Buddy Needs YOUR Help Making an '86 Tudor Marauder!

[pro-five-oh]

Have you actually bothered to look under the Lincoln lately? I have a T-bird in my garage, sitting in the air, and there are more than a few examples of where these IRS units have been installed into all kinds of cars, most notably a 1967 F100, and a Bronco/Lightning hybrid....(I have links to these in Man Cave 'Bizarre Projects' thread) I don't recall them moaning about the time/labor it took to install the Lincoln IRS; 4 mounts, two upper shock mounts, and two spring pockets.

Unless the swap is documented on a Panther, it ain't gonna happen. And FYI, I just put aftermarket sway bar brackets on my Addco equipped Lincoln, so I get it. I just don't see myself paying to make someone install it in a box. If you want to install one in your car, do it and I'll pay you for your blueprints.

2. The Marauder has a perfect donor frame?

Quoting you:

"Trust me, I think the Marauder sucked...I can't believe they actually thought they could sell it for $34,000 when new. No torque, slippery seats, dated interior, etc. Now that they are depreciated, I like their bits and pieces a lot more."

The frame is still desirable to me for a box swap, even if the whole car sucked compared to a 1996 Impala (performance wise) or any Lexus (luxury wise) back in 2003. You can't take two quotes about different topics (old car, same car when new) and expect them to gel.

Trust me, if you wanna try to mix my words and hope for a flaw in my intended logic, it ain't gonna work.


The 1998-2002 CV had similar control arms and brakes, and a quick-ratio steering box....all of which swaps over to the '86 chassis. With the Crown Vic and Marauder, you got a watts link (an expensive form of a panhard rod) in the rear.

That's what I wanted to know.


Concerning chassis improvements of the 2003-up chassis, when you look 'big-picture' here....there aren't any chassis improvements to speak of. That's what I'm trying to tell you. That's the grief I'm trying to save you from.

That's also what I wanted to know. In a round about way. But I think you're wrong on that.

Thanks.

[mrltd]

The chassis swap isn't documented either, Nobody has done a mod motor into box.

I've driven a trilogy marauder-with all the metco chassis stuff, and I've driven my wagon. Guess what. Same shitty skittering over rough roads. And the 03+ chassis has problems with ripping the control arm mounts out of the chassis. The older stuff is cheaper and parts are more available to upgrade. While I'd love the rack and pinion steering from the 03, the rest of the chassis isn't an upgrade. I can build a better suspension for the box on the cheap that would work much better.



But that's my thoughts

To actually swap it....energy suspension universal bodymounts, the whole firewall and floorpan from the marauder onto the box and the rest should be easy. Might even be able to swap the marauder dash over then too.



Oh, and back to my usual self... If you bothered searching, you'd see all of the modified cars running the whale parts and how to do it. It's all documented. I spent way too much of my time doing that.

[pro-five-oh]

While I'd love the rack and pinion steering from the 03, the rest of the chassis isn't an upgrade. I can build a better suspension for the box on the cheap that would work much better.

Very interesting. I'm still enamored with the idea of rack and pinion, on a rolling chassis with ABS, big brakes, Marauder engine/tranny/trac-lok/etc for essentially $0.00 extra money spent...but you and Pirate have a point.

Gut feeling? The notion of getting all the hardware and electronics of a 2003+ rolling chassis still sounds better than a 1998-02 piece by piece upgrade. And wrecked Marauders are cheap. Then again, CVPIs are even cheaper and PI 4.6s are fine by my book. Either way...

My head hurts...luckily we have plenty of time before its decision time.

[pro-five-oh]

Hi

If it's independant rear suspension you want why not just bolt a Jaguar rear subframe in and be done with it

Regards

Dereck

Nice to see you're as helpful here as you are on the other forum.

I jest! I jest!

[mrltd]

I'd like to see the marauder swap done...Just to see it done. It's not going to be easy though. The DOHC swap on a 98-02 isn't even that easy because of the heater/AC box.

I've been comtemplating an 03 chassis swap for the last few years. My car has a rotted chassis. I just can't bring my self to do it because it's not much of an upgrade-with the exception of the rack. However, with the 98-02 steering box and less assist, the wagon steering feels great. And the 98-02 brakes on a box are very impressive. Even my 4500lb boat stops on a dime with them.

[sxcpotatoes]

Would a $3k drivetrain be too much? Here's one from an '07 Mustang GT w/some extra goodies and a 5-speed, complete.

http://akroncanton.craigslist.org/pts/1921022166.html

You can do whatever you want with the car, man. There are a lot of good proven swaps you can do such as using an Explorer 5.0 with a mild cam, underdrive pulleys, and I think I saw something about attaching a supercharger from the 3.8 Tbird Super Coupe recently in the forums.

But I kinda like the idea of putting a box body on a Marauder... There are aftermarket rear ends for the Mustangs you could keep your eye out for a deal on one of those if the solid rear is an issue which it only sounds like an issue for the other guys on here.

[gadget73]

funny, people say the 03+ frame isn't an upgrade except for the rack. I'd call it not an upgrade specifically because of the rack. I hate rack and pinion steering. Oddly I'd actually say they seem to handle a bit better but the steering kinda sucks. If you could toss out that silly rack and install a steering box I'd go for it.


