The Supercar Registry - Hello, old friend

I purchased this Chevelle back around 1991 or 1992. I found it in our local "Tradin' Post" classified newspaper. It was black on black, and it had a very mild (flat tops, stock 1.94 461's and a COMP 268 High energy HFT cam) 327 with a QJet on an OE iron intake, a Saginaw 4 speed and a 12 bolt with 4.10 gears.

I beat on it pretty hard and the Saginaw quickly met its fate. I replaced it with a wide ratio Muncie that I also found in the Tradin' Post.

I took it to the track once as described above, the only concession being a pair of M&H street & strip L60 tires. With the headers uncorked, it ran surprisingly consistent 13.80's @ ~102 mph. I made 3 or 4 passes with it that day, each time lining up against a stranger in a Roadrunner with a 383 Magnum and a 4 speed. Each time I'd get the RR through the first 3 gears, but as we each went into 4th, he drove from just behind my door to a fender in front of me each time. I believe he ran 13.60's. As we were getting ready to leave, he came over to see what I had under the hood. He was quite surprised to see a small block with a QJet on it, and complimented me on how well it ran.

Note that I had my trusty ZEMCO timer in the car at this time--more on that in a bit.

Soon after I got the big block bug, and I wound up putting together a stock bore 454 with a set of LS6 11-1 pistons I purchased from a friend's dad (he was running a real deal LS6 in a `68 Camaro bracket car and had just pulled it down to warm it up more). I hung them on a set of 7/16" dimple rods that I also got through (you guessed it) the Tradin' Post. Everything went into a cherry low mileage 454 2 bolt block, along with a stock steel crank. I had Erson grind me a custom roller cam (my very first custom cam), found a set of square port closed chamber heads (yes, the Tradin' Post) and a factory dual plane intake. I don't even remember the casting #'s on the heads or the intake. I plopped a brand new 4781 850 Holley on it and added an HEI distributor.

I knew the Muncie wouldn't be long for this world with that big block in front of it, so I had a buddy build a 400 Turbo and connected the two with a B&M 2400 Holeshot converter (poor choice, but I didn't know any better at the time). I also had the exhaust upgraded to 2 1/2" at the time, but it didn't have tailpipes on it, just turn-downs. I don't even remember what mufflers I had on it--Flowmasters maybe?

I drove this one to the track, eventually running 11.90's @ 112 through the mufflers--pretty good for the time. I later bolted a 150 HP Nitrous kit on the car, but I only got to run it a few times on the street. The car would run 12.20's with the Goodyear Eagle GT's on the back and 11.90's with the M&H's on nuts. It ran high 10's on nitrous on the M&H's on a couple of clandestine late night tuning sessions, but I never backed that up at the track.

It wasn't long before I lost a valve which laid out the 454. It was around this time that the whole "Fastest Street Car" craze was gaining momentum, so I got the bright idea to give that a go.

Pfft...bad idea.

Since I wasn't made of $, it took me several years to gather up the parts and get my new engine built. I scored a killer deal on a Mark IV Bowtie block still in its crate. I bought a Callies 4.5" crank, some Manley 6.385" long H beams and had a Hawkins Speed Shop in Richmond Indiana order me a set of custom J&E flat top pistons to complete the shortblock. I ran a Crane R274 roller cam and a set of Dart 360 heads. I bought the heads as a bare kit from Doug Herbert and had a local machine shop machine & assemble them for me. Little did I know at the time that the local shop completely F*&KED me on those heads, but as the old saying goes, live & learn. I topped it off with a Weiand Team G intake and a 9377 1150 Holley--again a poor choice, but I didn't know then what I know now about carburetors. A Moroso street/strip pan completed the bottom end.

We ran it on the dyno at Hawkins, and I quickly found out that the valve springs that came with the heads--while having the correct "specs" to match my cam--were junk. They died on the 4th or 5th dyno pull. I also found out that I couldn't get enough jet in the 9377 to cure a lean mixture above 6K. The engine still made over 700 HP at only 6000 and 730 lb.ft at <4K, but since the springs were shot and I couldn't get enough fuel through the carb, we called it a day. I took the engine home and set it in the car. Next I started to re-do the rear suspension and tried to install some 30X13.5 ET Street M/T's. Realizing this wasn't going to happen with my fabrication skills, I had to come up with a plan B.

