A Year of Big Changes

Over the winter I purchased a 1988 HO Motor with a 130 000 kms, and the upgrades began with a spray can rebuild, a set of ASP street pulleys, 1 1/2 inch Hedman long tube headers, 2 1/2 inch custom bent exhaust (very poorly bent), which funneled into the factory 2 1/4 inch LX tailpipes, 3.73 gears, Lakewood traction bars, and a set of 275-60-15 Hoosiers.

I topped it all off with a Wiend Stealth intake and a Holley 600 Double Pumper.

It worked very good right out of the gate that year running very low 14's and getting a best of a 13.993 and 99.8mph.

Due to the fact that it is a Convertible, NHRA rules prohibit anyone from running quicker than 14.00 without a roll bar, so I had to slow the car down to comply.

1996 & 1997 were very slow years for me and the car I was working a schedule that made it almost impossible to make it to the track.

There were a couple of modifications in 1997 I went to a World Class T5, Ram Kevlar Clutch, Billet Flywheel, Pro 5.0 Shifter, and an 8.8 differential from a 1992 with 2.73 gears.

1998 brought with it a new job which had me Flying out of Calgary, and with this gave me the opportunity to take in my first 5.0 Shootout, which really did not go well, due to rain.

After an incident( broken starter) at this first shootout which forced me to drive home without a starter, as I did not have the tools to fix it in Calgary, nor did I know anyone there with an engine crane that I would need in order to replace the Starter, due to the way the headers fit.

By mid afternoon the long tubes were laying on the lawn and a set of stock shorties were back in ( I may have been a little mad ).

I made it to my first real decent size race that year, The 1998 Calgary National Open where I ended up in first round against a friend of mine, who proceeded to put me out of elimination early to finish an already poor weekend.

However I did find out that weekend that with 2.73 gears you can go through top end in 2nd gear at 92 mph and 7200 rpm ( I don't recommend this as i really don't know how this motor stayed together ).

I did upgrade to 1 5/8 Ford Motorsport Stainless Steel headers, but was unable to get to the track before it closed to see if they helped any.

1999 only had a change in rear gear ratio to 3.55 and a motor that was well in excess of 230 000 kms, that was really low on compression ( its not a good thing to watch your car roll down a small incline in first gear ) yet at the end of the year it ran a best of a 14.26 at 97 mph, pretty impressive considering that the car weighed in at a portly 3500 pounds with me in it.