She drove it for several years and moved down south. The trusty Tempo followed. The only out of the

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To gather the photographs for the Junkyard Find series , I do a lot of walking around self-service wrecking yards, and mostly I m just tuning vancouver cruises to alaska out the common cars as background noise. You know, the 15-to-20-year-old Detroit stuff that won t have any collector value until almost all are gone (as happened with the Pinto and Vega). The chaff. Right now, the Taurus/Sable is king of the Ford sections of these yards (I counted 188 of them in a 300-car section in a California yard not long ago), but you also see large numbers of Tempos and Topazes. vancouver cruises to alaska Once I decided to pay attention vancouver cruises to alaska to the lowly Tempo, I was surprised by the number of not-particularly-trashed examples I found at my local yard. Today, and just today, let s pay attention to one of the most common vehicles in American self-serve junkyards today: the Tempo.
Though I got some anguished vancouver cruises to alaska comments from the Jalopnik reader Ford_Tempo_Fanatic when I demolished a free Tempo Judgemobile at a LeMons race , to most of us the Tempo remains invisible. They re not terribly uncommon vancouver cruises to alaska on the street, though the last few years have been rough on surviving Tempos.
The era of screaming all-red car interiors seems to have peaked in the early 1990s. Detroit was a little late to the red interior party, but made up for the lateness with even redder reds than the Japanese used in the middle 1980s.
Having already long -since gone Japanese before I personally knew someone who bought one of these, I initially had a low opinion of them. Slab-sided styling you could stamp out in your garage, vancouver cruises to alaska plastics from an easy-bake vancouver cruises to alaska oven and and engine vancouver cruises to alaska design older than your mama. The lady of my acquaintence who bought one was a single accountant in her 50 s and cared as much about cars as I did about knitting. She wisely (I thought) bought the extended warranty.
However that car started every morning and just quietly soldiered on for the seven years I knew her, and was never any more headache than a sofa to own and operate. From the pinnacle of engineering that was my Acura Intergra I thought it beyond crude and boring, but she didn t care one whit; it did everything she asked of it, albeit she didn t ask much.
They were as dull as unflavored oatmeal. They did everything dull. I drove them all: V8, AWD, and lesser. They were all boring. The steering was rubbery, the interior was plastic, and the performance was dull, even with the biggest engine.
TempoEnthusiast is going to get a woody over this. I m willing to bet the number of comment hits this car gets will be half of the K car post. I guess I will say that this car continued the upswing of Ford s assembly quality, though it was not a huge step forward. Those with the Vulcan had the ability to live long and prosper as that engine could be pulled out of most wrecks, cleaned, had new oil seals/gaskets installed and then live out a second life. Otherwise, I just don t see much to love, with all due respect to TTE
MM: Please vancouver cruises to alaska please try to get a speedo shot showing the mileage in all of your JYF series (which is rapidly becoming my fave). The condition of this car and its interior are really good .I can imagine that it would bring up quite a lively discussion on perceived vs actual vancouver cruises to alaska quality if it had 190K, or 40K
My aunt had a rats fur grey 1988 Ford Tempo and it never gave her any trouble. So much that she bought a Ford Contour after having the Tempo for 7 years, then she bought a Taurus after having the contour for 6 years. Never gave her any trouble.
vancouver cruises to alaska Just like the Neon, no signs of an accident, interior seems to be pretty ok,so we must assume mechanical death once more, but like the Neon, you will read about they knew someone who had one of these for countless years with no problems, then as in the Taurus?Sable Why are there so many in the junkyards of America???
Tranny vancouver cruises to alaska issues were a definite possibility with these. If I remember correctly, the Tempo/Topaz came standard with a 3 spd automatic until its demise in 94. I drove a rental in 93 that drove me insane at 70 mph droning on at 4000 rpm.
That s what cracked me up on the neon posted. First gen neons are now between 13 17 years old, they sold by the millions. Most were driven and treated like the cheap cars that they are, so yeah, it s time they start showing vancouver cruises to alaska up in the boneyards. And you have these people saying stuff along the lines of look at how many are in the junkyard. Well duh. I know that they had a few issues, all of which I know well because my daughter has owned 2 of them, my son had one. So I ve worked on them and also visited all of the forums. vancouver cruises to alaska But the engines and drivelines are far from junk.
Then we have this tempo, yes it s in the boneyard, it s 20 years old. Even tho we don t know the mileage or what even happened to it 20 years is a long time for any car to be around before being junked.
