Mark VIII vs Crown vic PI..LOST??

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KingJacobo

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So I just got the Mark VIIII a few weeks ago and my brother wanted to race against his daily, a 2003 Crown Vic ex highway patrol car. It's stock minus 3.73s and a shift kit that the popo put in all there cars unless they did something else we don't know about..unlikely. It also has the heavy duty wraparound grill (100 lbs), and a spare and other crap in the trunk, I do not.
Rhino-vic-WHD-lg.jpg


My car is a 93, bone stock with a brand new air cleaner and freshly seafoamed engine. Runs good.

We were planning on jumping on the highway and doing a 30-70 ish roll, but because of a few cars could only manage to get down to 40. Both cars I believe were in 3rd, then I honked it off and we went. Both cars very quickly shifted into I'm assuming 4th, but he got the jump right when we mashed the gas and stayed about 5 feet ahead until 75 when we let off. What the hell?? The crown vic is pretty quick, but the mark even feels faster than the vic. Did I lose because of the 3.73s and starting at 40 in 3rd? I thought for sure he would be left in the dust! :mad:
 
Never race in 4th or OD. The gear was not made to handle alot of WOT. If your going to race always shut off traction control and OD.
 
Next time, turn the overdrive off and downshift into second and ride 2nd out until about 6000 rpms and then shift into 3rd and you'll walk all over him. Your car probably never downshifted at all at that mph.

Be glad it wasn't this guy that you ran into. I did when I was bone stock and got wasted a lot more than you did. :D

crown vic 0-90 with built 4.6/highstall ....... - YouTube
 
Right on the Mark said:
Never race in 4th or OD. The gear was not made to handle alot of WOT. If your going to race always shut off traction control and OD.
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Don't think my car has TC, I don't see the button on the door panel. I had a feeling the gears were the culprit..If I were to do a launch from 0-__ I'm assuming manually put it in 1, manually shift to 2 , eventually manually switch to D with O/D off the whole time (shifting @ ~6000rpm)? If from a roll, when is the best mph to leave it in 2nd and mash the gas for maximum launch? AKA "sweet spot" for these cars?

I'm hardly one to beat the snot out of my cars, I'm actually the grandma driver of my friends. A decently fast car is just new to me and I'd like to be prepared for the occasional fun.
 
my friend had a 96 HPP, which means we had the 3.27 gears and almost the exact same weight when you take into consideration the plastic hood and trunk on his car (I can't find the HPP weight listed online anywhere)

98 lsc Curb weight: 3765 lbs
96 crown vic Curb weight: 3780 lbs.

we were always dead even until 30, then I would pull away, this happened every single time we raced, which was probably around 10 times
 
KingJacobo said:
Don't think my car has TC, I don't see the button on the door panel. I had a feeling the gears were the culprit..If I were to do a launch from 0-__ I'm assuming manually put it in 1, manually shift to 2 , eventually manually switch to D with O/D off the whole time (shifting @ ~6000rpm)? If from a roll, when is the best mph to leave it in 2nd and mash the gas for maximum launch? AKA "sweet spot" for these cars?

I'm hardly one to beat the snot out of my cars, I'm actually the grandma driver of my friends. A decently fast car is just new to me and I'd like to be prepared for the occasional fun.
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TC button is right in front of the shifter if you have it. I thought they all came with TC stock?
 
KingJacobo said:
Don't think my car has TC, I don't see the button on the door panel. I had a feeling the gears were the culprit..If I were to do a launch from 0-__ I'm assuming manually put it in 1, manually shift to 2 , eventually manually switch to D with O/D off the whole time (shifting @ ~6000rpm)? If from a roll, when is the best mph to leave it in 2nd and mash the gas for maximum launch? AKA "sweet spot" for these cars?

I'm hardly one to beat the snot out of my cars, I'm actually the grandma driver of my friends. A decently fast car is just new to me and I'd like to be prepared for the occasional fun.
Click to expand...

I don't think you need to manually shift at all from 0mph. Just let the transmission shift. Whatever happened when you roll raced, you obviously were not in the right spot in the shift schedule to get a commanded downshift to occur is my bet. Your car is faster guaranteed. Run him from 0mph and see what I mean. ;) Take it out for a drive in Mexico and try some WOT punches in the 30-45 mph range and you'll begin to understand the transmission's behavior and will know when you should manually shift it into second to force a downshift. ALWAYS keep overdrive off while doing this as stated.

