Modding a Mustang

There is a difference between “modding” and “customizing” diecast cars. Customizing is changing car’s appearance. Modding is altering a car so it performs better on the track. Either one can be as simple or easy as you want to make, there is a difference, but you can combine the two.

My first real performance mod

I recently modded a car to enter in a race with the Austin Diecast Drags club down in Texas. The ADD club has been a big Redline Derby supporter and I’ve never modded a car for racing so I thought I’d give it a try. I figured I’d take a fast mainline model, FTE it up a bit, give it a little extra weight, paint up all nice and ship it down to Texas for complete domination.

Yeah. That didn’t happen.

Basically, I was worried too much about how my car looked. I wanted my car to look as stock as possible while trying to improve performance at the same time. To me that’s the true challenge in modding a car. There’s something really cool about a car that looks like one you’d see on the pegs,only to find out it’s been super tuned.

I don’t want to say modding without style is easy, I know better than that. We’ve all made Frankenstein cars, taking parts from several castings and bonding them all together to create a super massive racer. But there’s something very rudimentary about the rat mods. I guess I’m just a fan of a little spit shine.

Of course, said rat mod beat the snot out of my pretty pony, but I like to think that it’s kind of comparing apples to oranges. I was playing by self-imposed rules, that being to keep my car as stock in appearance as possible. My opponent clearly had a different plan and I commend him for creating a fast car. My lesson was learned.

Upgraded FTE wheels

Not enough mod

But enough excuses, let me show you my modded Mustang. I took a stock 1965 Mustang Fastback and added some FTE wheels from a Corvette ZR1. The rear wheels on the ZR1 are a size bigger than the stock Mustang wheels, so I had to grind out the wheel wells before they’d fit nicely.

Once the wheels were fixed in place, I cut the interior in half to open up the trunk and packed in some clay for a little extra weight. Looking back I should have used some nuts or bolts or something a little heavier, but clay is easy to work with and obviously easy to mold into every nook and cranny.

With the FTE wheels ready and some junk in the trunk, I did a few test runs against one of the fastest stock cars in my collection, the Land Rover MKII, and the Mustang held its own quite well. And that was enough for me. I figured no one else would be making a mod car as fast as that…of course, I was also expecting people to play by the same rules…I don’t know why because I’m not sure there were any rules in the first place.

And then it’s time to add a little style

Once I was happy with the test runs, I gave the Mustang a custom Redline Derby Racing paint job complete with one off decals. Not my best paint job but I thought the decals looked pretty sharp. I honestly thought my mod would do pretty well in competition, but I also wanted it to be a promotional car. One out of two ain’t bad, I guess.

Modded and customized, ready to race

With the car all painted and buttoned up, I sealed it up into a blister pack and shipped it on to Texas. I then waited for the good news that I had won the modified class. As you know, that good news never came. Instead I found out that my car got eliminated in the first round by a Frankencar made up of Fast Fish and Bye Focal II. Of course I didn’t mind getting beat. It’s all for fun and friendly competition, and frankly, a lot of the fun for me was shipping off a car and then seeing what someone creates to race against it. Anything that gets some others involved with diecast racing is always a plus.

In the end I was reminded that drag races aren’t beauty pageants. Having a good looking car is great, but in the end it’s all about getting to the finish line first. I still think the ultimate challenge is creating a good looking car that can also tear up the track, an unassuming combination of modification and customization. Oh well, there’s always next time.

I want to thank Austin Diecast Drags for accepting my slow poke mod into their otherwise local competition. You can check them out over at AustinDiecastDrags.com. If you want more details about the tournament in which my car raced, you can read through the complete recap with photos over in the forum.