FULL BUILD: A 1,100 Horsepower 1972 Mercury Marquis

today on detroit muscle we're gonna class it up with a new project car that's all about the size plus take a gander at the 1100 horses that we're plugging into it [Music] if you've been watching the show which you should be you know that the last few cars we built have been pony car projects from each of the big three these cars are small and nimble [Music] and they present an opportunity to throw a good amount of power into a light package but we feel like it's time to change things up a bit after all the original early 60s muscle cars were all much larger than any pony platforms that came later on and that tradition continued well into the 70s with huge displacement power plants which were married to class and luxury yes sir [Music] oh yeah girl you don't know about our 1972 mercury marquis broham [Music] the inside of this baby is big enough for all your friends and you ain't gonna want us to go because when we do so does the party baby but that's not all she's got going on that's 19 feet of pure fever bigger than any car we've ever worked on this rod floats down the road like an angel on a cloud and that illustrious 429 seems like one two [Music] well we got our big old mercury in the shop and we're ready to get started on it now i know that this platform isn't what we normally kick on here in the shop but we've got some pretty big plans for it and we're going to call it the highwayman the reason for that in the 1960s and ended in 70 mercury produced the marauder now in 69 and 70 they share the same platform as this car and they made about 20 000 of those and they were powered by either the 390 or that big old 429 and another word for marauder is highwayman now in order for our merc to live up to that outlaw name we've given it it really needs to bring the thunder when it comes to power output and all of that revolves around this baby right here this is a 557 cubic inch big block that the guys down in engine power build a while back with this we're skipping all the conventional power plant possibilities and going straight to the nuclear option just how nuclear are we talking how about almost 1100 horsepower they started out with a 460 block an eagle rotating assembly some trick flow 325 power port heads along with their r series manifold topped off with a holley 1150 dominator oh and they flung a big old shot of nitrous at it too the block is board 80 over and a set of forged rods along with forged pistons rounded out the bottom end a solid roller cam double roller timing set and trick flow 1.73 ratio rockers brought it all together but once it was in the dyno room that's when things got really impressive they made all of their pulls on 93 octane pump gas and starting with 30 degrees of total timing they made some naturally aspirated runs yes sir 754 664 for torque that is awesome awesome awesome then they plugged in an nos big shot kit and jetted it for 225 horsepower the timing was dropped to 22 degrees to accommodate the nitrous that was big that was big for torque i saw big torque numbers so big it's off the ground let's rescale it it's off the graph 1031 on power 996 pound-feet of torque once they check the plugs and bump the nitrous shot up to 300 along with pulling timing to 19 degrees what did that make 1080 on power 1119 pound-feet and all that was done on pump gas [Music] so needless to say even with a car this size and that much power well this dude is gonna boogie but you gotta make sure that the rest of the car can handle all that power that's right because the 429 that came from the factory it's only making around 200 horsepower and because we're gonna be throwing over five times that much power at it we've got some work to do the next thing that we got to do is get all that old junk out of the way [Music] [Applause] [Music] now i know this pan may look like it's on backwards but i promise you that it's not our car requires a front sump pan because of the location of the cross member the pan that was on this engine was a rear sump so we got a new pickup new pan from summit racing and we hadn't got those installed now whenever you're making the power level that we are you've got to think downstream just a bit kind of like the transmission because if it won't hold it well that's a whole lot of work for nothing so we went with a mega monster from monster transmission this thing's had a boatload of internal work done to it to accept that big power number kind of like a recalibrated valve body custom machined parts to accept more clutches and a custom accumulator and this piece is going to do more than just get the job done for us another important piece to the puzzle is the torque converter so we went with the 19 to 2300 stall hd 10 inch converter now this thing's tailored fit to meet our specifications it comes with everything you need to do the install including the fluid and the dipstick it's just about time for us to bolt this transmission and engine together coming up we'll plug in that nasty big block and show you how headers are able to free up power i wanna know how they call these things flex plates anyway we got our block plate reinstalled and we got this new flex plate from azir it's billet steel and it's zero balance which is perfect because our engine is internally balanced we found some arp bolts got those things torque specs now we're ready to tie these two together all right a little bit all right we're gonna need to go up some come on come on [Music] we needed new motor mounts and a starter so we went to rockauto.com to get those right guys you might notice that the inside of the engine bay here looks a little bit different than it did before we went ahead and did quite a bit of cleaning and sprayed on some flat black that way when we drop that big piece of jewelry off into that hole it's gonna look really nice in there looks good we've said it before and we'll say it again these engine tilters are a lifesaver when it comes to swapping engines and transmissions they let you angle the tail of that trans down to get into the tunnel and make it easier to keep the oil pan off your sheet metal [Music] it's not every day that you get to see what a gussied up motor like this looks like sitting in a big old land yacht but today is the day [Music] you may have to massage it [Music] now with that big stroker motor sitting at home looking all nice and pretty it's time to move on toward the exhaust now originally our car came with exhaust manifolds but with that highly modified engine if we were to use them they wouldn't be doing us any favors so we opted for a set of these long tube headers from hooker and these are originally designed to fit an early 70s torino but we went ahead and trial fit them and they're going to work for us just fine now most of you have probably always heard that headers will help you make more power but you're not sure why or how that works well one part of it is freeing up airflow but there's more to it than that on a factory-style exhaust manifold the passageways are typically a rudimentary design and are simply there to provide a route for the exhaust gases to exit toward the tailpipe the problem with this is that due to the timing of the exhaust pulses the collector on the manifold can form a bottleneck and make it more difficult for your engine to push exhaust gases through the system especially when you've made modifications to the engine a good set of headers are designed around the timing of the pulses not only are the primary tubes much larger but each tube is calibrated with the firing order of the engine accounted for they allow the pulses to pass through the collector without creating a bottleneck and can even provide the added benefit of a small scavenging effect which pulls the succeeding pulse through the system after it together these differences free up the exhaust flow which frees up more power now that's the short but sweet version because there's a lot of science behind making a