LS as a patrol car

M

Maxx

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So I finally retired in November after 35 years in law enforcement. Then I was made constable in my county. For those of you from other states, constables in our state do everything regular cops do, with the addition of having to serve papers in their respective precincts, and we are the only law enforcement allowed to arrest the sheriff. In any case, I get a paycheck and a vehicle maintenance check monthly with which to buy a patrol car or maintain one that I may already own. I have not gotten around to either yet and had to deal with a scumbag. He ended up riding to jail in my 2004 LS V8. He commented on the nice patrol car. Which got me to thinking. I have money to dedicate, why not? The old gal is getting up there with over 200000 on the clock.

I have been told that either they cannot or should not re-build this engine, I don’t know if this is true, but what would be a good replacement if I cannot find one? Will the transmission need to be changed as well? What about the computers? I went to buy tires the other day and they were high, but I have 15 inch Ford wheels off a Crown Vic patrol car that I get free Cooper Cobra police tires for as long as they are used for work, does not matter how many I blow. Thought this would make a good thread because I have not seen a thread that talked about one of these as a patrol car.
 
Seems like a bad idea, much cheaper to keep a Crown Vic going.
The parts to rebuild the engine are difficult to impossible to come by.
The only engine you can replace your engine with is the same engine from the same generation.
The only transmission that will fit is the same transmission from the same generation.
What about the computers?
15" Crown Vic wheels are not about to fit.
 
My questions are, why would you want such people in your car to begin with, and what does it matter if a perp is impressed with the car that takes him to the lockup?
 
The long answer is, no.



With the new batch of cruisers by Ford, Dodge, and Chevy coming out, you can easily pick up a decent shape crown vic for literally pennies on the pound and in most cases, less than that. I have limited knowledge of what a constable entails as my state does not have them but the constables I do know of certainly don't need pursuit rated vehicles.
 
I like the idea of an LS as a patrol car. Seen a few V8's over 200,000 and they're still running. And you can still drive them for 50k miles after they start to develop problems (or maybe I'm an exception... Been running a lean code and a bad transmission solenoid for 3 years and I might get to replacing those, but so far the car is still very driveable).
 
Go ahead, make the LS into a cop car, the more reason for me to sell mine!
 
I saw a township police officer in what looked like a gen 2 silver LSE yesterday, looked like he was on duty, he was sitting in the parking lot of a closed business facing the flow of traffic. I was going the opposite way, so I could see he was an officer.
 
Joe, I'm gonna start by reminding you that I have a VERY high regard for your knowledge and also for your dedication and willingness around here.

Now having said that, over the next several months I'm going to have reason to re-address most of what you said above. I just finished dickering for a 60K mile AJ 27R engine with a good warranty. Now we'll see.

KS
 
cammerfe said:
Joe, I'm gonna start by reminding you that I have a VERY high regard for your knowledge and also for your dedication and willingness around here.

Now having said that, over the next several months I'm going to have reason to re-address most of what you said above. I just finished dickering for a 60K mile AJ 27R engine with a good warranty. Now we'll see.

KS
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Very interested in how this goes. I assume you mean a 4.0L supercharged AJ 27 from a Jag XJR or XKR. Does the different firing order concern you? Or are you just going with an independent ECU? It seems it could complicate sorting out check engine codes sort of. The AJ26 has the LS' firing order.

In a twisted, sick way, I darkly want my engine noise to be rod knock so I can justify a swap. I came across a thread here from the Polish guy (the one with the LPG or CNG setup) who had mixed and matched 3.9 and 4.0 (non-SC) parts to rebuild his engine.
 
LSFrank said:
Very interested in how this goes. I assume you mean a 4.0L supercharged AJ 27 from a Jag XJR or XKR. Does the different firing order concern you? Or are you just going with an independent ECU? It seems it could complicate sorting out check engine codes sort of. The AJ26 has the LS' firing order.

In a twisted, sick way, I darkly want my engine noise to be rod knock so I can justify a swap. I came across a thread here from the Polish guy (the one with the LPG or CNG setup) who had mixed and matched 3.9 and 4.0 (non-SC) parts to rebuild his engine.
Click to expand...

Should be able to just swap wiring on the COPs and injectors to match the correct firing order. I would be more concerned about running a supercharged engine with a non-supercharged PCM. No idea if a Torrie Tune can do a supercharged tune in an LS computer. An alternative would be using the PCM that comes with the engine and making any wiring changes necessary.
 
I would expect a positive displacement blower to be fairly easy to tune, as the power is pretty linear to the speed of the motor, all the PCM needs is how much air is getting sucked in (it doesnt really care why so much air is coming in) and then throw enough fuel to match the air coming in, the bypass valve is controlled by vacuum...

come to think of it, I dont know anyone that replaced their PCM after throwing a SC on the motor.


Lou, Rob, and Alex are/were all running OEM PCMs. what does the LS PCM need that it is missing?

I would think the biggest hurtle in Ken's swap would be getting all the sensors working right.
 
Supposedly the service manager at our sister dealership loves his LS and has looked into the swap. He says you have to swap the PCM, but that seems like it'd be impossoble to me to keep the LS features (gauges, AC, PATS, etc....) Buy i haven't talked to him directly yet.

I know you can just swap wires to run initially, but it just seems it could screw up the engine controls when something goes wrong like a misfire or knocking, but I don't know enough (yet)
 
1LoudLS said:
I would expect a positive displacement blower to be fairly easy to tune, as the power is pretty linear to the speed of the motor, all the PCM needs is how much air is getting sucked in (it doesnt really care why so much air is coming in) and then throw enough fuel to match the air coming in, the bypass valve is controlled by vacuum...

come to think of it, I dont know anyone that replaced their PCM after throwing a SC on the motor.


Lou, Rob, and Alex are/were all running OEM PCMs. what does the LS PCM need that it is missing?

I would think the biggest hurtle in Ken's swap would be getting all the sensors working right.
Click to expand...

I just remembered... I looked into tuning my LS when I got it, before I realized that it wasn't going to be the car for me. SCT sells a tuning platform for the car, which if they still sell it should solve the tuning aspect. If you can get access to one of the supercharged Jags, you might be able to copy the tune (the Jag computer may not be compatible with the SCT software) out of it and use it as a base program for supercharging your LS. Then it would just be a matter of bolting the supercharger to your engine and going to town on it.
 
I'd be more concerned about the stock engine's internals more than the tuning. I assume an SC Jag engine has better parts than stock (Edit: I mean better than non-SC), but again, I don't know. I suppose the more I learn about the swap, though, the better chance my knocking noise really is just the flywheel area, due to a derivative of Murphy's Law
 
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^ I couldn't imagine a factory forced induction system on a motor that didn't have a stronger short block. also I would imagine that the compression ratio would be lowered a bit to better handle the boost.
 
1LoudLS said:
lol, nice

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=35&v=dpaWQV_l3VE

holy sh!t what did he do to that coil cover!!! it would have been so much easier to just replace the foam wiper arm cowl water thingy
Click to expand...

Yea... about that. Both are my videos. I was told water was getting in there and high temp silicone would fix it. And this was a guy who worked at the dealership not a mechanic, but the service manager. Needless to say, the dealership isn't there anymore. That has since been replaced. My next fix is the window cowl, which I also siliconed. I replaced the foam seal and water was still getting down there so I siliconed it. I was young, and tired of replacing coils and plugs. Ive learned since then.
 
I had the sound on a -5 degree day in the winter.

Guess I'll have to keep a new alternator on the back of my mind.
 
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