bleached, spider-webbing maroon paint and stinky-moldy seats. All things considered, the car was in more than decent condition for the $85 paid for it ($75 bid + $10 auction house tax). Nick's girlfriend, however, was less than thrilled to find that Nick bought that ... thing. Well, after a week or so, Nick decided to attack the interior of the Tempo with a rag and some Armor-All. I wasn't around, but I can tell that all the plastic is much shinier!

That is what our beast looked like prior to the "Camping Incident..."

During Labor Day weekend, I went camping with Nick's family. Nick was very confident and adamant about taking the ugly $75 junker. We had even, said, I hate to admit it, that we should buy a car, take it up to the woods, and TRASH it! Sounds fun, but this car ran a little too well to constitute such violence (though little money would be wasted, resale could be a possibility...) After a couple of hours of gravel, the rear, driver-side brake started acting up. For the remainder of the trip, the brake was dragging. Every once in a while, it would lock up and make a big rut in the gravel, while we were traveling 30 mph...

The road was very rough, with large potholes and big rocks. Somehow, the Tempo survived but ended up with a brake that spasticly locks up and some ... "visible" ... undercarriage damage, including the lack of a muffler. It fell off going up a gravel hill.

Well, that's the majority of the pain caused to the poor Ford during that trip. This is a picture of the maroon thing after we got home.

Ok, so on Tuesday, Sept. 3rd, Nick, Steve, and I went to a junkyard nearby that had an '80-something Ford Tempo. We had them fling it up in the air with a fork-lift. We did a very uneducated, un-thorough job of examining the exhaust pipes, and had it set back down. We then got to work removing the pipes from the car. Fortunately for us, someone had already done most of the work by cutting the exhaust pipes at the catalytic converter. So all that was holding the pipes to the car was 3 rubber figure 8's. Being violent, unwitting, and bored, we took a pocket knife and slit the poor little rubber pieces that held it to the undercarriage of the ugly car. When all was said and done (paid $15, broke in a few shattered windows, and kicked a bumper or two) we had ourselves a surprisingly good looking set of exhaust pipes and muffler. By the way they looked, the system must have been recently replaced, before the car was junked.

Yeah, that's me attacking Nick (behind camera) with the new muffler system...

So anyways, I threw it in the back of my little Toyota and hauled it back to Nick's house.

The clearance under that car is putrid. This fact well established, we nailed some boards together (2x8 and an 8x8) and drove up on them. Once there, we much more carefully removed the rusty-crapped-out muffler pipes from the car (NOT cutting the rubber hangers). We had to use the Sawzall to cut the straight pipes from the cat. That made it much easier to get the rest loose.

At this point, the car still had a sizeable exhaust leak... OK. The exhaust manifold was SPLIT into two separate pieces. So we decided for the sake of less tickets, and less exhaust breathed, and better resale, we'd fix the little error. (The car was very loud). So on Thursday, the 5th, we found ourselves another junkyard that had another Tempo with the same engine in it. We found it in a '90 Tempo. Same EFI engine. So we decided that it was time for destructo!! We started unbolting the EFI intake manifold and unhooking, snipping, jabbing, or cutting any wires and sensors that were in the way (or looked like fun). We got a late start that day so we had to leave and come back. We came back on that Saturday but to our dismay, someone had slammed the car hood closed. Now normally, this is not an undesirable act, but when the hood-opening lever inside the car has been swiped and cut, it makes things a little more difficult. So long story short: broke front grill, broke more plastic and jammed hand under car hood and opened. Unbolted random things, unbolted the bottom half of the intake manifold and started to take off the exhaust manifold. Cut some gas lines and some really nasty oil line or something that had been rotting for months and dripped on me (smelled awful). Cut more things, used WD-40, undid bolts and pulled the piece out. Not all things happened in that order exactly, but close enough. I was bored, so my younger brother and I decided to take a little lesson in Engine Disassembly 101. We found an old 80's "Mustang" and ripped off the valve cover, peered at the lifters and made funny noises. We then took out some rods connecting to the cam, I presume. Then, when we were bored with that, we unbolted the whole shabang (head) and looked into the 4 little holes we affectionately refer to as cylinders. After all that unnecessary knuckle banging (the head was on real tight), we set the cover back on and left. Curiosity satisfied (we'd never decapitated an engine before), we left with a one-piece exhaust manifold, a little power door-lock relay, a brake shoe and some spring which I forget the purpose of.

On Sunday afternoon, I went over to Nick's house and we decided to attach the catalytic converter (already dangling) to the new pipes. Of course, we relized it would be MUCH easier if the whole thing wasn't attached to the bottom of the car. So we proceeded to take off the exhaust pipe and muffler we hung a few days earlier. (Give us a break, first time doing this sort of thing After much searching, we found a solution for getting the two cut pieces of pipe back together. We got a piece of muffler pipe (2" coupler) and big, honkin' clamps from Schucks. We used the Sawzall to make clean cuts on the old pipes and stuck them together and clamped them until the pipe started crumpling like paper! Then we put them back on the car.

The pipe on the left leads straight to the cat, the pipe on the right twists through flow-restricting bends and through the muffler. You can see how much nicer the new pipes are that we pulled off the car from the junkyard. As can be expected, our measurements were less than perfect, so the pipe is an inch or two shorter than it is supposed to be, but it should all work out as soon as we get the new exhaust manifold in. That was the next project.