Body on frame

Get a grandpa's grand marquis.
I passed on a $1500 2004 with low mileage that looked great (on craigslist so idk reality) since I wanted a truck, still haven't found a car or truck and feel like a fucking idiot for not looking at that boat

Well either one I could go for. I'm just wondering how to not get one that's been fucked by a taxi driver.

Panther platform screams freedom
If I ever manage to move to America I want to get a Marauder

Crown Vics got beaten to shit by fleet users, police departments and taxi companies and teenagers.

Towncars got beaten by taxi companies.

Mercury's are likely to just be old people, so those are the most likely to find in good shape.

Noted. Thanks.

This. And they're usually cheaper too

you're getting too much praise so fuck you

>t. buttblasted towncar owner

It's so freedom-infused that we forced Canada to build it for us for twenty years so we could skirt gub'ment laws telling us domestic-made cars had to meet certain gas mileage standards. Because fuck you, we do hwat we want.

Well, there's three cars you'll probably be looking at- the Ford Crown Victoria, the Mercury Grand Marquis, and the Lincoln Town Car. The Marquis is just a rebadge of the Crown Vic- different headlights and taillights, but most body panels by year will interchange, the interior is nearly identical from the mid-90's onwards, etc. The Town Car is the luxury variant and so it has different body panels, a unique interior, a slightly longer wheelbase, basically a bunch of stuff that means your pick'n'pull runs have to be more selective. Town Cars also all have air suspension in the rear that will absolutely die at some point and require either repair/replacement or switching to standard coil springs if the previous owner hasn't already; some Marquis and civilian Crown Vics have air ride as well, but it's a relatively rare option and easy to check for.

Ex-Interceptors are more common than Marquis are more common than civilian Crown Vics, generally. Interceptors have a couple durability upgrades and some goodies like a rear sway bar and dual exhaust (all of which will bolt right on to the other cars per generation if you find them at a junkyard), but are nearly always beat to shit from a jillion miles of wear and idle time with the police department, and then beat to shit by whoever buys it afterwards, sees the POLICE INTERCEPTOR badge on the back, and decides their name is Elwood and they're gonna hop a bridge. Marquis are a pretty safe bet in general, they're dedicated old-person cars (can't spell Grand Marquis without GrandMa) and are usually pretty well taken care of. Civilian Crown Vics are seen less often, as the Marquis outsold it to the public most years with most of the CV's sales being fleet cars.

Dam, that's a really accurate replica of a NYPD Crown Vic, minus the rims which should be the steelies with small center cap
It makes me really sad that all the crown vic patrol cars and detective vehicles are being replaced by the Turd Exploder and the Taurus
There are some Dodge Chargers but those are much rarer to see

Points for effort though, so far as I can tell they're just aero body wheel covers instead of whale body.

>body on frame
>rwd
>big detuned V8 the loves to burble around
>massive bench seats and comfortable to drive forever
>can go through a brick wall with only damage to the wall
>lasts forever
>dirt cheap parts
>were bought even in europe and saudi arabia
Truely the last of the true American sedans

Big American sedan Like a Dodge Charger, but without a meth head driving.

Park ranger/admin vehicles at auction

>body on frame
>lasts forever
>charger

Did someone say crown Vic? Ways that tweeker at?

Or do what has become popular in the past few years and take the crown Vic body off the frame and replace it with a classic truck.

Enjoy your classic looks and not-weirdo styling while having the venerable panther at your core.

But what if I don't want a truck body, I want a classical sedan body, how cars were before windows got tiny and beltlines got tall and every C-pillar slowly started melting into the trunklid like a stick of rollover-nonsense butter?

Then do the same thing with an older sedan that use body on frame. It’s literally the hottest shit going on in the hot rod world.

You could do it with like a jfk Lincoln or something.

