'Inside a bulging, blue plastic file folder is the whole story behind Tom Habrzyk's quest for strip stardom. The timeslips are the tale of the tape-the Chrondek chronicles of one man's effort to turn an original six-cylinder commuter into a 10-second terror. He could have just pumped in the nitrous and made the pass and been a hero. But Tom's not wired that way. Sure, the Comet's plumbed for nitrous, but that's only for celebrating with once the car breaks into the 10s on its own naturally aspirated merit.
Last month we laid out the buildup of Tom's stock-block, cast-crank EFI 302, which made 510 normally aspirated horsepower. The other half of this tale is the procession of parts that lead him there. Tom started with a junkyard 302 from an Explorer that ran mid 14s with an Edelbrock Air Gap intake, a Demon 750-cfm carburetor, a Comp hydraulic roller, and headers in front of a C4 auto. It later went 12.80s at 109 mph after he milled the heads for more compression and-because running dozens of car lengths quicker was always the goal-throwing in a '70 Mustang 9-inch loaded with 3.89:1 gears and a Detroit Locker. One reason the Comet was so fast was its flyweight impact on the scales at 2,850 pounds (it doesn't hurt that Tom barely squeaks past 150 pounds on his double-cheeseburger diet). But, even with slapper bars, the 60-foot times were kinda soft at 1.8 seconds.
The first efforts at traction were with a set of slapper bars. Tom graduated through a set of SSM lift bars ("they were touchy on the street") and eventually to a set of Competition Engineering Slide-A-Link bars that now claim the space beneath the rear springs accompanied by a set of Rancho RS 9000 adjustable shocks. Up front, Tom also added a set of Competition Engineering three-way adjustable front shocks and a Wilwood disc-brake conversion.
The next e.t. improvement came after minor motor revisions plus 4.11:1 rear gears, a 3,000-stall converter, and a Hughes billet servo piston and manual valvebody in the C4. Now the Comet's tale improved to 12.58 at 107 mph, yet the 60-foot times were still stuck in the 1.75s. Tom decided it was past time to get serious and that's when he built the 500hp small-block we outlined last month. With all that new power, he also knew he'd need a safer car and a looser converter.
The safety stuff came in the way of a pre-bent six-point rollbar kit from Chris Alston's Chassisworks that Tom installed himself. With a main hoop and a pair of bars that trail back to the rear suspension and another pair that act as side bars that tie into the rocker panels, the car bulked up to 3,100 pounds but also gained major chassis rigidity. Now that he had a platform to build from, Tom also figured a higher-stall converter would launch right around the engine's torque peak and the little Comet would turn into a fire-breather.
If the Comet was only intended to turn a tire on the dragstrip, that would have worked just fine. The problem was that the 5,000-stall converter was no joy on the street. "I was sitting on a slight hill one time and I had to rev it past 3,000 just to get the car to move. Plus, it was like a light switch. You'd hit 3,000 and it would spin the tires instantly. It just wasn't any fun to drive and it boiled the fluid like crazy." On the dragstrip, the Comet managed an impressive 11.17 at 118 mph, but the 60-foot times were, according to Tom, "horrible" at a best 1.56. He admits that had he spent more time chasing the magic tweak, he could have achieved his 10-second goal. But instead, he shelved the C4 and opted for a manual solution to his 10-second dilemma.