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

stangboy said:

Are you staying at one of the casinos in Biloxi? My club members and I are renting an Air BNB in Bay St. Louis.

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Island view in gulf port? I think?

HotFox said:

Can't say I'm a fan of those wheel, too solid in the center. What's with the slots? Are the convenient grab handles for easy removal? Anyway not a fan.

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I gotta ask.....what version of what I ever did were you a fan of?

Ok boys, the car is sleeping,....waiting for his 9 am duty muster. The AC was evacuated, and recharged by my BMW tech son...
According to him, the system had lost half its freon, and was down to .9 pounds. ( it's supposed to be 1.8) they sucked out all of the old stuff, and replenished it with new using their bagillion dollar robinaire recovery system...

It's cold now. It'll be cold for the foreseeable future...now all I gotta do is make the drive tomorrow.

Here's to not breaking down along the route.

a91what said:

mike did you ever get the tune changed for the W/meth settings??

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Nope,...I added the condition, but was unsure that it was worded properly. I'm gonna add it before I leave though. I have to baby it to keep it out of boost, and I don't want to do that. I know that it's not rocket science.

But just to be sure...

I added the "and" to the condition, set it to "tps", and made sure that the condition needed to be > than 50 to work w/o any hysterisis. Do I have to put the "%" sign after the 50?

HotFox said:

Oh Mike the list is long...
About everything on the red car! When I say about not a big fan of the modular.
The Moster....interior, all the body work, that mad scientist I6 except when you went NA...ok not crazy about the color but you made it work! So I like more of what you did/do then you give me credit for.
Good luck on your journey!

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Well thanks,...I can't say I ever knew that. It's like they say....a compliment will roll off w/o notice, but a negative comment will be remembered forever.
There is a giant difference between the two cars I've built on here that's for sure..In my opinion based on what I heard, the red car was collectively dissed by the entire Mustang community..with only about 30% actually liking it. The car was a punching bag when somebody posted a pic of it on the SVT web forum. ( of course considering that most of the SVT forum are labeled as pricks,..I took that as par for the course). Everybody that commented had some reservation in their reply,..stuff like: "Not my cup of tea, but", or "I like everything but the..." Put a pic of the car on the Four eyed Pride forum, and the car became the poster child for " what not to do to your fox mustang". Too many fox body purists that got their wheaties pissed in by the front end treatment.

The Monster on the other hand.....I don't know of any Mustang guy that can get bent out of shape from what I've done with this cars body, because it still looks like a Fairmont. After the mustang, I chose a fairmont specifically for that reason.
( that is unless/until I push the fenders and quarters out with a wide body mod, and put stupid wide rubber on it)
The only frustration with the above statement is that there has been a ton of stuff done to the cars body,..and because most people either aren't familiar with it, they're not likely to notice it, or......think it's a completely different brand.

I got asked yesterday if the car was a Dodge Charger.

Well...I'm here.

What a freakin spectacle...I was the 8323rd registered participant, at an " non-early bird " rate of 90.00. I don't know what that gets me yet, but all I know is that this was a freakin long assed trip.

Ok dinner behind me, ....took Kate out for a cruise ( which will end this update) time to tell you guys about what it's like to ride 319 miles in one day in the Monster.

I left at 9:20....planned to take interstate west to Meridian MS, then divided highway straight south through the Deep South to the coast.

I get on the road,..roll up the windows, turn on the AC, and settle in for the ride.
I make it 50 miles before I gotta pee. Just east of Tuscaloosa there is dead stop road construction ...I take advantage of the opportunity to relieve myself and refill the tank. It takes 4 gals, but I've been driving the thing in town before this, so I'm saying 2 gals to make it here. I check the oil....there's nothing but foam on the dipstick. I'm 6 gals in to this point.

I think that I've got some windage, so I leave things alone,.open google maps, .find a path around the construction, and head back out.

meridian is 90 miles away.

I'm watching the water temp, and oil pressure like a hawk...a glance at the water temp, then a shot to the oil pressure. I'm ping ponging back and forth for the entirety of this leg.. But the oil pressure bounces between 50 and 80 psi, and the water temp is staying dead steady at 180 degrees....( at least according to my temp gauge) I have no clue what the actual water temp is.. The gauge typically reads 10 degrees higher than what the ecu thinks the engine actually is,..so I'm having to wonder..........is this the actual temp of the engine?, or is the ecu's sensor correct? In other words,....is the engine actually 180, or is it 170?