>take a 2000s panther
>take the body off
>replace body with a 1980s panther
>put the new body on the 1980s panther frame
>immediately forget which car started with what because platform updates more than one every three decades are for communists

I find it hard to believe that a detuned sohc v8 making 200 HP is "more durable" than a properly tuned dohc v8 making 250-300 hp. Since the weaker engine has to work harder, doesn't that mean that it also has more wear put on it? I know these were cruisers and not musclecars, but they weigh close to two tons and a stronger engine would've been just perfect. Plus these were police vehicles, surely ford could've outfitted them with high performance V8s making 300-350HP, right? Or were the engines never really tuned past the malaise era, and Ford saw no reason to beef them up?

The 4.6 SOHC is Honda-tier durable.

The lower revs and relatively simple design make it very easy to hold together. The DOHC motor was also durable, but it wasn’t like 200k+ miles level. Marauders got it and though they are rare they are actually very functional as daily drivers.

Durability through simplicity. Both the SOHC and DOHC 4.6s have their own known issues, but the SOHC's are easier to fix for sure (pre-2003 intake manifolds, coil pack looseness, timing chain guides, namely). Also, size and weight are big things, although it's not like it matters because the engine bay on a Crown Vic is so big you can almost literally sit on the fender while working on the engine with your legs danging next to it.

>Since the weaker engine has to work harder, doesn't that mean that it also has more wear put on it?
All in the compression ratios. Generally, more powerful engines are running higher compression and putting more wear on every moving part; the 4.6 in the Panthers is a lazy engine with a pig-iron block, understressed components and a tried-and-true SOHC system (they never got the 3-valve 4.6 like the Mustang GT, and only the Marauder received the DOHC 4.6 which by that point had been around for a full decade in various forms). The numbers also don't tell you everything when you're only looking at horsepower- these are pretty torquey engines, 200-something horsepower on a good day but closer to 300lb-ft of torque, and it hits peak torque early so it never has to rev very far to get going. Combine that with the wide-ass gears of the AOD-E/4R70W/4R75W and the conservative rear end gearing (2.73 on civilian cars and 3.55 being the shortest gears available on Interceptors/Marauders) and you have an engine that can very well spend most of its life never revving past three grand. They're not fast by any means but they will absolutely never have trouble merging onto a highway or going up a steep hill with a full payload of people and cargo.

(con't'd)

By your logic race car engines should be the most durable.

>Plus these were police vehicles, surely ford could've outfitted them with high performance V8s making 300-350HP, right?
They really didn't need it. Sure, there were hot-rod police vehicles in the past- everyone knows the stories of the old 440-equipped Monacos (as popularized by Jake and Elwood) causing Joey Donut in his Chevelle to immediately shit his pants when he spots the bubble light and lantern-jaw bumper in his rearview, or the LT1-equipped 9C1 Caprices of the 90's that were underrated from the factory with speed parts out the wazoo and some of the fastest police vehicles then or even now, or even the 400-cu-in powered Tempests where the 'police package' was a wink-nudge to get around GM's displacement limit rules, but for every high speed chase there's how many hundreds of hours of driving the beat or idling all night on a highway median? Lots. A fast car doesn't do much good if it's prone to breaking down left and right, especially for smaller or rural police precincts that can only afford a couple cruisers and need to be able to keep them on the road for cheap. Granted, the B-bodies were arguably just as reliable as the Panthers (how much more well known can you get than a Chevy small-block V8?), but once GM killed that platform Panthers were the sole body on frame sedan left for nearly two decades.

>Or were the engines never really tuned past the malaise era, and Ford saw no reason to beef them up?
The 4.6 was introduced with the new Town Car in 1991 and saw use in everything else starting in '92, so long past the malaise era. It did see a number of updates over the years, even just for the Panthers and their lower-power engines- coil on plug ignition in '98, a new cylinder head design in '01, new intake and a bigger airbox for P71s in '03, and general tuning by year for more power- but the 2-valve 4.6 was never meant to be a powerhouse engine, just one strong enough to do its job and reliable enough to do it for a long-ass time.

