Being a child of the 1980’s I can remember owning Mustangs like this and and being obsessed with one thing…making them faster! Originality be damned, I wanted the fastest horse in town. These are the sins of our youth.
So it wasn’t much of a surprise when I opened the hood of this Mustang, and found one of the previous owners had the same obsession.
Gone was the original cast iron intake manifold and in its place was a very desirable Edelbrock Streetmaster 390 aluminum intake manifold. This manifold was long held as one of the best performing aftermarket manifolds for the Ford FE (see http://www.fepower.net/GFEIC.html).
Likewise, the factory manifold weighed 75 pounds, so the aluminum intake would not only perform better but would also be substantially lighter.
Likewise the original carburetor had been long been replaced. Sitting on top of that Edelbrock aluminum intake was now a Holley, 750 cfm, carburetor.
But this was just the tip of the iceberg. They also improved the spark delivery by installing a Hays Stinger ignition. Now for those of you too young to remember the 1980s, the Hays Stinger ignition was the ignition to get. Cars equipped with the Hays Stinger consistently made 5-6 hp more than those with the MSD units of the day.
It was basically an electronic conversion from points to a “Mopar-like” magnetic pickup unit in the distributor and a trick reluctor that was press-fit onto the Autolite shaft cam. The system also included an electronic box to read the signal from the pickup, similar to other units that were and still are available today.
On top of adding performance items, they also lightened the car by removing as much weight as possible. This included the factory air conditioning compressor, condenser and brackets as well as the power steering pump and virtually every other power steering component. In short, if it wasn’t adding performance to the car it was removed!
Next Step: Chasing Classic Parts