In 1989, 1990 the project came to a halt
as so many project cars go thru. I never suspected that
it would become nothing more than a garage Queen for the
next 15 years. In the late spring of 2005 my wife made me
a proposed I take the summer attempting to get the car at
least running and if not ready for the road at bear
minimums. A deal I could not refuse! Since I had done a
fare amount of work on the car years earlier and
purchased most of the parts myself I new what a project
undertaking this would be. Compounding the effort was
that the car would have to be worked on in a very old
school way of building a Rod! Outside in front of the
garage stall! And making matters more difficult each
night I had to have the car assembled enough to push it
back into the garage stall along with unattached parts to
keep peace in the neighborhood. Is that crazy or what!
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Lets start with the
engine. It was harvested from an early 70's
Camaro Z28. It had a little more than 30,000
miles on it. It was disassembled and new parts
were installed, fresh rings, bearings and such.
General overhaul nothing to complicated. A
different cam was used. Nothing radical just a
low-end torque cam. With plans for a blower and
keeping the car street drivable nothing radical
was in the plan outside the blower for power when
you want to put your foot into it. The B&M
Blower was installed with 2 Holley 600 cfm
carburetors mounted atop. The blower was under
driven to 5-6 pounds boost recommended by B&M
for a basic stock 350 Chevy motor. Any more than
that and changing other internal engine parts
would almost be a must for this motor to last
long on the street! The transmission (TH350) was
salvaged from a 73 Monte Carlo I purchased as a
downer car for a different project I once had. |
Like I mentioned the car sat just like this for
15 years. The motor after rebuild had never been fired.
The trans also sat along with it for about the same
amount of time. One has to know that after sitting so
long that only spells trouble. As luck had it and after
finding the sweet spot this motor likes to run at after
tuning. Very little if any problems occurred outside of
just normal hot rod building! A few small leaks here and
there, vacuum leaks, different timing settings and
carburetor adjustments and she runs just fine!
Dyno Results
See Dyno chart to the right.
Click on image to open larger window. |
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