>Marauders got it and though they are rare they are actually very functional as daily drivers.
Of course they're functional, they're an Interceptor with some revised suspension (as part of the platform update in 2003 in general), the coveted 3.55 with Trac-Lok rear end, and the interior essentially of an LX Sport, the only thing that could possibly go wrong would be the DOHC engine. Even then, the DOHC 4.6 had been around since '92 with the Lincoln Mark VIII, so you'd think they'd have most of the flaws ironed out- I remember reading about people using Mark VIII and Navigator parts on their Marauders, but I don't remember if it was for durability, performance or what.

>since it's unibody
Wrong shlomo, Panthers are body on frame.

he's clearly talking about what happens to newer cars (i.e. the tauruses and chargers that have replaced crown vics), you doofball

how would you go about modernizing the classic landbarge for today's car world?

As much as I'd love car design to go right back to where it left off with the caprice and Crown Vic, that just won't happen.

Literally impossible. You can pretty much break the traits of a classical road-boat into a couple things:
>long and low body with a flat belt line from hood to trunk and a large greenhouse with great visibility all around
Not happening in this day and age due to design laws. You literally can't make a front-engined car with a big V8 be that low anymore when the hood has to be a minimum distance from the highest point of the engine and then the rest of the car has to follow that line (for some reason- there were lots of cars in the past where the side windows dropped below the line created by the hood, Volvo did it for decades, but now the line just goes up and up and up).
>three-box design with a clearly identifiable hood, cabin, and trunk
Also probably not happening- even the 'boxiest' cars now have turned into semi-hatchbacks as the C-pillars and rear windshield get more and more slanted and recessed further towards the trunklid, and the rear bumper gets closer to the cabin as manufacturers eliminate front and rear overhang.
>comfortable six passenger seating
Absolutely not, at least in sedans- no one does front bench seats anymore, and even cabin seats have to have RACING SEAT INSPIRED™ side bolsters and dick warmers and everything else and a gigantic fucking center console in the middle that's taller than your thigh for no reason because there isn't even a transmission tunnel under it 99% of the time.
>lazy V8 engine, automatic transmission with no manual option
Not only is everyone apparently in a race to get rid of V8s outside of flagship muscle cars, but every car must now be seen as 'sporty' and 'hip' and look, you can wiggle the flappy stick up or down to shift gears (as long as the car doesn't decide you can't). Old slushbox auto trannies are an old person thing and good luck finding a column shift on anything other than a Taurus Interceptor and probably a few trucks.

Oh, and
>body on frame
lolno
>rear wheel drive on anything that isn't a truck or pony/muscle/sports car
lolno

you're supposed to talk positive things to me user, not make me sadder

>3.55
i thought you could get 3.73s in the p71? if not, you could always snag the gear from an explorer at the junk yard. those had 3.73s and 4.10s if any user has a one of these and is interested.

it was garbage and its been dead since 2011

who gives a shit

The only way to make this good is to cut it down to 3k lbs flat and put a decent motor like an LS in it

Nope. Civvie Panthers had 2.73s, P71s had 3.27s with 3.55s as an option most years, and Marauders had 3.55s stock. There's also the civilian Handling/Performance Package (HPP) cars, which included some Interceptor stuff like dual exhaust and a rear sway bar, as well as the shorter rear gears (either 3.27 or 3.55, Ford repeatedly flip-flopped on which set the HPP option included over the years).

>cut it down to 3k lbs flat
the only way you're going to do that is cutting the car in half

I got HPP wheels on my volvo, polished the lips up and painted the spokes black, love em.

>ls
>decent
sub par at most

>2 timing chains

Ford you magnificent bastards!

Better than the piece of fucking shit engine that's in it now, that engine is underpowered as all hell and gets awful fuel mileage while making no power at all.

>drives slowly on windy road
>spins

>"Let me tell you all about cars......"

