Oh, this thing is running so bad. This thing is definitely misfiring flashing check engine light catalyst, damaging misfire, not good. Last time i drove the lightning to legit street quarters. I noticed it was running a little rough, so i shut it down and just left it at the shop uh.

It's been there for about a week, so i'm just driving around the block and uh yeah. It's definitely misfiring. So we absolutely have to fix this because we need this truck to tow. The trans am first to carmax for an appraisal, because i'm just curious what they would give me for a car that i mean basically has frame damage.

I mean the whole floor and everything is rotted out um, and then we are going to be giving this trans am away to a high school student in need who also owns an lt1 firebird with a blown engine. So this trans am is going to get properly recycled. The circle of high performance life will be complete, but it all starts with me diagnosing and fixing my svt ford lightning. So, let's get back to the shop.

Oh this thing's flashing at me. I feel so bad um and let's fix this guy up all right. Let's see what this code is: diagnosis, control unit, pcm, all right, i'm going to say, cylinder, six misfire place your guess down below which cylinder is it? Winner gets bragging rights in the comments cylinder. Three cylinder three and we have an over boost condition.

Uh. I haven't gotten into boost in a long time, but then again i've never scanned this thing or cleared its codes um and it does have a larger crank, pulley so curious. How much boost this thing does make, but if you guys have followed along in the lightning series, you know that this car actually has bad head. Gaskets i'll leave the link down below it's too much to explain right now, but we can still tow a car with bad head gaskets, believe it or not, but anyway uh cylinder, three misfire right here: uh, let's just go ahead and start taking a look at ignition.

All right so cylinder number three: is that one right there so passenger side? We have one two three and you guys warned me when i first bought this truck, that the excel coils were no good and they always go bad, and i just noticed this because i haven't touched the ignition system on this car, but they're not all excel. So you can see one yellow excel there. These back ones are black. I think they're, just factory ford or some kind of aftermarket, coils and check this out.

This is the number five coil on the driver's side and it's not even bolted in properly it's totally loose. I would have imagined this was causing the misfire uh, but apparently not. I guess this is okay. We're gon na fix it anyway, but hopefully we just have to tighten that bolt and it's not stripped crossing.

My fingers here got one of the pcv hoses out of the way. This should be pretty easy, so each coil just has one bolt and see if we can get it out of the way of this fuel, rail, yep. Okay, that looks fine, it's not cracked or anything, and i don't see anything inside of here, though, that's not good. Oh okay, all right! This guy is just kind of dangling in there.

So this is what actually makes contact with the plug and yeah. I don't know that might have just broken off, not really sure all right, so i'll pull this rubber boot off and you can see there's no spring the spring used to slide over this little metal spade in here and that's how it makes contact with the plug. This simply could have just come loose when i pulled it off or had it come loose earlier. That would definitely cause the misfire, but i think just so we don't mess around here.

I'm gon na go ahead and swap this with one of the easier coils to get to all right. So i'm just taking a look at the spark plug here and it wasn't making any ticking sounds or anything like that. So i don't believe, there's any problem with the spark plug if you guys aren't familiar the 99 to 2002. Svt lightning had an issue because the heads only have four threads for the spark plug, so the plugs would actually pop out.

So the lightnings had the issue and pretty much all the other triton v8 engines in the pickup trucks and suvs and stuff like that, and then in 2003, on the lightning and probably on the rest of the lineup. They cut eight threads into the head for the spark plug and that pretty much fixed it ford had only been making engines for like a hundred years at that point and somehow they thought going to four threads for a spark plug on the naturally aspirated version was A good idea, and then those were popping the spark plugs out and sometimes dent in the hood and so on the boosted application they stuck with the four threads. It makes absolutely no sense, but when i take these heads off to do the head gaskets, i'm definitely going to do something about that. Well, on the first coil, we got the spring attached to the coil, but the rubber boot is left inside of the cylinder head.

