In this episode of HOT ROD Garage presented by Lincoln Tech
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00:00 On this episode of Hot Rod Garage, these two take the crown hick a little too far.
00:06 Get out of the vehicle.
00:08 Welcome back to Hot Rod Garage presented by Lincoln Tech.
00:32 In this episode, we're going to take our F100 Crown Victoria frame body swap project,
00:37 and we're going to turn it into a running and driving truck.
00:40 Last episode, we took apart that Crown Vic cop car in order to swap a Ford F100 body
00:45 onto its chassis.
00:49 We announced this product online.
00:50 People are stoked.
00:51 This is a pretty common swap that people are doing, and I can't wait to get this thing
00:54 on the road because I couldn't believe how well that cop car drove.
00:57 Do you have a list?
00:58 I have a list.
00:59 You ready?
01:00 Let's do it.
01:01 Let's do it.
01:02 At the end of the last episode, you saw me make the two main cab mounts for the truck.
01:10 They're all done.
01:11 Then we started goofing around with that chariot project, which was clearly a good use of our
01:14 time.
01:15 Absolutely.
01:16 It was super fun.
01:17 We drove that thing around a bit, but now we have to make the other four body mounts
01:19 for the cab.
01:20 There's two for the front end and two for the very back of the cab.
01:23 Once those are all done and fabricated and in, then we can bolt the body down for good
01:27 and turn this thing into a real truck.
01:28 You take the chariot to lunch today?
01:29 Yeah, that sounds good.
01:30 Watch out.
01:31 Here we go.
01:32 To make the front end mounts for the cab of the truck, we did it on this Crown Victoria
01:44 frame.
01:45 We trimmed up the Crown Victoria frame.
01:46 It was a bit long, but luckily, the stock mounts from the cab are right inside these
01:50 frame rails.
01:51 We're just going to plate this off, build a pedestal, cut a little piece of body lift
01:55 mount to go between the two, bolt it in, and we should be done.
02:18 We've got the two main cab mounts bolted into the frame that we made last episode.
02:22 Then we went through and leveled everything so that the frame and the cab are exactly
02:25 in line.
02:26 I checked the angles.
02:27 They look great.
02:28 Now we can make the front pedestals that will hold the front mounts for this front end.
02:32 We are going to cut up some Delrin that we have off of regular universal body lift to
02:36 make those for now.
02:37 Maybe later we'll come back and rubber mount everything, but just to get it done, we're
02:40 going to chop it up, put some Delrin in there.
02:42 That's all we got to do?
02:43 Yep.
02:44 All right.
02:45 You got to cut it.
02:46 You got to cut that in half.
02:47 Cut that.
02:48 That's it.
03:17 The last cab mounts we have to make are the two in the rear of the truck, and they're
03:21 right in line and pretty close together, so I decided to use a two by three inch rectangular
03:25 tube to hold the car up.
03:27 One thing I can do is I cannot bolt through this tube properly because anytime you're
03:31 going to bolt through a tube like this, it will eventually weaken.
03:34 It'll deform in the center here because there's not a lot of strength.
03:37 What I'm going to do instead is I hog the holes out a bit.
03:40 I'm going to put a couple of sleeves in there and then weld them in.
03:42 They're going to go through about an eighth of an inch on each side.
03:45 I'll put a nice flat bead of weld on there and then grind them down so they're about
03:48 flat.
03:49 It'll be super strong.
03:50 I'll be able to bolt through it.
03:59 So we've got the main part of my rear cab mount bolted into the cab.
04:03 The only thing we have to do now is make two legs that will allow us to weld this into
04:07 the frame.
04:08 It'll be nice because this thing will span the whole frame and strengthen it up a bit.
04:11 If it looks like we're close to the driveshaft, we did a test.
04:15 We put a bunch of weight in the back of this thing, bounced it around, and it should be
04:17 just fine.
04:18 The driveshaft doesn't move that much all the way back here.
04:40 Now that we've got all six cab mounts for the F100 finished, we took the Crown Victoria
04:44 frame over to a local do-it-yourself car wash to hose off a surprising amount of grime for
04:48 a 10-year-old car.
04:49 We reached out to our buddy Chris at ADTR.net because we can't just leave it well enough
04:53 alone stock.
04:54 It's just not what we're having.
04:55 We want to do some upgrades to this thing and we're going to do them before we put the
04:57 body on because we have great access to everything.
04:59 The first thing they sent over is a Stainless Works header to tailpipe full exhaust system.
