Crown Victoria - Boosted & Bad Habits

Who would’ve ever thought we’d be featuring a boosted Crown Victoria!? Yet here we are; the world’s a wild place. Even wilder when it’s got Will Stipes & Dakota Arnold of Boost & Bad Habits in it. I’ll let Will Stipes take this from here:

Week 1:

I originally had a Ford Mustang I was building, so I actually purchased this Ford Crown Vic to be a daily. The perks – are that the two share the same 2v 4.6 engine that I was already familiar with. I had purchased credits for HP Tuners and taught myself to “tune”… just wanting to make the daily Crown Vic a little more fun. Things escalated…

Week 2:

I stole the Vortech v3 centrifugal supercharger & fuel system from my Mustang, and we made the intercooler pipe with couplers and pipes I had laying around.

At the time, me & Dakota had just started to take Youtube somewhat seriously. And we wanted to make a name for ourselves “Boost & Bad Habits”. We began documenting the process on the Crown Vic as we went, which surprisingly, did very well. Hey – we just might just be on to something here! We took the Vic the track with its new supercharger, and cracked-off a blistering 14.8@ 96mph lol.

Week 3:

I proceeded to steal the limited-slip and 4.30 gears from my Mustang. The burnouts got a lot better & a lot more frequent.

Week 4:

3rd gear went out. 4th gear went out. And driving 45 minutes home with just 1st & 2nd gear really drove the final nail in the coffin for the automatic transmission. I decided to push the Crown Vic to the side to get my Mustang back up & running. Unfortunately though, on the second drive, my Mustang’s engine spun 4 rod bearings.

Week 5:

With both cars down, I did what would any logical person would do… and used what good parts I had left from both cars to manual swap my Crown Vic.

I found a website ADTR.net that sold Crown Vic parts, and noticed they sold a pedal-set to add a clutch pedal. When the pedals arrived, we wasted no time ripping the automatic out of the Crown Vic & cutting it up to fit the TR3650 5-speed from my 04 Mustang. The swap was very easy to do with basic hand tools. ADTR has some great detailed photos & info for the swap on their website. The hardest part of the swap was getting the car tuned to not go into limp mode with my very limited knowledge on tuning (and being much too stubborn to ask for help). After days of playing with everything I possibly could, I finally got it to where it could run & drive.

At this time, my mindset was geared towards drag racing…

But my buddy Dakota, who started the Boost & Bad Habits YouTube channel, was trying to get me to attempt drifting. He finally talked me into going 2 hours from home on a gravel backroad to get some pictures & slide around a little. Let’s just say… that ended with us sliding into a ditch & messing up the front bumper. But good times were had.

I went to Harbor Freight…

And purchased the cheapest flux core welder they had & taught myself how to weld. The first project on the table was a bash bar. I got some tubing & borrowed a friend’s bender & created what I think is the best part of the car hands down. We took it to Niota Drift for my first event & had a blast sliding it around. But at the end of the day, I realized I wanted juuuuust a little more power.

After seeing the price for long tube headers…

I had this crazy idea that I can ‘turbo it’ for less than a set of long tubes & full exhaust. So – I went to eBay and ordered a $260 GT35 turbo, wastegate, and a couple v-band clamps. The hot side of the turbo kit is 95% factory p71 exhaust that I cut-up and repurposed to lead to the turbo. It’s welded-up by the same cheap welder. Again… everything is documented on Boost & Bad Habits.

I wanted the turbo to be visible…

But not like how everyone else does it… going out of the hood & whatnot. So with the help of a scavenge pump to return oil back to the engine, the turbo was low-mounted in the bash bar. We tossed a manual boost controller in the car & kept upping the boost until the car felt faster than ever!

One month later…

The stock motor developed a pretty gnarly knock, and so the hunt was on for another engine. I found a friend-of-a-friend who had a non-pi 4.6 out of a late 90s Town Car with enough miles on it to have been to the moon. I tossed it in… and I was back in the action!

The gender reveal…

Shortly after, a YouTube subscriber hit us up asking if we’d be interested in doing a gender reveal burnout for them. We decided the Vic was probably the best vehicle for the task at hand. So we drove the car up to his house & swapped tires. 2 minutes of rev limiter later, the car overheated & spewed water everywhere. The back brakes even caught fire due to the line lock malfunctioning at the beginning of the burnout.

We let the Crown Vic cool down…

Topped it off with water, and headed back to the shop. On the way back, the trans got locked in 5th gear and wouldn’t come out. Here we go again. But hey – that 4.30 rear gear really came in clutch having to pull-out in 5th lol.

We limped the Crown Vic back and tore the engine/trans out.

I decided to toss on a set of pi heads on the non-pi block, which gives it a nice bump in compression. Along with that, we also fixed the trans. With the bump in compression, I felt it’d be smart to run e85, so we tossed in a Hellcat 525 pump and sent it. I also thought the turbo was a little too small with the bump of compression so I ordered a $150 eBay GT45.

Once everything was installed back in the Crown Vic…

I was out “tuning it” and thought… “Man this thing feels like it could actually be fast!”

So we took the Crown Vic to our local 1/8th mile track on a set of used Hoosier 27×10 circle track tires a buddy lent me. We couldn’t get the tires to hook up as well as I hoped, and it would only net low-8’s in the 1/8th. So I ordered a set of 28×10.5s Mickey Thompson slicks. We took it back to the track & ran 7.78 off the trailer with new tires. We got it to a 7.5x @93.7… which for a vehicle with a race weight of 4,500lbs, seemed pretty fast!

Last December, we had the bright idea to put a Christmas tree on top of the car with lights & do a big Christmas burnout. One thing we’ve learned – is the stock engine does not like 4th gear burnouts. Those were the last moments of that engine’s life. Solid burnout though!