There we go. These are probably just cheap aftermarket coils. I don't see any marking on them at all, but whatever we'll swap this one out with three and see what happens? Okay, so i've moved cylinders, three's, excel coil to cylinder one and before we started up, i was just checking over all the other coils. I found another loose one, which is a pain in the butt, with the fuel pressure regulator to get to had to use an extension and a swivel socket.

But look at how loose this thing is, i mean it was just about to come out surprised. This wasn't misfiring ford guys. Let me know is this: what happens when the spark plugs start to get loose? I didn't take one out because i'm afraid to ruin the threads, but they are tight. I checked the two on the other side, so i'm not sure.

What's going on, i'm just gon na go ahead and assume installer error on this one, all right, so we'll go ahead and blow these codes out. So we start from scratch all right. There we go. Let's start it up, so it is possible that that excel coil was not making contact with the plug and that we might have just fixed it right now.

Uh. I don't think so, though yeah it's shaking around still misfiring when it idles down. You can definitely hear the miss yeah. It's still misfiring.

Well, luckily, for diagnosis purposes, this shouldn't take too long to trip the light. If it moves to cylinder one. We know it's a bad coil. Okay, literally two seconds later, the light is on: let's scan it.

I just pulled the lightning back into the shop and, oddly enough, it's cylinder number three. I was really hoping we can get away with an ignition coil um, but what's weird is the over boost. Condition is coding up almost immediately. It's just like everything is exactly the same.

So that's a little weird to me. We didn't get into any boost at all, all right guys, so i could feel the injector tapping away here could be an injector issue, but i got to take a look at this plug. I did not want to pull it in case. I ruined the threads, but i'm going to have to try here because i'm dead in the water.

It's broke loose kind of nice. I think this is always scary on these. These triton engines, you never know if you're, going to destroy the threads and then you're in a whole world of trouble. Huh doesn't look too bad all right, so here's the plug it's an auto light, platinum and at first glance i thought the gap was quite large, but looking it up, this is supposed to be 50 000.

I think this is about that. Maybe a little bit more. I wouldn't imagine it's a big enough gap to have an issue with these coil on plug coils, no matter if they're the excel or factory ones um, but it is possible that this plug is fouled out and just not firing. So it's worth three bucks to try a new one, just like it's worth trying keeps if you're experiencing male pattern.

Baldness, like two out of three men do by the age of 35., so keeps is a subscription service that makes treating male pattern baldness easy and affordable by keeping everything online, and it's just as easy. As a few drops on your head now, the earlier you get started with peeps the better and all you have to do is go to keeps.com, legit or click on my link in the video description box, when you do you're going to get 50 off your first Order and after you sign up you just consult with a real doctor from the comfort of your own home, come up with a game plan and then keeps get shipped discreetly to your house automatically. You have nothing to lose but more hair on your head, and i just want to say a big thanks to keeps for continuing to support automotive content creators like myself now, let's go see if we get lucky with a three dollar spark plug. I ran to the store and bought a plug.

I'm not replacing all eight, because we're gon na have this engine out soon and uh. This is about 45 thousandths on the new one, and this gapper only goes up to 45 thousands, but it's got a little play in there. I'm gon na say this is 50 thousandths. The gap is probably good enough.

All right i've, disabled the fuel system. Let's just check compression and without knowing the spec, i'm going to go ahead and say we have good compression, definitely enough compression for that cylinder to fire all right. So at this point, we're gon na go ahead and pop in our new spark plug just kind of hope for the best. Here i can feel the injector ticking.

It could still be clogged. There still could be an injector issue, but uh. You know for three bucks. We got ta, try this plug and just see what happens.

All right, plug is in just gon na give this a little snug. Okay, that's good! That's good! I want to go too crazy. Tell you these threads they're scary! They are so scary. You hear of all the horror stories of these plugs, just shooting out and stripping the head out and ain't.

Nobody got time for that in the hole. Ah, it's got no fuel in the rail. What the world i put the relay back in, or did i i think, i put put the relay in the wrong spot - there's an empty relay spot right next to the fuel pump relay god. You got to make me wake, don't you? Okay, we have a vacuum leak somewhere, it's got to be obvious.

