

- 1962 mercury comet install#
- 1962 mercury comet upgrade#
- 1962 mercury comet code#
- 1962 mercury comet series#
Wheels and Tires: Vision American Muscle 143 Torque Series wheels (18 x 8.5″), Bridgestone Potenza RE-71R tires (255/35R18).Brakes: 4.6L Mustang Hydroboost brake booster, Wilwood dual-piston calipers and AFCO rotors front, Ford Explorer rear disc brakes, Power Stop carbon-ceramic pads all around, Classic Performance proportioning valve.Rear Suspension: Owner-built parallel 4-link with panhard bar, double-adjustable coilover shocks, Welder Series adjustable splined rear sway bar.Front Suspension: Owner-built tubular control arms with Howe Racing extended ball joints, Mustang II spindles, double-adjustable coilover shocks, Mustang rack and pinion, custom solid sway bar, mounts, and links.Frame: Boxed and triangulated front frame rails, full-length subframe connectors, cross-braced rear frame rails, Welder Series crossmembers and motor mounts.It will be challenging to keep up with the Carpino family Comet at the track, but you can follow along on Instagram Rich and Kristen Carpino’s 1962 Comet 1969 Fast Specs The focus of these upgrades is to make the car as competitive as possible in Goodguys Street Machine, which limits tire size to 285mm.” (Image/Summit Racing) “By the time you’re reading this,” adds Rich, “I will have added the mini-tubs I’ve been thinking about, along with some complementary chassis and suspension upgrades. It features front seats from a Fox Body Mustang, custom door panels embossed with the Comet script logo, a custom center console, and a Retrosound radio. To make this corner-carving Comet into a proper summer family hauler, Rich spent some time making the interior clean and comfortable. I found a used one with a limited slip for a song.” (Image/Summit Racing) “You just cut down the long side and you have a nice, short rear end with 31-spline axles and disc brakes. “They’re offset to accommodate the transfer case,” says Rich.
1962 mercury comet upgrade#
It turned out that the perfect upgrade for the early 1960s rear end was out of a late 1990s Explorer. There’s a lot of planning and measuring to make it work, but we wanted something different.” (Image/Summit Racing)
1962 mercury comet install#
“Once I cleaned it up I used a Welder Series universal crossmember kit to install it. “I had parted out a 1996 Mustang Cobra a while ago, and I still had the 4.6L aluminum engine and transmission sitting in the corner of my garage,” Rich says. It had been repainted with GM Bright White in 2005, but it still had the original “slop gray” factory paint on the underside.
1962 mercury comet code#
It had spent most of its life in Hollywood, California, and had original Ford date code stamps on every panel. Their expectations were pretty high, but the Carpinos soon found their car in Michigan: a 1962 Mercury Comet. “It had to be big enough to carry our kids and all their stuff, and it had to be something we could quickly modify into an autocross competitor.” (Image/Summit Racing) “It had to be from the Ford family,” Rich says. The two engineers quickly settled on some design parameters for a new, family-friendly project. “We also have a 1965 Mustang convertible that’s fun to drive,” Kristen Carpino says, “but rear-facing baby seats just don’t fit inside.” (Image/Summit Racing) (Image/Summit Racing)Ī growing family presented new challenges for the Carpinos. Their shared interests in racing and classic cars brought them together, and even after getting married, launching careers, and having kids, they retained their automotive hobby. They both joined the university’s team for Formula SAE, which is a student design competition organized by the Society of Automotive Engineers International. Kristen and Rich met at the University of Akron, where they were both engineering students. They engineered this 1962 Mercury Comet to perfectly satisfy all of their needs, and we think it will make you happy, too. Rich and Kristen Carpino wanted a classic Ford that could be easily upgraded to compete in autocross, but it also had to have room for the kids, nice street manners, and, at Kristen’s request, fins. But what if your romance was kindled over dyno charts and spec sheets? Parenting doesn’t leave you with a lot of spare time for wrenching or driving. For many hotrodders, starting a family means putting the brakes on the project car.
