My '72 Grabber build thread

[John Holden]

I am starting this thread to ducument the restoration of my 1972 Maverick Grabber. I bought the car on August 6th 2011 from an old neighbor who had moved away. The car actually has low miles but it was sitting under plastic tarps for the last 10 years and the moisture from being under the plastic and the mice have done quite a bit of damage. The interior is completely shot. The body on the car is extremely solid with very minimal rust except under the cowl. These pictures show what the car looked like when I brought it home. The engine didn't run but turned over. The duraspark had been wired wrong. It had a weiand manifold with an adapter and a Quadra-jet carb that spewed fuel from the vents.

[John Holden]

The fuel tank fuel lines and fuel filter were all filled with rust. It's a wonder the fuel pump even worked. Between the time I brought it home and 8/13 I swapped the carb for a holley 600 vac sec that I had reworked for a previous car with center hung floats and secondary metering block. I filled the carb through the vent tubes and it ran much better. I had to run a jumper wire to the duraspark module but at least I know it runs! I used to own a maverick that I raced from the mid 80's until around 93 or 94. I've been poking around on this site for several years because I really missed my maverick and I wanted another one. The car in these pics has been my inspiration for the last few years.

[John Holden]

I got a free parts car from a friend from which I got a manual steering setup, disc brakes, jaz racing buckets, and a whole bunch of other stuff including a set of Bobcat taillights. Cleaned up the floor. Welded a few small holes somebody drilled for seats and fixed a couple of very small rust holes and sanded down some surface rust before giving it a coat of POR15.

[John Holden]

Got a new tank from Advance Auto Parts and welded in a competition Engineering sump. After removing the lower dash and air conditioning/heating box I could see there was some rust damage to the cowl that needs to be fixed.

[John Holden]

Drilled the holes for the Bobcat taillights on 9/7. On the weekend of September 10-11 I got teh disc brake conversion done, door hinge bushings and pins on both doors installed, and drilled out 130 spot welds to remove the upper cowl panel. There were some huge mouse nests in there and a whole lot of rust. I guess I will have to modify a mustang cowl repair panel for the passenger side and just patch the drivers side. I honestly think removal was the hard part though. I also pulled out the power steering linkage and installed the manual linkage.

[John Holden]

Here are some pictures of the cowl.

[socalcomet]

Originally Posted by John Holden

The car in these pics has been my inspiration for the last few years.

...with your skills and motivation you'll be there in no time...nice work!

[Comet Fever]

You have a project there no doubt. That is the fun of it. Challenge!

Look forward to your progress.

[2mav4u]

Went to the garage and looked thru my air vents and noticed the passenger side vent ring looks fine except for one small spot. The driver side vent ring is a different story. Looks bad but not as bad as john's. Gonna poor some water and see if the passenger side is still good or not

[Lzoesch]

Holy god... Seeing that cowl makes me want to go outside and rip out mine to check. I poked into it with a flash light and it seemed 100% solid. How was the rust in the rest of the car? My car/project had just surface rust in the floor, and cleaned up well when the car was sandblasted. Im fairly confident I have zero rust throughout the car now, but that scares me what I cannot see :S