good set of headers it's kind of like typically you're going to make more power with a long set of tubes as opposed to a set of shorties and it's an almost guaranteed that you're going to make more power with a set of headers than a set of those exhaust manifolds still ahead check out the eye candy we've got to go under the hood of that big mercury hey guys while you were gone we decided to go ahead and switch out our valve covers now the reason we did that is because these sheet metal valve covers are really bulky and they were really close to the ac box there in the back so we went ahead and got some tapered ones from trick flow they're cast and they leave a little bit more room in the back there so when the engine moves it's not going to get into that case now next thing we're going to do is get some accessories bolted on here to get all that done we went to summit racing and got us a full serpentine setup from march performance and this kit comes with everything you're going to need to get the job done and this is almost a must since we're plus a thousand horsepower otherwise with those v-groove belts well we'd be fighting putting them things on all the time but the first piece to this puzzle is installing this crank pulley this is a pretty simple deal it's just three bolts that hold it onto the front of the balancer now in the case of our alternator we're going to reuse the stock one and wd-40 will make the old pulley easy to get off with that out of the way we'll hit it with some brake cleaner to get any of the nasty stuff off of there this thing would look pretty goofy as it is with all those shiny pieces so we need to get it masked up for paint with the terminals good and protected we'll bust out a can of dupli-color engine enamel in the trusty old black variety once that's dried for a little bit we can flip the alternator over and finish spraying it [Music] after a few minutes we can unmask it and start installing those shiny bits [Music] with the water pump ready to go on we'll lay down a bead of sealer on the mating surface being sure to account for the water passages while we're at it with the gasket in place we'll toss another bead down for good measure then plug in our pump [Music] now we can install that prettied up alternator using the brackets provided in the kit [Music] then the water pump pulley can go on to its new home [Music] of course we need to toss in the idlers tensioners all that good stuff all right guys we're ready to move on to the next step of the process which would be installing the power steering pump and our ac compressor but we run into a small snag if you will and no big surprise we're crossbreeding a gm pump to this ford hose but we've got an order and adapter that's no real big deal but it's going to take a little bit of digging to find out which one we're going to need exactly so we'll catch you guys after the break stick around and we'll show you how to modify a cross member to work with big exhaust hey guys while you were gone we went ahead and buttoned up the rest of our belt drive and we went on to the cooling system now we installed a radiator fan combo from summit racing and what you get is a two row aluminum radiator the shroud the fans you can get a controller with all the wiring and it only runs about 400 bucks which is pretty good the headers we chose were for a torino in our car well it's a full size they fit but kind of didn't where they didn't is right here where the collector comes out it's kind of running into or interfering with our cross member now we didn't show you the installation of the cross member but while we had it out we went ahead and cleaned it up and sand blasted it because we knew we were going to do some welding on it and here's our plan of attack so what we're going to do is cut it across here and across here remove that piece and then weld in a big heavy u and move the u up toward the bottom of the floor now you don't have to worry about the cross member itself bouncing against the floor pan because it's stationary but you do want to move it up so you can have plenty of room for your exhaust pipe to move around we'll bust out a screw jack to keep the transmission in place once the cross member has been cut [Music] then a straight edge helps to mark the cutting points some masking tape on the end of the headers will keep us from slinging any sparks into them or the engine then we're ready to cut the bulk of the chopping can be done with a cut-off wheel then we'll bust out the body saw to finish it since it's easier to get to the top layer of metal with that measure across there and there's six and a quarter now this is that serious piece of metal that i was talking about it's a piece of five inch half inch thick angle iron now what we're going to use is a couple of pieces of this and weld it together to make our u-shaped piece you could use a piece of flat bar but then you've got to bend it not everybody has a way of bending a piece of metal that large the cross member itself is four and a half inches wide so we'll duplicate that [Applause] [Music] here [Music] now obviously this is too wide so we're going to do a little bit of trimming to get it down to that six and a quarter that we're looking for now you could cut it just once and then try to weld it up problem with that you don't have any good way to kind of clamp it in place and it's gonna pull on you so we're actually gonna have to cut both of them to get our six and a [Music] quarter [Music] i'm going to put a double bevel on here with the metal being as thick as it is it will help to ensure that we have a nice strong joint now we're ready to weld this giant piece of metal up now if you were at home and you had a smaller welder you could take a torch and preheat this thing and get it good and hot and that helped the penetration but we've got those esop welders and they'll practically weld anything that'll hold still long enough also with this being a piece of hot roll it's always a good idea to grind it back to that shiny side a couple of clamps are a good idea to keep your pieces held flat with the amount of heat that's being put into them there's a good chance that they'll try to pull on you the welder is turned up pretty high and one nice thing about welding thick metal like this is that you don't have to baby it near as much as that thinner stuff a piece of cardboard will make a good shim to keep our new section off of the floor when we mark our cutoff points well we trimmed that thing off to cut off all that excess that was hanging down now we just have to set this up here weld it up and it'd be that easy now that gives us plenty of room for our exhaust but that'll have to wait till next time so you guys come back and see us today on detroit muscle give me fuel give me fire give me a way to run that 1100 horsepower big block in our monster mercury project today we'll show you how to plumb a fuel system for a big power application as well as building custom exhaust that'll let this mean mother blow your house down hey guys thanks for joining us now we've got our 72 mercury marquis back here in the shop and we just finished putting an almost 1100 horsepower big block under the hood now we're getting ready to turn this thing into 19 feet and 2 tons of fun but first this thing's gonna drink a lot of fuel so we need to figure out how to get a fuel system installed oftentimes whenever you think about the term fuel system carburetor comes to mind now this is the one that came off of our 429 originally well somebody had done an upgrade it's a 600 manual choke vacuum secondary and it ran really well on it but since we're making that big old power number we're gonna need a big old carburetor this is holley's 1150 ultra dominator carburetor and has several features to it a few of them well it has a tps mount just in case you're running data acquisition it also has dual 50 pumps and with its all aluminum construction makes it a lot lighter as opposed to the earlier models now