I have had this car for the past 9 years. I've worked on it here and there, but within the past few months i've kicked it into overdrive. The car is a 1973 Grabber. I've built a 331 stroker for it. backed by a fully built C4 from Pro-Formance Transmissions. I put an 8.8 from a Lincoln Mark VII in the car with 9 inch ends and custom strange axles. The car is built for the track, but I drive it on the street every chance I get. I took pictures throughout various stages in the car, unfortunately I never made the build thread until now because I wasn't sure how long things would take to come to fruition. to start off. I'll upload how car currently looks. and fill in with seperate posts for the different projects i've done to get it to this point.
I've always had the car just parked in a driveway while i lived with my parents. Didn't have access to a garage, and it made on going projects on car a hassle. I purchased my own home last year, and drove the car around for a few months before deciding i was ready to start redoing the car. I decided to start with removing the engine that was in the car. I had used the engine from the Mark VII i stole the 8.8 from initially. but it had higher mileage and it had seen better days.. was still able to get a 13.3 out of it with my stock transmission from the 6 cylinder, 3000 stall converter, and 4.10s in my original 8 inch rear. I starting pulling the engine and finding all the stuff that previous owner had butchered up. car was originally a 6 cylinder car, and he had just mangled the original engine stands. Now i started my turbo fabrication before i realized this butchery, so afraid that V8 mounts were going to change how things lined up too much, i decided to un-butcher the motor stands. I dropped off the engine at a local machine shop who races a ton of ford products. I had acquired my bottom end components from mark o neal previously of probe industries, now he runs vigilante parts. had them balance the rotating assembly and do all the machine work. i did the assembly myself. got a custom cam from ed curtis at FTI. great company to deal with and no matter how many small questions i had they were very helpful. I had a set of AFR 185s on my previous stock motor, unfortunately when the bottom end went in that, it took out my cylinder heads. I am local to Headgames Motorworks, and Dave made these things look like new. Great company to deal with. While motor was at machine shop, i decided to do a wire tuck with a majority of the wiring that was under the hood. The car is mostly a track car, but i wanted to add certain elements to the car that made it more show like. Definitely not a show car by any means, but I wanted to be proud of every outcome on this car.
Nice looking car , I went back and reread your earlier post about your car and track times I am willing to bet with your improvements you have exceeded your expectations for the car . Looking forward to see and read more about the car. Good job
Now that engine is in car, and the mounts are not butchered beyond belief anymore, i started reassembly of the engine and turbo stuff. At this point, my transmission is in Delaware being worked on by the master of C4s Sean Wiley. also having a custom torque converter made for this car. While i'm doing all of this, I wasnt comfortable using my stock fuel tank and lines for the power i planned to push plus just the age and condition of the lines and inside of tank. I went with a 12 gallon fuel cell in the trunk. and originally ordered all Russell push lok hose. Due to my car being turbocharged and non intercooled I am running water/methanol injection to help with intake air temps. Have debated back and forth running E85. since there are two stations within an hour of me that sell it. The push lok hose was not rated for ethanol fuel, so i went with Orme brothers and they put together a package of PTFE hose that will outlive the car. Preparing to get my transmission back. i spoke with Sean and had asked for recommendations. he had pointed me in the direction of the b&m super coolers without the fan. Fabricated some mounts to try to do this cleanly, since prior to this i just had the basic auxiliary cooler ties that go through the radiator. I wanted an air gap between the coolers so one doesnt directly effect the other in temperature. also went with all braided PTFE line for the transmission to trans cooler. this stuff is great to work with and ormes brothers pricing makes it very competitive with other hoses/fittings. The stamped moroso valve covers I had on initially leaked and didn't have enough room between the valve cover and the rockers i am running for baffles. with a boosted application I didn't want to worry about excessive crankcase pressure causing oil to leak on all my exhaust work. especially since I had it professionally cera-coated by bonehead performance. When i initially fabricated all my turbo stuff, i had painted the piping and wrapped in the high temp lava wrap (brand is escaping me, but it was very highly rated) due to my piping being mild steel, the wrap seemed to hold moisture, and didnt hold up well after a few heat cycles and being removed and installed a few times. the cera-coat seems to be even better with temperature management under the hood, and looks great. I decided to put my ford racing valve covers back on, but with a custom touch.
