Build Thread 1978 Mercury Cyclone. The pig is in the pen.

CarMichael Angelo said:

Man!
Am I glad I decided to put some miles on this thing!
( Cause if i didn't........I'd be fck'd)

I take the thing out for a random drive. I put it on the interstate, get it up to speed, engage converter L/U, and cruise. I get out the GPS app on my phone, and compare what my speedometer is telling me....Yep,...78 MPH. The engine is humming along at about 2400 RPM..The temp is staying at 180.....
I turn on the A/C, and roll the windows up,...It's not great, but passable.

I drive it 20 miles and stop at the Riverchase Galleria.
( I need some undies.....Calvin Klein Mens trunks)
I stop the thing everything sounds normal,..I shut it off,...nothings dripping from underneath....Perfect. I go inside and drop 100.00 on 6 pairs of undies.

I come out 15 minutes later,...still dry as a bone underneath. It starts on the first crank (as long as I barely press on the pedal). Off we go.
Traffic coming out of the Galleria was the first test.....were those fans in back gonna make a difference in water temp.

Nope......MOF the engine temp continued to climb to about 210 before the lights changed and allowed me to start moving.
Complete waste of time and energy.

I get it on the interstate for the trip back,...set in in the same cruise state,...and drive.

I hear a bang.

Like the kind you hear when a bolt hits the car. You wonder if that was a rock, or if that was in fact a bolt, and if it was,...what is coming loose you wonder more.

Nothing is degrading, everything is going OK........Right up until time to get off the interstate. I lift, and I hear a loud clunk coming from the RF wheel well.

I'm thinking I got a caliper coming loose. The brakes grind like there is no pads on that wheel,...Maybe the pin that holds the caliper together has broke.
I'm 2 miles from the house...I know that I'll never make it if I don't baby the thing home....
So I creep.

The front rotor sounds like holy hell and the car now chatters when trying to stop it. Fortunately, I got two stops left to make. I coast through one, the other is my house.....Only it aint happening....The caliper swings up and jams itself against the wheel like a stick in my spokes...and I stop dead..... In the cul-de-sac in front of my house.

How freakin bad would this have been?

I go down the drive way and drag my floor jack back up. I remove the wheel, and there it is..( or isn't in my case) one bolt barely holding on, and the other.....(remember the loud bang?)

So,...knowing that I wont have a prayer of having that bolt, I go back into the garage to find the next best thing....an SAE 7/16 bolt out of a bellhousing be'd my guess. I put it back together finger tight, put the tire on with three lugs, and get it into the garage.

It's now back up,....nothing was hurt..there's just some scoring where the caliper jammed itself against the inside of the wheel.

Time to take off all the wheels, go and get the bolt, (or at least a high strength version of it) and some red loctite.

Every bolt that holds brake hardware is getting the dose.

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CarMichael Angelo said:

One day and a wake up..then it's on. Never before have I been apprehensive about my chances of actually making my intended destination like I am with this car... But then again, I've never had a car like this.

I just checked the event info...the thing is huge...Stuff going on in about 10 places along the coast daily, with bands rotating out every couple of hours in several locations all through the day. At night, the Casinos all have additional entertainment itineraries going on till Like 2am. Actually, there's so much junk going on, I don't know where to go to do the junk that's going on.
I'll figure it out I guess.

I added freon to the AC system with one of those trigger can systems.....big mistake. Now there's so much freon in the system, the compressor is struggling....guess I'm releasing some of it back out into atmosphere. Or maybe I'll take it to work, and have them recover some of it. I gotta get the front tires back on it to do that.


Tomorrows the big day. Google maps shows it to be about 4 hrs, 40 minutes, driving mostly interstate until I get to Meridian, Ms. Then it's highway ( 2 lane blacktop?) straight south from there. It'll be the reddest of redneck for about 150 miles.

( Maybe I should get a dump trump bumper sticker for the Monster,.........Whatdya think?)

I'm thinking neither me or the car will ever be found again...

imagine me being chased by a bunch of yeahoos piled in the back of a 49 Chevrolet step side all waving their clubs and bats....
On second thought,....I'll limit my political opinions for this trip I think.

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