The rear suspension on the other hand does feel more solid. Being the owner of two cars with that craptastic non-parallel 4 link rear suspension I've gotten very tired of the rear floating around under the car. Bushings help, but its still fundamentally lousy geometry. The only thing that will really plant it properly is either a watts link or a panhard bar. Given the choice, I'll take the watts since it doesn't have that arc of travel issue. IRS would be a significant upgrade though.

My personal thoughts, keep the stock box frame, do the 98-02 front brake and suspension stuff. Splice the watts link into the rear, and figure out how to mount the mod motor to the stock box frame. The wiring won't be that hard on the box side of things. One connector ties the body harness to the ECM harness. I strongly suspect removing the wiring from the Marauder will be grossly more difficult than removing the box wiring. I've de-wired boxes and one 1992 and the 92 was just so much worse its not even funny. Add to that OBD2 and it has to be a nightmare.

I don't know what the 98-02 4.6 motor used for motor mounts, but I wouldn't be terribly surprised if the frame side of that affair is the same as what the box had for the 5.0. I do know that box motor mounts work on a 92 to replace the 4.6 with a 5.0. Assuming they did not change this, and further assuming that the block side of the mounts are the same between the DOHC and SOHC motor, you can probably drop the DOHC motor onto late 90s motor mounts on the box frame. (keep in mind, this is pure speculation, I haven't researched jack squat of any of this). Once you have the motor in, figuring out the trans mount should be easy. if the stock crossmember won't mate up to the later trans mount, then you can probably swap out the whole crossmember. Its not exactly secured in there too well.

If you do want to swap the frame, as long as the frame mount points are the same between the box frame and the late frame, it should basically fit. If not, well its body on frame so you can fabricate new mount points on either the frame or body as needed. If the frame is off, you've got a great oppertunity to add more bracing to stiffen it and end up with something that beats what Ford put out anyway. The fit and finish of a box, well, yeah they kinda suck. I'm going through this now with my Towncar. Things just do not like up where they should, the gaps are weird, and getting good body parts is difficult. You live down south so rust is less of an issue, but this stuff is just old and getting difficult to find for no other reason than age.

[packman]

This is just a suggestion/question from a person not experienced in radical swaps like this. Would you get better results with a basic Grand Marquis frame, suspension, etc...., swap the 4.6L in favor of a mod'd 2V 5.4L? I would think that it would be cheaper than getting a wrecked or not-so wrecked Marauder and mod'ing what you take from that car.


Packman

[Lincolnmania]

i couldnt read no more, but the frame change came in 1990, so as long as the wheelbase is good, it should work

if you want to use the 86 frame, the mod motor will bolt in if you use aero motor mount brackets and an aero trans mount

[hemihotrod402]

dammit someone is going to beat me to it

This is basically my dream car...except I want to drop a tudor vic body on a 2003 up PI frame, and ditch the 4.6 for the mustang 5.0

[Piece-it pete]

Assholiness

Questions from a rank amateur-

I thought that the 03 up also had a number of support and subframe alloy goodness, with a serious reduction in unsprung weight. This is true? And it didn't make any noticable difference?

Pete

[pro-five-oh]

Thanks for the info, Gadget! (and everyone else).

Keep the thoughts coming, we gotta get a good plan before anything happens. And if anyone finds a wrecked Marauder or cheap CVPI near Houston, drop me a line.

[Pirate]

Assholiness

Questions from a rank amateur-

I thought that the 03 up also had a number of support and subframe alloy goodness, with a serious reduction in unsprung weight. This is true? And it didn't make any noticable difference?

Pete

It's still a straight-axle rear suspension setup, these 'improvements' were crutches, lol. If you want a 'worst case' scenario of how bad they can get, drive a 1987-1993 Mustang GT....and then drive a 1989-1995 T-bird super coupe with IRS in comparison. Firm suspension, but it doesn't beat you to death, nor does it skip around on rough roads.

The one benefit of using the Marauder? Even though it's still a 4.6 DOHC motor (it's not a Cobra 4V motor, it's a bit different), it produces torque lower down than any of the other non-supercharged 4V engines, the 2003-2004 Mach I being the exception, and the 1997-1998 Lincoln MK8....but with the wimpy cast crank in the MK8 4V....it's not to be considered.

Of course, that's not saying much, but if one of the 4V engines are going to be used, I'd use that one, as the Terminator has just a bit too much going on in the 'extra hardware under the hood' department. There's a guy over in Vancouver who just installed a Terminator engine/6-speed combo in a 1995 T-bird Super Coupe....there is now zero room under the hood for anything else; the washer reservoir had to be moved out from under the hood, and the battery had to be moved, not to mention there was even some concern about where to place the coolant reservoir....after seeing this car in person?

No way would I install that engine in anything with shock towers, and the owner of the car, given the chance to do it again....he said something to the effect of 'Hell, no'. He would go with a 408W, and actually have room to remove the valve covers if need be.

[Freshmeat]

Pirate- will anyone ever be able to post and follow through with his own project without you constantly berating him with novel after novel? You know plenty about cars in general, there's no doubt about that... but you made a suggestion and he shot it down. Stop beating a dead horse and let the man tackle his project.

To the guys building the car- I have a few leads on some CVPIs here in Baton Rouge; if that's close enough for you (3-4hr drive) I'll follow up and see if I get anything.

[P72Ford]

One time I photgraphed and measured the body mount locations on our '04 P71 parts car.

I sent the images and measurements to Scott and Mike, via a PM.

I no longer have the PM, but maybe they do.

That might be helpful in determining whether the body would actually interface with the frame in a friendly manner.