Hi! 93 Mercury Grand Marquis!
 

Hey all!
I'm not new to forums, just this one. A buddy suggested that I stop on by and see whats up.
So here I am!
I have two cars, which are pretty much polar opposites.
First, the 1993 Mercury Grand Marquis, the "Tank of Justice II". It has 210k miles on it, daily driven, and it's geared towards efficiency.
So far, I've had a best mpg of 28.5 and 516 miles on one tank of gas. Thats fullllll to sputtered-out-of gas-on-the-side-of- I80 empty. Which isn't bad for the piano and transmission I had in the trunk.
Mods include:
- Cold/Warm Air Intake, kinda custom
- MSD coil packs
- 9mm wires
- E3 spark plugs
- electric fan
- A/C delete
- 2 less catalytic converters (new down pipe, they removed the pre-cats in the new design)
- Aluminum driveshaft (-7 lbs)
- 17" aluminum wheels (-12lbs ea)
- 2.73 rear gears with Trac-Lok Limited Slip for winter
- factory dual exhaust with Thrush Turbo mufflers and Marauder tips

After each mod, the car responded better. Up to 26.67 mpg full of crap. Like 4 winter tires, 2 boxes of books and a dinning room table in the back seat.

Idealy, I'd love to hit 30 mpg. I have a motor waiting to go in, and I may swap the iron block for an aluminum one and drop 84 lbs off the front of the car.

I know there's a lot to read, but I'm happy to be here and look forward to meeting some new people and getting ideas.

Thanks for reading.

-ryan s.

Here's a few pics:
http://i31.photobucket.com/albums/c3...416_181816.jpg
http://i31.photobucket.com/albums/c3...I/S8300054.jpg
And the fun times:
http://i31.photobucket.com/albums/c3...113_155248.jpg

I was also throwing in the idea of a manual transmission swap. Simply because it drops roughly 40 lbs from the 4 speed auto, and I would have even more control over efficiency. I was thinking the T-56 6 speed manual transmission.
I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

-ryan s.

Decent mileage from that beastie.

I'd absolutely go for a manual swap if you're game for it. You correctly point out that the bigger benefit is the added control it gives you over gear selection (also, engine-off coasting potentially).

Sounds like a fair amount of your travel is highway, so you no doubt have been thinking about aero mods as well. There's some low-hanging fruit to be picked there.

EDIT: Your rear window area is obviously very abrupt, so you'll have flow separation way up high. But with the slight downward curve of the trailing part of the roof, and the huge length of that XXL cargo compartment hatch ... I mean trunk lid ... I wonder if you have some flow re-attachment there. I'd be noodling about that area as well.

Welcome to the forum!

Yeah, mostly highway driving.
The biggest improvement was in city driving. I went from roughly 16 to a solid 20.
I'm definately going to block in the front end to start. I'll take before and after pics. You guys will probably laugh at how many openings are on the front and how big the gaps are.
I have a buddy the owns a junkyard so I get parts quite cheap. I have a newer header panel and grill at paint right now. Now, I've decided to do block out the front end with the weatherstripping and do it correctly.
I'm excited to start on this new project.
I have a trip to Akron, OH next month, and I'm gonna use that as a baseline before modding.

-ryan s.

Glad to see you joined mang. I'll be lurking around much more to see what happens to ToJII.

Yeah, after perusing these forums, I think I'm going to take the Tank in a new, more aero "aero" direction.
I'm pretty sure I can do this.
I waa thinking, I may have to bring my O2 sensors and EGR back online.

-ryan s.