Hey guys. In 1971 or 1972 I worked at Ak Millers as a mechanic. Two of us were in charge of putting the turbos and koni shocks and sway bars on all the (pre-body work) Pangras that came out of Huntington Ford in Arcadia. We cut the front coils and added lowering blocks to a lot of them but not all of them.
All the ones that we modified were 2.0 motors. A couple had automatic tranmissions. At the 'garage, we did not put together any 2.3 cars although, there was a 'kit' that was offered by Ak Miller Enterprises, (same guy-right across the alley-mostly custom work & mail order)
At that time (over 35 years ago) none of them out of our shop had chrome valve covers. Some of them had a boost restriction device that fit into the compressor tube across the top of the valve cover. Almost all did not. The ones that did not have this restrictor all had a water heated casting through which the compressor tube would pass. This was to warm the intake charge prior to entering the combustion chamber. It was suppossed to be a driveability issue.
The batteries were all relocated to the drivers side of the engine compartment using a modified stock battery tray. They did not have any non-factory gaauges installed at our shop.
We put together 2 a day and delivered them in the afternoon and picked up 2 more to work on the next morning.
We burnt down (the motors-not the cars!) on a couple of them on the freeway 'test run' on the way back up to Huntington Ford. Shhhh...don't tell anybody
The cars all had a 2 1/2" exhaust ( now that I think about it, it may have been 2 1/4") from the turbine outlet to the rear where we hung a Walker Turbo muffler (part # escapes me) We did the exhaust work in house.
Mine was a '71 2-door, dark green metallic, 4sp with goodyear ppolyglas tires and the 2.0 motor. It was my 1st new car and I still think that it was one of the best cars I have ever owned.
I put a turbo on it at the shop one afternoon after work and went cruising (street racing) that night. The motor had an 'o'-ringed head that had been shaved .060" a Spearco adjustable cam pulley, a stock distributer with the dual diaphragm vacuum canister that was rigged to retard timing under boost. It also had a water injector that utilized the windshield washer reservoir and a stock nozzle that was fastened to the air cleaner(later into the air horn of the carb) and the koni shocks, dropped on the ground with some special leaf spring s at the rear that were a new single leaf set-up. Shocks at the rear were set loose, no rear bar but the front bar was a good sized 1 1/8" Interpart bar that I had made for me. Front springs were cut down out of an early chevelle. Damn thing rode like a rock but on a smooth road up a canyon it was pure heaven and extremely tossable.
I ran into quite a few fuel distribution problems so I put on a 2bbl carb out of Ford truck and a different intake manifold and solved that problem. I also knocke d the flywheel right off the end of the crank twice but solved that by having the crank re-drilled for SAE threads in 1/2": size AND dowel pinned the thing.
With a 3:55 rear gear, tires in the size of 185/70-13 continental radials at 35 #'s the car did a quickest in the 1/4 at Irwindale Raceway (it's a brewery now) like a 1347 at 101 mph. Through the traps in 3rd gear at about 6000. No boost control. and 24 mpg to boot!
I haven't owned one since i sold the shell (with a full frame and a 9") in 1975 or 1976.
I was setting it up to take a 460 but got married instead!