It's an aftermarket Trick Flow intake. I originally wanted to get a Lightning intake; but after seeing what they were going for on EBay for a 30 year old piece, I decided to go aftermarket.

@Rubehayseed my Dad shook his head and then said "you do what you have to do to make that engine fit." I think he wanted to lecture me again about not getting that 351W/5.8L; but decided not to continue LOL. Fortunately for him, he stopped driving Mopars before the muscle car era really kicked in.

 

We all do what we gotta do, Chickenbone. My Dad, two uncles, one brother, 3 cousins and I were all pipefitters out of local 572 in Nashville back in the day, Now, only one cousin still is a member. The rest of us are dead or retired.

 

Glad I got 2 non-running vehicles in the backyard! The battery in my Grand Marquis went completely dead overnight. Unfortunately, with electronic transmissions, you can't turn the key and pop it in neutral to move the car out of the way. Scratched some more hairs off the top of my head for 10 minutes before I realized that I have 2 batteries at my disposal. Ran back to the Crown Vic and snatched the battery; but the poles are the opposite, so I couldn't just drop it in. I ended up using the Crown Vic battery to jump the Merc. Total time spent was about a hour. I really need to get that Crown Vic running *sigh*

 

Battery or alternator issue?

 

Probably the battery; it was 4 years old. When I got it in July 2021, it was the same exact situation; my car was parked in front of the Explorer when the battery went dead. That time, I was able to unlock the column shifter and push it to the back and out of the way in order to use the Explorer to get another battery. I have a notebook that I log all of the repairs and mods to the various vehicles and I made a note 4 years ago to buy a new battery in 2024 - 2026 (3-5 years). When I replaced the battery and alternator in the Explorer last February, I made another note in that section to look at the Grand Marquis battery and alternator in the Spring I am giving some serious thought to getting an upgraded Powermaster alternator just to have in case the OE one fails.

 

So the last several weeks have been unproductive. Between having either cold and rain and now high heat; I've gotten nothing done outside. I did however, get some work done inside. I spent the last couple weekends cleaning the basement. In the back corner of the basement; for more than a decade, I had been piling up scrap metal and other bits underneath and behind my Dad's old metal lathe. In that process, I found things that were not supposed to be in there. I found a front suspension bushing kit for the Crown Vic. This makes it so that in the event I get the car running; I won't have to buy another kit to rebuild the front suspension a 3rd time (doing the GT500 brake upgrade). I found a NAPA auto parts fuel pump relay still in its box. And a drum brake rebuild kit; which I am most likely not going to ever use. If anything, I will endeavor to snag a 92-97 Crown Vic/Grand Marquis rear diff for its disc brakes. The whole assembly is a direct bolt-on. At the bottom of all that, I found a couple small NAPA boxes with the old injector plugs inside. Of the 8 plugs, 2 were intact, 2 were completely broken, and 4 were half broken. If you look closely, you can see the orange Permatex that was used to join the connectors. Most of the Permatex was on the injectors; but I was going to replace them anyways because they were only 19lb injectors.

 

Isn't it funny how soon we forget stuff we don't really need. Just scrap it once per year and that way you won't get an accumulation of stuff you're never going to use again.

 

Don’t look on the top shelf in my shop, there are turbo Diesel parts and Lincoln parts. I did throw away all the Suzuki/Metro parts but they have been replaced by Saturn L parts. The scrap guy will have a field day when I tip over!

 

That's what I am trying to eliminate. But when I have those rare moments like last February with the alternator dying on the Explorer; and being able to grab one out of my bucket of old alternators to work for that SUV; then I start wanting to save every old part again; for the next rare/once-in-a-blue-moon situation. Good thing is now since I am doing this, my Dad said he's going to clear out the shelf behind the lathe of his old/rarely used tools, parts, and wedding gifts (49 years old) that will never be used. If we clear out enough things, I can shift stuff out of the rear of the basement to the front. This will give me access to the downstairs bathroom plumbing so I can start with the renovation work.

 

Spent some time last week clearing out more of the basement. I opened up a spot behind my Dad's lathe. This gave me access to the shelving behind it. I had a box of Prothane body bushings for Putter Project ('82 Chevy C20 p/u) and a bed bolt kit. I remembered that I was considering snagging the front axle off of a Chevy K10 Blazer at the junkyard and swapping it over to my C20. Even though the frame has all of the holes to mount the axle and leaf springs; I was told that is an extremely difficult swap. So those parts will be moved to my storage box of Chevy parts.

I discovered a box with the shifter collar for the Crown Vic. Back in 2014, the original heater core blew and I attempted to install one myself. In the process, I broke the plastic steering column collar that is used for the shift indicator in the instrument cluster. So I took that box and went outside to the Crown Vic; with the intention of leaving it on the dash for me to install at a later time (even though I will be going to an aftermarket floor shifter). But after uncovering that car; I decided to poke around engine bay. I tightened up all but the No.1 cylinder spark plug. Cleaned the acorns off the lower intake manifold (freakin squirrels!) and the cobwebs from around the engine. There was mold forming on my heater hoses, so I used some sporicide on them. After doing that, I looked at the cruise control servo and decided that I was never going to use it again; so I removed it and plugged the vacuum hoses. I took the connector and the plugged hoses and tucked them out of view. The cruise control servo went into storage for anybody in the Ford Panther community that wants to restore their '80s Crown Vic/Grand Marquis. Now I am going to get myself re-familiarized with the EEC-IV tuning software. Maybe next weekend I will go back out there and see if the engine still turns over by hand. If it does, I will find TDC on the No.1 cylinder compression stroke and go from there. This time around, I will only get 5 gallons of gas for the 1st start.