05:04 First thing we're going to do is grab this old exhaust, yank it right out of here.
05:07 It'll be that easy.
05:08 We get to work now?
05:09 We get to work now.
05:10 Okay.
05:11 We're taking this opportunity with the body off to install this sweet, fully stainless
05:37 TIG-welded set of headers from Stainless Works because they're going to flow a lot more and
05:41 give us the kind of bark and sound we want.
05:43 They obviously will flow way better than these cast-iron manifolds from Ford.
05:46 And since the body is off, we've got great access in there to replace this stuff because
05:49 there's not a lot of room with the body on.
05:51 I think Lucky's just about done pulling the exhaust manifold studs out and we can install
05:55 the Stainless Works full exhaust.
06:20 Getting in this Stainless Works header back four-in-one mandrel bent slip fit exhaust
06:24 went very smoothly.
06:26 This stuff looks like it's really well made and I cannot wait to hear it get fired up.
06:30 But before we do that, we're going to move into some rear suspension upgrades.
06:33 We've got four link arms, watts link arms, and some sway bars from ADTR.
06:37 So one of our first rear suspension upgrades, we're going to install these Hainas brand
06:41 rear arms.
06:42 They're rear four link arms from ADTR.net.
06:44 Are you pronouncing that correctly?
06:46 I think I am.
06:47 All right.
06:48 Hainas.
06:49 They're really nice, built aluminum, polyurethane, greasable, probably very rigid.
06:55 This is the flimsy cop stuff.
06:56 Better than cop stuff.
06:57 Better than cop stuff.
06:58 Buy Hainas.
06:59 Better than cop stuff.
07:00 I put the Zerk fittings down so they'll be easy to access later for maintenance.
07:16 This will never stand up to the kind of action they're going to see.
07:28 We've got these Hainas four link arms in and we're going to install a set of watts links
07:31 from Metco.
07:32 Also billet aluminum.
07:33 Super nice.
07:34 So I'm finishing up the back of the car.
07:51 This is the factory cop sway bar.
07:53 This is the new ADTR sway bar.
07:55 They look almost exactly the same, don't they?
08:06 With the rear sway bar in, we're done with the rear suspension.
08:09 We're going to put in this big fat ADTR front sway bar.
08:12 That's all we're doing to the front suspension.
08:14 Put this thing on the ground and then we can start building the car.
08:20 Fries are done.
08:21 I remember Lucky's last day at work.
08:23 Remember that day?
08:24 It was like a regular day.
08:25 We're just tossing the rear wheels back on.
08:36 We'll tighten them up.
08:37 We'll put this thing under its own weight on the ground so we can tighten up all of
08:40 the bushings and the rear suspension that we have removed.
08:43 Hey, let's chat about what we're going to do next.
08:47 Lucky.
08:48 Hold on.
08:49 Go.
08:50 Man, I can't wait to get the body on the frame.
08:53 Yeah.
08:54 Old versus new.
08:56 Truck versus car.
08:57 A blend.
08:58 Cops versus robbers.
08:59 Cops versus robbers.
09:00 That'd be sweet.
09:01 One more thing I wanted to toss on before we drop the body onto the frame is a mechanical
09:08 throttle body.
09:09 This thing came with drive by wire and the Holley HP EFI setup is for an earlier '96
09:14 to '04 Mustang 4.6 liter engine and that throttle body actually bolts right on.
09:18 I picked up a cheap one from Summit.
09:20 When I put this on, it'll allow our Holley EFI to work with this later engine.
09:25 For the interior of the truck, we really wanted to keep the original steering column and shifter
09:28 in there for a nice vintage look.
09:30 We had to come up with a way to adapt this shifter to that modern transmission from the
09:34 Crown Victoria.
09:35 I went online, I did a little digging and the S1832 part number from Locar is designed
09:41 to make old school shifters work with a cable shift mechanism, but they list it for two
09:45 and a quarter inch universal steering columns and GM stuff.
09:49 We're doing a little bit of work on my end, it bolted right on, but Lucky's going to have
09:52 to do a little bit of work on the transmission fabricating a mount and a bracket to hold
09:56 the cable in the right spot.
09:57 Works.
10:22 So this is the original 1966 steering shaft out of the steering column of the truck.
10:26 This coupler is the original component off of the police car, which used to go directly
10:31 to the bar that interfaces with the rack.
10:33 Obviously the two won't just bolt together.