It sounds like it's coming right from the area i was just messing around in this thing is fighting me. I don't care as long as the misfire is fixed found. It didn't have this hose on the pcv all the way all right there we go. That's smooth guys that is very smooth.

Remember before this was shaking around it just idled down the tailpipes aren't shaking. I think we might be all right. I got ta say i: i've never been a ford guy, but i've always loved the way that these cars and the 0.304 cobras sounded. When i bought my ws6 in 2003.

I was always jealous of of that of that noise, so i think we're good i'm gon na go. Take it around the block as long as our check engine light doesn't come back on and it doesn't start shaking on me we're good to go to pick up a trailer which u-haul claims. They will rent me this time. If you guys were around for the giveaway lexus reveal video.

They would not rent me a trailer. They said this was not a real f-150. It was infuriating. I brought him out.

I showed him the truck and he's like i've. Never seen anything like this before it looks totally stock anyway, they claim they will rent me the u-haul. So let's go find out all right. So i've cleared the codes out again, it's a little wet out right now and snowy.

I can already tell this thing is fixed. It was already shaking around by now and we've already driven about a block, no check engine light before it came on immediately. All right, i can't go too crazy with the lightning it has blown head gaskets, but they only leak under boost. So as long as i just drive the truck, normally it's fine, it doesn't blow any smoke, it doesn't lose any coolant or anything like that.

But that's it! It was a spark plug, don't count out the easy stuff we fixed it for three dollars and if you guys saw the reveal video or the second lightning video. You know that the previous owners didn't really maintain this car mechanically. All that well cosmetically. It's really nice, but uh yeah.

I guess they didn't change up, plugs all that often and it fouled out and and that's what we have so anyway, when we take the engine out, we'll put all new plugs in it and take care of a bunch of other things at the same time. But for now we have to go to carmax with a rotted out destroyed practically totaled firebird, get an estimate and then give it away to a high school kid in need. But first i'm going to do some donuts all right. Well, i just got back from u-haul and they rented me a trailer same location, different guy though, and he came out, he was totally into the lightning.

I told him. I was towing a 96 ta. He loved that also we checked the lights. Everything is good, so that guy was much better than the last guy.

Who literally did not believe that this was a ford f-150. It literally says f-150 right here i gave him the vin. He would not believe me, so he wouldn't rent me this trailer and we had to use a 6-cylinder toyota 4runner. Instead, he was totally cool with that, but anyway uh this trailer is a little snowy.

I got to clean that up. I got to clean up the ta and i have a battery for the ta, so we can get it off the trailer and drive it right into the carmax parking lot like a totally normal car. All right. I've installed a temporary battery filled up the totally flat tires.

Let's see if it'll fire up, it's about probably 15-20 degrees out, come on, not good. Oh catching come on baby. Yes, it runs. It's got a rough cold start, but no smoke whatsoever, no ticking from the engine.

This thing runs pretty darn good, especially for having six or seven year old fuel. If you guys were around for the last video, you know that i was able to drive this thing around. It does have brakes. It drives quite nicely.

It shifts perfectly as well, and i drove it by mel's house, the guy i bought it from in the last video and he wasn't home. I can't get a hold of him. I really wanted to drive it by and have him take a look at the car running and driving, but he's not answering fun. Fact, i've never loaded a car onto a trailer and i've, never trailered a car before in my life and i've chosen the winter time and a two wheel drive svt, lightning and u-haul trailer to be my first tow rig, so that went really well, hopefully, the rest Of this does too all right.

Ta is loaded up, we're heading to legit's recorders to pick up max and take off some plates and uh. If you guys ever wondered what a squatted svt lightning looks like well, hopefully, you've never wondered that because it'd be horrible, but this is it this is it it's definitely feeling the weight and we haven't even taken off yet. Luckily, this thing's running like a champ, though all right guys, i made it to my shop without a hitch that is so bad, but the lightning did really well it's a little squatted. It does feel a little heavy back here, but i kept it at about 55.

