Who wants to pop wheelies at Mc-D's for fun? lol

Thought I'd give a short update on my personal project mav, for those of you who showed an interest in being kept up to date. Now that I'm back I can get down to business and get it done for spring. I normally spend all my wrench time working on other people's Mav race cars- but this one is mine.

The tubbing is done as of yesterday. Everything is welded in now. The rear end (narrowed 9", 5.13 gear set, locker, brace, slide a links, 50/50 CE shocks, DE leafs) is also set up and installed.

I will modify the rear wheel lips slightly today to give 1" clearance for the slicks (width is no problem thanks to the tubbing, but the diameter of the tires necessitates removing an inch or so from the leading edge of the rear wheel well lips).

Next, during the weekend etc, we will weld in the 8 point cage and the boxed frame connectors. I also need to patch the floor a bit with some mustang replacement floor pans. I suppose I will end up putting a swing out drivers side roll bar extension into it, as usual. I'm a long time strength trainer and weigh in at 290 pounds or so (and I now have a Daddy gut for good measure)... getting into a maverick with a roll cage and a non-removable steering wheel would require an act of God.

I have had a *thing* for digital gages lately, so I will finish installing Dakota digital gages into the stock dash bezels sometime soon. The remainder of the thousand gages are to be mounted in a carbon fiber panel that runs the length of the dash from about where the drivers right arm is to the passenger door, lol. I'm covering all interior surfaces (rear panels door panels, sail panels, etc etc) with carbon fiber *like* sheeting. It looks 100% real, correct texture etc, but its not. Weighs the same, but can't be used for anything structural like real CF- but I like the look of it and working with it. It will do a good job of covering the interior.

I'll install one of the wheels I sell in there as well, of course. I have a gated Art Carr floor shifter to install to work the gearing gon the full manual reverse valve body... as a side note: I would tell anyone who is considering a full man. valve body to NOT GET IT, at least if you street drive your car. Its a pain. (mind as well get a stick, you're going to be shifting constantly anyway, lol)

Front end is more or less done as well. I modified (read: cut) the shock towers to fit the motor, smoothed the firewall and painted EVERYTHING w/por15 (just as the entire underside of the car, wheel wells, etc). We made our own shock tower to firewall to tower, brace. Anyone can do it using heims fittings, steel rod, mounting plates made from whatever, etc. If you're handy with shop tools, its a no-brainer. Don't pay big bucks for a stang brace that you're going to have to modify anyway. I'm going to run some Koni adjustable drag shocks up front, probably set at 90/10 along with a sway bar delete and a straight up wheel camber (who wants to make turns anyway?). I'd like to run one of MaverickMan's sweet CF hoods... but I'd need to cut it to allow for the blower... which is causing looks of horror on some of your faces as we speak, lol.

I work with glass so I'll more than likely replace the front and rear bumpers, rear trunk, front fenders, windshield and doors with fiberglass/lexan. I was running a fiberglass tilt nose on the last incarnation of the car, but I want to run that cf hood, so i swapped it out to a customers car.

Lastly, the motor is on the stand waiting to drop in. I have several here more or less good to go- but I will probably use a 427(351w stroker, YES, you can do that and YES the walls are paper thin and YES it requires trick crank clearances and other shenanigans) with a small blower on it and some canfield heads. This isn't a tech thread, so I'll leave out the details- but its basically what you'd expect in a blown motor thats built to be beaten on. I didn't like any of the header options out there, so I made my own. I will be running our signature home made, low buck but super effective digital fuel injection. Probably also run some water/methanol injection for *wow* factor at the track meet and shows. (this entire motor will be available for purchase shortly as what I'd really LIKE to do is run a 408 with twin staggered turbos).

..forgot: the car is totally dechromed and debadged. It will be tuxedo black with black tinted glass and gloss black steel wheels. I am running pro stock style Hoosiers out back and relatively narrow fronts- the only shiny bits visible on the car will be the billet aluminum gas cap on the rear and the aluminum fuel cell tub hanging down below the rear bumper (and associated braided line, etc etc) and lastly, my fav part of the whole thing: there will be 4 separate exhaust pipes exiting out and upward just in front of the rear tire on each side, a la Mad Max.

Sorry fo rthe enormous post and all the inevitable spelling errors therein, lmao.


I'll compile and try to upload pics throughout the day- there are a lot of them, lol.

 

Gonna be sweet, keep us updated!

 

Can't wait to see the pics...sounds like a blast

 

I'm looking for some sort of free pic hosting solution at this very moment- there isn't enough space left in my forum account to hold all the pics. Myspace maybe? I dunno, I'll find something this afternoon.

 

email them to me and I can post them temporarily...for a week or three...

 

okiedokie

 

Cant wait to see pictures

 

For free pic hosting use photobucket.com.

Edit:Wow that looked like an advertisment for didnt it lol

 

Let's see um!

 

hey, i thought we were gonna pop wheelies in the mc-d's parking lot?..

 

Talk to this guy: http://mmb.maverick.to/showthread.php?t=11302&highlight=wheelie

That thread never gets old.

 

Sounds sweet!!!!!

 

Mad, I checked my email last night and this morning. Let me know if my email provider is not letting those pics through, and I will give you another email address to send them to.

You never know when the email server is going to pick something up as SPAM and not let it go through...

 

Progress Pics...I will host these for a couple weeks then delete them...


This is Bud. He's an old dude who appeared one day at our shop- he has a restomod duster that he had us do motor work to- he just never left, lol. Seriously, he's at the shop every day- like most guys from his generation, he does more work at the garage than the rest of us combined...for free.


Passenger side wheel tub tacked in before the needed material was added to widen it and before being painted w/POR15. The frame rails have also been moved/reconstructed.


Nose refitted, motor bay painted w/POR15. Some turd leaned that ladder up against it, it was probably me, lol.


wheel tubbing completed, replacing of floors not completed, lol.


This is the side I did, thus it looks like poo.


This is the side my fabricator/friend did, "Wild" Bill- his side is nice and clean.


good shot from the trunk showing the completed 9" rear installed but before the slide a links went on. That square cut out is where the aluminum fuel cell tub sits. We had to remove the old shock mounts and fabricate new uppers and lowers, now they're totally strong to deal with the stress of racing and also mounted in a better configuration to assist launch.


both completed tubs

Hope I matched all pics with their respective captions... I have had a couple glasses of wine, so if you see a naked chick captioned with a Mustang II front clip, that would be my fault

 

1978 Mustang II Front Clip