we're not going to bother you guys with showing you how to bolt on a carburetor because you've done it or seen us do it a whole bunch of times but there is a lot more to do on our fuel system now to feed that big dominator carb we need a massive fuel system so we turn to holley and earl's for a bunch of components that are going to feed it now we've got everything from the hose to the wiring hose ends regulator gauge the filters and of course the pump now this pump is 160 gallon per hour aluminum dominator pump and it'll support up to 1800 horsepower so we don't have to worry about starving that big block and check this out this is the latest from holley it's called hydramat and what it does is it acts as a bladder inside your tank replaces a traditional pickup tube it's available in all different types of sizes and shapes and you can even order custom ones it works with stock and aftermarket fuel cells perfect for drag racers road racers drifters or any time the fuel is going to be sloshing around in the tank now it has a 15 micron filter built in so there's no need for a pre-filter and with its bladder design basically if it's touching fuel it's going to get to your engine now before we can install that into our tank which we've already removed out of our mercury we need to do some things to get this tank ready first thing to do is get this pickup and sending unit pulled out so that we can access the inside then we'll grab a jug of gas tank flush and dump it on in this is basically a cleaner and degreaser that's non-flammable and non-corrosive should be good [Music] now that we got all the cleaner in there i'm gonna slosh this around a little bit get all those fumes out [Applause] [Music] so that smells good looks like old mark has himself a mystery noise inside that tank [Music] how long that's been in there all right so we've got our tank all cleaned out now and dry so we don't have to worry about any fumes left here when we get ready to drill our holes the reason we need to drill into our tank is because if you look here at our sending unit this is the hole that was used for our feed it's really not big enough especially when you compare it to the dash 10 that our pump requires now this is required for the feed and the return so we need to drill two holes we chose the top of the tank here near the vent we just need to mark the holes and drill them now to do that we've got a couple tips for you to help keep the shavings out of the tank and to keep you safe [Music] that's where you want to go one easy way to keep shavings out of the tank is to drill up from the bottom so that gravity helps keep them out we're also using a pneumatic drill since an electric one can generate sparks a little grease on the step drill bit will also help keep the shavings under control as well as eliminating sparks no need for high speed take it slow and easy [Music] we're gonna jump on in here with a reamer and knock the rough edge down on these holes then after that a magnet is a great way to fish around for any shavings that manage to make it into the tank just look at that a little earl's assembly lube on the o-ring for our bulkhead fitting will help us tighten the fitting without tearing the seal [Music] mmm we use a tape measure to find the length that our pickup hose needs to be these earl's ultra pro fittings don't just work great and look nice they're a cinch to put together don't forget the lube [Music] as for the hose it's earl's ultra pro which is a premium line of plumbing it's ptfe lined and is extremely flexible plus it's good to use on gas alcohol ethanol and e85 with the hydra mat rolled up nice and tight we can work on getting it in the tank via the filler neck hole once it's in we can attach our pickup hose you can see that we have magnets attached to the corners to keep it in place once it's positioned on the bottom of the tank this part can be a little tricky we'll fish the pickup line to our bulkhead fitting and then get it threaded on and in case you're wondering the braided steel ultra pro line can be immersed in gas no problem we went ahead and reinstalled our pickup tube and city unit assembly but we did modify the tube we're not going to need that anymore so we blocked it off but we are going to reuse the sending unit we hadn't reinstalled our vent and installed new hoses here these are 20 foot long each that way we can route them wherever we need to once we get it in the car well let's go ahead and do that now what do you say all right still ahead we gotta find a way to keep our big bad fuel pump off the pavement then we'll turn a whole bunch of stainless steel tubes into a gnarly three-inch exhaust system to let our mercury exhale nice and easy plus a little history lesson about welding hey guys while you were gone we went ahead and reinstalled that tank and got the straps tight we ran both of those feed and return lines all the way to the front of the car but we need to break the feed line to install the pump now there's a couple tricks to this the pump needs to be installed lower than the tank as low as possible and normally you would mount a pre-filter and a post filter but because we're using that hydra mat we only need the post filter we do need to include it here so we just need to figure out where we're going to mount this thing this looks like a pretty good place to mount the pump there's a pocket here in the floor so we can get it up get it away from where anything on the road gonna hit it probably mount it this way here it'll keep it away from where the exhaust is gonna be the muffler is probably gonna be right in here so we'll make a bracket okay we're not gonna make this too complicated we're gonna use a piece of eighth inch plate do a little bit of cutting a little bit of welding and it'll be that simple [Music] all right we went ahead and drilled a couple of holes so that we can mount it to the frame and then i went ahead and cut a couple gussets so now we need to weld all these together and we can mount it up under the car we busted out our esab mig master 280 pro to get this bracket burned together [Music] here we go thanks looks good i went ahead and made the ends on the hoses here and we're getting ready to mount the pump now in order for us to do that we're going to use this tool right here now what this is looks like a rivet gun but it's threaded nut inserts what we're going to do is just screw these on the tool here slide them in crimp them down and we don't have to worry about the threads coming out [Music] like we said we're going to keep this nice and simple a couple of 90s will get our line to the pump and we'll get it screwed down to our bracket to keep it at home [Music] we need to use this filter in addition to the hydramat the zip ties are temporary while we work up the fittings for this filter [Music] some of these dei exhaust bands will work like a charm to keep our filter in place once it's plumbed [Music] there you go we just gotta wire it up with a 40 amp relay and we're good to go [Music] now to finish up our fuel system we went ahead and mounted our regulator up top that way it's easy to keep a check on our fuel pressure and whenever you go to dial it in you don't have to stand on your head oh yeah another thing we got our solenoids for the nitrous mounted up as well now to light the fire on this big block we went with an msd blaster ii coil along with one of their ignition boxes and to send that fire where it needs to be we've got an msd pro billet distributor and a set of their wires with all that taken care of the next thing we need to do is make sure this big block can exhale after the break we'll show you some new technology in the world of welding that can make your life way easier and it'll help us get that exhaust welded up real nice alright we're getting to the point now where we can start installing our exhaust system on our big mercury there's a few things we need to take into consideration one of those is the drive shaft now we don't have our