first fe experience

[fescj428]

My first FE experience actually played a part in my eventual career. My older brothers friend had bought a 69 Fairlane Cobra sports roof around 1976. I first saw the car during the winter of 1977 and simply fell in love with it! It was the most highly optioned Cobra I have seen to date. Black Jade with black interior, auto, buckets, console, floor shift, tach, clock, am/fm, rim blow wheel, ps, pdb, sport mirrors driver remote, R code car with 3.50 trac lock rear, Ford accessory trailer hitch. It also had a set of MWC Spyder wheels which to me made it look awesome. It was pretty loud with glass packs in place of stock mufflers. I kept track of the car till the early spring of 1979 when I bought it for $300. It had been parked Christmas of 1978 with bad fuel pump. The car was worn with rust and needing some mechanical work, but still ran and drove OK, very fast for a 17 year old kid. Unfortunately the car made me "car poor" very quickly and I sold it for more suitable daily driver. But, I could never get it out of my head. I had a couple of 1970 GTO's after the Cobra, and they were decent. But, the Cobra made a lasting impression. In the early 80's I went to the local community college for the auto mechanics degree. I started working for a Ford dealer upon graduation and just retired from that same dealer this past fall 32 years later. That 69 Fairlane Cobra made me a Ford fan and an FE engine fan for life! I wouldn't change anything!

[Rory428]

 I turned 16 in 1973, and my first car, was a 57 Ford Sedan Delivery, that I bought for 50 bucks. The stock 272 Y Block was very tired, and a high school classmate had recently crashed his 64 Mercury, with a 300HP 390, so I bought the engine to swap into the 57, but after I tore the intake manifold off, it was badly sludged up, so I decided a rebuild was in order.I found a pair of 428 CJ heads for $125.00, and there was a local Super Stock racer who raced a 69 428CJ Mustang in SS/G that did engine work for a few other local Ford racers, so I took my 390, the CJ heads, along with a brand new Edelbrock Streetmaster that I bought when they were first available. The engine guy didn`t much care for my rusty 57, and suggested I look for a Mustang or Fairlane. By the time the 390 was built, I had bought a 1970 Mustang fastback with a 351 Cleveland 4 barrel and a Shaker hood. My buddys were hounding me to put the 390 into my 70, but the Mustang was my daily driver, and weekend bracket racer, and I didn`t want to modify it that much. As luck would have it, a buddy had a nice black 66 Fairlane GTA that the C6 died in, and the 390 was tired. Since he needed transportation ASAP, I swapped him a nice 57 Ford Custom 4 door with a 272 and 3 speed straight across for the broken Fairlane. I installed the fresh "big dollar" 390 with a fresh C6, and a Detroit Locker with 4.57 gears, and it ran a best of 12.62 @110 MPH, thru the mufflers which was pretty decent performance for a hydraulic cammed 390 back in the mid 70s. In 1978, I swapped the 390 into a buddys old ex Modified Production 64 Falcon, and just like that, I had a 11 second daily driver, until a cop pulled me over one night, and wrote me up a  "Tow this thing home until you fix all this stuff" ticket. Been hooked on FEs ever since. By the way, that first set of CJ heads that I bought for 125 bucks back in 1975, are currently on my 59s 428CJ.