I"ve been reading posts for years, have found a lot of good stuff. It seems I'm short on both time and money more and more everyday, so I figured I could at least chat about the things I can't really do for a while.
Hello and welcome aboard. Your description sounds just like me, not enough money here to do the things I want.
The story Ok, I thought I should update this a little. Here is were I am. Please bare with me as I am not a good storyteller and I have a tendency to get side tracked. The car is a 1970, was originally a 3-speed column shift 170 i6. (I think) Previous owner had converted to 302 and C4, with an 8.8 from a mustang with 3.73R+P. (he said it was out of a 93 cobra and that he took off the disc brakes to put on drums, weird) I have my doubts about the cobra 8.8, but have not looked into it as of yet. He had it set p for drag racing. It has some seriously stiff springs both front and rear I think he said the rear leaves were from a Chevy Truck (wait a sec…gotta wash the mouth out) and I can’t remember what he said the front coils came out of. But they set kind of low and are very stiff. I weigh 190 to 200 lbs, and I can bounce on this thing front or rear, and it barely moves. STIFF STIFF STIFF, not sure if that is good or not yet. Moving on. He kept his engine and tranny, but all the molding and trim save for the mirrors was there. I got two sets of bucket seats(ones in the car look like early mustang low backs, and the other look like actual maverick high back buckets they have some red overspray on them but otherwise in good shape) The back seats are look great. The body is ok, some rust around the rear tires, a few small dents, some what of a wrinkle in the front fender, and a burned truck lid. (looks like the race gas caught fire) I also got two hoods, one plain mav, and the other is the Grabber nostril hood. That is where it started. Fist thing I did was add disc brakes to the front end, safety first and I know my right foot….(and it needed to have 5 lugs on all four corners ) Next was the engine. Picked up an 87 Lincoln mark IV HO motor, mustang motors go pretty fast in the yards, and I happened to se the HO on the intake. So I popped off the intake to verify the roller lifters, it was and it came home.(In hind sight, I would have passed on it, as the heads turned out to be the POS heart chamber e6’s, seems that for used up the last of those on the bigger cars with HO motors :16suspect) Had a shop check it out, clean it up, took it home put it back together using mostly stock HO parts, except for the Keith Black 30 over pistons with valve beliefs for 2.02 valves, and a Com Coms XE282HR cam. (I was/am hoping to get a good set of heads one day like the AFR’s out there that also explains my cam overkill) toped off with a 600 holley and a weiand stealth manifold, and Dura spark ignition. I slid it onto an 88 F150 AOD and dropped it (squeezed it) down into the Mav. To my amazement the drive shaft that came with the car actually works. The hedman headers the guy left in the trunk went on but may need some shielding for the tranny. Then used a generic X pipe kit to dual flowmasters, loud…(it scared the dogs loud.) Bought the lokar kickdown cable and found a t-bird floor shifter. (it uses a shift cable and seemed to be easier to rout that mechanical linkage ) I got it to start and running, for a while. About this time..I met a girl… and have done very little in the last 3 years…sad I know. Not all her fault, I get distracted easily, like with the 2 bronco’s the F150 and the other assorted stuff I come across… (no honey it followed me home I swear…) We did get married, buy a house and have our first child on the way. (of only two before I get fixed I’ve done a lot of work on the house, but you guys don’t care about that or you’d be reading the bob villa forum….I’ll get back on track and hopefully get more done at some point. Check out the pics, give me some feed back on the slow progress, and maybe some ideas on how not to screw up too bad. Thanks for listening.