10:36 This was the wrong diameter from this, so I made a little sleeve, I put it on there,
10:39 I split it in half, I put a nice little bead that you can't see because I ground it down
10:43 right there so it's secure, but it still has a little room for expansion.
10:47 Then I clearance this, forced it on, drilled a bolt hole for safety, and it's really just
10:51 for safety, it's not actually holding the thing together.
10:54 And now Tony's going to weld it up.
11:15 So, I installed that new throttle body, Lucky made a shifter bracket for the transmission
11:29 itself, now we can roll this thing under and finally make that sandwich for the last time
11:33 of body and frame.
11:36 Sandwiches for everyone.
11:37 There, I think we're right where we need to be.
11:44 Good work everybody.
11:46 Let me watch the front.
11:54 Bend those hoses up a little.
11:57 Spin like a glove.
12:01 Boom.
12:02 Well now that we have the body bolted down for good, we can get onto our control systems,
12:09 the steering, the shifter, the gas and the brakes.
12:12 You want to pull the whole thing back towards me, right?
12:14 Just a little bit, plenty.
12:15 Is that too far?
12:17 I think it's good.
12:19 Yeah right there.
12:25 So I mocked up this bracket and cable stay before when I had this column out of the car,
12:30 now I'm just reinstalling it now that we've pushed it through the firewall.
12:33 Once we got the F100 body mounted to the Crown Victoria frame, we had to make all the controls
12:37 work so that meant doing a little bit of modifications to that shifter setup that we got, a regular
12:41 universal low car throttle cable, lucky I made a bracket for it, very straight forward.
12:45 We just welded the one steering shaft to the other and then the brakes were a little bit
12:49 more complicated.
12:50 We got a kit from Summit for this truck, it's number 760214 and we wound up doing a little
12:56 bit of modifications to get the Crown Victoria master cylinder bolted right onto that.
12:59 Which we are going to change later.
13:01 Yeah, we'll change that later, eventually.
13:04 So what's left buddy?
13:05 Let's make it run.
13:06 That would be fuel and wiring and then you have a solution for making this modern fuel
13:13 injected engine run in this old chassis.
13:15 That's about a third of what it takes to make the stock harness work.
13:19 I have a modern solution that you came up with.
13:21 That's true.
13:22 Same thing in my car and that is Holley.
13:25 We call our buddies at Holley and they make things better.
13:27 Let's do it.
13:28 Alright.
13:29 Alright, cool.
13:30 Let's do it.
13:36 So I'm here with all the cool stuff we got from Holley.
13:38 It's the HP EFI fuel injection system.
13:40 The reason we went with this is because the wiring harness that's in the police car, we
13:44 could cut that all up and thin it out and we would spend who knows how much time doing
13:47 it and when it was all said and done we wouldn't be able to tune it and it wouldn't do half
13:50 the things we want to do.
13:51 The upside to using this is it does absolutely everything.
13:55 You can plug anything into it including their 7 inch touch screen monitor which is really,
14:00 really cool.
14:01 I have one of these in my car.
14:02 For transmission control, we're using the MSD TCM.
14:04 It's pretty cool.
14:05 We can actually put switches on that and manually up shift and down shift the transmission.
14:09 The Holley HP EFI wiring harness, I've done a few of these for LS conversions and even
14:14 though it looks complicated and like there's a lot of wiring here, there really isn't.
14:18 It comes with sub-harnesses to operate the coils, sub-harness for the fuel injectors,
14:22 the ECM fully programmable, drivers for the injectors, relays are all built in, map sensor,
14:28 O2 sensor, it's all part of the kit.
14:30 I'm excited to put it all in the car.
14:32 Are you?
14:36 While Lucky buttons up the wiring on that Holley EFI system for the truck, I'm grabbing
14:40 the fuel tank and fuel pump out of the Crown Victoria so that we can have a quick and easy
14:45 fuel solution.
14:46 I ordered a fuel cell to install in there but it did not arrive in time and we want
14:49 to hear that thing run now.
14:50 I'm going to pull this out.
14:52 Hopefully we find a regulator in there.
15:00 Here I think that's a simple regulator and return.
15:06 That is surprisingly sturdy.
15:09 I punched a hole in the firewall, I pulled the engine management harness out and then
15:15 I put the transmission harness that we installed while the body was off in.
15:18 I want to make a grommet and a block off plate for that and then it will be all about just
15:22 routing the harness.
15:23 When the harness is all installed and looking like it belongs there, then we'll talk about
15:27 putting power to the thing.
15:29 It'll be fun.
