70s style mav street rod, opinions please?

Haha man I love the shag and fur on the dash idea... buuut I might have to leave that to you . And I really do like the way that scoop looks on your car, I may be able to pick up a boss 429 scoop and get that same feel.

You know I really had my mind set on cragars until I found my torq thrusts and I just couldnt pass them up!

With any luck I will be able to make it to the silver springs all ford show, maybe see a few of you there

 

I am a street racer from the '70's.

Angle hair or carpet on the back package shelf.

Chrome speaker covers on that same package shelf or calliope speakers

Tach mounted on the dash

Gauges mounted under the dash

8 track hanging below the dash

15x10 deep reverse Cragar SS wheels with N50x15 tires on back

Headers with direct mount short header mufflers

Nobody around us ran a hood scoop unless it was a copy of current Pro Stocks of the day

All kinds of crap hanging from your rear view mirror. Graduation tassel, girlfriend's class ring, dice weren't popular in the 70's

M/T or Cal Custom valve covers

Cal Custom air cleaners

Accel big yellow coils

Hurst shifters with "T" handles, the velvet/fuzzy covered ones wore out real fast

Slapper traction bars, preferably bright yellow Lakewoods or chrome universals

Little Superior steering wheels with foam grips

Air shocks were on everything, had to clear the L60's and N50's

Have fun. Go to a swap meet and buy some magazines. A lot of things were regional.

SPark

 

I saw this one recently on a site, and instantly fell in love. I was in my impressionable early teen years years in the mid 70's. This car hit all the stuff i liked in that time frame. I really liked the lakewood 3-point. It borders on guadiness becuase it has so many features from time that may or may not have matched, its a show car, so its an overachiever. But I still love it. It is definitely acheiving that 70-72 pro-stock look, while capturing paint style of the vans. I like it!!

Like you, we are doing my sons car for period correctness too. Im not sure your shifter is going to get your look. You need something older looking. We used and old BM series 60.Even the stock ford floor shifter is pretty neat and works pretty well. You can use one of those with a large 4 speed boot, and look pretty wild.

 

70s = Cool !

1st car - 72 Pinto
2nd car - 72 Pinto
3rd car - 76 Pinto

Now.....



Tach in yer face





Back end will look better after the body work .....required for the 29 x 18.50 x 15s going on it. All under the fender though - tubs will handle no problem.

 

Totally agree with everything said above plus these:

paint the gas tank, rear end and springs white

small red marker lights bolted to the underside of the leaf spring plate

prismatic decals with car name

black krinkle look valve covers with high "T" bolts

 

I want that slot machine show maverick!!!!! Wow that is way cool. I allways wonder what happens to cars like that. Somebody really cared when they were doing that kind of work.

 

Im14 and Bob,

Congratulations! You have successfully overridden the "mind eraser" that I had in place to eliminate some of the awful 80s car things I have seen and done. LOL.

I ran a snorkel hood scoop on my white Comet back then. In my defense, I put it on there after the Cobra Jet scoop allowed the ignition to get wet in tropical weather here. "Snorkle" wasn't just name-only ... that sucker worked! Never got stranded by the side of the road, wielding WD-40 and toilet paper, trying to dry the ignition out ever again.

 

Well, I could have mentioned the neon green fur on the back deck but I didn't want to cause any "flashbacks"

 

Popular '70's scoop around my part of the country and early Pro Stock choice (until they learned the front carb starved at high RPM's).



Look as old pro stock pictures on Google, that's what many were trying to copy. I probably have a hundred pics of '70's Pro Stocks and they all look the same basically. Street cars were just copying what they saw in magazines. What they saw was drag cars mostly.

Sorry, I forgot the prism lettering, peace sign or Ford emblem. I'm getting old!

Got the foot or boot shaped gas pedal with matching dimmer switch pedal? I did.

Things changed pretty drastically from 1970 to 1979. You need to pick a year and stick to it or you will have a total mess. Hendrix never played disco.