drive shaft yet we're actually going to replace it the larger aftermarket one so for now we've just got this piece of tubing in here we rigged it up that'll take the place for it also for the rear end now the exhaust is going to loop over the rear end and when the suspension travels up and down it could interfere so we remove the springs that way we can modulate the rear up and down with these pole jacks during installation for the exhaust on our mercury we decided to go with a three inch stainless steel hot rod kit from borla we upgraded our kit to these big block ford crate mufflers in addition to those we got a variety of mandrel bends to help us get that exhaust from the front to the back of course it also includes the straight sections you'll need to get it back there as well and to top it all off this stuff is going to look great under that car we'll start by mounting the flange to the collector on our header then we'll grab a 45 degree tube and mark where we want to trim the end down to get it pointed in the right direction with that done we'll put it in place and grab our esob rebel welder we set this welder up with stainless wire and we're going to put it on the smart mig mode which will take any guesswork out of the settings we're dealing with 16 gauge tube so we'll roll with that all right now we've got this pipe headed straight toward the rear of the car we're going to kick it in with this 45 we'll cut a section out of here and bring this pipe outward toward the hump here then we'll attach a straight pipe to it toward the muffler in the back [Music] these are the goals for the exhaust system obviously we want to make sure that it doesn't get into any moving parts like the drive shaft or get bound up in the suspension well we also need to make sure that it's tucked up as high as possible against the floor so that it doesn't drag [Music] now we talked a little bit about the pipes we got from borla which we're using to build the exhaust system here on our mercury now let's talk about the mufflers this is a set of borla's 3-inch crate mufflers which are specially tuned to optimize the sound and performance of a built big block ford which is perfect for us now they offer those in three different sound levels from touring all the way up to the super loud attack series we chose the s-type which is the middle of the road option [Music] now we have our exhaust routed over the rear end and free and clear of our rear suspension we kept it kind of tight here under the frame rail that way when we put some wider tires on the rear we don't have to worry about it interfering now borla did send us these really nice shiny tips as well but really the only way we found we can make them look nice let's dump them all the way out the back like this then we have this long tube hanging out underneath the car so we found a better way we're going to take these 45s like this kick them out the side tilt it down just a little bit dump it out here right behind the rear tire it's pretty good right there that's what we're gonna do after the break we'll show you an easy way to get rid of rust and it's as safe as can be hey guys while you were gone we went ahead and pulled our exhaust system out from underneath our big mercury now if you'll remember we tack welded all this together using that new rebel that we got from esab welding and cutting what's really cool about that machine is not only will it mig but it'll also stick and tig weld lucky for us because we want to make that new exhaust system look really nice the way to set it up for tig mode is first to reverse the polarity by switching the ground lead to the positive side then we'll grab the tig torch and plug it into the negative side we'll unhook the eight pin wire from the mig lead and plug in the tig one which allows the machine to communicate with the torch then we can switch it from smartmig mode over to lifttig and then dial in our amperage 40 is a good place to start in this case [Music] last of all we'll turn on pure argon [Music] esab is the front runner when it comes to welding technology its founder oscar kilburg developed the world's first coated welding electrode in 1904 this revolutionized the worlds of construction and fabrication with the advent of the arc welder allowing vastly improved strength and speed of welding so yeah you could say that they invented welding as we know it of course over the years they've improved the techniques with wire feeding gas shielding and tig machines which continue to improve the quality and capability of welders our shop is outfitted 100 percent with esab welding gear which we use exclusively this rebel unit is a great machine it runs on both 110 or 220 power and works great for both the beginner and a master fabricator oh and one trick that we're using to shield the back side of the tube is to plug another argon bottle into it and let it fill the exhaust with argon that keeps the inside of the welds as strong and clean as the top side there you go we got our exhaust system all welded up now all we need to do is put it under the car hey guys one last thing we want to do is get our bumpers all stripped down so that we can send them off to advanced plating and have them re-chromed now the backing on these things are full of rust and oftentimes we'd sand blast them but for those guys out there that don't have access to a sandblaster we got something to get that rust off that'll work just as good what we're going to use to get this nasty rust off this old bracket is a vapor rust super safe rust remover and it's so safe that most cases you can pour it down the drain now it's water soluble ph neutral which means it's not acidic and biodegradable which means a lot if you've got kids or pets running around [Music] now we've left this bracket set for a couple hours and where it's been in the solution has turned all black now all we have to do is get at it with this rag to see all the good that it's done [Music] now you can see that it removed all that old nasty rust with practically no effort now if you were working with a big piece you could wrap it with a paper towel then saturate it with the evapo rust and then wrap all that with some plastic wrap and then you'd be good to go but we're all out of time for now guys we'll catch you on the flip side today on detroit muscle we continue on our monster mercury build the highwaymen we gotta make sure that 1100 horsepower can make it to the ground with a massive suspension overhaul hey guys thanks for joining us now today we're getting back on our big mercury project the highwayman now if you'll remember we stuffed a big block under the hood that makes over a thousand horsepower and to support it got a built transmission big fuel system and exhaust today we're moving on to the suspension brakes and rear end now our old car came from the factory with a nine inch under it but whenever you factor in that big power and the weight of that old girl well it's just not strong enough so we have to go with an aftermarket unit so we gave our friend john curry with curry enterprises a phone call john what'd you bring us well we got a complete f9 rear end here a set of 35 spline axles complete nodule iron third member and a set of 11 inch brakes to put on this thing the housing itself is our f9 3-inch tube setup it's a fabricated housing with billet large bearing housing ends it's back brace for maximum strength and a high horsepower application whenever we started down the path to find the rear axle for our mercury we had a little bit of a concern because it's kind of an odd duck because i'm sure you guys don't get a whole lot of cost for 72. no we don't but curry enterprises is known for building customer ends and for most popular applications we have all the brackets on this particular one though we put some pieces together we use the chevelle spring buckets the jeep shock mounts and toyota control arm brackets why don't we talk about the center section well what we got here is our nine plus