15:30 This is my fun face.
15:34 What's going on here is the wiring harness that we got from Holley comes with the high-end
15:38 Bosch style fuel injectors.
15:40 We are not using high-end Bosch style fuel injectors.
15:43 We're using the factory fuel injectors.
15:45 What I did was I cut the ends off of the original harness.
15:47 I'm going to clean them up, strip them back, solder and heat shrink them onto the harness
15:51 so that this part is vintage and this part is badass.
15:55 Can I put it in now?
15:58 Yeah.
15:59 Alright.
16:00 Done.
16:01 That one fits.
16:05 So while I'm buttoning up everything under the hood here, the next thing is to hop on
16:09 the computer and put the tune in it.
16:11 There's a bunch of different types of ignition systems they run on all the later model cars.
16:15 This is a distributor-less coil-on plug.
16:17 There's tons of different ones and here's Tony with a Lincoln Tech Tip to tell you how
16:20 they all work.
16:24 Welcome back to another Lincoln Tech Tip.
16:26 Today we're going to talk about the modern ignition systems that you would use with an
16:30 aftermarket EMS or engine management system.
16:32 Yeah, there are those old school distributors with points and magneto systems but those
16:36 don't really apply here so we're going to skip talking about them.
16:39 An ignition system's function is to deliver a high-powered spark to each cylinder at a
16:44 specific time in the combustion cycle depending on driving conditions.
16:47 Okay, let's dig into these modern ignition systems and see what they have to offer.
16:51 First thing we're going to talk about is an electronic distributor and single ignition
16:54 coil.
16:55 A modern electronic distributor has either a hall effect or an optical sensor and that's
16:58 going to tell the computer how fast the engine is spinning and where it is in the cycle.
17:02 The computer will take that information and deliver a spark at the proper time from the
17:06 coil through the distributor to each cylinder.
17:09 This is a simple and usually cost-effective system but it has a lot of moving parts and
17:13 it does not allow for as much timing control as other systems.
17:17 Second system we're going to talk about is a distributor-less waste spark setup.
17:21 This is a big step forward in tuning.
17:23 In this setup, there will be a combination of sensors on the camshaft and/or crankshaft
17:27 that will tell the computer how fast the engine is spinning and where it is in the combustion
17:31 cycle.
17:32 The computer will fire a single coil per two cylinders and match them so that they will
17:36 fire a wasted spark on the cylinder that is in the exhaust stroke and the main spark on
17:40 the cylinder that is in the combustion stroke.
17:43 The final system we're going to talk about is a distributor-less coil-on-plug system.
17:47 This is the most advanced system on the market today.
17:50 Like other distributor-less systems, the engine computer or EMS will use a combination of
17:54 camshaft and crankshaft sensors to input the engine RPM, speed, and the position of the
18:00 engine in its cycle.
18:01 But instead of having to fire one coil per two cylinders, the COP or coil-on-plug system
18:06 fires one coil per cylinder.
18:09 These are usually mounted into the valve cover.
18:11 The advantages here are very tidy installation and the EMS has total control over the timing
18:15 curve.
18:16 Our 4.6 mod motor is a coil-on-plug setup.
18:20 That will allow our Holley EMS total and complete control over the timing curve, allowing it
18:25 to extract maximum power from our crowned Hick truck.
18:27 All right, so now that we're clear on modern ignition systems, let's get back to the shop.
18:31 Lincoln Tech can teach you how to have a career working with cars.
18:34 See lincontech.edu.
18:35 I think we have a name for this project.
18:42 We're going to call it the crown Hick, which I love.
18:45 We are ready to fire this thing up, but I've got to jump into the Holley ECU and punch
18:48 in some parameters like what kind of sensors we're using, what kind of ignition we're using,
18:52 the size of the injectors.
18:54 And then as long as we're getting the right signal and everything, it should fire right
18:56 up.
18:57 Okay, going to crank it.
18:58 Sounds good.
19:05 Yeah, it does.
19:17 Nice.
19:18 Woo!
19:19 Pretty good?
19:20 Yeah, man.
19:21 Exhaust sounds really good.
19:22 It does.
19:23 High five.
19:24 High five.
19:25 You always try to hurt me, dude.
19:27 What's up with that?
19:28 I'm sorry, dude.
19:29 Turn it off.
19:30 We're running out of oxygen fast, buddy.
19:33 All right, I think that's all we can do in here.
19:41 It started right up, which is awesome.
19:43 I cannot wait to drive this thing.
