Horse Sense:Matt Balazs is a logistics engineer for Mack Trucks. As we had no idea what that meant, Matt explained that he coordinates between suppliers and the production plant to get the parts delivered at the right time to coincide with production dates. As Volvo recently purchased Mack, Matt has made a few trips to Sweden to check out Volvo's operation. That would be cool-going to Sweden, that is.
There seems to be a theme to several features we've run in 5.0&SF lately. It centers on guys who have simply wanted a Mustang with which they can goof off. However, in each case the original plan was eventually pitched out the window and all caution was thrown to the wind.
Somehow, we get it into our heads that if we perform one modification, we should do two or maybe three more in order for the initial upgrade to perform properly. Here at the magazine, you can lock us up and throw away the key because we're as guilty as any of you-maybe more so. One staffer acquired a 347 stroker for his Mustang only to have the car down for another year, upgrading the heads and having them ported, changing the intake, and ordering a custom cam. Our chief, Editor Turner, purchased a Chrome Yellow '98 Cobra from Paxton (yes, it has a Paxton under the hood) and proclaimed he was not going to touch the car.
Well, at last count, the ultra-sweet ride has received a Bassani X-pipe and after-cat, new wheels and tires, a TTC-Tremec TKO, a D&D Performance clutch, a PST driveshaft, a Steeda G-Trac suspension, a Diablo-Sport chip, and a Kirban flaming-horse grille emblem. "Don't forget the brakes," Editor Turner adds. Oh, yeah-and he couldn't forget about the Baer Eradispeed rotors. That's quite a list for "not touching the car." However, if we chronicled the upgrades found on his '89 coupe, that list would make the Cobra look as if it's a card-carrying member of the gears-and-pulleys crowd.
Maybe that's why we got along so well with Matt Balazs of Walnut Port, Pennsylvania. After talking to him about his '88 LX, we decided he's one of us.
When Matt bought the car in 1994, just two weeks before graduating high school, he simply wanted a Mustang to drive daily back and forth to work and school. The bone-stock LX was the first car he purchased, and with only 34,000 miles on it, we'd say he got a gem. Although "the nasty blue interior" almost kept him from buying it, the LX served Matt well through college, with such simple additions as 3.55 gears and exhaust upgrades.
As with just about every Mustang owner with a pulse, Matt became involved in a little street racing, but that didn't last long as the state troopers raided his band of racing brothers. That experience helped persuade Matt to keep the racing at the track. His first trip to a dragstrip was at Atco Raceway in New Jersey with buddy Bill Tumas. That night, with just the gears and exhaust, the car ran 14.20s on stock radials. Being a poor college student at the time, Matt didn't have the funds necessary to break open the bank, but he did have enough to add the Cobra wheels, brakes, and to upgrade the rearend. With drag radials on the car, he ran regular 13.60s at 102 mph.
Once Matt graduated from Penn State in 1999, the car was relieved of its daily driver status. He became more aggressive behind the wheel-at the track, of course. And it was while at the track one day that he broke the clutch. He pulled out the engine to freshen things up. But somewhere along the way, that concept got tossed like yesterday's leftovers, and Matt decided it was time to spice things up a bit.
He wanted to do something different under the hood. "Everyone's got a blown 302," Matt reasoned. His version of something different began with a '74 351 block that he got out of a van down by a river. He almost built a stock 351, but for a little more money he could build a wicked stroked Windsor. So he had the block cleaned up and bored 0.030 over for a bore size of 4.030. In went a Scat cast-steel crank with a 3.85 stroke. Eagle H-beam rods swing from the crank and are attached to JE pistons. Though these days the popular stroked Windsor is a 392, Matt's stroker comes in at 393 ci.