1988 Grand Marquis

[jobumo]

Bought this sexy hunk of steel for $800 last Christmas Eve. It's a 1988 Mercury Grand Marquis LS with the 302 EFI. It was in good shape, ran strong, leather in great condition, vinyl top in ok condition, it has a lot of the options on it. Previous owner painted it in bedliner and put 2.25" dual straight pipes in, it sounds mean.

Before even driving it I did a basic tuneup, new battery, cap & rotor, plugs, wires, synthetic oil, oil filter, belts, fuel filter, cleaned intake, flushed coolant, I even got underneath and scrubbed away as much rust as i could with wire brush drill bits.

It's been my daily driver since then and I've done a couple other things. I fixed all the power locks, put in a new stereo and subs, swapped in a 130a 3g alternator, upped all the battery wires to 2 gauge, and of course fabbed up a home depot cold air intake lol.

I plan to rebuild a lot of the engine with performance parts. I'm thinking trickflow heads, gt40 intake, 1.7 roller rockers, a yet to be determined cam, tighter springs, and hopefully one day a turbo charger. It'll get 3.55's once it's pushing a little more power and someday soon i'm gonna put stiffer shocks in it. I'm thinking a strut bar too if i can get one fabbed up, and some sort of unibody frame connector to help with all the body roll.

Anyways here's picture of the beast, let me know what y'all think.

[jobumo]

And interior pictures

[jobumo]

Oh also, the previous owner is actually a member on here. Bonus points if anyone can guess who it is

[DerekTheGreat]

Leather seats but no ditch lights! EDIT: It does have ditch lights. WoW. I might need you to make me some glasses haha.

I have to admit I hate the bedliner paint and home depot special intake. I once bought an F-150 that someone used PVC plumbing to make an intake for it and some of those cheap spectre filters at the end of the Y pipe. That shit came off so fast and was replaced with OEM, probably before I even had the chance to insure it. Still, I wish it was possible to find clean running cars around my way for $800..

[jobumo]

I have to admit I hate the bedliner paint and home depot special intake. I once bought an F-150 that someone used PVC plumbing to make an intake for it and some of those cheap spectre filters at the end of the Y pipe. That shit came off so fast and was replaced with OEM, probably before I even had the chance to insure it. Still, I wish it was possible to find clean running cars around my way for $800..

Haha I felt the same way about the bedliner when i first bought it but it grew on me. It's reallyyyy nice driving around without worrying about scratches. For example, anytime someone parks like an asshole i can park right up next to them (within my spot still of course) and i don't have to worry about door dinging lol.

As far as the home depot intake... I have no explanation except that I did it because I can! Lol it might get replaced with something pretty oneeee day, and if it helps i did top it off with a nice k&n filter.

[DerekTheGreat]

Function over form, slap a stocker on there and you wont have to worry about sucking dirt or damage.

I avoid dings by parking in BFE. My heart thanks me for the exercise haha. That or we take either one of our trucks. They're already worn in so no worries.

[87gtVIC]

Welcome to the forum.

Full chassis vehicle. no unibody.

No strut towers. no strut bar to install.


You can however install bigger sway bars to help with body roll.

Looking forward to seeing what you do. Sounds like you love the car.

[79lincolnlover]

Welcome! Were the rims a direct fit or were spacers required?

[jobumo]

Welcome! Were the rims a direct fit or were spacers required?

The rims were put on by the previous owner, they're 1998 mountaineer rims. When I bought it, it didn't have center caps, it was direct fit without the caps but to get the caps to fit i had to put in 1/2" spacers.

[jobumo]

Sorry I haven't been posting much, life got busy and I joined the Army so i've sorta pushed all car things off until I get back from basic training.

Anyways, my sister and her fiancé are doing a movie style wedding and all the invitations are going to have movie poster style photos on them. They wanted my car to feature in one of the posters so we went out and got burnout photos.

The photos are actually good quality but my phone camera sucks. They still look awesome tho:

[sly]

No worries about posting frequency. There's some folks that have been here for years and still have less than 200 posts. Others of us are post whores.

[87gtVIC]

Cool photo!