On the highway and it's gon na do just fine so for those of you who haven't seen any of the ta videos, just a quick recap, although this car looks fine from a distance, it's all but totaled. Every single panel on this car has been hit, filled with bondo and is rusting and probably the worst part of the car is the floors they're completely rotted. Through everything is rusted. Underneath the steering suspension exhaust it would be way more cost effective, just to buy a good, solid roller and transplant the drivetrain, which works fine and, of course this has a bunch of other good parts on it that can be removed.

So it's a great part out car, the bumpers, the spoiler, the tail lights, the glass all of that kind of stuff is in good shape, but it just wouldn't be worth it to fix this particular car anymore. There we go um. The odometer on this trans am has also been rolled back, so it says 125 000 miles, but on the carfax it said 180 like seven years ago, so there's a good chance. This car has like 200 000 miles and if this interior looks a lot cleaner than it did in the last video, it's because i have cleaned it.

This car had some mice living in it and i don't want to bring it to carmax like that. So i've had this car for about three weeks and i have sprayed a bunch of mouse repellent in there. I let it sit outside, and then i placed a christmas cookie on that seat over there and it was untouched for over a week. I've looked everywhere.

We don't have any mice left at all, and then i disinfected and cleaned the entire interior. So all the seats are pretty much shot this one too. The dash is cracked as well um, but you know for a part out car. There are plenty of good parts inside of here also, and now it smells really nice all right.

We made it to carmax and we're just gon na straight up unload the ta right here in the carmax parking lot, and this is their lineup of auction cars. These don't look too bad, but on the other side are some total beaters, so they've definitely seen way worse than this and a couple of years ago i brought my 200 c43 here. They offered me 201 because they recognized who i am, but today we have a secret weapon. We have max he's bringing in his 96 ta for an appraisal.

So you got to look the part max. I mean you kind of look like a ta owner. Anyway, i mean, i don't know what that means. I don't know what that looks like it's a little disrespectful, i mean i'm a ta owner.

I've been a va owner, my whole life, but you know what i mean. So this looks awesome. I don't want to give it away now: it's so sweet, it's a burnt out machine. That's for sure all right max stay strong, don't accept anything less than 5 000.

Good luck, no runs and drives beautifully people. It's an excellent vehicle. All right max is all done here. He comes with the ta, so i paid 1500 for this car.

I think i overpaid by quite a bit now we're gon na find out how much this carmax offer is place. Your guesses down below no cheating max i'm gon na say 300.. What were you thinking before you you're the only one that knows this. One 200, bucks, 200 bucks, i'm going to say: 300 bucks all right.

So what do you think? What do you got? They gave you or they offered you a thousand dollars. No, are you serious really? Yes, wow all right, i mean i paid i paid 1500, so i definitely still kind of got ripped off, but that means that carmax thinks they're gon na sell it for at least fifteen hundred dollars at the auction, a thousand dollars for a car. That's i mean, for all intents and purposes this car is totaled, i mean i know it looks good from here watch the other videos. If you want more details on how bad this thing is, but you know it does run and drive kinda.

It does look. Okay from here a thousand bucks nice to meet you too, all right everybody. So this is eli and he emailed me before i released any of the lt1 trans. Am videos asking me if i had a lead on an ls engine.

He wanted to swap his formula. This thing is: awesome, super rare color. What do they call this color purple gray metallic purple gray metallic hard top 93 lt1 formula? They did not make too many of these and uh. Unfortunately, the engine doesn't work anymore right, no, not really so uh yeah, i mean i was just driving this one day and um the temperature creeped up right.

I think it's the red line, yeah, the red line's at 260. and the temperature creeped right up and then car turned off, and i heard a huge backfire out of the exhaust took it to a shop, got it diagnosed and uh. It was a bad head. Gasket and blown heads so, but it still it you said: did it shut off on you and it locked up at that time? Yeah it just shut off, and then i lost everything i had to like it.

