Yes--I find it amazing that the EEC or OBD on sequential injector engines does a MASSIVE amount of computing thousands of time every second. Certainly more computing power than any of the Apollo missions---your cell phone surpasses that they had--and they had to think in hexadecimal; no higher lever languages; not even BASIC. I had a "computer on a page" a single circuit board that had 256 bytes of memory. It was just a learning tool. but so limited and it was probably more than the Apollo guys had. 256 BYTES!!! can you even imagine.
How reliable is the air bag system. i know you have one and prefer it, but based on some reading I have done, you can't expect Dealers to actually know much about the system. Replacing parts is an expensive way to go.
Hello ms fowler,
Action did well in presenting the Panthers through the decades. I have owned 4 of these cars (93,94,97 and 2004) and still have the '94. In owning these things for well over 10 years and a few hundred thousand miles I can present my findings on them. In my experience, the 92-95's are the best built and riding cars. The 96 through 2000 are some of the poorest quality cars and Ford being in trouble with Jaguar, Range Rover and other overseas deals had to cut costs on their American products and it shows. The '97 we had was just cheap interior, rattles, and it drove like a cheap car. I traded a friend of a family member my '97 for '95 whilst I put new brakes on my car and a middle aged women who knows nothing about cars basically said the '97 was a piece of junk compared to her '95 and my '97 looked better and had less miles so take that with a grain of salt.
Speaking of salt and rust. The '96 to 2000's seemed to have poor rust preventions. The bottom of the doors were rusting out from the inside out on the '97 the rockers are another place. The '97 also had electrical (ECU) problems and the engine would occasionally run on 4-5 cylinders and then be ok again with no hard or soft codes tripped but the check engine lamp would flash. I took that '97 to CarMax and was glad to be rid of it. I bought a '93 Grand Marquis LS after that and it was miles apart in quality. That car too went many salty winters and after several of them only ended up with a hole in the underside of the rocker. The visual exterior of the car looked as good as the day it was made still. The doors didn't rust at all. That car had traction control and was a half track in the snow. I remember going to work and people with crappy little front wheel drive cars and minivans would be stuck and the '93 Merc just pulled right out in 6+ inches of snow and soldiered on home with no worries.
The 2004 was a decent car but not as nice as the '93 or '94. The quality improved over the late 90's some but it still felt cheap especially the interior and it was delaminating in some parts. We put nearly 200K on that car alone. The problems we had with the 2004 Merc were the cheap plastic intake manifold cracking and I replaced it twice. It's just garbage and you cannot retrofit an early 90's all aluminum intake on that because Ford changed the fuel injection arrangement. Plus by then half the electrical connections for coils and injectors just shattered from age. More cheap garbage Ford use. If you have to take the car in for repair something like an intake manifold will cost around a grand, if not more now to fix. The other problems we had with the 2004 was the blend door servo (electric) became stuck on heat during the summer. I called around and places wanted between 700 -1200 dollars to change a 40 dollar part because the entire dash has to come out. Did it myself but yuppers I would charge the same for all the work it took. The other major thing that went wrong was the 8.8" rear axle ate an axle shaft and bearing. I just put higher grade axle shafts, new bearings and seals after an axle clean out. Again another high dollar repair if you have to take it in. Buying parts from Rock Auto I think that repair was around 350 dollars my part cost and my free labour of course.
My '94 is just like my '93 and a good car and why I'm keeping it.
Now for a general problem rundown with these cars. The 4.6L 2 valve engine is meh engine. It's not powerful and more a slug. The engines are tired around 200K even with the most meticulous of care. The AODE transmission (early to mid 90's) will develop a shudder in lock up if you do not change the fluid every 30K miles or so and you have to drain the torque converter. Ford even puts a drain plug on the torque converter so that should have been a clue from the get go.
The 4.6L 2 valve engine has a horrible head design with no quench pad and the engines in the heat of summer will detonate on cheap fuel. On the pre OBDII cars there is a shorting bar to curtail the aggressiveness of the timing map and that helps to leave it in the more conservative position. The pre OBDII cars do not have a knock sensor. The OBDII cars do and even though it has a knock sensor our 2004 pinged away to the point at 200K in the cold mornings there was little mains and rod bearings left as it made a knocking clatter until it built oil pressure.
The early to mid 90's 4.6L 2V engines like to plug up the EGR ports in the aluminum intake and it's pretty easy to clean out as it will set a code and trip the Check Engine Lamp. The are getting old and both my '93 and '94 needed new intake gaskets as they leak past 20 years. Also there is an irritating little hose in the back of the manifold tying one side to the other that leaks and you'll end up with a lean miss and check engine lamp and it's a pain to get to.
The 4.6L 2V engines as I mentioned are tired and will need extensive work by 200K miles. My '93 I bought with 88K miles and by 160K I had 3 cylinders only cranking around 60 PSI and it was guzzling oil and I took very good care of that car with maintenance and 3K mile oil changes. My '94 is approaching 160K and its oil consumption has increased and like I said the 2004 would hammer until the oil pump earned its paycheck if you let it sit a couple of weeks.
I know the 4.6L 2V was in theory a much better design than the old Windsor or inline 6 series but Ford cut too many corners on the plain jane 2V version and honestly should have stuck with the little Windsor 302 or even the 300 inline 6 for the Panther. The higher end version of the modular 4.6L from stories of others tells a much different tale and it sounds like Ford built those (4 valve) engines better. I'd take a sequential mulitport injection, coil over plug mass airflow metered 300 inline 6 any day over the Modular 4.6L 2V and I don't even like inline 6's.
A word on air conditioning. I had to replace the evaporator on both the '93 and '94. I dunno if I had just bad luck or..... something more too it and it's not an easy job. In fact the factory service manual says to remove engine first. However if you remove the intake, the passenger side rocker cover, passenger side inner wheel apron, wiring and tubing behind the passenger side engine you can just get the plenum out without having to flex it and most likely crack it. It's still an 8 hour job working at a good speed and having all the tools. The '94's are R134a from the factory but the '92-'93's (new body style) are not and to convert you'll have to flush the old mineral oil out thoroughly and do not use PAG oil, use POE or Ester for conversions to R134a.
A word on dealerships and older cars. Don't plan on dealerships working on your older Panther, especially the pre OBDII ones. My '93 had a problem with the ABS and I didn't have a way to extract the codes at the time and took it to Rich Ford (just a local Ford dealership) and they said they do not have the Star tester required for that car. Furthermore they said if I were to find one, they would happily rent it from me from time to time. So there.
Long story short, you'll have to learn to extract the information from your car as I did and find the list for ABS and SRS codes and you can diagnose it yourself and fix it. Anyway the ABS turned out to be a harness that was run to tight at the factory up front and it rubbed through some of wires. I was able to track it down quickly and repair it once I had the ABS codes and the means to extract them.
As for buying one. I would look for a well cared for garaged low mileage one. I know that will pose a challenge but these cars aren't getting any newer and every passing year the propensity for more things to go wrong on a highly used one increases which will cost you more to fix, even if you do all the work yourself. Just keep in mind some of these Panthers are over 25 years old, so things like gaskets, hoses and seals will all start to fail and can easily nickel and dime you to death. I bought my '94 a few years back and even though in pretty good shape I put the equivalent of 8 grand (if you paid someone) of new parts in it right away to make it reliable. I rarely drive it, but I can count on it anytime now.
Hope that helps some.
Cheers
