1969 Ford Mustang Boss 429 - Jay Leno's Garage

well in an episode of Jalen's garage today the car is a 1969 Ford Mustang Boss 429 it doesn't get much rarer than this as far as Mustangs go this is one of those misunderstood cars the most powerful engine folders have a built up to that time period I guess if you didn't count the camera which is not really put in cars and this one is a hundred percent restored I don't think it gets much better than this you know I like the guys who specialize in soda one maker cars and marques angel he's the boss 429 guy come on and you restored this car correct yeah now this is not my car this is a stored for a customer of yours right right okay and you're on the judging committee and all that kind of stuff right yeah I do quite a bit I do judging for the national head judge for the Shelby Club of America Mustang Club of America as well all I do some writing for Mustang monthly and I have a restoration shop and I was that still what turned you wanted a Mustang what made that the car for you well I think you know although I wasn't around in 1969 in high school I'd had these cars people were you know kids and ourselves were fixing them up we didn't know them or appreciate them like we do today but I just fell in love with the the lines the the classic lines of the Mustang and specifically you know what I really like is the 69 and 70 Mustangs okay now the boss 429 this is one of the most misunderstood engines yeah I think underappreciated by some yeah overly appreciated by others around but more people just kind of wrote it off because well the Hemi and and the big Chevy had 427 horsepower whatever right this was rated at 375 375 but it was really much more than that wasn't it yeah I mean it was detuned for the street right so they said 375 they had it you know issues with insurance and you know his gates starting to get into that era where they were under raiding these rights and smog and stuff was coming on well it had to lean out the carburetors beyond what they were meant to do sure okay yeah and this one you've put back to a hundred percent stock it even has the smog pump which is very good did that mean there's a California car now the California car started in 1970 so they had a special package for emissions in 1970 okay but all of these cars with basically with the holley carburetors the Boss 302s the Cobra Jets and these boss 429 s had this therm actor system with the smog pump well let's show pit since the engine is really the focal point this all car let's get right to that open the hood okay yeah here and this okay and this is what everybody always looks at right you go to a car show you open this up and like with most cars right it's always nice to stand around but when you look at the size of the motor right it's enormous for a Mustang and this was called semi Hemi is that fair to say it wasn't a true Hemi head right but it was it was along the and it called it a semi Hemi they also called it the shotgun motor right they had a couple different names for it I call it the shotgun motor see a lot of literature from the 60s and even the Ford promotional stuff that called it and these were not even built by Ford right now as I remember there was a company called car craft yeah and what they would pull a Mustang off the line and and modify to take this big motor he has something like that so they had in Dearborn Michigan car craft was kind of like I know how you like the Mercedes it's like the AMG the performance arm right a Ford it was like this little kind of if you want to say secret shop but it was a shop that did a lot of the modifications did a lot of girls OD yeah exactly so they were contracted to build these boss 429 Mustangs both the 69 and the 70 model Ford was getting a butt kicked by the hemi charger is and all that kind of stuff with the big 426 Hemi this this is an engine built for NASCAR correct correct originally this motor was supposed to go into the galaxy that was the whole design that was the idea to put this all they wanted to do was homologate this and get this in NASCAR they had to sell 500 units right but at the last minute the new guy from Dec came over from GM bunkie Knudsen he said you know why are we doing this we want we have this Mustang and the engineers said it doesn't fit in there he's like make it fit find a way to make it right so this is really a shoehorn job yeah yeah the shock towers were moved out yeah these are out further yeah that's the only way to get this in a regular Mustang there's no way that this would fit in here and it couldn't have handled very well with this huge lump hanging over the front axle like this right I mean well it was not the best handling Mustang maybe you could say that well put it this way a 289 on a road course would probably take this yes that's that's fair to say that yeah because you're just allowing yeah where do those turn that are you your weight is probably what 60/40 it's uh it's a little bit less than that if it's something like that okay but they did you know they knew this they put on here what they call the competition suspension on here you know the heavier duty sway bar in the back and they put a sway bar and in the back and in the front on these cars yeah yeah but it's a bit like Dolly Parton doing gymnastics certain parts override the other part yeah yes sure once everything starts moving and her should take so yeah okay that's basically good but that's not today it's not a great most a good way to put it on yeah yeah you even have the overspray here is that correct yeah why that yeah on the on the smog pump there I mean what I would do here with the cars that I bring in is the idea is this is day one so day one means the way that the customer picked it up from the dealership all the chalk marks that you see on here all the stickers the patina you know you want to be careful not to make everything the same shade of black now why green oh I don't see any green in here so what is the green overspray from well we see that on original pieces you have that on here on the distributor as well but what I do is I try to copy as low mileage cars as possible all right so when we see it what was Green that when they were spraying green here I mean what white green paint in here I don't