Mustang Car Club of Omaha

Omaha, Nebraska

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Chris' 1971 BOSS 351

Back when I was 2, my dad (Steve) bought a yellow and black 1971 Boss 351.  After beating the crap out of it for a couple of years, he traded it in on a more family oriented car.  Growing up, I always heard how he wished he had never gotten rid of it. 

In 2002 my dad was turning 50 and my 2 younger brothers and I thought it would be a great idea to get him his dream car back.  It took a litlle while to find, but we found the perfect candidate in Phoenix, AZ, luckily we have family there, so we bought round trip tickets (just in case the car was not as promised) and flew down there.  The car was better than expected so we bought it.  We still had to drive it 24 hours back home so we changed the oil and headed out.  30 minutes into the trip the headliner was raining on us constantly so we had to pull over and pull the rest down.  From there, we were pulling into gas stations every 45-60 minutes - $$$.  We packed very light so when the sun went down in the desert it got very cold, oh yeah the heater doesn't work (also fun through Colorado).  One other problem we had was one of the rear tires was a retread.  That flew off doing about 70 and caved in the lower part of the quarter.  Luckily the tire still held air so we limped it to the closest tire shop(just about impossible to find in New Mexico off the interstate)  From there we were able to get it home.  It was the best adventure I've been on and I'm glad my brothers were with me.

We gave the car to my dad on his birthday and he could not believe it.  Unfortunely we could not afford to buy a real  Boss 351, but it is a Mach 1 that we completely restored ourselves to make it look like the car he had. It took us 8 months to do and it was really fun for all of us to get together.  It technically is my dad's but you would never guess it as much as I have the car. 

We recently put in a 351 cleveland 4 bolt main, stroked it to a 408 with "H" beam rods, forged aluminum pistons 11:1 compression, roller valvetrain Aussie heads topped of by a dual plane intake and 750cfm carb.  We have'nt gotten it to the dyno yet, but is supposed to  create 500hp and 500lb-ft.