03 Marauder

[Mexican Kerry]

Got this car last October, looked at it in the driveway all winter until it started to warm up. Been doing little things to it for the last couple months, trying to clean it up and get it to go a little faster.







Its far from pristine, it looks good from 30 ft away. The rear bumper cover is sagging in the middle so I need to get that reinforced.

[Mexican Kerry]

So far all I've done is exhaust, a cold air intake, gears and a tune.

The exhaust was removed and replaced with a full set from Stainless Works, including headers, cat-delete 3" pipes to their "turbo chambered" mufflers, then 2.5" rear pipes to 3" chome resonator-delete tips.









This was a crappy vid with mk wife at the wheel right after I got the headers on:

[Mexican Kerry]

Also have a K&N cold air intake on it, not sure if I'm a believer but the "experts" say its good for 5+....

Other than that, the engine is bone stock.



I ordered a Ford Racing 4.10 ring and pinion from Mo's Speed Shop in Dallas Georgia, along with an XCal 4 programmer and a 3,200 stall torque converter from PTC, built to "Mo-Spec".



The Xcal came with three tunes from Mo, for the sequence of parts I was installing. Right now I'm waiting on the t/c so I'm running the 4.10's with stock t/c. It is a completely different car than when I bought it haha. He claims that his tune combined with my minor mods will net me over 300 hp at the wheels. I'm going to set up a dyno run at a local shop to see where I'm at and to see how accurate he is. Its a canned tune, but if it works out I'd like to get him to link up with the shop to do some tweaking while the car is hooked up. The age of the internet is amazing.

[Pitbullcrazyinky]

I like.

[Wyldman]

With 4.10's and a 3200 stall, you're going to have a hell of a time keeping rear tires on that little beast, especially if you decide to do a forced induction setup. I had a similar setup in my Lightning once upon a time. I took it out for one test pass and destroyed a very expensive pair of tires.

As soon as I scraped all the melted rubber out of the wheel wells, I pulled it back into the shop, snatched the TC out of it, reinstalling the stock converter, and re-geared up to 3.73's (I hated the stock 3.55's). This setup was only slightly more civilized, but at least kept it from melting street tires almost immediately. It also raised the top speed back up over 160 mph, which wasn't really necessary, but the added gas milage from the higher gear didn't hurt at all, especially since it requires only 93, or higher, octane. Gets expensive, fast.

I'm not suggesting what you're doing is in any way wrong, and it should make for a potent package in your car. I'm just saying that my truck was far too violent with that setup. I wasn't building a race only vehicle, I needed to be able to daily drive it. If you do go to forced induction, though, you may want to keep what I said in mind.

Have fun! I look forward to reading of the further adventures of MK's Monster Marauder! I wanted one the first time I saw one, but couldn't afford to feed The Beast and a Marauder at the same time.

[Mexican Kerry]

My plan was to s/c it at some point, and a safe goal for this engine without extensive internal work would put me in the ballpark of 400-420 hp at the wheels.

The cost of this though, once I started doing some budgeting, would probably end up being approx the same as swapping in a coyote crate motor (which would put me right in that same ballpark, but wouldn't be a tired old engine).

Not sure yet which way I'm going to go. The ohc engine is kinda cool, and making it fast with the original mill does appeal to me.

On the other hand, it would make sense to do the new motor for the same money......and then save up for a blower for that one haha.

[1fastmach1]

The modular dohc 4.6 is a fantastic motor. You can put a pro charger on it with a stock bottom end and make 500hp without worrying about it popping. That's how I ran my mach until I put forged internals in the bottom. These motors are great. If you ever decide to use forced induction, those gears will have to go. Low gears don't go well with turbo/blower. Although, my mach and 4.56 gears with a 150 shot ran like a raped ape at the track.

[Toecutter1978]

Sweet ride! I have very little experience with going fast, other than Subarus. Those make one nasty sleeper.

[Mexican Kerry]

And, about the tires. Its got a set of cooper zeons on the rear right now. From a stop it doesn't spin them (unless its wet or I do a brake stand). It really doesn't make a ton of low end torque, it needs to be around 2800 to do anything. With the tune the shift points were changed so that at wot it shifts at 6000. From 1st to 2nd it spins the tires before hooking up, and sometimes from 2nd to 3rd.

The higher stall will likely cause more tire spin, at that point if its excessive I plan on changing to drag radials to minimize wheelspin. The car is heavy and doesn't make that much power, I can't afford to waste any of it!

[Wyldman]

I'm running a 2.5 ton truck with 295 40 ZR18's on it. On the street tune, it makes 425rwhp on the dyno. Those tires don't stand a chance if I get on it hard. Even drag radials will go up in a flash.

From the Wyldphone

[Mexican Kerry]

This isn't my daily driver/grocery getter, although I do drive it almost every day. I bought it so I'd have something fun to drive while I work on the Model A. Funny thing is, I've already put more time into it than my "project" car.

Time will tell but I really don't expect its going to be a real street screamer with the little I'm doing.

If I'm wrong and dr's don't hook up, I can always look at widening the rims to put more stickum on the ground.

[1fastmach1]

I'm running a 2.5 ton truck with 295 40 ZR18's on it. On the street tune, it makes 425rwhp on the dyno. Those tires don't stand a chance if I get on it hard. Even drag radials will go up in a flash.

From the Wyldphone

There's your problem. It's a truck. My car makes more power than that and I launch with my two step at 3500 and it doesn't even bark.

[Wyldman]

Well, aren't you just special, then?

[1fastmach1]

Well, aren't you just special, then?

Well my god you were talking about this and that with your truck. Don't get your feelings hurt. I DD a 99 chevy s10 with a 2.2 liter and I can do single wheel burn outs. If your referring to the lightning, they do burn outs bone stock from one end of the county to the other.