The story begins

I first learned of my Gran Torino in 2001, it had been owned by a family friend and had been sitting in a driveway with a tarp over it for a few years. I picked it up shortly after and started the project of making it roadworthy.

I had never had a car project before, and being young and dumb I tried making the car cool before making the car run. I started with a B&M shifter, intake manifold, carb, and some “race seats”. I removed the cracked cream vinyl roof, leaving holes where the trim used to be.

I was hoping to get her on the road by 2003 but that didn't happen, in 2004 I smartened up to know making it cool and sitting, wasn’t as fun as less-cool and driving. That didn’t pan out to well as I started bodywork to fix some holes and ended up stripping the entire car. After digging a lot of old bondo from past repairs I started the long process of straightening everything out again, and got the car primered before storage that year.

Some actual progress

The year after I started on making a cowl hood to cover the hole I had to cut out for the air filter with the new manifold. I also had a shop run a checkup on the car to find anything that needed fixing: a new master cylinder, a refresh of the rear brakes and lines, and a new water pump. That was it, and that Aug of 2005 it was road-ready.

The following year I was gifted a set of headman headers, from a great guy who goes by DutchD on the Torino forums, he was even wonderful enough to pay for shipping. He also sent me his leftovers from setting up his own 3” exhaust on his Torino, which I fabbed into a fairly crude system with some second hand mufflers as well.

The motor had quite a few drivability problems, likely from being 30 years old without any major work, but also due to a mismatched build of speed parts, gas-crunch era smog parts, and worn out internals. I ended up with a slipped timing chain while driving, and had to tow the car home. After taking off the timing cover, I found it had over 1 1/2" of deflection, and it would bind when flexed inwards as the chain couldn't flex inward that much. It was amazing the car ran had even ran at all.

And the story continues

Then in 2007 I got to drive the car to a church, and drive away with my Bride that wonderful day. It got parked the day after, and sat untouched again in storage for almost another 5 years.

Being parked didn’t deter me from stockpiling more goodies, a used set of rear gears, a new set of aluminum cylinder heads, all again before getting the car in smooth running condition. It seems I still have a lot to learn…

Someday soon I’ll hopefully be able to replace the worn out bits, and refresh the motor to make it a smooth running street machine… but that was the dream 12 years ago.