welcome to wacky Wednesday's, where everyone has a chance to show off their
car mods, and here's this week's winner,
I know what you're saying, what the heck is a maverick, a lot of people look at
this car and they go, is that an old Mustang well I guess it does have
somewhat of a family resemblance, the maverick was in the 70s the early 70s to
77 and it was a simple car originally but they made this sport package called
a grabber, this is a 71 grabber and it's very unusual and that it has what's
called the dual dome hood scoop, which was for only two years, otherwise they
had flat black or color paint only, the rear taillights were blacked out the
trim that is and you can see this particular one has a black vinyl roof
the grabber was a trim package, it was not a performance package these cars
originally came with 200 cubic inch six eventually they came with a 302 cubic
inch v8 which this one has, the grabber package included these high-back bucket
seats non adjustable but nice, the interior was pretty Spartan but really
quite tasteful, I think Ford really did a good job on it
now the car is 47 years old and you can see where my elbow has been all those
years, but it's held up remarkably well, back in the 70s getting in and out of
this car and wasn't too easy it had this seat that's kind of bent back and forth
you bent it back and forth and then you jumped into the back seat what a drag
a couple of my favorite things is these wheels, if you notice they're red well I
actually had them powder coated the entire wheel and the outer trim ring is
stainless steel and the hub cap covers most of it, but I loved a little bit of
red that peeks out, the Maverick grabber stripe you can still buy there's a guy I
believe in Arkansas makes that stripe, insane isn't it, by the way all you
purists check it out the original spare tire and yes it has
the original air, this had the optional sport mirror package notice with the
remote yeah baby, now this is the original v8
that came in the car, I did take it apart just to see if it needed work and as it
turned out it didn't need anything at all, one of the unique things about it is
had a factory over bore, what do I mean by a factory over bore, it had the
original Ford Pistons in it board 30 over I was talking to a Ford old-timer
and he said back then, he says it wasn't uncommon for them to pull a v8 or any
motor out of the assembly if there was a scratch, hone it down and put in
oversized Pistons, over the years I've tweaked it for example you're probably
looking at the Edelbrock carb, but if you take a really close look, you
can see that I have air flow research heads on it and some simple hooker
headers, it really makes the car breathe a lot better, now I've taken Scotty's
advice, I have all the parts Scotty, this car used to be a power steering car at
about 20 or so years ago I took it off because it was that old external power
steering and it dragged and leaked, well I'm getting older now and I needed power
steering, so there are wonderful kits now that take Saginaw which is integrated
power steering, integrated in the power steering box, so you Ford guys are
noticing that looks like a Chevy power steering pump and it's a Saginaw pump
which yes Chevy uses, the car came with standard drum brakes, four-wheel drum
brakes can be exciting sometimes to stop so I managed to find from a 1977
maverick power disc brakes, so this car has power disc brake conversion and
that's that weird ugly bracket that goes around the master cylinder and brake
booster, let's see how quick a 47 year old engine starts up
not too shabby, it has a slightly what they call a slight cam on it, again it
helps it breathe real nice and gives it plenty of power for a very light bar I
have a flex fan on it those are all old-school power tricks, old school power
can you say rumpitty tumpitty, here's the dash, you maverick guys, you torino guys you
pinto guys, probably know that that turn signal lever, reflected right on to the
glass on the speedometer and the instrument cluster, that's why I took off
the glass because you would be driving down the road on a normal day and you
could not see the gauges, because of the reflection of that stupid turn signal
lever, great engineering Ford, close up at the tiny backseat but if you're a small
person, a kid it was just fine, by the way there are two old-school 6 by 9s from
RadioShack, yeah everyone remembers RadioShack right, now these cars didn't
have roll-up back windows, they had these strange sort of pop out windows, check it
out now many times, not with this car, but I would see these windows pop out at
highway speeds I mean pop out on the floor on highway speeds, grabber package
included this rear deck spoiler, can you see that little lip there, now on the
eBay parts market that is a highly highly desirable part, also the bumpers
started to get bigger bigger and bigger this is a small bumper maverick in 73
they started to get big and by 74 they were gigantic and here's the tiny bumper
again in the front, much much more tasteful, the big ones were well they
were terrible, but a it's what you got with all the regulations that were
coming in, put in an aftermarket oil and transmission cooler it does use the
standard c4 transmission which is their medium duty transmission, the c6 was the
bigger one that was in Torino and other big cars, they're great transmissions I
have never had any trouble in all 47 years of it being around, I do have a
what's called a mild stall speed converter to allow it to rev up a little
bit to get a little bit off when you tap the gas, and I do have a traction lock
rear end,
you know what they say Scotty, friends don't let friends drive a Chevy, well that was this week's video and to
have your car mods shown on my channel here, check this out, so if you never want
to miss another one of my new car repair videos, remember to ring that Bell!