nigel iron gear case our nine plus big brand pinion support billet yoke 35 spline tru track and set up a set of 3-0 gears for that big block motor now normally this kit would come to you fully assembled and ready to go and they have the option of having the housing powder coated just in case you need it well we shipped it to you in pieces but now it gives us the opportunity to put it all back together and take a look at what we got going on on the inside these axle shafts are inch and a half 35 spline performance axles set 20 tim kim bearing heavy duty retainer plate and half 23 inch long studs the stock axles are only 28 spline and these axles are over twice as strong you wouldn't want to put this much into a rin and put the wrong oil in it the nine plus gear oil 85 140 is specifically formulated for the nine inch ford one last thing is our 11 inch disc brake kit this is not only our most popular disc brake kit it's also our most economical disc brake kit [Music] like we said a minute ago normally these rear ends would come assembled from curry and now that we've taken a look at what makes this thing work we can get ours together as well [Music] well john i want to say thanks for this trick piece now it's time for us to get a little bit busy and put this whole car on some air you're welcome to stick around and get your hands dirty if you'd like thank you for the opportunity i've enjoyed myself out here but i got an invitation to go to moab utah and do some off-roading so we're off well let's get you on the plane man all right we're really trying to cover all the bases whenever it comes to putting that big power to the ground we've got our old rear out and the next step to do is going to be beefing up those trailing arms and that's not going to be as bad as it sounds now the way we're going to do that is we're going to make our own control arms like we said earlier we sent curry all of our stock dimensions on our mercury the advantage to that is this setup is already a three link with a panhard rod which means it's going to handle really well on the street and on the track but we do need to get rid of these soft stock bushings we're going to do that with these solid rod ends we've got all this stuff from qa1 we got some left-handed and right-handed thread ends lock nuts and some inserts that will weld into the tubing now we just take these ends and we'll mock up our stock control arms and weld a piece of tubing in between simple as that first i'll head on over to borrow some tube from ian and extreme off-road he won't mind now before we measure we're going to go ahead and run the tubing adapter out about halfway down the rod that way we can adjust both in and out we're going to make our tubes just a shade shorter than our flange to flange measurement because we want to leave a bit of a groove to act as a natural bevel for our weld to penetrate the rod ends [Music] we'll use our esob rebel mig welder to attack them then jump to its tig welder to burn them [Music] solid all right now that we've got our control arms built it's time to get the rear end mounted underneath the car but there's one problem the original suspension bolts were 9 16 thick we're upgrading to 5 8 so we need to drill these holes out some more another thing you may notice is the mufflers and tailpipes aren't here that's because when we build our exhaust system we left the welds at the front of the mufflers just tacked that way we could remove all that for this very reason we'll get those back in before we get our rear end buttoned up [Applause] it's important to use spacers like these that we also got from qa1 because they prevent binding during suspension movement or travel [Music] for the lower arms we'll mount them to the car first then bring it down so that we can hook everything up then we can bring it down and get the upper arm fastened as well [Music] the last thing we'll do is articulate it to check for any problem coming up learn how to adapt your suspension system to work with airbags hey guys welcome back from the get-go we weren't real sure what exactly we were going to do on our old mercury regarding the suspension well we finally pulled the trigger and we decided to put this old girl on air so we went to summit racing and got us a full kit now it comes with a 5 gallon eight port steel tank and four bags that are going to replace our coil springs now you got to have valves to control the air so we went with the chrome 3 8 in size and it may look like a bunch of them here but we'll talk a little more about that later it also comes with a boatload of fittings now you won't use each and every one of these but it's handy to have them on hand the kit also includes two of these dual needle 200 psi gauges and all the line it's going to take to get you plumbed up now don't forget you're going to need some of this electricity strain to wire up that shiny compressor there are quite a few things you need to take into consideration when installing an adjustable air suspension like we're going to be running one of those is wheel and tire clearance and we went ahead and installed the wheels and tires that we're going to be running on the rear of our big old mercury these american racing wheels were dreamed up by famous automotive artists max grundy and they're named the stella they're a modern interpretation of classic wheel styles from the 50s with all the advantages of modern two-piece construction and forging processes we wrapped them with some mickey thompson et street ss's these sticky mickeys are a high-performance street to strip radial and they're d.o.t approved now we've got our rear end at full compression which means the car is as low as it's going to be on our axle there's plenty of clearance in the front the rear and even up top but we need to operate this thing through its full range of motion to make sure there's clearance everywhere because of the design of this suspension as the axle moves up and down it's going to move forward and rear of the vehicle [Music] all right guys we got the rear mocked up as aired all the way up and then some and we've got enough clearance except for it right here up front and it's a little bit tight but that won't ever be a problem because the car won't ever be aired up this high just like we were talking about the link bars causing the rear to move we've got a panhard bar on this thing too and it causes the rear to move left to right look what it does whenever we put this thing at right height [Music] what that did give us a little bit more room like what we were needing now another common area that you'll run into clearance issues is here at the dry shaft and the tunnel because whenever that rear starts to go up so does the dry shaft so make sure to check it out we're in pretty good shape so we can move on these air springs or air bags as they're commonly known are not a direct replacement they're actually universal and most of the time need to be adapted to fit in your application as you can see here this is a spring out of the rear of our mercury and it's quite a bit taller than this air spring but we can't just take the measurement here on the table and use that to make our adapters it's actually a bit more complicated than that and it has to do with the specs of the spring ours have a maximum height of 12 and a half inches which is full inflation when you deflate it it can be compressed down to 2.8 inches clearly ride quality will be diminished drastically at both minimum and maximum height but there is a sweet spot which is between 6 and 9 inches in overall height so to optimize ride quality we're shooting for right down the middle at seven and a half inches we've got our rear end set at ride height and now it's time to do some math we know our bag will be seven and a half inches tall and here we have nine and three quarter inches between the frame rail and this perch so that means we've got two and a quarter inches to fill hey welcome back now tommy just finished measuring on