Ls = literal shit

stay mad dogfucker

how much longer until we storm the DOT and hang them from lamp posts so we can make wedge designs great again?

>more displacement
>more engine bay room

Why does the modular exist?

post a literal shit engine faster than this cuckold

HPP wheels- and the various other lacy-type Panther wheels- are pretty rad, but living in a snow and ice and salt state, man would I hate to have to clean that shit out when it all gets caught in the spokes.

At least I don't have the late model flat-face wheels, though. Those are just ugly.

It's not that bad, one for each cam and they meet down in the middle. At least they're on the front of the engine.

Man, you want to feel sad, think about how aside from the land barge, the domestic personal luxury car is also dead so we'll never see another Thunderbird/Cougar/Mark trio (or a Cougar period because Mercury is fucking dead too).

i see, pretty neat fun facts. glad i didnt grab my 8.8 out of a crown vic then. it would have been too wide for my application anyway.

i can get the more power thing, but i don't think any crown vic owner in existence has ever said, man, i really need more room in my engine bay

no, stop. this thread is about the crown victoria. pls no derail.

True. But more room to work and way more power potential aren't bad things.

no LS is faster than the fastest Modular tho

worse than the original SBC

It's still about crown vic, just crown vic with a more powerful and easier to work on engine

Is there anything that can be done to add cheap horsepower to a 2v Modular? I currently have an 08 p71 and have thought about eventually going back in time to box panthers just to have access to the 302's aftermarket.

It seems to me that the 2v Modular is a dead end

dont get me wrong, i dont have a problem with the LS series of motors. i think they rock. what are the common performance modifications for the 4.6? i figure just cams and heads/headers. supercharger. maybe a stroker kit? im sure there are probably some reliability mods for it too.

>pre-2003 intake manifolds
>mfw I just helped family member do intake manifold on 2004 Town Car because it was leaking coolant.

ffs, plastic is gay

do the GT cams work with the 2v? the hot rod garage guys put a vortec and bigger injectors on theirs.

youtube.com/watch?v=xX1mjS7Gjys&t=8s

No I actually mean it, two simple timing chains is probably the best option for V motors.
Way better than the absolute mess of a timing chain on most modern OHC V engines.
>GermanEngineering.jpeg

back when I was working at a shop
>crown vic needs a thermostat changed
>take cap off housing
>put new thermostat in
>go to tighten the cap back up
>intake manifold cracks
Holy fucking shit ford please stop making the intake out of plastic and please stop making the intake and the thermostat housing one piece, seriously fuck you for doing this

Everyone's using crappy plastic intake manifolds now, but boy, Ford was ahead of the curve using those goddamn things since the early 90's. I've got an '01 and I know it's a time bomb, I pulled a gently used junkyard 03+ intake over the summer to clean up as a just-in-case (or just replace it early so I don't get stranded when the front crossover goes kablooey) but like hell am I doing any engine bay work when it's below zero outside with the wind. I'm sure there's aftermarket metal intakes out there someplace, but they're probably $900 overkill-and-a-half meant for Mustangs when all I want is my damn boat to not worry about a green glycol tongue-bath.

>Everyone's using crappy plastic intake manifolds now
yeah but ford is the only one that's running engine cooling through the fucking plastic intake, LS doesn't do that.
It's fucking stupid.
Aslo you can pull the intake off the LS without exposing any of the engine internals, it's still a totally sealed engine with the intake off.

