Piston Slap: The Barber Shop Coil Spring Swap?

Loooongtime TTAC Commentator Nate writes:

My barber is another Yankee-to-West Coast transplant and he brought a low-mileage 2003 Mercury Grand Marquis. It’s very nice but every now and then the air suspension decides to get wonky and the car settles down as he’s driving along. As a barber he doesn’t have much $ to throw at it, and he asked me if I knew what to do.

I think this is a Panther chassis so any old cop car or taxi’s coil springs and shocks should be a fairly easy air suspension-to-coil springs retrofit but I’m physically not up to the job. How do I find one of the myriad hole-in-the-wall shops that fixes up old cop cars for the movies and TV?

I’m sure they’d have the parts and knowledge on hand and be affordable to boot. Once this is fixed he’ll consider replacing the weepy AC evaporator deep inside the dashboard (shudder).

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  • Redapple2 I think I ve been in 100 plants. ~ 20 in Mexico. ~10 Europe. Balance usa. About 1/2 nonunion. I supervised UAW skilled trades guys at GM Powertrain for 6 years. I know the answer.PS- you do know GM products - sales weighted - average about 40% USA-Canada Content.
  • Jrhurren Unions and ownership need to work towards the common good together. Shawn Fain is a clown who would love to drive the companies out of business (or offshored) just to claim victory.
  • Redapple2 Tadge will be replaced with a girl. Even thought -today- only 13% of engineer -newly granted BS are female. So, a Tadge level job takes ~~ 25 yrs of experience, I d look at % in 2000. I d bet it was lower. Not higher. 10%. (You cannot believe what % of top jobs at gm are women. @ 10%. Jeez.)
  • Redapple2 .....styling has moved into [s]exotic car territory[/s] tortured over done origami land.  There; I fixed it. C 7 is best looking.
  • TheEndlessEnigma Of course they should unionize. US based automotive production component production and auto assembly plants with unionized memberships produce the highest quality products in the automotive sector. Just look at the high quality products produced by GM, Ford and Chrysler!