the rear of our mercury to determine how much of a spacer we need between our air spring and spring perch he figured out we needed two and a quarter inches now we can put that all at the top or all at the bottom or we could put some at the bottom and some at the top depending on where we want the spring to live now for us we want to put it all at the top but we are running these quarter inch plates both at the top and the bottom so we'll just subtract a half inch from our measurement leaving us with an inch and three quarter which we're going to cut out of this piece of pipe that we got from a local steel yard we'll go ahead and blast our spacer because we're going to be doing some welding on then we'll grab the tick torch from our esob rebel again and get it tacked to our mounting plate we'll use a hole saw to make an access hole through the frame and body here the reason we need to do this is to allow a pathway for the airlines as well as allowing access to fasten the mounting bolts [Music] now we're gonna set the bag in place for a bit of a test squeeze so as you can see here at full compression there's a lot of side load on the bag because of where we have this mounted to remedy that we need to move this blower mount back some try it again [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] it might take a few attempts to get this lined up the way it needs to be but it's important because if you do it wrong you're going to assassinate your bag nobody likes that [Music] so after moving our lower spring mount back some we went ahead and compressed the bag again as you can see here it's a lot straighter another thing you need to look at is to make sure that the bag doesn't hit anywhere here in the frame because if it's going to do that it'll damage the bag so now all we need to do is mark where the upper mount needs to weld to the frame take it all apart weld it in [Music] we'll get the area prepped for welding with a small grinder then we get our upper mount burned into the car [Music] a little black double color we'll dress it up for us [Music] then we can reinsert that big old bag [Music] well mark's in the back finishing up that rear i've been up here doing a little bit of plumbing now this right here may look a little bit intimidating but really and truthfully it's just time consuming let me explain it to you we've got eight individual valves but really and truthfully you have only four circuits you've got let's say these two for the front and these two for the rear and how this would work is there's compressed air inside of the tank you trip this valve air flows through there down up to your front back and then let's say you want to let it out it will back feed whenever you trip this valve and back out allowing the car to go down now to wire them up it's pretty simple you've got a ground and then you've got a trigger wire and this is where your options come in you can wire them so that you can control them all individually meaning if you want one corner of the car or you can let's say wire them in paris so the front comes up front goes down same with the rear or let's say you can wire all four of them together so the whole car comes up or the whole car goes down it all depends on what you want now here on top of the tank install the schrader valve and this will allow us to put air in it just in case we ever run into some kind of issue now another thing that you want to make sure to install is a drain because just like your compressor at the house this thing will get some moisture in it and you'll need to let it out now to operate the compressor or turn it on and off we went ahead and installed a pressure switch what this is going to do is cut it on and off with a maximum pressure of 175. now speaking of the compressor it comes with a hose you want to make sure to use this one for a couple of reasons one of them it's got a check valve it allows the air to go in but not have to fight with it pushing up against it second of all you want to make sure to use this one because the air coming out of it is hot if you use this nylon stuff to feed the tank it's going to melt and just give you troubles now it's time to mount this thing in the back of the car let's go after the break it's time to see what that massive merc looks like hey guys while you were gone we got our tank and our pump mounted here in the trunk now we're gonna jump on toward the front and get on it and then we can move to getting this thing plumbed up all right so we've already done the other side so we have a pretty good idea of what needs to be done here in the front to get our mercury laid out on the ground now we've already removed the spring and shock as well as the sway bar the brake caliper and the tie rod so now it's time to get dirty [Music] we need to cut out this old spring perch to provide a good spot to attach the bottom air spring mount ooh that's hot we're also going to cut into the frame right here to make room for the bag itself that's how too the upper shock mount goes away as well to access the air lines and bolts we're gonna get after those cut points with a grinder to make them look nicer plus a bunch of jagged edges next to a pressurized airbag might make things a little bit too exciting this old fuel line ain't doing nothing but sitting in the way a quick whooping on this seam we'll close up the hole and add to our clearance we need to make sure we have enough room for the air spring with at least eight inches either direction we good since we sliced up the frame right here we're going to weld it back together to keep things nice and strong after a little cleanup we can move on time to get that upper mountain spacer welded in the plate is offset so that we'll have proper clearance when the bag is [Music] installed [Music] everything can go back together now looks like we might need to come back later on and replace that ball joint we'll double check our travel then tack the bottom mount in [Music] make sure you pull that thing out before you weld it solid you don't want to burn your bag man [Music] all right guys we've got everything wired up and plumbed up and it's ready to see what she's gonna look like sitting on the ground now one nice thing about that adjustable suspension is you can raise it up lower it down depending on your personality of the day mr marcus go ahead and let's see what she looks like there we go [Music] that's it wow slow today on detroit muscle our monster mercury the high women is getting buttoned up for a shakedown run but she's not ready just yet learn how to measure for shocks on custom suspension as well as some other details to tidy her up also take a look at a low buck upgrade that opens the door to a whole lot of other mods hey guys welcome to detroit muscle now you guys know what we do around here oftentimes we take an old body car fix up the exterior throw a lot of performance at it and have us a really good time now we've got some big plans for this 69 dodge charger but it's just gonna have to hang out for a minute because we're gonna be jumping on an old project that's right you guys may remember this it's our 1972 mercury marquis broham and you could say it's been on the back burner but in spite of all that neglect it's come a long way from where it started you've seen these cars before even though they're not as common as they used to be the big three cranked out a ton of the 70s era lanyards back in the day this 72 mercury marquee is all about being classy but we threw classy out the window when we snagged this 550 cubic inch big block from the guys down in engine power on spray it managed to twist out over a thousand horsepower then we tied a monster automatic trans behind it and plugged them into that big old white merc we also got busy upgrading the fuel system because she's gonna be real thirsty then we let her breathe with a big old set of borla exhaust as for the rear end we talked to curry and got this beefed up nine inch then fabricated some custom control arms