Short Wheelbase #001 and #006 together at last

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SWB001

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Many of you saw Auto Kraft's Short Wheelbase Mark VIII for sale a few months ago. I bought it and finally got it home where it now shares space with Short Wheelbase Thunderbird #001. Here's some picts of them together:
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together4.jpg

together5.jpg

Here it is in the garage:
Garage.jpg
 
I don't know about anybody else, but I think the tbird looks a lot better then that poor mark viii. How about more pictures of the tbird?
 
I see you decided to mirror the stripe on it. Looks much better going down both sides instead of just the one. So how is the performance compared to a regular one? Is their a notecable weight difference? How about rotation? Does the car rotate faster going into a tight corner? How about the rear stepping out? Is it more prone to doing it?
I am very interested in if/how it changes the cars dynamics. Why did they do it in the first place, I mean was it only cosmetic or were they hopeing to improve the cars cornering ability?
 
You really have to see the car in person. The lines actually look so much better. If you follow the flow of the rear window down to the rear wheel well, it flows really well. Anyhow, here's more pics of the bird. It's powered by a 69 Boss 302 with a Vortech supercharger.
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The handling is extremely impressive compared to stock. That was the intention at the begining of the project. Back in 1989 Kenny Brown wanted to race the Thunderbird in the SCCA World Challenge series due to the much better suspension characteristics over the Mustang. However the length of the car really made it not a great handler for the high speed stuff. 8" is just what worked out well on how much to shorten the wheelbase. However to race in World Challenge you have to be a manufacturer, so the plan was to build at least 250 SWB Thunderbirds a year and sell through Ford dealers. However, the project was cancelled before it ever really got started due to many changes in Kenny Brown's life. Only five Thunderbirds were ever completed. The Mark was just done for fun since Doug loves the VIII's and the chassis is basically the same as the birds and he had the jig ready to go. So he did this car for his wifes daily driver. My 001 car was the prototype for the project and was to be the first race car chassis as it was a scrap body in white from Ford. This is the basics behind the SWB project.
 
Did the place that does the chasis conversion do the 302 install as well? Is that a carb?
 
Wow, so its a one of one car? Cool beans. I had thought they made a dozen T-Birds and a half dozen Marks..... which would have been uber rare anyway. Huh. When I saw it for sale I really didn't give it much thought.

I forgot, which side was the stripe originally on?
 
Funny thing about the octastars, I didn't know that there were two different ones. The ones that I bought years ago through Ford Motorsport for my Bird are fully polished. The ones that came on the Lincoln are polished on the outer most surfaces, but are more of a rough surface in the openings between the spokes if that makes sense. P.S., when I bought the ones through Ford, they had a bunch on closeout for $99 each. Seems that they have gone up a bit since then :).
 
Stripe was on the drivers side.

When I bought the Thunderbird, it was a body shell only. I built the car from there. I used a painless 14 circuit wiring harnes and mapped that through the factory switches, boy was that fun. I built the full harness in the basement and then transferred it to the car. Most Super Coupe parts I scavenged through many junk yards. Suspension, etc. I had the 302 in the garage, so it that's how it found a home there. I also had a couple T5's laying around so that's why it got the 5 speed. Had to custom build the drive shaft. I used a Mustang pedal assembly with cable clutch rather than using a hydralic unit. That is a carb under an old Paxton box. It's a 750 Demon.
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my buddy mike made a home made set up similar to that once, hr took a zephyr, i think it was a 79, and dropped in a 460 he had laying in his chassis shop, made a bonnet to go around the carb, and turbo'd the car using an old turbo from a diesel school bus engine lol! the car was retarded fast and he had next to nothing invested into it! the t-bird looks good like that but i dont care for the short mark.
 
SWB001 said:
Funny thing about the octastars, I didn't know that there were two different ones. The ones that I bought years ago through Ford Motorsport for my Bird are fully polished. The ones that came on the Lincoln are polished on the outer most surfaces, but are more of a rough surface in the openings between the spokes if that makes sense. P.S., when I bought the ones through Ford, they had a bunch on closeout for $99 each. Seems that they have gone up a bit since then :).
Click to expand...

I have had two marks with octastars the 97 were fully polished like you said
and the 98s were not I think they just got cheep with the later production ones
 
I need to see it next to another mark. It looks shorter but where is it shorter? Even though welcome to LVC and nice cars.
 
Look at the distance between the rear of the door and the rear wheel opening. The glass is all stock. Look at the width of the pillar between the quarter window and the rear window and then the overall length of the roof. There is a full 8" removed. Here's a pic from the construction set which shows where the cuts are made. You see that there are two different cars here. At least the construction of this car brought back to life a Mark that was destined for the crusher. Here's a pic also of what it looked like before. It is a salvage title car, where my T-bird is a non title car since it was a body in white from Ford.
MarkVIII1.jpg

MarkVIII10.jpg
 
I really like that T-Bird. The Mark is cool, but the T-Bird's lines seem to lend themselves to the SWB treatment somewhat better than those of the Mark VIII. That being said, I really like both of them. And I heard that the original SWB T-Bird was built by Ford as a testbed for what was supposed to be an MN-12 based replacement for the Mustang. That would have been pretty cool.
 
hey Jeff glad to see you getting some good use out of that old SWB Lincoln, My wife and I miss it now and then but I can always build another when we get caught up! if you notice in the picture of the car on the frame rack off to the left is George's SWB T- bird 005 in process, glad to see you keeping this unique concept alive and interesting for guys who like custom cars. BTW I'll have to send you pictures of one of our latest projects a 2013 Mustang GT prototype you can see it on my Hub garage page.

Later,

Doug Kielian
Auto Kraft
body and paint Inc.
Lincoln, ne.
 
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