SPark

 

That analogy couldn't get any better! Lets say I'm goin for a look closer to Hendrix, if I were 19 in 72 and bought the car new what would I be running? ie: obviously not lowered on 20s, t5 trans and lokar shifter. The only thing thats definitely gonna be out of place is my hei distributor, but I thinks its gonna work better for my setup

 

check out this FB page for some ideas!

Maverick gallery
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.166097456875433.1073741831.146514035500442&type=1

 

As far as the distributor is concerned, the big cap is seriously going to kill the look. That is the first thing you see. If your distributor uses a small cap, of some sort, then it will be better. The Ford duraspark can easily be converted to the small point style (and 75/76 Electronic) cap by simply removing the funnel adapter and tall triangular rotor. Once those are gone the early rotor and cap fit perfectly. Here is a pic of one with a small cap. In our case we even removed the vacuum advance (locked the advance plate with machine screws, and tailored the curve and springs to our desires). The end result looks like what was done when installing the FoMoCo dual point conversion. We will take care of the horseshoe connector eventually, but the small cap really dates the motors to the 60's 70's much better.

As far as wheels for 72 look are concerned, you have to keep 14" or 15" (period). Slots, S/S (or copies like Appliance), Keystone Klassics, Old Centerline AutoDrags, Super Tricks, etc. Motorwheel Spyders really rock, but they take a very odd lug nut design. If you take it on up into the late 70's then you get the diamags, and turbine wheels and definitely centerline autodrags and other similars.

We found a set of Cragar SST's (Street SUper Tricks) for dirt cheap, with Radial TA's that we drove on for a long time. They 15x6 and 15x8. We are running 205-70's on the front and they look good and provide way more robustness than VW (165-80's) tires. The back is a 275-60 (L60 equiv). our real desire is Keysone Klassics, but with such a deal on the Cragar's we had to get them.

Chrome Steel Slots----- awesome. But they are virtually impossible to find now.

Getting the correctness for a nice looking very 70's(ish) set-up is pretty easy. There are lots of guys around who were there (or very shortly after). there is lots of old mags and pictures. there is also a lot of mis information, though. I advise to go to the real source, dont hit up sorces or sites that are ran by younger people that werent really there. The history gets twisted that way and misinformation abounds. The 70's are still close enough that lots of car enthusiasts were truly there, and the documentation is still readily available thanks to the internet.

The 70's street machine page is cool, but there is lots of banter about being authentic or not, and it gets alittle old. It normally happens when someone wasnt in the 70's and they think their car is very 70's ish and doesnt think it is. Regardless, there is crap load of good real 70's pics on there.

 

That Facebook page is great!

Another option on the distributor is to get a Pertronix conversion. Looks stock from the outside, but it is an electronic ignition under that cap. Tamed my car down a lot!

 

Here are a few more ones that I thought were cool. the first, is a Comet that was built around 1976, from my home town, by a local mech engineer car enthusiast (NHRA/IHRA record holder with 2.0L pinto in modified compact too). It has the motor, tranny, and rear-end out of a wrecked 302Boss mustang. The rearend is a couple of inches wider, therefore you can see the telltale signs of the wheels sticking out, yet its obvious they arent heavily reversed offset wheels. the flat top of the valve covers can be seen if you look carefully. The car used some homemade headers that utilized the Hedman flat-4 collectors. It had a 4.30 detroit locker. While its not a 70'd up show car, it is a very typical purpose built street-strip car, no frills, just nice clean, proper, and fast. A notable feature, was it had captains chair mounts (swivel seats-- a very 70's ish thing). This particular picture was taken around 82, it had a new owner by this time. this car still exists in someone's basement garage, supposedly. I wish more pics were available of this car, it was a killer car.

The second, is a very similar set-up. No idea of the motor and driveline or the year.

While neither can be verified to 72, these are timeless 70's style looks without the gaudiness that occurred in many of the cars. SLot Machine, while I love it, is ahigher level than would be seen out on the road.
That is a show car.

 

I really enjoyed that. In my impressionable mid/late teens back then. I thought it was just my memories making the hi-boys that high and the paint jobs that loud. Nope. That's the way they really were. Thanks for the link.