that are going to be way stronger than the factory ones [Music] we also picked up some 20-inch wheels from american racing that are going to help our marquee grab some eyeballs then we installed some airbags that we got from summit racing along with the tank and lines that lets us layer out nice and low that's it well we're not too far off on this thing we do need to get some bumpers on here and it doesn't have any shocks or a drive shaft yet we really need to figure out how we're gonna get the hood to clear that big old carburetor we have some other loose ends but other than that we're really close and hopefully by the end of the day today we're gonna be behind the wheel of this old girl the first order of business for today is mounting a set of shocks here on the back side of our mercury now this can be kind of complicated but not nearly as bad as on the front now you don't really have to have them up there because this thing's got air bags on it and you don't have the recoil of a conventional spring but back here on the back we're going to have some weight transfer and we want to make sure that we can dampen that as much as possible we need to measure the maximum length of our shock at this point now the rear axle is at full droop or let's say aired all the way up now we're going to measure from this tab that we had curry installed on the rear that's very similar to the stock location up to the hole in the frame right at 19 and three quarter okay now we're going to put the jacks under here compress the suspension and see what the short side of the shock's going to be right at 13 and a half well now that we've got the measurements of our rear end travel based on our shock mounting points we know how far the rear end is going to travel and we also know the full extended and compressed lengths of the shocks that we need but it's a little more complicated than that we can actually use the shock as a stop for either the extended or compressed ends and because we have an air suspension we don't want that shock to be the stop at full compression now our measurement on the short end is 13 and a half so we want to make sure the full compressed length on the shock that we order is going to be shorter than that but on the other end of the spectrum we actually want to use the shock as a stop that way we save from damaging the bags if we accidentally over extend it that way the shocks actually going to stop it and keep us from doing that and our measurement on that end is 19 and three quarter so we're going to err on the side of caution and order something in the range of 17 and a half to 18 and a half inches so we just went to summit racing's website and we selected a few of the parameters and a couple of the options it gives you are both extended length and collapse length of the shocks and we want to make sure that our collapse length is going to be below 13 and a half we want to keep our extended length somewhere around 17 and a half and 18 and a half so we're going to click this one and add that one and maybe this one as well that'll fall in there just fine now as far as the collapse length goes we have a few options here and a couple of them fall in the range that we're looking for we get 11 and a half and then that one's kind of on the edge of where we want to be but we'll see what they've got here well it looks like there's two options here one's 26 97 each and the other is 140 each but those are for a cadillac so we want to stay away from those those are air shocks these are the standard shocks we want to get they're just the oe style shock we'll get two of those let's take a look at a couple of shocks here now this blue shock is actually what would be a stock replacement for our 72 mercury and the black one is the one we ordered from summit racing and you can tell just by looking at them that the length is different now this blue one it's not going to provide the stop that we want at full extension it's actually too long that's why we went with this black one and another thing with this one if you compress it all the way down it's actually still going to be too long and it won't let our car lay out all the way like we want it to so that's why we ordered these we'll get the bushing in place for the upper mount then attach it to the shock with it fastened we can get the lower mount run down and then test the range of motion we'll go to full compression first and make sure the shock is happy and doesn't stop the travel we're in good shape there so we'll run it up to full droop and make sure that the shock is acting as a stop in the range that we want it to perfect still ahead brake hoses stud upgrades and hood holes oh my hey guys welcome back while you were gone we went ahead and ran some new hard brake lines where they needed to be replaced and it's time to move on to the hoses but up front here we cut this one when we took it all apart originally and we could replace that with an oem style but we've got a better solution first thing is to go ahead and unfasten the old hose and get it out of the way along with this bracket we'll plug off this brake line to minimize the mess now since the bracket was part of the original brake hose tommy made us a couple of new brackets here we're gonna bolt these to the frame [Music] now it's time to start thinking about connecting the dots between our calipers and our hard brake lines with some brake hoses so we went to crown performance for those now at first glance these may look like your run of the mill braided stainless hose but they're not this is a standard braided stainless hose and it does have a teflon inner and the stainless braid but the crown versions have a five layer design with the same teflon inner a kevlar braid a protective sleeve as well as the stainless braid now they're available in a bunch of different configurations and links and ends and nine different colors another cool thing about the crown hoses is that the ends are crimped on with a one-piece crimp which is stronger than your standard two-piece crimp [Music] with our new hose plugged into the caliper we can get it fastened to the stock brake line as well make sure you use the included clip that keeps the line from rubbing and getting bound up [Music] hey y'all while he's tidying up the brake lines we run into a little bit of a problem whenever we was mocking up our wheels let me show you what i'm talking about take a look at the lug studs you notice that they're not sticking through very far and that doesn't give us enough threads for the wheel to stay on properly we need to swap these out for some longer ones so we went to arp and got us another set of studs now these are substantially longer and quite a bit stronger than them oems now to get the old ones out you could drive them out with a hammer and then drive the new ones in with a hammer as well but whenever you have a press it's just easier to do it that way [Music] [Applause] like tom said you can do this with a hammer but if you have access to a press it makes the job a whole lot easier [Music] [Applause] we can see those studs cured our safety issue now we're one step closer to taking this big old boat for its maiden voyage up next our hood won't close no problem we've got a saw to take care of that hey everybody welcome back now while you were gone we went ahead and got our brake system buttoned up on our big old merc here got the wheels and tires back on it back on the ground and we're getting really close to taking it out for its maiden voyage but there's a few things still missing one of those two is going to be these newly refurbished bumpers from advanced plating we're real lucky that just down the road from us in nashville is one of the best chrome shops in the country advanced plating can strip repair and re-chrome just about anything we use them for all of our chrome work because they never fail to knock it out of the park even with some of the raggedy stuff we bring them so of course our mercury bumpers went straight