A Match Made on YouTube: Stay Tuned and Vice Grip Garage Build and Beat On a 1967 Fairlane

As proprietors of the Stay Tuned and Vice Grip Garage channels respectively, Tony Agnelo and Derek Bieri are dedicated to the proposition that it doesn’t take cubic money to go fast and have fun with cars. They’re also big proponents of not taking much of anything—including themselves—seriously. With about a zillion subscribers between them, lots of gearheads agree.

It was just a matter of time before Tony and Derek got together on a project—and this 1967 Ford Fairlane played matchmaker.

Tony found the car on his local Facebook Marketplace and thought it would be a great project for Vice Grip Garage. He convinced Derek to buy the Fairlane sight-unseen with the promise that the Stay Tuned team would throw together a small block for it. Tony even talked Derek into coming up to Pennsylvania to help put the car together and flog it at Maple Grove Raceway before driving it 900 miles to Vice Grip Garage headquarters in Tennessee.

Turns out the Fairlane was a local legend of sorts in Tony’s corner of Pennsylvania. A guy named Ted Carl built it in the late 1960s and cleaned up at Maple Grove and other local drag strips through the early 1970s. The car had been stored for almost 40 years when Derek bought it. The 427 ‘medium riser’ big block Ford and four-speed were long gone, but the homemade ladder bars, a driver’s seat out of some sort of bus, a sketchy roll bar, and questionable suspension modifications were all present and accounted for. Even the ancient rear air shocks were in working condition.

Tony out and out lied to Derek about the engine. Instead of a mildly warmed-over 302, the Stay Tuned team built a potent street motor out of a 5.0L from a 1987 Mustang. The short block was deemed acceptable, but most everything else went in the scrap pile. After a call to Summit Racing the new parts came rolling in. The camshaft was pitched for a Summit Racing™ ‘F303’ hydraulic roller camshaft rated at .550/.540 inch lift. The factory iron heads were replaced with Summit Racing™ Precision Cast aluminum heads fitted with 1.6 ratio Summit Racing aluminum rocker arms. The EFI system was tossed for a Summit Racing™ Stage 2 intake manifold topped with a 750 CFM Holley 4150 Street HP carburetor. Check out the parts list below to see what else Stay Tuned bolted on the little 5.0L.

As for the drivetrain, Tony and Derek threw in a T-5 five-speed transmission of questionable condition and a new Hays Hot Street clutch kit. The Fairlane already had a 9-inch rear axle, It got a new third member with 4.11 gears and a Detroit Truetrac differential.

In keeping with the cheap is neat theme, the manual steering and four-wheel manual drum brakes were retained. Being cheap doesn’t mean being unsafe, so the brakes were completely gone through. As Derek said, they were just fine.

So, was the Stay Tuned/Vice Grip Garage Fairlane a match made in YouTube Heaven? Did it make it down the track and get Derek back to Tennessee in one piece without serious mayhem? Spoiler alert: kind of.

But don’t take out word for it. Grab a beverage and some snacks, then settle down to watch these videos to see exactly how everything came (barely) together.

Stay Tuned

Vice Grip Garage