Enter your username:
Do you want to login or register?
  • Forgot your password?

    Login / Register



    Page 1 of 3 1 2 3 LastLast
    Results 1 to 20 of 57
    1. #1
      Join Date
      Jan 2013
      Posts
      18
      Country Flag: United States

      Agent 47 Falcon Sprint Build

      Hello Everyone,

      I have been lurking and learning on here for quite a while, and have finally got some focus and pulled the trigger on my new Build. I have always been a Falcon Guy and have owned at least a few at all times since the early Eighties. I have done a few Resto-Mod Builds, and a full race build. My last Falcon Race car has become well known on the Vintage Trans Am Racing Circuit. It is the original James Taylor '63 Sprint that raced in SCCA, Trans Am, and the original Mexican Panamerica races in the mid 60's...... long story short, after spending 10 years building the car from a basket, I was forced to sell it before I made a race with it. It is now in the hands of Michael Eisenberg at Maeco Motorsports and he has finished the car to all it's glory. Here is a link to a Car Craft Article done on the car shortly after I sold it.

      In the last few years, my Business started doing well enough to start thinking about a new build and I decided that the '64 Sprint that I have owned for 24 years would be the next project. After my experience with the Vintage crowd, and my enjoyment of new technology, I decided that I wanted to build a modern version of a Trans Am car.... basically take an old car and build it to Trans Am rules as if it was a late model car..... which led me to the discovery of the "Pro Touring" Community. I did a lot of digging around at available suspension options for upgrading the Falcon. I looked at Falcon specific offerings, Mustang offerings, and what I could do to adapt the Mustang kits to the Falcon.

      I have good mechanic skills, but I am not a fabricator. With Business being good, it makes a lot more sense for me to do what I do best, and pay someone else to do what they do better than me..so I knew that I would need to find a good shop to pull off this build.

      After about a year of research, and digging around, I found the Agent 47 Harbinger online, and their custom SLA suspension that they had adapted to the Mustang Platform.... better yet, I realized they were right here in North San Diego, so I decided to shoot them an email about the possibility of adapting their suspension to a Falcon. I got a quick and friendly reply from Corey Weber, who happened to know my '63 Falcon and was more than interested in looking at what it would take to do. Corey is definitely one of those guys that gets really excited talking about builds, and I was stoked to be able to get his ear.

      Agent 47 are really race car builders. Their Harbinger Mustang is an effort to take their racing knowledge and build a refined version that can be comfortably street driven. On the race track, their cars are at the front of the pack in the NASA American Iron Series and others. Since I want to build a streetable racecar, and not a trackable streetcar, this seemed to be a great match for my vision. I basically want to build a Falcon version of their Harbinger..... though it will likely take more work than building another Mustang due to the subtle and major differences in the cars.

      Anyways...... after several months of talking to the ever enthusiastic guys at Agent 47, and gathering ideas and parts, I have dropped off the car at their new facility and the teardown has begun. This car will be built to be legal for NASA American Iron Racing, and like the Harbinger, It will have the equipment to set it up in street trim, and be able to swap over to full race in about a day's worth of swapping seats, inserting door bars, adding Aero.....etc. I am not really sure where the build will take this thing, or how far I get before I have to slow down and run out of money, but I am excited about this new Journey.



      I will be meeting once a week at the Agent 47 shop for a weekly "happy hour" progress report and build direction decision making. I look forward to sharing the progress in this build thread and hope there are a few on here who will enjoy the updates.

      I I did a mild build on this car about 15 years ago and it has a 350 horse 302/Tremec 5 Speed, Currie Rear end with Global west suspension and 4 wheel disks..... all the takeoff stuff will likely go on my Ranchero in the near future. More to come!

      Cheers, Allen

      Here are a few photo's from drop off day, and this week after some teardown: (The pic of the two cars in the driveway shows the car in it's original white color along with my Sprint Convetible and is from around 1999.
      Attached Images Attached Images                            


    2. #2
      Join Date
      Jan 2006
      Location
      McKinney, TX
      Posts
      1,625
      Country Flag: United States
      Tuned in, should be bad ass like the rear of your cars.
      66 Mustang "Project: Ballin on a budget"
      89 Mustang "Box Wine"

    3. #3
      Join Date
      Sep 2009
      Location
      St. Pete, FL/Deployed
      Posts
      185
      Country Flag: United States


      Gonna be awesome!

