Most people in the car buying community will rarely, if ever, buy a car without first going to give it a once over. After all, you never know what you’re getting, right? Jerry Irwin is not most people. And when it came to the Trilogy supercharged Mercury Marauder with a blown engine, he knew exactly what he was getting.

It all started when Mo’s Speed Shop in Georgia called the car’s owner and told him one thing: the engine is blown. Well great. All that money into building a 400+ horsepower, supercharged machine and it just blew up. In an attempt to give the car new life, he put it up for sale on the Marauder forum.

About a month went by and not much interest was generated for the car, mostly due to a high price and the white elephant in the room, the blown motor. Irwin decided to start looking into it as a partial parts car. His plan was simple: take off the Trilogy supercharger for his bone stock blue Marauder, and sell the car as a roller to his friend Zack. Negotiations started and ended pretty quick, and next thing he knew the car was on its way to Michigan.

The car arrived on Saturday evening but had some complications. Not bad complications, however, just something surprising. Irwin, his son Jeremy, and his son’s friend Austin, were unloading the car when they decided to see if it started. To everyone’s surprise, it fired up. There was a noise from an engine, but it was not your typical rod knock tick.

“The sound was familiar. I had a spark plug shoot out of the head on my 2000 Grand Marquis, and it started making a similar noise,” Austin said.

Despite the wonky noise, the engine ran without a supercharger belt. The next day, Austin, Jeremy, and Irwin set to work. Irwin called his friend, Connor Williams, to come join in on the mayhem trying to get the car running. With 4 pairs of hands working in the engine bay, it was only a matter of time before the problem was solved.

Austin started by pulling the all the spark plugs and coil packs to replace them with new NGK spark plugs and new coil packs.

“The number 6 & 7 plugs weren’t loose, but they weren’t tight. Number 4 was barely hanging on to one thread, and that’s what was making that noise,” Austin said.

Next up, the quartet pressure tested the cooling system to see if the car had a blown head gasket. The test came back negative, but it was discovered that a lower radiator hose was leaking just due to old age. Austin attempted to pull the hose without getting an anti-freeze shower but failed.

“It always happens!” laughed Austin, “you can never work on a cooling system without getting soaked.”

Irwin ventured off to the house of fools, the parts store. The first time he came back with a new hose, it turned out to be too small of a diameter. He shot back out and, after heading to 3 different stores, he was told it was a dealer only part and that nobody could order it. He said screw it and got a longer hose that had a similar curvature to it and simply cut it to length when he got back to the shop.

“I had a ton of fun working on the car that day, but three trips to the stupid parts store, that’s what pissed me off!” Irwin said.

While Irwin was scouring the stores for the radiator hose, Connor and Jeremy pulled off the 2.9” pulley from the supercharger. It took some coercion to come off the snout but finally let loose. They put a larger 3.2” pulley on to keep the motor from blowing up from too much boost.

“Before we yanked the pulley, I gave the supercharger some turns to see how the gears & rotors were. It was definitely about time for a rebuild; there was some noticeable backlash and the rotors were hitting. It’s not bad, but it sure isn’t helping anything,” Williams said.

It came time to fire up the Banshee, and its deep roar filled the shop with a menacing tone.

“You know what that sounds like? It sounds like (censored for liberal ears) you, that’s what it sounds like!” Irwin said.

Williams plugged in his data logger to check for any irregularities in engine performance, and nothing came up.

“There’s not a damn thing wrong with this engine!” Irwin said. “This is perfect.”

Since then, Irwin has been daily driving the car; testing its limits, seeing what kind of problems may arise, and just having some fun.  Next time you consider buying a car, take a gamble and get the one that sounds bad. You never know, you just might get lucky.