As some of you may know, finding a grill for these cars is either a very expensive or difficult task.. My family has been ford people my whole life. The NMRA race came around to maple grove. So I went with my older brother, and my father. My father had a early grabber as a race car back in the day and when we had seen my car at the swap meet when i purchased it I knew i had to build my own. While walking through the pits, we saw a few mavericks down there. they also have a small swap meet. I spot out of the corner of my eye a completely intact grill. I look over to the right and i see a beautiful maverick. I talk to the guy for a little bit, and turns out hes selling this grill. no broken slats, all mounting tabs in tact. He sold it to me for a steal of a price. I've been looking for a in tact grill for the whole time i've had the car. since My grill came in a box broken in half along with a bunch of other pieces for this car. I started working on the rear end. the rear end was in rough shape and had all the stock 4 link, shock brackets, and air ride stuff on it. trying to fit a 28x10.5 tire on the back of these cars with stock leaf spring locations, and not rub is difficult.. I have never narrowed a rear before, so this was a pretty nerve wracking process.. especially because if i ended up measuring wrong i would have very expensive paper weights from strange. I took 2 inches off per side, and put 9 inch Torino housing ends on from quick performance. After speaking with companies like moser and strange they had pointed me in this direction for availability of aftermarket brakes. I have a set of 3.55s waiting to go into the car. the housing had 3.27s in it initially. i installed them back along with my spool just to help put some miles on car to break the motor in. I hope to swap the rear gear over the winter time along with switching to a split mono leaf. in the mean time, I installed caltrac bars and converted to double eyelet rear shocks. I purchased calvert adjustable shocks. I have Viking double adjustable shocks up front. Initially I wanted to go with viking all the way around, but the customer support from calvert i decided to go with their product. Installing the rear end was quite the chore by myself. Doesn't seem to heavy until you have to bench press it through the leafs and try not to mess up your freshly painted housing. all 130 lbs of me got a work out that day. haha
Last picture for the night. a picture of what the car looked like after about a year of ownership. to present day. Its been a great project, and i'm far from done. but with having my own space to work on the car now, I am able to do things my way, at my leisure.
Thank you. i cannot wait to get this back down the track. I am only running wastegate spring for now which is about 7 psi. but with the weight of car, and the rest of the parts, it should be very fun. Eventually I will turn it up, but after grenading my first motor from being greedy with boost, I am taking it slow and enjoying the car for now. Haha.
So I got a few passes under my belt with this set up. The car does not leave very well. Need to change rear gearing and do some tuning. I’ve had the car about 10 years. Ran 14s with some kind of random motor when I first got it. Ran 13s with a different stock motor. Ran 12s with the first mystery motor with aluminum heads on it, had a few 11 second passes on this set up. Now finally got my 10 second slip. I’m actually converting the car to Holley efi over the winter. So. I hope that will be much more friendly on the launch. I’m hoping for mid to low 10s once I get the car to leave hard.
133? lol...that is a beast. BTW, the final engine paint looks nice in there. You have done a ton of work, and it looks very well done.
Man it must pull hard on the top end! My fat old Pontiac wasn't far off your 60' (1.77) but was almost a full second slower at 11.88/115 mph. You are right, get it to leave hard and it'll pick up some ET.
Thank you. Yeah I was pleasantly surprised since it’s not on much boost. Should be great once I turn it up. Lol.
Yeah it has a nice top end charge. I had a half ass pass that I miss shifted (used to forward pattern valve body, Just converted to reverse manual). I gained like 45 mph in the back half once I got back in it. lol.
