The folks at Late Model Restoration have to love me right now. Over the last couple of months, I’ve been ordering stuff for three different Mustang projects…not only the Great Pumpkin and the Rough Start Fox, but my wife’s uncle is doing some work on one of his cars too, more or less a full restoration. I’m pretty sure I paid the light bill there last month…you’re welcome. The UPS guy knows me as the Mustang guy. I’ve got enough cardboard marked with LMR floating around in my shop and my office to build a kickass fort with. And there’s a reason why: they have good stuff and a wide range of good stuff to boot, plus tons of helpful videos on YouTube in case you get stuck working on your project. In fact, the only critique that I have of LMR is that they are pretty light on four-eye Fox stuff, but that’s across the board with a lot of the companies. C’mon, guys…we could really go for reproduction 1979-82 tail light lenses and housings over here. Just saying.

In a recent video, they strapped on a  beauty to the rollers. This is a 1979 Mustang Ghia coupe that hasn’t even broken the 10,000 mile mark yet, and is dead stock with the exception of the aftermarket 16″ TRX-style wheels. Not that anything from 1979 was something to crow about when it came to horsepower, but this Ghia is a naturally-aspirated 2.3L four/automatic unit. Which was exactly as my mother’s old car was, and my grandfather summed up that 1982 LX as a “nice little car that never needed to see the Interstate” the last time anybody heard anything about the little Ford before it disappeared into an Iowa farm somewhere.

New, the 2.3 was good for 88 horsepower and 118 ft/lbs of torque. That’s the factory numbers. Now…what will the dyno actually record it at?