My faithful '03 MM has now accumulated just under 200,000 miles. I bought her in 2007, when she had only about 110,000. I won't lie and say the car has "always been stored in a heated garage ..." the way a lot of For Sale ads read. True, she has spent at least half her life, including the last 8 years, in a series of unheated garages, but for the rest of the time she has waited for me in hot, cold, wet, and snowy weather, and fired right up when needed. She has been a faithful daily driver, with no significant problems in a long time. The engine has never been opened up, the exhaust is all original, and fluids have been replaced on a regular, although badly documented basis. I had just pulled the car into the garage here at home last week when the guides gave up the ghost. It sounded like a bunch of ball bearings whizzing around in a 55 gallon drum. I was able to shut the engine off immediately, and I did not hear or feel anything like a piston-valve interference.


The time has come to replace the cam chains and guides, and probably the oil pump as well. I’d like to keep the car if I can, but I need some help, OK a lot of help to get her going again. I’m 75 and partially disabled due to multiple back surgeries and a brain bleed that triggered a kind of stroke. I need either someone in the area who knows how to do this work, and would accept some kind of compensation TBD for travel and work performed, or a reliable shop somewhere within a hundred miles that will accept Carshield insurance. The car can’t safely be driven, of course, without inviting disaster, and a hundred miles is the limit for AAA to tow / flatbed a member car. Other than those choices, I am open to any and all suggestions or offers of help. Without the MM, I have no transportation, as my Crown Vic has suffered a series of disasters of her own rendering her unusable, and Warsaw, Indiana has no public transportation.