    4. #4
      Join Date
      Aug 2007
      Location
      Roanoke (FortWorth) Texas
      Posts
      786
      Very Cool. Looking forward to seeing this one come together.
      Chris

      Total Cost Involved - Ridetech - Fatman - Total Control Products - Gateway Performance - MaverickMan Carbon

    5. #5
      Join Date
      Jan 2013
      Posts
      18
      Country Flag: United States
      Thanks Guys,

      I have been looking forward to this for a long time as well. The more the car comes apart, the more details are exposed and fine decisions need to be made.

      I stopped by yesterday and the car is so far torn down that I decided to go ahead and just tear it all the way down and send the body out for media blasting so we have a perfectly clean slate to start with. I am the second owner of the car and it has never been hit, and has no rust, but there is quite a bit of rubberized sealer on the bottom of the car and inside the rear quarters and I want to clean and lighten the car as much as possible.

      The car is going through a complete lightening by Jeff and his magic cutters and grinders. He has pulled and cut at least a couple hundred pounds out of the chassis already and has quite a ways to go.

      We are also going to move the driver position in the car back about four to six inches. To do this, we are going to move the steering back as well as the whole dash so that the steering wheel remains the same distance from the dash and looks "right". This will allow us more room under the dash for the new Tilton Petal assembly we decided to go with, which is the same piece they use on the Harbinger Mustang.

      It has been really fun going down to the shop and talking about the build with guys who seem just as excited about the build as I do. I thought I had everything figured out until they started throwing more ideas at me. For example, I have been set on a big bore 347 as the powerplant, but the guys in the shop just kept whispering "Coyote" in my ear so many times that I started to think about it. When they told me they actually weighted their race ready 331 with accessories, side by side with the equally accesorized Coyote, that the Coyote weiged 75 pounds LESS... I was a bit shocked, because when you look at them, the Coyote is just a monster. This detail alone made me really consider their suggestion.

      My biggest concern is that I don't want to put any kind of a scoop on the car, I just like the clean hood look.....and for NASA Racing, we can't cut the firewall and move it back..... We took some quick measurements off the Harbinger, and they are convinced we can make it fit. They also have a mockup engine sitting on a stand, so I told them if they could show it to me with the Coyote sitting in it and the hood closed, that it was on!

      So we made a friendly little bet, and will see what happens. I know I saw a build on here where someone put a Coyote in a '64 Falcon, and they put a big scoop on it... so we will see! I have also seen one first hand in a '63, and it required about an inch of raised hood. Stay tuned.

    6. #6
      Join Date
      Dec 2008
      Location
      Detroit
      Posts
      2,584
      Country Flag: United States
      Looking forward to seeing this build complete. I saw the Harbinger pictured in the background at SEMA, beautiful car. I'm sure you'll be more than satisfied with the end result.
      Big dreams, small pockets....

      Chris--
      '72 Cutlass S LSA/T56 Magnum
      Bowler Performance, Rushforth Wheels, ATS, Holley EFI, KORE3, Ridetech

      Project Motor City Madness

    7. #7
      Join Date
      Mar 2011
      Location
      Oxford
      Posts
      39
      Country Flag: United States
      kewl car I will be watching for sure ......

    8. #8
      Join Date
      Sep 2012
      Location
      London, Ontario
      Posts
      293
      Sweet build, I'll be watching for updates.

      73 Maverick Grabber Project

      My never ending project:
      https://www.pro-touring.com/threads/...hlight=grabber

    9. #9
      Join Date
      Oct 2013
      Posts
      70
      Country Flag: United States
      wow cant wait to see this build

    10. #10
      Join Date
      Aug 2011
      Location
      North Platte,NE
      Posts
      876
      Country Flag: United States
      I really like the "purpose built" vibe, but yet subtle, of the Agent 47 cars. A Falcon should fly with the same approach.

    11. #11
      Join Date
      Apr 2009
      Location
      san diego
      Posts
      5,102
      Country Flag: United States
      welcome aboard! Its always good to see another falcon on here.

      Why not an aluminum block 331 instead of the coyote.

      I look forward to seeing the progress.

    12. #12
      Join Date
      Jan 2013
      Posts
      18
      Country Flag: United States
      Thanks Bryce,

      I waded deep into your thread a while back and really appreciate the engineering and work you put into your car. I only wish I had the time and talent to do it myself these days, but right now, it just makes the most sense to put the car in the capable hands of the guys at Agent 47 and pick let them do their thing.