19:45 It's time now to get this thing out onto the street, let the ECU start to tune itself,
19:50 and maybe we can get some fresh air.
19:52 Let's do it.
19:53 Let's go.
19:54 Let's do it.
20:08 So now we're out on the streets with the Crown Hick.
20:10 You can see we've done a couple of things to turn this thing into a real truck.
20:13 A couple things.
20:14 A couple little guys.
20:15 It has a bed on it now that's been shortened, 14 little inches, got chopped out so that
20:19 the wheel base lines up.
20:21 Behind the wheel wells is where there's a giant crossmember in the frame for the factory
20:25 suspension.
20:26 So we made a big panel to make sure we have enough space for that bed to go down.
20:30 It's got a gas tank.
20:31 It's got some mirrors that a local police officer urged us to put on this morning.
20:35 Gages are mounted.
20:37 It's got a proper intake on the engine now.
20:39 Fans are in there and wired up.
20:40 And we are in beautiful Malibu, California on some rad closed down canyon roads, and
20:45 we're going to give this thing a workout.
20:52 So we're sitting in the Crown Hick.
20:53 I'm about to drive this thing for the first time.
20:55 Lucky drove it up to the canyons.
20:57 So this will be my very first impressions getting behind the wheel of this thing.
21:00 And our director told us to take it easy on the first run.
21:04 So we'll be doing that for sure.
21:08 Let's do it.
21:12 There she is.
21:15 Oh yeah.
21:19 A little more solid.
21:20 Oh boy.
21:21 Here she goes.
21:22 What?
21:23 30 seconds.
21:24 Slowest 30 seconds.
21:25 Sounds good.
21:26 Yeah, she got some brakes.
21:27 It's a very soft pedal.
21:28 That is disconcerting.
21:29 Oh boy.
21:42 Yeah.
21:45 Let's not do too much of that.
22:03 It'd be fun to hop in here and run around town.
22:26 Okay, that was my first drive in the Crown Hick.
22:38 And first impression, this thing is awesome.
22:40 It's got total modern performance, fuel injection.
22:43 It runs super smooth.
22:44 It sounds amazing.
22:45 It handles very well.
22:46 And it looks like a 66 F-100.
22:48 So this thing is a great run around town shop truck.
22:51 That was my first kind of ease into it, shakedown drive.
22:54 Now I'm going to take it out and see what it can really do.
22:57 Lower down, turn it in.
23:11 Old truck should not drive like this.
23:37 That's it for this episode of Hot Rod Garage presented by Lincoln Tech.
23:40 The Crown Hick project turned out awesome.
23:42 I'm just blown away.
23:43 Man, this thing didn't cost a million dollars, but it drives phenomenally.
23:47 If you're going to do this project, I highly recommend it.
23:49 We haven't done a lot of Ford stuff on this show, but man, this thing snapped right together.
23:53 I like the F-40 now.
23:54 Yeah, it's pretty good.
23:55 Don't forget, all our help came from Holley.
23:58 The guys at Cruiser Connections came up with a good car.
24:00 ADTR gave us all those hop up parts and the stainless steel.
24:03 Stainless works.
24:04 Stainless works.
24:05 Yeah.
24:06 Exhaust headers that make this thing sound so good.
24:07 Thanks to the CHP for putting up with all our shenanigans on Mulholland Drive today.
24:10 Who else?
24:11 Riverside Police for donating that car that we eventually got our hands on.
24:16 All around, thanks for your help.
24:17 Don't forget to check us out on social media.
24:18 Between episodes, I'm Tangelo96 on Instagram.
24:21 He is?
24:22 MobileTechLucky.
24:23 MobileTechLucky.
24:24 The show is Hot Rod Garage Show on Facebook and Instagram.
24:27 If you want to see the shows earlier now, you're going to have to sign up for Motor
24:30 Trend On Demand.
24:31 They'll be airing a month before they hit YouTube.
24:33 So do it.
24:34 We're worth it.
24:35 We're worth it, right?
24:36 Absolutely.
24:37 You can get a copy of Tony's number.
24:38 He'll loan you five bucks.
24:39 Yeah, I'll give you five bucks.
24:39 Thanks for watching.
24:40 We'll see you next time.
24:40 Thanks for watching.
24:41 We'll see you next time.
24:41 Thanks for watching.
24:42 We'll see you next time.
24:42 Thanks for watching.
24:47 Thanks for watching.
24:52 Thanks for watching.
24:57 (whooshing)