1971 Grabber Blue SCJ

1971 Mustang Super Cobra Jet

This Grabber Blue SCJ Mustang was sent to us from our customer in Texas who purchased the car seen only in pictures. The car was sent to our shop as a running driving car with a desperate need of refurbishing. After unloading it from the carrier we started the car up. It ran ok but had a slight knock and the oil pressure dropped down to a scarry 5lbs after warming up. Later in this story you will see why. This car has one of my favorite colors, grabber blue with a black deluxe interior. The car was done in the argent stripes originally but our customer prefered to trim it out in black in the restoration. I could not agree more, I was never a fan of the argent and grabber blue. The car sports a four speed which really added to the cool factor.
Now lets take a quick tour of what we started with!!

Ok now on to what a little lovin , time and ........oh ya money can do. First we pulled the engine trans and front sheetmetal. Not to bad, no shortage of grease and grime and a little rust here and there. The biggest issue in the front of the car was the battery apron and lower portion of the radiator support. So we stripped the engine compartment and addressed those issues. We thankfully have our own Mustang Salvage yard so a quick walk to the bone yard awarded us with our lower radiator support section we needed. The walk back was a little longer as I passed the 65 Gt Fastback on the way back in and rubbed on it while telling it I was going to bring her in one day and bring her back to her glory days. Ok where was I........oh ya, we cleaned up the donor part and trimed it up for its new home. After grafting that on and doing the battery apron repairs we etched and primed.

Now that the engine compartment is in the back pocket it was on to bigger and more time consuming project........The Body! Stripping the body revealed some past dings and dents on top of the obvious required taillight panel replacement, qtr patch, qtr panel damage, and cowl panel repairs. Also some very poor past fender repairs that had to be ........well lets just say refined a bit from the previous technique used by the last body guy who left his mark.

The body work is done and the gaps are looking good its on to the paint booth!!!

Ok we got the outside of the car looking pretty presentable now its on to the engine!!

Remember earlier in the story when we said we had an oil pressure problem and a little knocking... well we found the culpret a piece of the oil pan baffle broke off and got sucked into the oil pick up screen. Blocking about 60% of the oil flow. The bearings were shot but overall the block and crank were all good to go with a little machine work.

Even though this was a car that needed to be restored as original I have no issue with making some things better especially when they can't be seen. Case and point if this car was judged on its originality you know a Judge is not going to require an engine tear down. So we upgraded the original engine with a roller cam and some port and polishing work, along with some new stainless valves. These upgrades not only reduce engine wear but our horsepower jumped to 488 with 520ftlbs of torque. Not to shabby in my book.

The engine installed and ready for a little run time. Please enjoy the little movie of a big boy purrrring. Oh and by the way please don't be critical of the rear valance fit. It was not permanently installed during the video recording.