Kind of makes me think after seeing - you know how they say the 240 was designed as a heater core on wheels and everything else was built around it? I'm pretty sure that's what Ford did with the Mod's intake manifold.
>okay so we're going to put the fuel rails right on the intake, like usual
>and then we'll make sure all thirty parts of the airbox back mount onto the intake
>and then we'll make holes on the sides to put the coil packs through
>which then also bolt onto the intake to hold them in place
>and then we'll not only attach the thermostat and its housing, we'll actually make it part of the manifold itself
>and then for good measure we'll bolt the alternator bracket- and all the force of the belt torquring it forwards and around- directly onto the front of the manifold, which just so happens to be a primary coolant passage because of where we put the thermostat
>>sounds good boss, what'll we make it out of?
>the absolute cheapest black chinkshit plastic we can find
Like goddamn, I'm a big fan of some of the blue oval's designs but I have no idea what fuckery was going on here.

>you know how they say the 240 was designed as a heater core on wheels and everything else was built around it
Never heard this before but fuck it's hilarious and true

>were bought even in europe

Nope.

Still great car though

that is pretty darm stupid of them. it looks like there are a few aluminum aftermarket ones though.

It's not the DOT, it's (((women))). You can thank them for ruining literally everything.

I just wanted to take the time to point out that no one responded to your pathetic shit posting and that you should consider removing your lame ass trip since you serve literally no purpose here.

Get over yourself, retard.

>no one replied
>you replied
>your such a faggot you think opinons are shitposting

can you filter me already before you kill yourself you pathetic faggot you go in every thread looking for my name lmao

literally obsessed with wanting my attention

For the 2v? Nothing really. A cammed/intake/longtubes/bolt on 2v is still slow as shit. They like boost, the 4v like boost even more.

bump for crown vic/caprice PPVs

Just go kill yourself you fucking degenerate faggot furry.

I swear to God you are seriously mentally ill.

So I guess valves aren't engine internals? Fucking neck yourself, furfag.

Why did you pull a used one? You'll be doing it again soon.

The fuck are you talking about?
No valves are exposed when you temove the intake off an LS, it takes 30 seconds to pull it off

>No valves are exposed when you take the intake off
>Has the ports taped shut

VS this dummy, have you ever pulled an engine apart before?

>4.6
>big
wanna know how I know you're European?

my '92 was about 3850

I think he meant big as in physically, that engine is retardedly huge and heavy yet it's still tiny displacement wise and has no power to back it up, seriously pathetic

Here’s mine

>Why did you pull a used one? You'll be doing it again soon.
Because I'm cheap as fuck and haven't read good reviews about the Dorman intakes.

tfw your first car is your grandfather's 1985 mercury grand marquis

>those soft green glowing instrument panels
>that relaxing whir as you gently accelerate
>gas was 75 cents a gallon so who cared about economy
>that ride every old person loved

at the time (1996) i was just happy to have a ride, but it was much older than most of my friend's cars. i went on my first date in that car. this thread made me nostalgic because i remember grandpa driving my sis and i around in it when we were small.

wonder what happened to it...

fuckin things clean bro

Listen here degenerate mentally ill scum. How the fuck would air get from the intake to the valves if the valves aren't exposed when you take it off? Go ahead and drop a bolt down that hole and see what happens you stupid fuck.

>huge
>heavy
>slower than a 3k civic
>seats are less comfortable than a 3k civic, seriously, crown vic seats are shit
>no manual option

>huge
a positive
>heavy
who cares?
>slower than a 3k civic
*passes you on the highway on ramp*
pff nothing personal kid
>seats are less comfortable than a 3k civic, seriously, crown vic seats are shit
>implying double benches aren't GOAT

>no manual option
cry more soyboy

...

if it's so american, why didn't they give it a more american sounding name?

Unfortunately i cant say it can go through a brick wall with only damage to the wall. But i had no engine damage.

Pic after the crash

And after it got fixed

>Dodge Chargers are rare
Depends on where you live, I live in Marquette, MI which has 20,000 people that live in the city, and another 8,000 students at NMU, There's about 36 City cops and the the county sheriff's office shares the same building and I think there's maybe 10 of them. Total in all I think about 2/3 of all the cops use Chargers, with some Tahoes filling up the rest as well as the older ford expeditions that's mostly used by the parking meter guy and animal control.