...throttle body swap, that is. A while back I swapped the 70mm throttle body off of a 2003 Lincoln LS onto my 2010 Mercury Grand Marquis, with good results. I neglected to take any photos at the time, but recently Spamgod reached out to me for one for his 2009 CVPI, so I took photos this time when I prepped his for install.

Preperations


So the biggest part of the swap is, obviously, the throttle body. For the 70mm swap the only throttle body I am aware of that works for ours is the one off the 2003-2006 Lincoln LS V8. It’s entirely possible that the retro Thunderbird or certain Jaguars may share the part, but I don’t know for certain, so I can’t say anything. You’ll also need one of the plastic spacer gaskets that came stock from Ford, or an aftermarket equivalent. This will get modified. Tool wise, you’ll need a drill, 5/16” bit, a sharpie, and a dremel for this job.

1. Gasket Modification

The plastic spacer gasket will need to be modified to use the LS throttle body. There is no question there. I didn’t do the modified gasket for this one, but I modified the paper Fel-Pro gasket I used as a template in a similar manner to the way the spacer gasket will need to be.



If you look at it, I lopped off part of one side. This is to avoid cutting into the throttle body where it’s got a small protrusion onto the mating surface. You will also need to make the cut in order to mark the throttle body for the new bolt holes.

2. Throttle Body Modification

The throttle body is meant for a larger plenum bolt pattern than our cars, so there is some drilling involved. I suspect it’s based on the same throttle body used by Black Sunshine in his F-150 75mm upgrade, but again I cannot confirm. I marked mine for drilling using the gasket as a template, and will note that there is ***some*** overlap between the holes on the throttle body, as shown:



If you look over by the throttle body motor, you’ll see the protrusion that requires the gasket modification. Drilling the holes is fairly simple, however there are a few pitfalls to avoid. Drilling overlapping holes like this, the bit may try to slide into the other hole. As long as you keep control of your bit, you should be fine. Additionally, if you don’t manage to keep the bit straight, you may find yourself going back and cleaning up the holes later on so you can bolt it to your plenum. The end result should look a little bit like this:



At this point you should be fine to install it, but if you plan to port the throttle body or your plenum, now is the best time to do it.

3. Installation

Installation is fairly straightforward for the throttle body. Just have to remove the zip tube, remove the old throttle body, and bolt the new one in with the coolant tubes facing upwards. Reassembly is where it gets tricky, however.



Shown above is the throttle body, as installed on my car. The big, glaring change there, other than the throttle body, is the Spectre tubing between the throttle body and the zip tube. It wasn’t the route I wanted to go, as originally I planned on doing as Black Sunshine had and heating the tube to fit, but since SOMETHING must always go wrong when doing these, I melted it enough that it ripped when I put it on the throttle body. Now I could have bought a new zip tube and tried again, but instead I decided to cut off the melted part and attach the Spectre part. It should be a 3.5” to 3.5” adaptor, but I didn’t have one so I made use of a 3” to 4” instead. The end on the zip tube was superglued on both the outside and the inside to prevent any leaks, and the clamp added on as a precaution. The car had an absolutely night and day difference without a tune, still pretty decent with one.

Title is a bit miss leading lol

glad it worked for you

I figured it would be a worthwhile joke lol. Just hoping it proves as worthwhile to others as it did me.

Convinced me to click on it.

Well to be fair, I wouldn’t have clicked on it if not for the title, so it works lol

Ha-ha, definately click bait, but also a good mod!

I just finished the install and I must say I’m impressed. Dropped my 0-60 time by .3 of a second. Plus it sounds good and a noticeable throttle response. Total credit to claybelt, I never heard of anyone using an LS TB for later model panthers, thought I was going to have to go with BBK at too high of a price. I can say 100% that it works.

Believe it or not, the only reason it even occurred to me was there was a 2003 Lincoln LS next to the Vic I pulled a standard throttle body off of in the junkyard to compare truck throttle bodies to. When I went to go chuck the throttle body back into the vic, someone had pulled the intake manifold off the LS and left the throttle body. I went ahead and compared it for [censored] and giggles and decided I liked what I was seeing well enough to give it a shot, and it payed off.

I was thinking this would be a good situation for a spacer as the LS plate sits right up to the plenum and the stock has about an inch or so of housing after the plate.

A spacer plate isn't going to do ANYTHING on one of these cars. Or any port fuel injected car, for that matter.

To the O/P: That actually looks like a 5.4 3V throttle body, like Black_Sunshine and myself have used. The bolt pattern looks the same (requires drilling), but the neck-down to the throttle plate looks a little tighter.

For what it's worth, I'm pretty sure that Ford put these same throttle bodies on 5.4 powered E250/ E350 vans with 5.4s. I work on A LOT of those, and it looks identical.

Alright, then I guess that confirms my suspicions that this 70mm TB is based on the 75mm y’all used. Or maybe it’s the other way around. Either way, best of both worlds I suppose

I’m not saying spacer for power or anything else. I’m saying spacer would make it an easier install and move the plate back to the stock position.

I would think you would want the throttle plate to open fully before the plenum and not partially in the neck at WOT. Just a hypothesis, but wouldn’t the spacer bring the throttle plate back enough so at WOT it is clear of the neck? Also the fact that these are literally installed upside down so the plate opens in the opposite direction might affect flow. I thought about getting a 75 mm throttle body before I realized that the plenum is only around 70mm which would cause a bottling effect from the 5mm reduction. But again, I’m no expert and have never used a 75mm throttle body. All I know is that this mod greatly increased the smile on my face as I push the skinny pedal to the right. I will post my results with the spacer when it gets here. Again, credit to claybelt for doing this mod, I wouldn’t have even thought to do it. And at a ridiculously cheap price.

updates? what about those cooling tubes...you just leave them pointing up and open?

Yeah. They had no purpose on the vic, I just haven’t removed them on my car.