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The Mighty Merc – Rear Cargo Platform
I have a dream that will probably never become a reality, but I hope to aspire to it one day. That dream is to have all the tools required for the Merc to just live in the Merc full time. That way when I’m ready to wheel, I won’t have to spend any time getting things loaded up, hoping that I didn’t forget something. I can just jump in and go.
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The Mighty Merc – Front Winch Bumper
Being able to self-recover is something I try to strive for with my builds. In that vein, I make it a point to fit a winch to the front of my toys. I will admit that it doesn’t get used that often, but when it does, it’s a big help! The goal was to tuck the winch in as tight to the body as I could in hopes that I could reuse the stock bumper cover for a cleaner look…
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The Mighty Merc – It’s Shocking and bumpy, and occasionally tracking the right way! (Part 2)
With the rear out of the way, it was time to knock out the front shocks, bump stops, and track bar. A little work with the plasma table and I was able to get the brackets knocked out for the track bar (reusing the old axle bracket I had):
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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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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.