why would you have to rebuild it every year? what year tbird? my old 73 390 spits oil out the valve cover but doesnt burn oil yet. the grabber had 230k on the 302 and wasnt burning oil.
Dad's Tbird was late 60s, I don't know which year exactly. He had it burning over a quart of oil a week before he even paid it off, and vowed to never own another Ford again (and has stuck to that vow). I have mine torn down for serious work at least yearly, cam swap, new intake, new heads, that kind of thing. I have never "broken" it or had it not running...just doing improvements. I have another year or so, then doing the 347 with 10.x:1 compression. I find the old 302 very easy to work on and I am very comfortable with the mechanics of it all. If my 5.7 hemi ever goes out, I might bore it, maybe stroke it a little, carb it (I don't think computers belong in cars), headers, etc and keep it running a little longer (and a little faster). It has limited slip 4.11 gears, so it has potential to be a fast truck.
well for a truck, if you stick with efi it is easier if you tow or carry a camper up to denver or on tall mountains. still not fond of them though.
I like the dual scoop hood, but I would have to either make it functional as a forced air intake, and/or put some small but bright spotlights of some sort in there, to look like glowing eyes at night. Mounted some how so you cannot see the lights during the day.
Ford advertised the first Grabbers as "Jazzy Firecrackers." They were pseudo muscle cars, and proud of it. I posted info on an early Grabbber ad in a thread last year http://mmb.maverick.to/showthread.php?t=16870. The Grabber paint job fooled enough people into wanting to make it the real thing. So by 1971-72, with V8 options, Grabbers were pretty zippy. But except for the paint job and spoiler, you could get all the same options on any other 2 door Maverick. Grabbers are more desirable now because most people don't know they weren't real muscle cars. A spectator at a Good Guys show insisted that the Grabber was a muscle car. I tried to tell him it wasn't, but he wouldn't listen, and it was MY car we were arguing about. A couple of weeks ago I was at the Longs Drugs here in San Ramon and saw an orange car with a white stripe going from the roof to the front fenders. It looked like a cousin to my 1973 yellow and black Grabber. I drove over and it was a 1973 Plymouth Roadrunner. My Grabber (with my new Firehawk Indy 500 tires) looked like it could keep up, even if it probaby couldn't, and that's the point. Roz
