You drop out of Second gear and ratchet the shifter from left to right in the gate. The car thumps satisfyingly as you roll up to the starting line and watch the tree's pre-staged and staged lights wink on. The lights cascade down the tree, and suddenly, you're off--blistering a great quarter-mile. But could it have been better?
Or maybe you're on the highway, and you reach down and grab a lower gear and step out to pass some wayward traveler. Does your Mustang have what it takes to pull out and pull away? Stunningly, we believe that most vintage Mustangs probably don't.
One sure way to find out whether your steed is fleet or foul is a chassis dyno. A couple of years ago ("Big-Block Blowout," Sept. '99, page 20) we dyno'd several big-block cars and came away with some numbers that were mild but still impressive. The winner of this shootout was Bob Myhrer, owner of the '71 429 SCJ. Since that time Bob has been blindly tuning the car for more power--or so he thought. After hearing Bob whine about the lack of go, we decided to dyno the car again to see what we could do to liven it up. The first vendors to help us were Summit Racing and Mustangs Plus. Summit provided the Holley tuning aids and the K&N products as well as a pair of Edelbrock air fuel meters, while Mustangs Plus set us up with its excellent aluminum driveshaft.
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