Wouldn't it wouldn't restart it after all that well it did, it did like. We gave it a chance to cool down right, okay, it probably locked up from the heat, and then it cooled down and started back up. So this engine is toast and it sounds like it's toast right. Yes, all right, this is way way cleaner of an engine compartment than what i'm giving you um, but uh.

This thing will still run right now, so we're gon na go ahead and start it up. I wan na hear how bad this engine really is. Does not sound good all right. Let's do it.

This battery is pretty weak, so we connected the jumper all right go ahead. That's not good yeah! It fires up! That's for sure! Oh man that didn't sound good for the uh short amount of time it ran, but no uh, i mean the engine's blown. I want to hear this again. I know you guys want to hear this again.

Do it do it again, eli, let's let let's do it. Let's see what happens oh hold on hold on. Okay, hang on time out time out. What do we got going on over here? Yeah yeah there's a little bit of smoke here uh.

I saw some smoke over here by the wiring. Okay, all right coming up from under here yeah - it's coming, i don't know there might be something shorting out over there. Yeah we're good. I'm gon na try to see the engine here, this engine's bad, that's for sure all right, so we're just gon na call it a day.

There was some smoke coming out from here um, but yeah. This thing died out while being overheated, unfortunately and uh, and it's toast like this is this - is like the race car version, hard top cloth interior, no headliner, no headliner, wow yeah. It came out no headliner when i bought it so you're going to do this engine swap at your school right. I am okay and you guys have a uh shop class here, yeah we do and then uh there's a lift in there.

So and i mean on the i'll - probably uh drop the engine with the suspension. I heard you're supposed to take it out like from the bottom but yeah it's it's super easy from the bottom. That's how i've done it on my trans am a bunch of times. So this is kind of your first time really doing anything like this right yeah it is, it is i've only really done like oil changes at my house, i did a coolant flush on this a while ago, like over summer, when i got it, i take care Of my fam all my family's cars, so i do the brakes the rotors spark plugs.

All of that is this something you want to do like you're, a senior now right, i am so is this something you want to do then for a living, or what do you think yeah? It is i i love doing this stuff. It makes me happy. It's really fun and it's really i like to be hands-on and um. This is just it's for me, cool man, that's awesome! So what are you gon na do next year? Are you going to college, or what are you going to do? I am i'm going to.

I actually just uh i got accepted to uti nice. I went to wyotech, i was going to go to uti, but really some other friends were going to wyotech very cool man. That is awesome, so the full story is eli emailed me way before the lt1 trans am videos came out, and he just asked me for advice because he'd blown his engine and he wanted to ls swap the car and he had a budget of like two thousand Dollars you know, as like we talked about the ls swap, is like way more than two thousand dollars. Unfortunately, so he was kind of in a bind, but the school was nice enough to let him use the shop if he could figure something out.

As far as parts go so i'd, given him a little bit of advice and then i ran into the whole ta situation, the car wash video and then i bought the car, and my intention was always to give it to eli. So i emailed him - and you took like a few days to get back to me - i'm like like - where is this dude, i'm trying to give him an engine here, um so anyway, i'm donating the entire car uh to eli, and now this way once he has The engine out he can freshen it up, do whatever he's got to do here at the school and they're gon na help him, and this really means a lot to me, because the way i had learned how to work on cars was by ripping apart the engine In my third generation firebird when i was in high school and i had like no idea how to do anything - and i blew it up, but i learned a lot uh and that's exactly what happened. You like blew up his engine, i'm gon na learn like you right so and then another. This is so crazy, but he was telling me that he never wanted a firebird.

Originally, you wanted a a mustang, a mustang. That's what i wanted when i was shopping around for my first car. My trans am, i actually went to go, see a fox body mustang and when i got there it was like an hour and a half drive. The guy had sold it and he's like, but i have this: 88 trans am gta and i fell in love with it and it was really similar.