She drove it for several years and moved down south. The trusty Tempo followed. The only out of the ordinary repair was fixing the air conditioning leaks. (They all had leaking o-ring problems) vancouver cruises to alaska Have to have air conditioning down south!
Then one day the oil change shop installed the drain plug without a sealing washer. Over the next week or two the oil slowly leaked out. The motor ran low on oil, the engine vancouver cruises to alaska started knocking, and the oil light came on. My daughter turned it off on the spot.
The car was towed to the oil change shop. They re-changed the oil and said everything was fine. However, it was too run too long with little to no oil. The poor high mileage Tempo had a mild rod knock. The oil change shop would not take care of it claiming everything was fine. Due to the high miles and some rust it was not worth fixing. I told her to sell it with full disclosure and shop for another vehicle.
Another vancouver cruises to alaska really nice fin here MM. I agree, need to, whenever possible to get the odo readings, though Fords of this period vancouver cruises to alaska did not get the 6th digit so hard to tell if the car had 99k, 199K or 299K, I know as I had the same year Ranger, though it had the Cologne 4.0L V6 in it.
If anything, this car has been well cared for much of its life and while the mechanicals may be on the crude side without any trace of refinement, they were long lasting and durable, the same can be said of the bodies and interiors.
When I traded in my truck at 237K nearly a few weeks ago, the interior still looked really good. The carpeting had some minor staining, the driver s seat was sloping badly towards the door and also towards the seat back from lots of butt time over the years and the seatback adjuster was stripped out, the headliner had some minor staining, probably due to a previous smoker at some point. Otherwise, no cracks, tears or ANYTHING else that I could see. I don t know how the upholstery on the seats were since good friends vancouver cruises to alaska whom I bought vancouver cruises to alaska the truck from covered the seat with an aftermarket seat cover.
vancouver cruises to alaska That said, I wonder vancouver cruises to alaska if the car got sold later in life to its last owner and they didn t know enough vancouver cruises to alaska to keep oil in it or something like that (and it may well have lots of miles on it too) before succumbing to old age/mechanical failure.
As to the bordello red interior, my youngest sister (5 years older than me) and her husband bought a brand new 86 Tempo (before the 1988 redesign of this car) had gotten vancouver cruises to alaska it in white with the same red interior. I remember riding vancouver cruises to alaska in it at least once after they moved back out here from NY and realized even then (1989 or so) that the car looked DATED already. Ford in the mid 80 s on this car anyway went with the wide door frames and smaller windows, vancouver cruises to alaska which then gave the interior a closed in feeling. And that was just for starters, the seats, while cloth were hard and stiff feeling and there was NO ounce of refinement ANYWHERE inside as the whole interior felt cheap and dated for a car that was not all that old at the time.
Of the exterior trim, the items which aged the quickest, and probably should have been one of the items to age slowest, were the headlamps the Lexan covers would (and this was not unique to the Tempo or to Ford) slowly fog and craze due to the sun (at night, the beams are muted and no longer focussed.)
I replaced my covers after a crash (deer) and, they were significantly brighter. The 3.0 made it surprisingly quick (94LX). Auto trans. was 3-speed no overdrive. I drove it from Mich. to Phoenix in 2008 loaded down. Great dependable car. No one wanted to steal it either. lol
Unforgettable. The finest car of the 1980s, and one of Ford s greatest achievements. They just can t be fully appreciated vancouver cruises to alaska by shortsighted Americans. The same Americans who gave us George W. Bush (twice), the SUV, and the housing crisis.
I had one of these for my kids to drive all during high school. It survived until the automatic transmission died (wouldn t shift out of first) and at a cost of $900-1200 for even a used one, it was more cost effective to replace with an Escort Sport 5-speed (mostly spoiler, trim wheels) for $13k. That car soldered on for ten years with nothing but minor issues. The Escort was the true philosophical replacement as it was also anonymous (even is sport trim) and designed for people who thought of cars as appliances. The Contour was a much better and more involving car all the way around. The Contour SVT may have been one of the best American-made vancouver cruises to alaska cars for the money ever. (Disclamer: I owned two)
I owned an 87 Tempo GL Sport coupe. Yup, they had a sport version for a couple of years which was laughable. You got 2 more HP from changes to the exhaust. The exterior redesign was distinctly vancouver cruises to alaska more Euro, free of the chrome bumpers vancouver cruises to alaska of the 80 s and a bit of a look ahead to the future of cars (at that time). I even had the