understand of red on here because dope no no it's well it's part of the assembly of that of that smog pump out rain is with that and the interesting thing with these smog pumps you know everybody wants to be you know this is a Ford those were actually made by GM okay yeah and the fascinating thing was the first thing you did when you bought one of these cars was take this new stupid smog pump off and throw it away right OH - try and find one of these must have been a lot of work I imagine yeah they're out there you know but to put it back and I mean there's the whole system that goes with it but that's the true way to do that on these cars it's the way they were delivered a disc brakes in front disc brakes was standard on this car the base model but holding in the front only in the front the base model mustang still in 1969 was a drum car what they did is they added an oil cooler on all these cars so see this here yeah so they would route the oil through here it had a 391 geared rear end so they were kind of worried about that you know this this had to be in a lot of different environments right hot cold but that was added on all the boss 429 s had that oil cooler and what was the compression ratio on these do you remember about ten and a half to one with ten and a half so that's not it's not eleven I have it's not twelve so it could run on 91 octane fuel okay yeah okay yeah because these although are expensive they're not in the million dollar range like some of the Hemi cars in spite of cars like that yeah even though that's a 4-speed and it's desirable body it's it just yeah it's one of those cars it just was sort of misunderstood from the day it came out they Ford kind of hemmed and hawed and was not really about you know they didn't spread the rumor like the room with the 426 Hemi was it was closer to 500 or 550 horse you know but they said it was this Ford said no this is 370 375 yeah so if you're a guy who's buying your cars by the horsepower numbers didn't seem as powerful as the Challenger or some of the other things are out at the time and the transmission is watch just do basic Ford four-speed it's a top loader transmission okay it's the one that was in the galaxy in the big car yeah they had variations of but the top loader there's no automatic on these cars that were made because they didn't feel that the automatic could handle a torque on these cars a torque was around 450 foot-pounds not on here they sold these cars on performance right the big thing in the 60s and especially with Ford 6970 they wanted to race these cars and they figure they entice buyers to come in they see all these different types of racing out there and people say hey I want to buy a car that I can race on the weekend and then go to work and during the right so a lot of buyers were brought in by the performance that they were doing which is a little different than what we see today and the other odd thing is when you bought some of the Chrysler's or some of the other cars and you got the 426 Hemi you didn't get the power booster and power steering whereas this has all that then the power brakes and power steering or standard on this card you get air conditioning or 420 I know no room in there no there's no room I mean and you see they had to move the battery in the back as well yeah I mean this thing is really crammed in there and what did this cost new new it costed five thousand dollars okay right so that doesn't sound like a lot five thousand but keeping in mind that the base you know the comparable Mustang the 428 was around 3,000 this this package was a $2,000 that was huge yeah so this car sat on the lot this particular one for six months before it sold yeah and that was Corvette Stingray money when it mm-hmm yeah I mean the Corvette was under $5,000 you could have gotten a 427 435 horsepower car right with that and was probably a better balanced package yeah overall yeah that's nuts it's one of those cars that is quickly appreciating it just hasn't appreciated much as others you really have to understand yeah what are you getting here yeah and I think the market is no there's it's done quite a bit in the market in the last ten years yeah yes people learn about them you know in a car like this that has the original drivetrain in it it's it's a hard thing to find a lot of these motors got blown up and replaced sure sure I remember when we were kids in the 429 looks to bigger than the 427 you know just everybody was bigger man than the 440 came after the Chrysler you know all that kind of stuff but yeah it's a great-looking motor I mean it reminds me of a Harley knucklehead the way there yeah the valve covers protrude like that cool okay let's shut the hood again take a little look around car you got five lug wheels those are those two standard Ford wheels at the time uh these are thus these are the Magnum 500 wheels that they put on and those are poly glass yep good your little Arius tires I mean they just they melt in like two seconds don't they do just the smoke makers ish yeah yeah yeah you look at the Mopars right and some of these they're loud they're very you can see it from half a mile right right this is very understated you have a hood scoop on here just the stenciled boss 429 actually I thought this looks almost contemporary because now the idea is not to have a big chrome thing that sticks out it was just to paint some graphic I actually think I imagined him young people probably think oh you added that because it looks sort of modern but that's the way it was done one yeah that's the way it was done it was I mean styling wise you have that you had the front spoiler that was added on there and if you took this off it could be a 302 you put that off to change the hood on there yeah yeah it's it's very understated and that's a functional hood scoop yeah it's functional we have controls inside where we can you can open and close it yeah okay yeah so as a rain you would close it obviously yeah yeah yeah okay but I like the wheel it's nice to see a pre airbag wheel with a normal kind of you know well the wheel and these they're called rim blow steering wheels right so yeah you weighs it you do that around the edge yeah yeah yeah but every time you give me the car babe yeah well if you don't know