Hello all at Maverick/Comet Forum. My name is Bruce Price. I live in Southern Maryland and have been involved with 60s and 70s cars for about 27 years. I have restored two 1965 Mustangs of my own, one 65 GT coupe and a 65 fastback/Shelby clone. I have also helped a friend of mine restore a 1970 Maverick 302 car. All three cars have been completely disassembled and put on a rotisserie. I learned to weld on my 65 coupe about 25 years ago. I do all of the sheet metal work, assemble my own motors, rebuild my own C4 transmissions and setup my own rear gear sets, mostly because I am to cheep to pay someone, and I enjoy the sense of accomplishment of doing my own work. I have also been drag racing for about 16 years. I race at Maryland International Race Way. When I first started I was racing my 65 Mustang GT coupe which was totally stock it was running mid 16s. At present a friend of mine is racing the GT coupe and it is running 13.0s and is last year’s Midnight Madness track champion. I am racing the Fastback which has a 351W stroked to a 433 CID and is running 10.30s at 127 MPH on 93 octane pump gas and is using a trans-brake and a delay box. The whole delay box setup is new to me and is a steep learning curve after racing foot brake for 15 years. Recently another local Maverick enthusiast asked me if I was interested in doing some work on a Maverick he had. I looked over the two cars he had and agreed to work with him to get the better of the two cars setup how he wanted it. As a result I have in inherited a 1974 Maverick that was somewhat rusty but was in too good a shape to send to the scrap metal man. So I decided to make a drag race car out of it. I have all ready welded 65 mustang floor pans in it and have to patch both quarter panels. I am also looking at cutting out the rear frame rails out and welding in some 2X3 mandrel bent frame rails to replace them and narrowing a 9” rear and tubing it out to fit Hoosier 29.5X12.5W slicks. I will be welding in a 12 point roll cage and have completely gutted the interior and removed all of the original wiring. I will be rewiring the car from scratch. My goal is to build a mid 9 second car with a 351W Dart block stroked out to around 454 CID making 600+ horse power. I have a pretty good idea on how I want to set up the car with the exception of the front suspension. My fast back is setup with all original style suspension that has been highly modified with the help of Alex Denysenko of Moneymaker Racing. I know the 65 Mustang is tight in the engine compartment but I see from looking around on your message board that the Maverick is even tighter. I am very interested in two threads. One that describe a coil over setup outlined by Steve H, and one thread on moving the shock towers outboard 2” by MNTony. I am interested on possibly pursuing one or the other methods of front end mods and am interested in hearing from either or both members to get the final impressions on how the mods ended up and if they were satisfied with the results. Any other front end setup options or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. THANKS MavRock72
from Northeast Pennsylvania My own Maverick is fully caged - mustang II type front suspension and 4 link rear - will be all coil over - you can click on my images under my avatar to see some photos
From very warm & sunny San Jose. My Maverick started its life in 1979 as a B/SM car with Boss 302 and 4spd. The current motor is 408 early factory block 351w. The motor was put together back in the 90's and uses some TF-R heads that were used on one of the many Roush/Yates Cup cars. I have just refreshened the motor and put it on an engine dyno for break-in and intial tuning. We made 642hp @ 6800rpm and 544lbft of torque at 5700rpm. It has an Ultra Glide by Mike's Transmission and a loose 5000rpm converter. I just replaced the stock suspension with Global West lower control arms and strut rods in hopes of freeing up the front alittle................................also did some mod's to the headers in hopes of lowering the torque curve.............I'm shooting for 1.2 60' times. My best so far with the 3325lb car (with me @230) was a 9.801 @ 133mph. Now with that said, deep sixing the shock towers will be my next refreshen of the car................mainly because of the access to the spark plugs and building a different set of headers, not to say it will be a lot more access to the engine bay.
Welcome from Laurel, MD, I race at Capitol but make it down to MIR a couple times a year. Ill be down for the Fall Swap meet.
Thanks for the warm welcome. This is my first attempt at posting a picture. This was from MIR Sunday before last. I hope it works.
Now that I have the picture posting figured out here are some pictures of the Mavericks I have worked on.
I did a home built roll over the same way as you have pictured here out of (2) 1,000 pound engine stands. It was a life saver for undercar work.