      As far as the motor goes, building a 500 HP fuel injected aluminum block 331 or 347 would actually cost quite a bit more than even the new Boss 302 Crate engine. An aluminum Dart block alone is more than 5 grand, and I the only motor builder I have a relationship with and have ever used (Leon Patton) is swamped with race motors and it would take me forever to get one build. I can pick up the phone and have a new Boss motor in a week or two. Since we are already taking the car down to the frame rails and changing it to front steering, the labor difference to make the switch will be negligible since the guys at Agent 47 already have done several early fords with this setup and know what it takes.

      Since the guys at Agent 47 are already racing the coyote motors on the track, they have a LOT of experience installing, running, tuning, and just sorting them out. They already have the programming down for race tuning, as well as a de-tune to run legally in the American Iron series. If I was having someone who didn't have all this Coyote experience do the build, and I didn't already want to build an injected motor, I would not even be thinking about this. But since I am building this car in their Stable, the best fit is going to be to follow their lead. They are able to make right at 500 HP at the crank using the Boss motor with the cross ram style intake bolted on it, which should fit under my hood.

      At least those are the arguments I have made to convince myself that going the Coyote route would be a good thing ;).

      Cheers, Allen

    13. #13
      Join Date
      Aug 2004
      Location
      Nixa, MO
      Posts
      41
      Country Flag: United States
      Looking forward to this project. Huge fan of the Agent 47 cars and Falcons.
      Luke

    14. #14
      Join Date
      May 2013
      Location
      Texas
      Posts
      297
      Country Flag: United States
      Im glad someones finally got the time and money to get a Coyote into a hard top. Looking forward to seeing how this one goes.

    15. #15
      Join Date
      Jul 2010
      Location
      OREGON
      Posts
      365
      Country Flag: United States
      Im very excited to see this thing built....

    16. #16
      Join Date
      Oct 2012
      Posts
      164
      Country Flag: Australia
      I love this model Falcon. :D

    17. #17
      Join Date
      Jan 2013
      Posts
      18
      Country Flag: United States
      Thanks Guys,

      No update this week due to the limited holiday schedule. Thanks for the props. It was a difficult decision to build a Falcon after looking at all of the custom pieces that Agent 47 made for their Harbinger Mustang. The owner's day job is "Rapid Prototyping" and he does lots of OEM work for the Automotive and Aerospace industry. They have state of the art 3-D printers and used considerable resources to print custom parts for the Harbinger to make it light and slippery. Hopefully we can make a lot of those parts work on the Falcon...... In the end, it would cost more to build the Falcon to their Harbinger specs, and I can't afford to have one off engineered/3D printed parts just for my build.

      Sometimes I wish I wasn't so stuck in my ways, because the Harbinger is absolutely awesome, all the engineering is already done, and they are building them on spec as rollers or finished cars...... but I have been a Falcon guy since I started driving cars... and just can't see myself building a Mustang.

      I also have a '64 Sprint Convertible (Beach Cruiser) and a '65 Ranchero that I am doing a period style Baja style build on..... probably not suitable for the forums here, but here is a pic of the original Arras/Moser Ranchero that raced Baja in the 70's-80's. The Ranchero evolved over the years from the small tired near stock car pictured in black and white (1973), to the big tired car in the second photo about ten years later.

      Name:  73 baja 1000 ranchero.jpg
Views: 3829
Size:  22.2 KB
      Name:  5-19-2013 6-47-26 PM.jpg
Views: 4004
Size:  54.1 KB

      "I just want to be different.... (like everyone else)"

    18. #18
      Join Date
      Dec 2013
      Posts
      9
      Country Flag: United States
      Subscribed! (Obviously)

    19. #19
      Join Date
      Jan 2014
      Posts
      1
      Country Flag: United States
      Hey Allen,
      Sorry to let you know this way but, your old motor and tranny fell out. I guess we will just have to throw in a Coyote. Looks like you would save about 70-80 pounds compared to the motor we took out.

      Name:  photo 3(1).jpg
Views: 2582
Size:  139.3 KB

    20. #20
      Join Date
      Feb 2012
      Location
      compton IL
      Posts
      159
      Country Flag: United States
      the coyote is very impressive, great choice. the only engine i would chose before a coyote is a 351w based stroker. Windsor make more power and they sound so much better than the coyote, but at the expense of comfort and gas mileage. To me, the sound of a car is equally as important as looks. All that aside this is one cool car and will be fun to drive ! looking forward to more updates !
      1965 mustang fastback. a pro-touring concoction of oem, race & custom fab...build thread here https://www.pro-touring.com/threads/...Racesteed-quot
      1975 harley ironhead custom long chopper. home built dream machine. fast, loud & beautiful

    Page 1 of 3 1 2 3 LastLast




    Advertise on Pro-Touring.com