in your steering you'll yeah it's the only car of that era Mustang wise it has four headlights alright so you don't see that in the early cars or later than then yeah they rolled the fenders on these cars so where the wheels go right here J see all this yeah is rolled in the car Kraft did that car crafted that and then these came from the assembly line they're rolled here as well okay the car craft paint them as well or was that yeah it was it was a finish oh so they just sent a body in white no motor yeah okay yeah it's basically the way you see it here this is the original interior on this car right the steering wheel was restored those cracked pretty typically and it's got the little place to hold the seat belt yeah the seat belts so didn't want to use it it wasn't in your way yeah you could just tuck it down just tuck it down forget about bother with it yeah let's take a look inside the trunk okay I brought something in the trunk for you to look at as well and this has an actual trunk you can put stuff in here Wow look at the size of that battery that's enormous yeah so the batteries they all were trunk mounted batteries on these cars and because of the size of the 15-inch wheels they had to put these space say oh the space Davis spare but I brought what I wanted to show as well was this was the literature you know not every Ford dealer was a performance dealer right right so this here is considered the holy grail of literature for the 69 70 Mustangs for the Cobra Jets for the boss 429 s I remember in my neighborhood it was tasks afford in Rhode Island Casca was huge yeah they were the huge performance guys right I used to work a place called Wilmington Ford yeah and so it's really funny I remember those days and I mean this just shows it gives the dealers help they Ford wanted to show them how to sell these cars right position themselves against the the mopars of the day it helps them with different things they can buy for their dealership so you know you'll see something a lot of them had the performance corner and then they'll have all kinds of parts that they sell there and all the couple cars cause total performance and total performance that's what it was yeah you know it's so funny you brought some magazines and I remember buying these magazines when I was a kid yeah I have this issue a hot rod eBay yeah they get all the stuff on eBay now there you go turning right can we take it out for a little spin at that puzzle yeah yeah of course so this guy had what 49,000 miles on it's the original mileage on it when you got it yeah it's the original miles it was one owner that originally bought it in 1969 because Eric bought it and he documented everything so that was really appealing on the car like a thousand miles a year huh yeah it's not a lot you know when you think about how these cars are and you know it's much better to be driven I remember there was that sale in Nebraska where people buying 63 Chevy with two miles on it yeah I think you still got to pull the piston you got to do everything to it yeah but something that's been started once a month you know it's got some power down yeah yeah but the power-steering in the pile break and make it really really easy to drive there you go the German third but it's fun to see the cars as they were produced you know it's funny when you read the road test cause it was bent pretty fast they go those make up awful they just couldn't make them stop and go around corners yet that was the real the real test so you have these outrageous cars like you know the Hemi Cudas and some of the stuff that a straight-line crazy until you came to turn out then I was either enter that game why this drives really nice this is the first boss 24:29 driven itself I still have a newfound respect I thought it'd be you put your foot in and be and you know you hear the mouth to get to get together to get to get to get out well you got to tune it just right I mean that yeah there's a bit of work that goes into this I had to take the carburetor completely apart again a machine everything to get it just true but it's funny you know that the carburetor on here it's a 7:35 it's smaller than the boss 302 carburetor yeah you put a big carburetor on here you get rid of the smog you open up the exhaust it's a completely different car yeah you can take a road trip in this thing sure keep it going to pull it the gas it's like the strongest old guy in the world you know little David book it's a bit much in the face yeah we got to get much of a faith well temperatures pretty hot today but it's running dead-center nice and cool yeah it's built to run I mean it beautiful show car but you got to take this out and now the owners going to meet us in the garage what's his name Eric Eric does he know we're out driving around in his car uh he might have missed that really real when he sees this yeah we we told there was some food drink and then we took yeah you don't look too worried Eric a dryer come on over here this is Eric he's the owner of this car okay yeah how many miles have you put on this thing maybe 200 oh okay well it runs beautifully that's great you did a watermarks did a great great job it's a very impressive car very tight nothing overheats cuz I really expected the engine to be you know a lot of valve clattering and detonation and whatnot just cuz of crappy gas and all that but why it runs really nice it's this is probably better than new I think it yeah I would think so yeah yeah you got a good one on your hands here I'll give you twice what it cost new doc that's the way to do it see you guys next week check out this restoration shop very good

Channel: Jay Leno's Garage

Views: 2,893,929

Rating: 4.9149289 out of 5

Keywords: Mustang, Boss, 429, Jay, Leno, Garage, Ford, Marcus, Anghel, Jay Leno, Jay Leno's Garage, car reviews, compares cars, classic cars, vintage cars, sports cars, super cars, cars, car gear, McLaren P1, Porsche 918 Spyder, Camaro Z28, jay leno garage, jay lenos garage, car collection, cnbc, episode, motorcycle, ford, corvette, tour, dodge, lexus

Id: pNYfrsYZf4s

Length: 19min 11sec (1151 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 19 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/Chris559]

You think he actually bought it at the end?