Shortly afterwards I came into some $ unexpectedly, so I shipped the car over to Hawkins and had them install a complete back half with an Alston 4 link. The rear was a junkyard Dana with a 3.70 gear and a lock-rite diff. They also installed the 8 point cage and re-worked the 2 1/4" Tubular Automotive headers I'd bought for the 572 install.

I got the car running shortly after I got it back from Hawkins. I'd already replaced the valve springs, but the carb was still stock and I still had the Team G intake on it.

I sent the carb off to Pro Systems and had Patrick set it up for the build. I have to give credit where credit is due--while the car was stupid-fast with the stock carb, it was notably more stupid afterwards. The first time I turned that car loose it scared the sh*t out of me--2nd gear pulled harder than anything I'd ever ridden in -or on- to that time. With the proper valve springs on it the engine now revved to 7K in an instant.

This all took me ~3 years to complete. By the time I'd "finished" the car, the rules for the classes I wanted to try to run had completely changed, and the car was already obsolete.

Again, live and learn.

I drove it on the street for a while, scaring the crap out of a few friends with it, but I was still so disgusted by the whole rules thing that I honestly lost motivation to do much with it. After considerable prodding by some friends, I finally broke down and set a date to take it to the track. The day before I planned on taking it to the track, I attended a local cruise-in with it. Shortly after we left the cruise, the engine started making a hell of a clatter and had a definite dead miss. I pulled it into a nearby as station and shut it off. I took a quick peek under the hood and didn't see anything obvious, but a quick re-start confirmed something was terminally wrong. I called a buddy with a tow truck and had it drug back home.

I pulled the valve covers off and found the #1 intake rocker was sitting sideways. At first I thought I'd dodged a bullet, but when I looked down inside the lifter valley, I noticed the lifter was sitting cock-eyed in the bore.

I pulled the intake off and found the roller lifter had lost its wheel. Upon closer inspection I noted a significant gouge in the cam lobe as well. Since a cam swap on a `67 Chevelle can't happen w/o removing the grill, I decided just to pull the engine. Good thing I did too. A chunk of the broken lifter had wedged itself between a counterweight on the crank and the bottom of the wrist pin boss in the #1 piston, which left a nasty gouge in the pin boss and a notably sticky wrist pin. As I'd neglected to order any spare pistons when I first built the engine (again, live & learn) I had to place an order for 4, the minimum quantity.

By this time I was doing some subcontract work at another speed shop in Middletown. They had a direct line with Dart, so I made arrangements and sent my heads in for a full race CNC port job.

To make this long story short, I got the engine back together a couple months later. I had it running for maybe 15 minutes when it lost the head off #4 intake valve as I was setting the timing in the driveway. Talk about a sickening sound.

I pulled it back apart to find a small gouge in the cylinder wall and another set of damaged pistons thanks to the shrapnel that got pumped through the intake.

That was all she wrote for me. I cut my losses at that point and parted out most of the 572, except for the connecting rods, timing cover, rockers, the carb, and some other misc. peripherals. I put together a much milder flat tappet 496 to go back into the car. This one had a Scat crank, the Manley rods out of the 572, a set of shelf SRP pistons (10-1) a Canton oil pan, a set of AFR 315 CNC heads I found on eBay, and a Dart intake. The cam was the same grind flat tappet I'm using in my current 496 in my Chevelle now, Crane # 131311.

I got the car back on the road, but by this time I was pretty much over it. The 4" exhaust had the cops watching me like a Hawk, the `cage was a PITA to climb over, and it rode like a log wagon. That's when I decided it was time to let it go. I put it on eBay, but it didn't meet reserve. One of the bidders contacted me after the auction was over and we came to an agreement. ~2 weeks later I drove it to a local gas station parking lot at around midnight and watched it get loaded onto a car carrier.

Broken-hearted? Yep.

Disgusted? Yep.

Sad? Yep.

I started searching for my next project car, and this is when I inadvertently wound up finding the whereabouts of my very first `67 SS396 Chevelle. You can read about that tale here.

The guy who bought the car wound up having Patrick build a new 1050 Dominator for the car, and he had the rear gears swapped to 4.56. At his local track, the car ran 6.50's @ 112 MPH in the 1/8, which roughly equates to 10-teens--but that 112 mph @ the 1/8 translated to ~136 in the quarter, so the car had 9's in it as it sat, he just never found them. Instead he pulled the 496 apart, shoved in a giant COMP roller cam and added the Vortec blower. The car ran 5.50's @ 135+ in the 1/8 after that, which equates to mid 8's at 160-ish. The last time I looked there were still pics of the car on Vortec Supercharger's website.