Cleetus isn’t having a good run lately. He wounded Leroy the Savage’s engine. He absolutely nuked the turbocharged truck motor in the Auction Mistake C6 Corvette. And then there’s Project Neighbor…that would be the Ford ex-cop car that is now sporting running gear raided from a Shelby GT500, complete with a six-speed swap. In short, the Ford is a dream car, a whale that has a row-your-own box and enough power to wake up every last shred of self-preservation instinct left in your body…or, for those of us who are seriously infected by this gearhead disease, enough power to remind you why you love being alive. Always look on the positive side of things!
Well, we’d love to, but in this video…that just ain’t the case. After the Shelby engine flashed the middle finger and laid over after ghetto-spraying tons of nitrous into the intake (1,070 horsepower!), it was time to put an engine in that was better prepared for the kinds of abuses that Mr. McFarland is known for doing during his events, such as Cleetus and Cars and Street Car Takeover. The new engine went together and on the prior update, sounded absolutely beefy. Then…well, it went bad, and not due to extravagant abuse or excess nitrous, either. In fact, it was more of a shakedown drive that was being performed when the engine packed it in and started making the kinds of noises that make you sick to your stomach. Here you will get to see an engine autopsy, and watch as the shop crew try to determine just what the hell went wrong with Project Neighbor.
I wish my Vic was the right vintage to duplicate this swap.
Anybody that wears a hat with the brim bent up at the front and their ears tucked into the sweat band is a weirdo.