to them i have to say these bumpers look like jewelry now and they're really going to set off our mercury heck this front bumper is about 50 percent of the nose of this whole car can't wait to see what it looks like and stall first things first we got to get all the goodies reattached to these bumpers like the lights and brackets [Music] of course we got a few pieces of new hardware to keep from blemishing the looks of the new bumpers [Music] [Music] well we got our bumper on and now the next task is pretty obvious that our hood's not going to close so we're going to have to find a cure for it this air cleaner is sticking well above the top of these fenders the next process is going to be a little bit primitive but i think it's going to turn out just fine so the first step that we're going to do is make sure that the engine is sitting in the engine compartment center if you will from left to right and to do that you just simply measure from the air cleaner stud to the edge of the fender looks like we're at 32 and an eighth whenever you're doing something like this you want to make sure that you measure in common points all right this is 31 and 5 8 which is a half inch difference which means it's only a quarter inch off take a quarter inch away from one side add it to the other be in the center next thing we're going to do is measure from the front of the hood all the way back to the carburetor i'm setting that just to the side and i'll do that here and we're 34 and a quarter now we need to account for the gap at the leading edge of the hood so we're just going to take about an eighth inch off of that measurement we'll mark it at 34 and an eighth and we're going to use the crown of the hood here as a guide now we just need to get those left and right measurements that we took earlier transposed here onto this line that was 32 and an eighth right then that's going to be 31 and 5 8. now where these lines intersect that's going to be where our stud's going to come up through our hood so we just need to make a mark here drill a hole then we need to figure out what our radius is going to be so we know how big our hole needs to be for that air cleaner now that all is going to be determined by like he said how big this air cleaner is now we want to make sure that we give it plenty enough room because that big block is liable to move around a bit whenever we actuate the throttle if you know what i'm saying so we want to give it two inches on this side and two so we'll just add four inches total to this overall measurement overall it's 16 and a half plus those four inches of clearance is 20 and a half now we've got this piece of cardboard here and this is going to be our tool that's going to allow us to make that big circle so we just got a starting point here and tommy's measurement was 20 and a half which is the diameter so we're going to cut that in half to make our radius which is going to be 10 and a quarter so mark 10 and a quarter use our center punch here all right so i'm going to use the drill bit that i used to drill this hole as the pivot point here in this cardboard that's going to go there just take the pencil through this hole that i made with the center punch and that's going to make our mark [Music] with our circle marked out we can make a hole to give our saw a place to start then it's time for the soothing song of a body saw now we are cutting through a little bit of brazing here but not enough to compromise the strength of the hood too much [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] well tom what do you think well we caught a little bit of grief over this ride but i do believe we did all right i like it after the break it's our merc's first cruise now you know we've used yukon gear and axle in the past four needs for differentials and axles and things like that but they're actually doing drive shafts now too and we needed that driveshaft for our mercury so we just told them the dimensions we needed and what our power level was and they made up this four inch aluminum piece for us right here in the usa now they do offer some that are ready to bolt in say for like mustangs and jeeps like that but if you need a custom one they can do that too [Music] she's about ready to fire so we'll fill the fluids including this royal purple extreme performance motor oil which is going to keep that gnarly big block nice and happy we'll take her for a shakedown run which is going to involve putting her through her paces but not burying the throttle you never do that with a fresh build once she's got a few miles on her we can get her back to the shop and make sure everything is kosher next time you see her we're gonna open that throttle up well we've been out riding around in our big body mercury we thought we'd have ourselves a pit stop and see a friend of ours and get his impression of our latest creation hey samo what are you doing hey what's going on man i'm making breakfast here i'm just joking i'm making miniature log cabins chopping wood guys you may recognize smoke aka big smoke he's a country rapper musician songwriter producer and film director you might also recognize him from his tv show called well big smoke broham mercy look at this berkmobile it's like the stay puft marshmallow man i love it oh my goodness well did it not come standard with that what is that a 19 inch hole in the hood well yeah we had to cut the hole we didn't just do that for fun we needed it so wow look at this thing man makes about 750 horse the way you see it with a 300 shot of nitrous it'll make over a thousand well do you want to go for a ride heck y'all want to go for a ride let's take this thing to the moon so you think a big old car like this be kind of slow right i mean my granny's car was how was it like this it was kind of like this whoa was it like that she had a lighter foot than you do all right you got to check this out right here serving up them pancakes i like that it's the emergency brake [Music] i think we can stop at this church i feel like i need to say a prayer god help us in this beastly machine to survive the twists and turns of the road that lies ahead amen amen i like it that you kept the standard what is that a track yeah ain't dragging it ham radio wait am hot [Music] we can hear something yeah probably not on the a.m but i am working on releasing my new single on eight track really oh but we all know this old thing will run pretty good straight down the road well y'all say us go set up a few cones and see how she does on a slalom yeah i want to see this thing dance [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] let's assess the damage here oh that's right on point that's point spread look at that one two three four and five oh we got a little dinger right there we got a wonky eye lid up here we're gonna need some duct tape well boys you built one heck of a car i'm talking about this is as cool as a car can be thanks man that means a lot coming from you because i know you like big cars like this so i do i love this car and you know it really makes me think about a song that i've got called rolling that we're going to be shooting a video for real soon this car would be perfect for that video oh dude that would be so awesome we could be in a music video wide open the tailpipe smoking laying the lane floating no gps loading cause even when i got no place to go it's just me myself in the open road and when i hit the i-24 gonna put the pedal to the floor i tell you what you let me drive this thing i'll let you be in my video deal let's do it the burnout

Channel: POWERNATION

Views: 1,230,152

Keywords: Car, PowerNation, howto, how-to, diy, automotive, cars, trucks, automobile, do it yourself, automobiles, auto, grand marquis, mercury, full build, 1000 horsepower, mercury grand marquis, full build powernation, land yacht, sleeper car, sleeper cars, best sleeper cars, big smo

Id: SSPrOXTum1A

Length: 79min 55sec (4795 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 27 2021