Finally!

This is the most exciting post for me thus far in the history of our blog. This post also marks a first for us here at FiveThirty: Our first car feature! It truly is an honor to be the first to feature this one of a kind Crown Victoria. One of the first questions he gets asked is, “Why a Crown Victoria?” He replies, “Everyone builds mustangs, and I am an avid sedan fan. I kind of wanted to depart from the norm and do something off the beaten path. Something that no one would expect. Seeing a Crown Vic with a custom GT500 inspired engine- Yeah. No one saw that coming.”

He had been sourcing and purchasing parts for two years before the build was finally completed. Interestingly enough, I got to become good friends with Dallas over the course of those two years. The first time I had ever spoken to him was after he mentioned to me that he had “the” modified Vic in the work parking lot. I asked, “Oh, that’s YOUR car?!” After we cleared that up, he began to tell me about this plan to boost his Vic and that he had just purchased the first part for his build. It was the supercharger!

This picture gives us an idea of this car’s humble beginnings as a P71 Police Interceptor. The stock engine was a 4.6L SOHC rated at 250 HP at the crank. The car only had one owner before Dallas, and that was the FBI based out of Sacramento county. He purchased the car with just under 25,000 miles on the odometer in 2011. In 4 years he has racked up almost 26,000 more miles, bringing the total to exactly 50,987, and a hair-raising engine swap that is not to be reckoned with.

He began by hoisting out the stock 4.6L, 2 valve engine, and tearing it apart. He wanted to inspect the pistons to make sure they were in good enough condition to run boost. Then, it was time to build it with the new Cobra heads. I was fortunate enough to get to help along with Dallas’s good friend Damon. Damon is very familiar with both the panther platform, and the Focus platform. It was great getting to know him, as he was a very knowledgeable gearhead.

As you can see, the stock block was used to go along with some 4 valve (#4 Valve probs’) DOHC heads from a Terminator. The heads were purchased from a private party. These specific heads are OEM 2004 Terminator 9-thread “DC casting” heads. The cams are also OEM Terminator. These heads are some of the best flowing 4.6L DOHC heads available on the market, and it is extremely commonplace to be able to hit 600RWHP+ on un-ported heads and stock cams. Dallas actually needs to port match the runners to match the fully ported lower intake.

It wasn’t just mechanical work, the OEM wiring harness also needed to be modified too. He had to re-locate all coil-on-plug pigtails to a separate harness lead that goes inside of the valve covers, from their stock location on the main harness tract. Due to the sheer size of the DOHC heads, he had to elongate almost every other lead to a minimum of 8 inches, and some as long as 15 inches to reach their correct location with the new configuration.

With the engine back in, it was time to put everything together. This included new coolant lines, oil lines, supercharger coolant crossover pipes, and relocating the battery to the back in order to make room for the supercharger coolant reservoir. Dallas also got a new Carbon Fiber intake to go with his new Dragon throttle body, and Cobra Engineering blower adapter plate. With the throttle body being cable driven, it gives a great throttle response. The throttle body, blower bracket, blower tensioner, and IAC are fully show polished to match the blower. 

A part normally overlooked on high horsepower builds is the braking aspect of the car. Usually it’s common for people to forget about this aspect of a car. However, when you have a car going fast you do want to be able to stop quickly as well. He went with a combination of R1 Concepts GT500 rotors and Corvette C5 4 piston calipers with carbon fiber ceramic pads.

Dallas took the amazing power and versatility of the Eaton M122 supercharger- an OEM supercharger for the 2007-2012 Shelby GT500 Mustang and adapted it to work with his 4.6L DOHC engine. He was able to achieve an initial power level of 416 RWHP and 437 RWTQ on 10 PSI of boost and 19 degrees of advanced timing. He is currently using the stock upper and lower pullies on his supercharger, so there is no extra boost being added to the setup. He lucked out and found a ported and polished supercharger, which is pushing around 3 PSI more than a stock M122 would under normal conditions.

Having already maxed out both rotating assembly and his transmission’s HP/TQ handling ability, no extra boost can be added until both these weak links have been addressed. Based on the in-depth research Dallas has completed for the project, his particular M122 supercharger should peak at around 21 PSI. If he opts to do water-methanol injection, he can gain a little more boost as well. With all of this considered, it should be able to readily furnish north of 600 RWHP with an aggressive pulley setup on pump gas.

The supercharger itself sits atop an adapter plate on top of the heads. The snout of the supercharger was a very tight fit with this setup, and the supercharger coolant pipes were made specifically for this build as well. This supercharger does have the stock M122 snout, but where it differs is having a Cobra Engineering extended pulley hub installed, bringing the lateral pulley alignment to the same alignment as the OEM cobra setup. The alternator brackets were also a very snug fit, but everything ended up eventually fitting perfectly.

Here is Dallas’s Blue Vic next to his friend’s Mercury Marauder. The owner of this particular Marauder is Chris from ADTR.net. His car has ADTR’s Stage I, Vortech self contained supercharger system. He has opted to use the original heads and block with his setup. His engine is boosted at 7PSI, making 375 RWHP and 362 RWTQ.

The aesthetic transformation begins up front with SE grills. These particular grills are extremely rare on the US platform.  ADTR got less then 30 of them from the Middle East, and is currently the only vendor that has them stateside. Dallas was one of the very the first people to have one from them. Unfortunately, once their stock is gone, they are gone forever in the US. He also has a Mustang Mach-1 front lip which he modified to fit on his bumper. The front side is also rocking some aftermarket headlights and turn signals by Starr bi-xenon with HID housings featuring all Philips hardware.

Another addition was the bovine… err, cowl hood! Dallas wanted to be sure that there wouldn’t be any fitment issues between the blower and the hood.

For the two shots just above, you can see the GT500 wheels fitted in an awesome metallic grey color. It also has larger exhaust tips in the back as well as a trunk spoiler for a subtle, yet aggressive look.

To finish the post, I want to share some final thoughts. Dallas put a lot of man hours into creating an incredibly unique ride. It’s definitely something that no one has ever attempted until now. The cool thing about this build is that everything worked out great. Even the long drive to Southern California to get the Vic tuned two days before Fabulous Fords went very well. I would like to point out, that this post also starts coverage for Dallas’s Blue Vic, as he will get his own category for updates. Watching him create this build gives me the desire to boost the Focus myself. (Editor’s note: Yeah me too, but unfortunately if I tried my engine would explode into a million pieces because Skyactiv. So HA!) I have been doing a lot of research so far, and am now in the saving phase to hopefully be the first boosted MK3 Focus. I hope you enjoyed the feature, and I hope to do a lot more features for other vehicles along with the Blue Vic. Thanks so much to everyone that decides to tune in for future features! Godspeed.

-Jose