Jeff Burbank's story begins in June 1994. "At the time," he says, "I was driving an '88 F-350 and had been itching for a performance car for a while." Unfortunately, high insurance rates and a few points on the Sinking Spring, Pennsylvania, resident's license kept Jeff from scratching his performance itch. But later that summer-after his driving record took a positive turn, with insurance costs following suit-he set out to ramp up his performance aspirations.
As for a replacement for the truck, Jeff narrowed down the short list to a Camaro, a Grand National, and a Mustang. He found what he was looking for at a local Ford dealership-a '91 GT convertible. "It was a one-female-owner car with 22,000 miles-bone-stock and triple white," Jeff says. "I had always wanted a drop-top, and the fact that this car was bone-stock really appealed to me." The day Jeff and his girlfriend, Christine (now his wife), drove it off the lot, he thought it was the fastest thing on the road. But as anyone who has ever driven a Fox GT convertible with an AOD can attest, those cars are stone-stock slugs. "I guess when you're used to an F-350 truck as your daily driver, pretty much anything else seems fast," Jeff explains. It didn't take him long to figure out the car needed more, and a lot of it.
"The car stayed stock for a while, but after subscribing to a few Mustang magazines, a strut tower brace and some subframe connectors sounded like a good idea for my drop-top," Jeff says. He searched through his local Yellow Pages and found Chris Giles Garage in nearby Reading, Pennsylvania. Chris' ad said he specialized in Mustangs, Corvettes, and Panteras, which was good enough for Jeff. After the strut brace and subs were installed, Chris created some business for himself by telling Jeff a 3.73 gear would really wake up the car. "Needless to say, I knew I'd be back to Chris' shop in the near future."
Fast forward to 1996, when Jeff made his first trip to Maple Grove Raceway for a test-and-tune session to see the fruits of his labor. "By that time, I had 3.73s, a shift-improvement kit, exhaust, and a mass air meter," he says. "This was it, the moment of truth. I would crush all comers." On street tires, the car ran a best of 14.3 at 94 mph. "Ugh, back to the drawing board," Jeff laments.
Needless to say, Jeff's disappointment over his car's performance sent it back under the knife for more bolt-ons. This round of additions included a throttle body, bumped timing, a short belt, an H-pipe, slicks, and a 2,600-stall converter. The suspension was not immune to changes either, with Jeff adding adjust-able shocks and struts, four-cylinder front springs, and a six-point rollbar, while removing the front sway bar. With these mods, Jeff's convertible was running high 13s by the fall of 1997, right in time to be stored for the winter.
When the following spring rolled around, out came the 98,000-mile stock short-block for a much needed freshening up by Rich Olson at Hyde Villa Machine Shop in Reading, with a 0.030 bore and new forged pistons and rings. The rotating assembly was balanced and put back together, and Chris Giles was once again called on to install a pair of Edelbrock Performer heads, a Cobra intake, an E303 cam, 24-lb/hr injectors, and headers. Jeff says he ran the car in this basic form for a little more than a year.
"By the fall of 1999, the car wound up going low 13s at MGR," Jeff says, "and I wanted a 12-second timeslip real bad." One of his friends suggested taking the 'vert to Cecil County Raceway in Rising Sun Maryland, notorious for possibly being the fastest track on the East Coast. "The car went a few 13.0s, and I had to get my 12," Jeff says. "Extreme conditions demand extreme responses. After icing the intake, pushing the car all through the lanes, and running with no belt, I went 12.72 at 106 mph. Mission accomplished-or so I thought."