Ford Falcon With A PedalMonster?

Mike Strope dropped a Ford Coyote V8 into his 1965 Ford Falcon. “It’s a pretty tight fit in there. It took me 14 months to build on it on weekends and after work. I’ve put about 13,000 miles on. I have to tell you, this thing has exceeded all of my expectations.” Mike bought the Coyote crate engine directly from Ford, which came with its own ECM and OBD-II port. Other upgrades to the car are 4-wheel disc brakes, a beefy computer-controlled transmission, power steering, and air conditioning. Even the suspension was heavily modified. He has a Mustang 2 style suspension up front with a 4-link and coil-overs in the back strapped to a nine-inch Ford rear end. It has 505 HP at the flywheel, and the car only weighs 2800 lbs. That’s about 1,000 lbs lighter than a new Mustang. It goes 0-100 mph in 9.6 seconds, and the great thing is that I get about 26 mpg!”

So just how does a Banks PedalMonster throttle controller fit into this hot rod? “I was watching a TV show, I dunno… maybe Gearz, and they were talking about the Pedal Commander. I didn’t even know the concept, and after hearing about it I thought that it was exactly what I needed. So, I got on the internet and did some investigating finding that there was more than one throttle booster. I ran across the Banks PedalMonster. From what I saw it was the best solution on the market because it drew its power from the OBD port, not the accelerator pedal circuit. For my situation I already have my transmission piggybacking off the pedal as well as my cruise control. Really, I don’t need anything else drawing power from the pedal. I use Banks mobile app to control the PedalMonster.

The PedalMonster is so easy to operate, and it took me like 10-15 minutes to install,” Mike recalls. This is the first vehicle that he’s ever had that was drive-by-wire. He just thought the engine didn’t have much low-end grunt. “I was thinking that the car just needed to get to higher RPMs to make the power. But now that’s fixed with the PedalMonster. Right now I’m on SPORT level 6. I put it on TRACK level 10 once, and I couldn’t even take off without blowing the tires off.”

The Falcon had sat in a field for 19 years, and 15 of those years Mike drove by it with his wife. He’d tell her how much he wanted to have that car each time he passed it. What he didn’t know was that she had gone to the people it belonged to and tried to get it for him, but they had their own dreams of fixing it up. In 2016 Mike’s wife passed away, and a year later he got a call from a woman that he didn’t know. She was the owner of the car, and she was calling because his wife left them his number to call if they ever wanted to sell the Falcon. They promised her that he’d be the first person that they’d call when the time came to part with it. Even though she’s not with him anymore, his wonderful wife keeps showing her love thoughtfulness, and love to him. The finished car is his tribute to her. He made a Facebook page chronicling the whole project. It’s worth a look.