“I believe you should enjoy the mechanical side
if you want to be a car person. Seeing others pay
shops to build these fancy cars amazes me.”
COVER CAR I 1986 MUSTANG COUPE
Framed by a six-point roll bar from Maximum Motorsports is an ultraclean interior filled
with reproduction bits from Dean Satterfield at TMI Products, including the headline,
sun visors, and door panels. The seats received Mustang SVO–style upholstery and
foam from TMI as well. A Classic Auto Air air conditioning system makes it palatable to
pilot this street machine in the warm Florida climate.14 OCTOBER 2019 WWW.MUSTANG-360.COM
most talented people that I
know.”
Having befriended Lyons
before this complete rebuild
began, Kelly knew just how
to get a handle on his new,
big-cube, twin-turbo setup.
“I blew up my stock block
not long after we met, and I
started picking his brain for
my next combo. He further
helped me once I decided
to step up to the Haltech
Elite 2500. He was, and is
currently, running an older
Sport 2000 plug-and-play
harness ECU. I always
bounce my questions off
Jack, and if he’s needed, he’s
always a phone call away.
He was there to help me
configure and has taught
me the basics of tuning. I
still call him in to review my
changes! I’m very fortunate
to have him as a friend.”
While he hasn’t hit the
dyno or dragstrip with the
latest combination, it’s safe
to say that Kelly’s combo
performs pretty well thanks
to a little help from his
friends.
“Doing some research
and talking to a tuner up
north that has an Incon
kit on a 347, it will prob-
ably support up to the 800
horsepower or so advertised
of the kit. This is the smaller
800 kit. He made around
800 to the tire before the
turbos started falling off,”
says Kelly. “The torque curve
is what I’m dying to see, and
it’s currently having some
clutch issues—that I was
expecting. I need to get it
on a dyno ASAP once I get a
new clutch in it. We’re guess-
ing that it’s making around
650 to 700 lb-ft currently on
9 psi based on comparisons
to Jack’s, but it comes on
so low that it still gets away
from you.”
Kelly describes the
combination as scary, but
we would imagine that’s
in a good way. When he is
banging the gears with theTremec TK600 six-speed,
the 3.31-gear 8.8 rear strug-
gles to put down the power
even with a host of suspen-
sion upgrades and a set of
sticky Mickeys out back.
“We knew it would have
a comical amount of torque,
but it’s just a deathtrap, to
put it bluntly. Between the
363 cubes and the small
turbos, it ramps up so hard,
so low in the rpm range,
that it’s hard to keep on the
road,” Kelly confesses. “I’m
still only running 8.5 to 9 psi.
I haven’t added the boost
controller yet because I
don’t know what I’ll do with
more torque. I may swap to
a larger single just to make
the car more useable. For
now, it’s a blast as long as
you don’t let it get away from
you. The drivability has been
phenomenal. It just turns
sideways on you whenever
you stab it on the street.”
While the Incon-boosted,
big-cube small-block is
certainly the kind of throw-
back combo that will gather
crowds when Kelly pops thehood on his four-eye, it isn’t
exactly the most practical for
a hot street car, so it may not
stay this way forever.
“During this most recent
motor build, I knew it wasn’t
well suited to the combo, but
it’s just so period correct for
the car and I couldn’t take
it off,” Kelly tells us. “I’ve
had thoughts of moving it to
my first-gen Lightning if I
ever go to a big single on the
coupe.”
Until then, however, he
plans to simply enjoy the
fruits of his labor, which
emerged from a three-year
rectification in 2013 and
remains a stunning example
of this now-classic version of
the Fox Mustang.
“I’m just trying to enjoy
the car for a while now,”
Kelly says. “Efforts will be to
expand the potential of the
Haltech, finish running the
air conditioning through the
ECU, and making it a great
street/strip car. I’m too sen-
timentally attached to chop
it up and make it a race car,
so I’m just trying to make it acrazy street cruiser. It’s been
to Mustang Week and sat in
the NPD booth in the con-
vention center, and it always
gets a ton of attention.
I also want to thank Mat-
thew Laszaic and National
Parts Depot. We have been
close friends for a long time,
and he has been a part of this
build almost every step of
the way. We test-fit a lot of
parts and did a lot of R&D
with the build.”
Kelly went on to say,
“Racing efforts have moved
to a Coyote-swapped coupe
that I’ve been working on.
Once I get back into consis-
tently racing with the other
car, I’ll suck it up and make a
few passes.”
Based on the results of
this car, we have no doubt
that Andrew Kelly’s Coyote-
powered racer will become
an impressive specimen, but
it might not pull at those
nostalgic heartstrings quite
has hard as the 800 lb-ft
thundering to the rear tires
of this twin-turbo
small-block combo.