MotorTrend’s “Pure Power Pony” Drag Car Powered by Amazon made its first debut at Roadkill Nights in Pontiac
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00:00Last time I saw the Mustang it was here where we were doing burnouts in the
00:05street and it's funny because this is an old Mustang 360 project car. We
00:11de-wicked the program but I'd actually never seen the car. I wasn't around when it
00:14was built. That was me seeing the car for the first time.
00:19It's nice to have you back here. I know last time we ended it off with a fun
00:24burnout. Yeah. With just front brakes. Right, right.
00:27Nothing wrong with that. Last time we drove the car we did burnouts. It was a
00:32ton of fun which resulted in water coming down the radiator. But good news
00:36is we got an Amazon delivery right before you got here. Yeah. So we got even
00:41more parts and components we can kind of open up and I think we got some fun
00:44stuff to do today. And transforming the car is slightly to more of a drag race
00:48orientation so I'm excited to get going on that. Today we are getting the
00:53car ready to take to roadkill nights. There's a drag racing element. It's not a
00:56full eighth mile but it's a drag racing plus a big car show. So we're getting
01:02ready to do a couple passes at the drag strip and then just show it off.
01:11Oh nice. This looks like our detailing kit from 303. Alright, alright. That's cool.
01:18Oh and now this is gonna be what's cool for when we take it on the power tour.
01:22You're planning on speeding? No. Alright so we're gonna look clean. We're gonna
01:29have speed. Mm-hmm. And now I'm gonna have to assume this is probably our seats.
01:32They're about the shape of a seat box. Yeah I think so. And that's from DNA
01:37motoring. Okay. That's not bad huh? And I also heard you got some wheels and tires
01:42on the way. Yes. That's exciting. So we yeah we got some torque thrust and I
01:46believe what it has on it right now we got like 245s in the rear so we went to
01:49255. Okay that's a good size tire. A little bit wider. Yeah. And then in the front we're
01:54kept at 225. Today we're gonna be addressing the radiator. We're gonna go
01:59through the braking system. Then we're also gonna be tuning the suspension. The
02:03front does have coil overs. We're gonna be installing brand new racing seat,
02:06racing harness because you know we are gonna be taking this for a pass down the
02:10strip. You may need to loosen this intake. Yeah I think we're gonna have to move
02:16that because it looks like it's pretty tight. Yeah. It's funny there's not a lot
02:19of room under the. No. In the engine compartments of these early Mustangs.
02:28All right. Okay. Well that's fun. One thing I think we can do Steve is look in here
02:37through the fan opening and fill the radiator back up to the top because it's
02:42it's. It's low. Yeah and then see if there's if we can see. Where it's coming out?
02:47Yeah. It's dropping out right now but there's that little pan underneath. Mm-hmm.
02:54Yeah I think we need to put it up in the air. Okay. Sounds good. All right.
03:03We do have a little bit of a coolant leak. There's some water coming out of
03:07the radiator and unfortunately it looks like we're gonna have to drop the
03:11radiator out. It's definitely gonna entail a little bit more work than what
03:14we were thinking. We can still address you know our other issues while we're
03:18underneath the car right now. Yeah. So what I'm thinking is you know we can
03:21mess with the back brake line. Yep. Let's see what we need right there. Yep. Let's get it
03:25clamped in and then we can mess with the suspension as well. Yeah. You know being
03:28we're underneath the car. It's a cool thing about a project car if there's one
03:32thing goes wrong there's always something else to do. Yeah well it's crazy
03:35too because this thing looks so nice underneath but don't judge a book by its
03:39cover. There's always something to work on. We can kind of figure out if we're
03:44getting any of the brake fluid to the rear. I know that lines clamped and you
03:47know we'll pull the vise grips and I think we'll loosen up the top and the
03:52bottom and if we got some brake fluid coming out it looks like we don't have
03:55to repair that line. If we open the top bleeders on both sides and then see if
04:02we have a steady stream of fluid coming out we'll know that there's still fluid
04:06going to the back. Nothing? No. Let me jump up there. I'm gonna push the brake. So yeah if
04:15you want to hold the brake pedal down. Yep. Oh there it goes. Is it coming out?
04:19Yeah. We got fluid coming through the brakes to the back. I think that
04:24line's good Steve. I always forgot that old saying heat rises. Because I'm in
04:29there and I'm sweating bullets. This guy's down here having a siesta, air
04:34conditioning, you know the fan blowing on him. I'm just sweating bullets just
04:38getting a leg press in but it's okay. That's how it works. You know you've got
04:42to be initiated. So now that I'm out of this very hot car pumping the brake while
04:46you got. That was a lot of work. Yeah it was really cool. Very well played strategy wise okay. Yeah I
04:51just stood in front of the fan and just messed with the bleeders. Yeah I'm up there like is it really hot up here?
04:57It feels hot up here. Suspension time? Yeah suspension time. So we're measuring the
05:02ride height here and it looks like it's about not quite 22 and a half but close
05:06enough we call it 22 and a half. Okay so yeah we're at 21 on the money. Okay. I'm
05:11almost thinking that we should go down on that other side. Sounds good to me yeah.
