I bought this car in early 2002 from the dealership I worked at. I thought it would make a fun project car someday. It was just a little 2.3 with a 5 speed. I didn't plan on driven very often but after getting 30+ mpg I started driving it daily for sometime.

In January 2003 my first born son got to ride home from the hospital in it. I was still exploring performance options with it but since the Mustang was still my primary driver I had not done much with it.

In my search for performance and ideas for the car I had found the website Turboford.org, a website dedicated the the Ford 2.3 Turbo engine and cars with it. After reading up on the performance of these little Pinto engines I started looking for a donor car to perform a swap on mine. I found an 87 Turbocouple T-bird and purchased everything I needed for the swap.

I did the swap in one weekend in my uncles garage at his house using jack stands and a cherry picker! In the coming months I worked on the tweaking the stock setup to get more power.

In 2005 I entered the car in the Clash of the Titans true street event for the 14 second category. I made it to the finals with a string of 14.0x's. The other 14 second finalist asked what all was done to my 302! It was funny when I told him it was a junkyard turbo 2.3!!

Later that year or early 2006, can't remember for sure but I blew the head gasket and hurt some pistons with a different turbo I had on the car. That was the beginning of the 5+ year build that made the car what it is today.

I started the build wanting just a little 6 point roll bar and a new fresh engine but it snow balled in a hurry. I went from a 6pt to a 10pt cage with funny car driver add-on in mild steel to a 25.5 cage in chromoly. The final setup was built around the 1.5" chop the car recieved.

I started gathering the parts to make the engine a stong peice to try and make the power I wanted. Some of these parts were custom billet crank, 4340 h-beam 5.7" rods, custom JE pistons, SVO performance head from Esslinger Engineering, custom stage 4 cam from Boport Racing Heads, custom intake and head work, 150 lb/hr injectors, accufab 90mm t-body and the final turbo it wears now, Precision 7675 CEA with ported housing.

The chassis got the already mentioned chromoly 25.5 cage attached to the throught the floor subframe connectors and rocker bars. The cage material came from Chassis Engineering in Florida. I narrowed the rear end, stuffed it with custom Moser 33 spline axles, spool and 4.56 gears. The car is minitubbed to make room for the 12 inch wide wheels that the current 28x10.5 MT tires are mounted to.

Some of the other items that make this car tick are a the Neal Racing Transmissions powerglide, installed using custom bellhousing adapter plate, custom billet flexplate made by Meizere and custom torque converter from PTC converters. Turbo boost cooling comes from the custom air to water intercooler that has SIX Precision 1000hp cores welded together. With the ice packed in the cooler and the Meizere water pump circulating the water, the intake charge temp with 30+ psi is in the lower 50's, even when its 90+ degrees outside!! The engine is controlled with Big Stuff 3, MSD 7531 ignition box and MSD 7562 boost controller setup.

There are so many more parts to this build but I will be able to right a book if I list it all!

The biggest question is always, How fast is it?! So far with just boost the car has run a 9.06 at 151MPH!! The car has run a 9.03 with a 5.68 1/8th mile pedaling it with the nitrous on during the pass!! Not bad for a pedal pass getting out of it early!!

I hope ya'll like the car! You can see vids of it on youtube.com , just search my screenname Stangman93!