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The Mighty Merc – It’s Shocking and bumpy, and occasionally tracking the right way! (Part 1)
I spent way more time fretting about shock selection than I probably should have given what I wound up going with. The best I can tell, I needed about a 10-12” travel shock in the rear, and an 8” travel shock up front. With that in mind, I was going back and forth between the Bilstein shocks and the Rancho shocks. I had mixed luck with the Rancho’s on the last rig so I was hesitant to go down that…
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Belle Smith Springs – 6/1/16
We wandered down to Belle Smith Springs to hike a couple of trails before they got to overgrown. We wound up not quite heading the way we meant to on the trails but ended up back at one of the best spots at Devil’s Backbone. Running the backroads: In the mini-minivan adventure mobile: Rather picturesque parking area: With all the rains recently, the creek was up quite a bit which made some of the crossings interesting: We eventually ran into…
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The Mighty Merc – Power Steering Fun!
This was one of the bigger pain in the butt parts of this project for no good reason, but we’ll get to that frustration later. I am planning on using the stock Ford pump that came with the 5.0 to power things. From what I have been able to find, this pump should flow enough and put out enough pressure to get the job done. If it doesn’t, we’ll figure out another plan.
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The Mighty Merc – Fueling The Beast
With the doubler in place I lost a good 6” in clearance for the stock tank. Which meant it would no longer fit. I had wanted to modify the Bronco II tank I had on hand as it would allow me to place the tank in a better place, and net me an additional 2 gallons of fuel capacity. But in the name of time, I wound up just picking up a 2 door sport tank (17 gallons) so that…
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The Mighty Merc – Oil Pressure Low Warning Light
I’m a bit leery of running remote oil filters, they just seem to add unnecessary risk and complication to a critical part of keeping a motor happy. I am terrified of this thing losing oil pressure while running down the highway at 2500 rpms due to a hose blowing off. So I wanted to add a little extra warning in case that scenario were to happen. I picked up a Jegs universal low oil pressure warning light kits. The Part…