05:16Yeah because it's always better. You know we already got a brick in the wind. Yeah.
05:20Yeah.
05:23Okay good.
05:26We're about 21 and three quarters. Okay so we got about another three quarters or so to go and then we should be down enough where it should be even in the front. Yeah.
05:40So we've addressed the radiator, we've adjust the brakes, we've adjust the suspension. Yep.
05:45You know now I need I know we need to check out kind of these racing seats see
05:49what we can do with that. Oh yeah this is good. This is gonna be much better. Alright.
06:04And then all we'll have to do is just run our harnesses which luckily on these
06:07cars seatbelts are right here so we don't really have to do any modification
06:11or drilling. But cool.
06:15Honestly I think we had a great day and what I'm really excited for is to do a
06:20pass down a drag strip. I've actually never done a pass down a legal drag strip.
06:28Everything looks good. I think the next time I see you. Yeah.
06:32Be at Roadkill. And we'll be running some passes. I like it.
06:38After today I'm super excited. The car's gonna be fine. Be able to cruise around
06:42and make some passes at the show so no problems. We are out in Michigan. We got
06:50our 67 Fastback behind us. It's set up to run but we have one issue. It would appear
06:57that the shipper got the exhaust completely stuck on something and ripped
07:06the welds on the exhaust, dented in here, and when he hit this it shoved it up
07:14into our linkage right here. So we had to disconnect our linkage up top because he
07:19Hercules the crap out of it. So now at least we have linkage here that allows
07:23for us to shift but now we can only get into park or reverse.
07:30You know when I got here we let down the exhaust hanger on the left side that
07:36way we can try and see where the header was hitting the linkage, not allowing it
07:40to shift. Once we did that we dropped the hanger you know now we could actually
07:44see that was really pressed up in there. We were able to reroute the linkage, get
07:48everything tightened up, and now our car is ready to roll.
07:54So today we're at M1 Concourse. We're out in Michigan. We're road killing nights.
08:07You know the car unfortunately got out here in rough shape due to the shipping.
08:11Stuff happens. It's okay. We fix these cars and we upgrade them but you know
08:16what I feel confident enough we're gonna be able to get a couple passes down
08:19today and then depending on how we do that's gonna be the configuration that
08:23we mess with a little bit so that we're dialed for the Power Tour West and
08:27luckily Amazon has everything we need so I'm feeling pretty good.
08:30Good to see you Steve. Nice to see you. A little bit different weather but it's
08:34same old Mustang and it's good to see it here. Got some new torque thrusts on here.
08:38I don't know if you like them. They look good. I guess it's actually correct.
08:42They look, it's got that you know the bullet. Everyone loves the bullet Mustang.
08:46Right. That's you know you can't have a bullet Mustang without the torque thrust on it.
08:50Yeah, I like it. Should we pop the hood? Yes. Let's do it.
08:56So you know new radiator and then these fans are a little bit better in my opinion so
09:00higher CFM. Yeah. It's just before it was literally almost pressed up against the
09:03block. You know how hard it was just to get this air intake off. Yeah. This is a nicer setup.
09:08The only thing we haven't done yet is our fluids. Okay so yeah because we're
09:12about to make a couple passes on the drag strip here at Roadkill Nights and
09:16so just check out all the fluids and make sure we're ready to go. How are we
09:21looking? Good. We can add just a little bit of oil and everything else looks good.
09:30The goal for us today was making at least a couple passes down the drag
09:34strip so ahead before that we had to just check over the car make sure
09:38everything was like tight, not leaking anything. It was a little low on oil so
09:43we had to add some oil and then had to add some of the sponsor decals and that's an
09:49easy operation so really the car is basically ready to go.
09:53We are using Pennzoil's 0W-20 for this vehicle as recommended by our friends
09:58from Shell.
10:14All right John so last time we were with the car I got to do the burnout. Flipping
10:22for who goes down that track? Sounds good to me. All right what are you calling?
10:25Heads. He's calling heads. Let's measure the coin. Oh yeah. It's hats and
10:30tails. No trickery going on here. All right he's called heads. Let's see it.
10:36All right ready?
10:43Let's run it!
10:48So I believe we're gonna hang on here hold up for a second and so the the
10:54issue is we had a passenger. We weren't sure how many passes we'd be able to
10:59get out of the car today so we figured let's just go in together. The rule here
11:03is no passengers so they booted them out.
11:14John how has today been going and what are you thinking on? I think this is
11:22great. It's a better than I thought coming in here. Right. The car launches
11:26straight. Sure. Engine sounds awesome. Right. A lot of power. I would have to
11:31agree with you. Now it's back to the drawing board. We'll go on Amazon. We'll
11:34get that new exhaust. Yeah. We'll get the linkage all tuned up and adjust it. Yep.
11:37And Power Tour West here we come. About a thousand mile road trip but I can't wait.
11:41I'm excited John. Let's do it. Awesome.