Basically I’m taking a 1968 Mercury Montego MX Station Wagon Unibody that has been damaged / unsafe to really drive, and then Installing a 2001 Mercury Grand Marquis Ls Frame and powertrain in it. I wanted to do a forum post showing the whole process I’m going through to possible help others, and get some help myself.
I’ll post some pictures below of the cars before being taken apart, and some more backstory to everything. I’m also doing youtube videos showing a lot of the process and interesting things I’m finding out along the way. The first Video below is basically an introduction to the cars, and getting them ready to be taken apart.
68 Mercury Montego MX Station Wagon
01 Mercury Grand Marquis LS
A long time ago I wanted to put a frame under this 1968 Mercury Montego Station Wagon. At the time my dad ended up getting the wagon back from me. Many years has passed, and the car broke another axle of many and hit the ground hard. After this last hit it left the car pretty out of wack, not counting many of the other subframe problems. It needed a new sub frame or some serious straightening work. He decided he didn’t want to mess with the job and gave me back the car. Now after the current damage I was 100% ready to try the frame install. With a lot of thought and measuring I decided that the modern Crown Victoria Chassis would be a great fit. Its very close in track width, and the wheelbase is only off around 3/4 in. give or take. The Mercury Montego is very similar to other cars like the Ford Torino, Ford Falcon, Ford Fairlane, Mercury Comet, Mercury Cyclone and other Ford unibody cars around 1968.
This is going to be a full build series showing how I plan to get through mounting the frame to the unibody chassis. I will be using a 2001 Mercury Marquis LS as it is basically exactly the same as a Crown Victoria. The Grand Marquis was bought for $500 and had an additional $100 put into it to get everything going good. It basically needed a lot of body work that was not cost effective to fix. With that and other factors it made it the perfect donor vehicle to fix the wagon at a decent price. This marquis had rear air bags, 3.55 gear ratio, and dual exhaust giving it a lot of great additional options to start with, not counting the 4.6 ford that has a huge aftermarket parts list, 4 wheel disc brakes with abs and traction control. The station wagon was bought by my dad in the early 90’s for $100 and has been in my family driving for over 25 years. I remember being taken to 2nd grade in the 90’s with the wagon and all my school years after. I learned a lot about working on cars from all the work I helped my dad with on it growing up. It really means a lot to me to be able to bring it back to life, and keep it going for many years to come.
This first video will be the introduction to show you both vehicles and getting them ready to be taken apart for the chassis swap. Many videos are to come with the crown vic frame swap, and all the performance upgrades later… If You have any questions or need help with anything then just ask. I will help with anything I can.