I'm driving...the windows are up,...the AC is blowing cold,..but the engine is completely audible....you hear this sewing machine on steroids for the duration...you start to wonder if it's getting louder....you think you're hearing additional ancillary noises..."is that an exhaust leak I'm hearing now?"

You check the oil pressure,....you check the water temp...

Everything is staying dead steady.

Meridian is finally here...your exit is 5 miles away..you check the oil pressure, you check the water temp......it's climbing..190, 200, 210, 220,... WTF? The exit ramp is 1/2a mile away!!!

I'm pissed....I'm at the ramp,...and this is it...done at 150 miles whatever is going on to cause the temp to climb is happening,....and I'm gonna have to make a choice..Eiither stop, or say: Fck it!

I drop the thing out of LU, and OD....slow down...exit off of the interstate, circle round to hwy 45,..and flog it.............

The temp drops.......back to 180 degrees... Evidently, my cooling system has gas.

Hwy 45 is a 4 lane divided highway...a beautiful stretch of road if there ever was one. Typical Mississippi though....long stretches of nothing, with out any service stations attached at the exits...( you have to go for miles into a small town should you need gas if, and when an exit sign indicates that there is gas ahead)

It is also devoid of any shoulder........and T mobile doesnt service Lower Missippi.

In other words,....If I Break down now,..I got nowhere to pull over, and no way to call anybody if I do....

My hands tighten a little tighter on the wheel.

It's somewhere after that that I just let go....I stop watching the gauges. And the Monster just keeps going. I need a break 20 miles south of Meridian..I exit at a town they call Quitman...
Ironically...like a silent voice telling me to turn around .

I drive the 5 miles off of HWY 45 to get into town,....I add more gas. 6.6 more gals more. Now we're at 12.6 to get me here. I check the oil,...it's less foamy. I'm thinkin hat however much got used has dropped the level out of the path of the crank...I'm feeling better.

I get back on the road,...I get back on the highway,..I'm only periodically looking at the gauges..the Windows are down, cause I forgot to check if the compressor was maybe dragging on the engine causing it to get hot like it did back at the Meridian..so I just run with the windows open...its hot, but it's cloudy,...and were tooling along.

And the Monster just keeps on keeping on.

When I finally make Gulfport, I'm 319 miles in the bag. To get to the venue requires that you deal with rush hour traffic....that means that after driving for 5 hours,...I gotta sit in stop and go traffic...with a car that wants to get hot for no apparent reason.

Traffic bumps the temp up to 220...but it holds. As soon as I move, it moves. At the next light, it goes right back up..but again it holds...I stop looking at it.

What difference will it make anyway? If something lets go, watching it won't change anything.

I get to the venue...I register the car. I go to the room, take a shower, and Kate and I meet up, have a couple of drinks and a good dinner.

I go out to the lot to check on the car ( I've parked it in a place I'm not sposed to) the lot guard is on me as soon as I touch the car " Sir,..I'm gonna have to ask that you move that car" the guard insists... "C'mon Man!!! If I move that car into a standard parking space, somebody is gonna trash my door,....and I can't have that" I tried to argue back.

" Move the car sir,....there are several spaces in the way back that are almost deserted...and we are patrolling this lot all night long"

Ok...ill go get my key.

I tell Kate what I gotta do, and she decides that she'll come down with me. I tell her I think I'll make a quick loop up and back the strip just for giggles, and again, she insists that she wants to ride along..."ok...but I'm not gonna listen to you nag me if I decide to do some street hero stuff along the way."
"what is street hero stuff" she asks...I tell her that the street is covered in black tIre marks at certain intersections where the spectators egg the drivers into doing a burnout, or wailing on the car at a stop light...
And she says....." And you're just gonna have to do that aren't you?"

"Maybe".

She's all back seat driving while we make the circuit....I remind her that I've been driving since I was 16...when the street hero opportunity presents itself...

And she gets a dose of it.

" Is that out of your system now?"...

It's always a comfort to me that you don't like me just because I have a cool car.

droopie85gt said:

Alright...you made it! All in all it seems uneventful. Everyone is a keyboard samurai, even if they don't even know what a dipstick is, so I don't sweat people's comments. Plus people will comment/facebook/instagram that would straight up get them punched in the throat or shot, because no one is standing in front of them to retaliate.

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Is there something that I missed between last night and this morning?