July Car of the Month
This is "Purple Venom's" story. I had a thought one day after looking at Hot Rod magazine of building a kit car. I looked on line, found several makes and ordered the Factory Five free DVD. Once I received that, I was determined to buy a kit that my son's and I could build. I knew Fastlane had gotten these cars in before, so I stopped by the showroom and there was a Black with Gold stripes B&B kit as well as Purple Venom. I just really wanted to look at how "kit" cars were assembled, and began asking Dave alot of questions. He asked if I wanted to drive it, well of course I did. After I drove it, and listened to Dave tell me that I can buy it now, drive it now, and modify it later to my liking...I was hooked. I had saved a bit of money for a garage expansion and spent it on this instead. Linda didn't believe me when I sent her the picture, but did when I drove it home
She wouldn't ride in it the first year, too scary she said. This was in May of '06. I finally took delivery towards the end of May first part of June. 2006 was spent meeting many new people and getting to know others I had met before (Mike Deguire, Tom K, and others). I entered a few car shows and won a 2nd and a 3rd place trophy before I figured out the fun was in driving, not showing.
Since then, I have added many modifications to the car:
2007
- Removed de-powered steering rack in favor of a true manual Unisteer 18:1 steering rack
- Upgraded the rotors all around - 13" in front and 10.65" in rear
- Upgraded the brake calipers all around - Cobra dual piston in front and Cobra rear
- Installed electric power brake from ABSPowerbrakes.com - Much improved and even braking
- New switch bezels on the dash
- New front sump Canton oil pan - this was the lowest thing on the car
- Modified flywheel casing to have more ground clearance, next to the oil pan, this was the next lowest thing.
- Installed new electric radiator fan - much improved cooling
- Removed radio and speakers that came with the car - couldn't hear it anyway
- Installed battery cutoff switch and 12v outlet
- Swapped out Holley 850 double pumper for new Barry Grant Speed Demon 750 with vacuum secondaries.
- Swapped out quick jacks with overriders
- Added screens to duct openings on front of car.
- Added trunk supports and carpeted trunk
- Added rollbar grommets
- Added "cobra" badging and floormats
2008
- Removed body and upgraded the electrical system front to rear
- Added self cancelling turn signals and emergency flashers
- Replaced carpeting in the entire car
- Replaced intake manifold gasket
- Re-located the brake fluid reservoir and converted to a remote reservoir system.
- Added Cobra Earl's footbox "coolers" - only as cool as the outside temp
- Installed Dark Water's drop battery box in the trunk and re-located the battery
- Swapped out axles to a 28 spline "Fox" width axles. Got rid of warped axles and allows for a wider tire in the future.
- Added Herb's custom door panels
- Replaced roll bar grommets
- Replaced tailights
- Replaced shocks with Koni coil overs all around
- Replaced front and rear lower control arms with tubular Factory Five type
Now, the fun stuff. I recently had the car at Lynch Hummer with Omer Phelps. The car just wasn't running right. See first pull dyno below and you will see why:
After removing the carb, it was found that the accelerator pump was damaged during assembly, and the jets were grossly undersized as well as some issues with the choke linkage. Omer fixed all of this, replaced the spark plugs and performed another dyno which revealed that the vacuum advance was not working on the distributor. I ordered a new MSD distributor and had it shipped directly to him. He then re-curved it, adjusted timing and did a final tune.
The engine advertised 535Hp with a single plane Victor intake and an 850 carb. With the numbers shown above, add 18%, this engine is producing 512Hp with a very restrictive Torker II intake and a 750 carb. I am quite pleased with this result. On to the specs
460 Crate Engine from Ford Motorsports
Barry Grant 750cfm vacuum secondary carb
MSD ignition and distributor
2.73 Rear gear ratio
At last year's RNG, the car ran a 11.94 1/4 mile at 119mph. I wonder what it will do now?
I know, you're shocked. It will just be a little longer. Looking forward to going on some cruises with you after our vacation. I'll miss the next club meeting too. 
Post your numbers from the dyno!