On my car, traction control is turned off in the info center under "driver settings". When you get to that fucntion, just hit reset and it will turn it off and illuminate a light for it that says "t/c off". ;)
 
Right on the Mark said:
He has a 1993.
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That's the best thing they could have left out of the Gen 1. Like Chris said, some had it, some didn't. my 94 didn't have it, the 93 did and my 95 doesn't have it.

I have a friend that drives a cab. They get their cars from TN and they were from one of the police departments. Has an H pipe and will chirp 2nd gear but I can tear his ass up from a dead stop, up to 80 is as fast as we have raced. His is a 99 Crown Vic and he don't even bother asking to race anymore.
 
Right on the Mark said:
He has a 1993.
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missed that part. but yeah, like nolimits car, not a standard feature. its just about useless in my opinion.

works alot better with rear cobra brakes though. with the TC on, i can launch from a stop on wet pavement with minimal spin. and then blast myself sideways on the 1-2 shift. and then again on the 2-3. its scary watching the speedo jump from 70-90 on a wet on-ramp. :eek: i didn't do that again.
 
Another thing to mention is the Vics got PI(Performance Improved) heads and cams in 2001, so they did perform better in the latter years. Some of the die-hard Vic guys who mod these cars won't even bother throwing bolt-ons at them until they do a PI motor swap. One of my Crown Vic buddies ran high 14s with a bolt-on non-PI Vic and came back the next year running low 14s after doing some exhaust work and doing a PI motor swap. Once he put a set of Hightech Stage2 Cams in, it ran steady 13s.

Shortly before it met its demise I got to drive that same car with a Vortech centrifugal blower with an 8 psi pulley. I shifted it on the tree from a stop light in Mexico and saw 9 psi on the boost gauge. The ScanGauge said max rpm hit was 7257 rpms. OOPS! LOL I gotta tell ya though, that was the most fun experience in my life. That was a low 12 second car if it ever made it to the track and I got to drive it! :D
 
Roll racing means you need to be in the right gear, with an auto you need to know when and how your car shifts which is what happened here.

Race him from a dig and you should win, even with his 373's. Please dont manually shift your car.

If you drive it like a grandma regularly , reset the battery and give it a few nice WOT runs. It keeps a long term fuel table for economy vs performance.

Test at what mph your car downshifts while rolling, for me its somewhere around 38 mph,

Make sure your TC is off, my 93 had it.
 
Thanks for the replies!

So would it be best to just turn O/D off for roll racing, or manually start in 2nd then manually shift to D? As you can tell I'm a total newbie, not trying to destroy my tranny here. Will take a closer look for the TC button if I have one today, but pretty sure mine wasn't equipped with it.
 
Both. Give it a little more throttle when you pull down into 2nd gear so you do not jerk it hard by reverse loading it. Try to be smooth with it in preparing to go. But if you need to go right then mash it and pull it into second at the same time. AS LONG AS YOUR SPEED IS IN THE SECOND GEAR RANGE. This my vary. You need to know the range (MPH) of each gear to be successfully at this.
 
My Great 8 said:
I thought you are asking for trouble manually shifting a 93-97 trans. I thought it wiped out second gear.
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autoshifting a 4-2 or an aggressive 3-2 is also supposed to blow 2nd.
so really, just leave it in first forever.
 
Sorry if I gave bad advise I thought the only real problems were reverse loading it and OD.
 
My 93 Mark VIII ran 14.7 bone stock. That Crown Vic is a low 16/high 15 second car. You need to show him which car has the real performance 4.6 bro...
 
I know this is our 2nd vic so I know what those cars can do, Lincoln is clearly faster but I just need to prove it to him, haha.

So just keep it in the 2 position with O/D off, then manually shift to D at around 6000 RPM and bye bye crown vic?
 
KingJacobo said:
I know this is our 2nd vic so I know what those cars can do, Lincoln is clearly faster but I just need to prove it to him, haha.

So just keep it in the 2 position with O/D off, then manually shift to D at around 6000 RPM and bye bye crown vic?
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It depends on which MPH you are starting at. You might want to be in manual 1st or 2nd.
 
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