You were looking for a mustang and ran into this yeah. Funny thing is you also? I also saw in one of your videos you mentioned you had a 96 grand marquis, i didn't know it was a 91 91. I actually had a crown vic. No, i had a 03 crown vic, it was the police intercept nice.

This was meant to be so uh anyway, uh, i'm hoping once you guys get the engine out, they're, probably going to refresh some stuff, and since there's a lot of parts on the trans am that you can sell it's a good part out car um. You can put all those funds towards doing whatever. Maybe you want to do headers at the same time you know, might have some. My parents were nice enough to give me something you got headers already.

Oh man he's way ahead of the game. So then we're talking you got to get a torque converter uh, you maybe put a cam shift. I don't know i'm i'm getting ahead of myself. I want to do i'm going to blow the engine up, that i give them, but uh anyway, let's go, show eli his new car.

It's worth a thousand bucks according to carmax. Can you believe that i can't believe that i thought they would give you like. 500. At most of this thing yeah i thought two 300.

I don't know, but that's what they offered me. So you got yourself a thousand dollar car. I paid 1500 bucks, so i got ripped off. I really want to take these seats, but i don't know my parents they're kind of beat up but go ahead.

Start it up the most important part right there. It's got a good engine. Let's see wow sounds good right, give it a little love, probably yeah, yeah yeah the exhaust is shot. Everything is shot under there, but supposedly the engine was replaced.

Um, the guy told me he spent five thousand dollars putting a new engine in this. I'm not exactly sure how long ago or how many miles, but i'm gon na venture to say the engine's fairly new i saw mel said on that motor right. You know he claims that he blew the engine up and had a brand new 5000 engine put in. So the body has like 200 000 miles on it, and this thing runs beautifully.

So i'm gon na say that it does have a new engine yeah and it's got. It's got a good transmission. It's got a lot of good stuff, so you can part this thing out and soup up your car, it's gon na be awesome. What's cool is this? Is the trans am? If you wanted to use the steering wheel, there's some upgraded interior parts.

If they're not, you know, beat up the door panels alone, and these are worth some money because they they cracked on the later cars, it's totally cleared up. It doesn't misfire anymore, all right, so you got the keys. Here is a clean title in hand, although i'm gon na say this right now, i don't think it's safe to actually drive this car so yeah. I highly recommend you part this out.

Take the engine, sell everything and then have the the unibody, the body of this car crushed. I mean all the quarters are full of bondo rust, everything's rotted, so it shouldn't really be on the road but uh. But you know it's gon na get recycled properly, but anyway man here it is, it is all yours enjoy and uh. Let me know, keep me posted guys.

I wanted to help him do the engine swap, but they won't allow that in the high school. So i can't - and this is gon na - be a learning experience that he's gon na do for months, so um but yeah. If, if i could go in there and help, i would be there to drop the cradle, you got to drop the cradle. That's the easiest way to do it.

Obviously, if you need any advice, let me know thank you and uh. I can't wait to see that car back on the road, the formula back on the road same here we'll meet up with my ta and stuff. One of these days, thank you so much of course it means a lot yeah, of course, so that'll do it guys. I hope you really enjoyed this video uh.

We were kind of a little all over the place with the lightning carmax and eli. Now getting this car, but i think we've accomplished quite a bit for uh. You know the last two days, but if you enjoyed this video, give it a thumbs up share the video subscribe if you're new, most importantly, have an awesome day i'll catch. All of you in the next video so alex, i got you some stuff for your family.

This is, for you, give me the trans hand, so i got your wife, some flowers. Okay, we got flowers, we got chocolates. What do you got? What are these? These are for your kids. I know you have kv, told me about that.

Remember. I saw one of your videos and i remember you needed head gaskets for lightning. So there you go no way, you got me head gasket, you got velcros too. I know that's good stuff dude.

Thank you so much. I have never gotten head gaskets as a gift before this is amazing or flowers. I guess, but thank you eli seriously. Thank you.

You.