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

MY 85 GT said:

I like it alot..!!!!!!! By any chance did you ever think on making it on both sides?....except the other side a dummy one use the mesh also but not opened behind it?....to make it look and match the other one....

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Yeah, I know that adding the other side would balance out the hood.I was telling myself to remember that the thing is a one-off, and the likelihood that I'd be able to reproduce the thing closely enough to actually match each other is pretty slim. As much of a pain in the ass as it is to do, and redo everything that I do, I'd hate to have to redo that whole damn hood because it ends up looking like doo-doo.

Man what a week.

All week long, I've been working,.....no scratch that......slaving away on my most recent hair brained "modification" that I'll make to this car.

During the past 5 days, the temps have hovered just about 96, w/ heat indexes that go into the triple digits. By the end of the day, I'm completely drenched in sweat, and smelling like the bottom of a trash can. I told the wife today that after the rain, that I kept catching a whiff of something that was just "off"..I kept getting these random whiffs for the rest of the afternoon. It just seemed weird that I kept smelling the strange/bad odor especially since it had just rained.

It wasn't until after I came in the house, and stripped off the soaking wet T-shirt that I realized that the bad smell was me.:cloud:

See,.....Not only do I have to deal w/ all of the crap that is involved w/ the building of the car, I also get to do it while smelling really bad.

My last update detailed the many iterations that the hood scoop went through to get to the final version. Seems everybody liked the final version, and most commented that I should consider building a clone to match it to balance out the hood.

I agree with that. Despite the fact that there is absolutely nothing functional to gain from building and mounting another hood scoop on the opposite side of the hood, the cosmetic "balance" will be worth the effort. I only hope I can make another version that closely matches the one already built.

Now I could've done that, and this update would've been about doing it , but the fact of the matter is,.....I didn't.

I had to get rid of the other "idea" that popped into my head first.

Again, as per my sketch, I wanted to do something different w/ the exhaust. The sketch details a center mounted exhaust hanging directly below the bumper.
Building the thing turned out to be way more involved than the plan. Nonetheless, I slogged through it. I just didn't feel a single fart pipe looking thing hanging under the bumper, although it would've been so easy to just chees out and go to AZ and buy one. It's just one more thing that took way too long and caused me a whole bunch of grief along the way.

I built this thing out of 16 ga. mild steel. To say that it is a little heavy is an understatement. Especially considering that a typical exhaust tip probably weighs a whole whopping pound or two, I now have the equivalent of about 10-15 of those dudes back there.





The problem that came with building this thing, and still remains even now, is the failure of the farthest outside edges to follow the curvature of the bumper.
The bumper crowns out and up. and despite the fact that I literally clamped the main center section to the bumper before welding the outside triangles in place, The damn thing just wont follow the curve. I have cut relief cuts in the outside traingles two additional times, clamped everything in place to avoid heat related warpage and welded the thing in spurts to be sure it all was welded before committing to the final welding.

It still comes out wonky.

I started on this thing Tuesday, and up until 6 PM today, have been dicking with it non-stop.
I think it looks good, and I'm curious to see how it will sound, but I'm sure that those hanging down outside corners are gonna cause me to cut it apart again. (and I know that it's gotta be getting thin in places from all the grinding)




The 3" pipe that comes into the thing had to be "persuaded" down to the 2" height of the rear entry. I flared the transition into the box, and flattened the tube somewhat to mate the two surfaces up. Once the exhaust gets past that tiny choke point though, it flows into the big center chamber where it exits through the 1.5" x 36" slot in the center.

Right now the thing isn't tied into the exhaust, but it's only a matter of one 45 degree bend, and a couple of 3" V band weld rings to hook the thing up. As you can see in the pic, it is rigidly mounted. Well see how that goes after I get the thing back running again.

As for the droopy outriggers, I have a few choices:
A. leave the damn things alone.
B. add a filler strip on top to fill in the gap.
C. cut them off altogether, and redo the outside outrigger in a shorter, more stunted angle that more closely matches the drawing in the sketch.


I spent stupid money on some body filler to finish the thing. After doing some research this morning, I found that Evercoats Rage body filler is rated to withstand 260 degrees F. And I rushed downtown this morning to one of the paint supply stores and bought me a gallon of that stuff. $50 bucks a gallon. Compare that to the 20.00 a gallon that the actual Bondo brand costs, it better have some magic formula inside. Now that I have that junk, I'm pretty sure that I'll be able to finish the thing and get it in primer before it turns as orange as the rest of the bare metal on the car.

84Ttop said:

Vote for leaving it the hell alone here... I like it!

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Already cut it up.