Author Topic: What to do with a Ford POS  (Read 1922 times)

intellectsucks

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What to do with a Ford POS
« on: February 16, 2017, 10:25:58 AM »
So my car (a 99 Mercury Grand Marquis with about 140k miles) has reached the point where I’m now constantly worried about it breaking down as well as frustrated by some of the small annoyances.
A possibly not all inclusive list of the issues:
The battery cables are REALLY corroded.  Who knows when they’ll fail.
There is a gasoline smell coming from the passenger side while driving.  I suspect some issue with the fuel line, fuel filter or fuel pump.
The ignition coils have been failing.  I’ve replaced 6 of the 8.
Only the windshield and floor vents work, and won’t shut off, even when the heater is off.  In the summer cold air would come out of those vents, but there is a likely a Freon leak somewhere in the system (my mechanic had to add Freon to get it blowing cold air).
There is an antifreeze and oil leak somewhere that is leaking into the spark plug chamber on the drivers side.  I’m not sure if this is causing the ignition coils to fail on that side or if they’re dying on their own due to age (I’ve heard from multiple sources that this is a common problem for this type of car in 125k-150k mile range).  There are a couple of possible causes of this that are not serious but the most likely causes (cracked intake manifold, bad head gasket) are big, terrible jobs.  Oh and for those in the market for cars, The Ford Crown Victoria, Mercury Grand Marquis and Lincoln Towncar all have this issue, it think from 95-2005 but I might have the years wrong.
The lock/unlock button on the drivers door doesn’t work.
I’ve done some small car repairs in the past but the most difficult thing I did was helping a friend replace brakes and rotors (he was a career mechanic).
My wife and I are pretty dead set on selling this car and then buying a used minivan (we have three young kids and I will haul larger loads on a fairly regular basis).  I figure my options are thus:
Sell the car as is to someone.  Disclose the issues and take what I can get.  Probably won’t be much given the issues.
Repair as much as I can on my own, especially the major mechanical issues so that I can get a much better selling price.  An intake manifold and head gasket don’t cost very much, so I can get it done pretty cheaply, but it’s a really labor intensive job and with my limited experience I’m concerned with screwing something up and making the problems worse.
Sell the car as is to a mechanic/dealer.  I had a similar situation with my previous car (a 97 lincoln towncar) and got almost a grand for it from a mechanic.  I suspect he was able to repair the manifold more easily and cheaply than I could have and sell it for a much better price than I could have.
So, what would you do?  What would you recommend I do?

AZDude

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Re: What to do with a Ford POS
« Reply #1 on: February 16, 2017, 10:41:41 AM »
I would say sell As-Is with full disclosure. Take the $1000 or whatever and put it toward a less crappy used car. $5000 could probably fund a used car without all those defects that will last a good 5 years or so.

lbmustache

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Re: What to do with a Ford POS
« Reply #2 on: February 16, 2017, 11:31:36 AM »
Sell-as is, disclose all the issues. Or sell to a mechanic.