Where is 69 Yenko Camaro 124379N663539 - Page 16

ds1 · #**151** 12-22-2016, 02:45 AM

The racing has been my hobby within the car hobby, coming from a car family. We build the cars to use, not museum or trailer queens. We have thirty between 4 of us. GTOs, Camaros, and street rods. I have an S10 I am building as a bracket car. I work in a 223 year old steel mill and get very little time off in maintenance and it is very cold this time of year. After the truck I plan to finish my 64 GTO then get Joes 67 Camaro in. I enjoy building and having to think about the changes I want to make. I have 2 to 3 local cars I work on beside mine.

**GM_427_Racer** · #**152** 12-24-2016, 01:16 AM

To All,

Hoping everyone has a Very, Very Merry Christmas and Santa brings everything you want and your dreams come true.

For those of you that do not believe in Christmas, then I wish you a Happy Holiday Season.

Gary Merrick

bigsixman · #**153** 12-31-2016, 09:56 PM

Gary, do you have any photos of your lower alternator mount on your blue 69? I have motor plates and I am looking for a good way to mount
the alternator low on the drivers side with a plate. I received my crank and water pump pulleys today and I am trying to get some ideas for the alternator. Thanks.

**GM_427_Racer** · #**154** 01-03-2017, 01:51 PM

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: bigsixman</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Gary, do you have any photos of your lower alternator mount on your blue 69? I have motor plates and I am looking for a good way to mount
the alternator low on the drivers side with a plate. I received my crank and water pump pulleys today and I am trying to get some ideas for the alternator. Thanks. </div></div>

bigsixman,

Sorry for the delay, I was out of town.

To answer your question. I did not have an alternator system on the blue 69. In Super Stock, an alternator is not required by NHRA, so I was planning on running two batteries. However, if you go to East Coast Auto Electric website, there is a kit #2414 for big block cars with a motor plate and that kit is pretty much what I used on the 70 Stocker (NHRA does require a working alternator in Stock Eliminator), with some slight modifications. If you have questions, you should give East Coast a call at (570)457-0553 and ask for John. I talked to him at the PRI show a couple of weeks ago and he is very knowledgeable and I am sure he can help with any questions you might have.

GM

bigsixman · #**155** 01-05-2017, 05:32 AM

Thanks Gary ECAE #2414 appears to be something that will work for me. I appreciate your help.

**GM_427_Racer** · #**156** 01-08-2017, 08:52 PM

Hi All,

Hope everyone had a good holiday season and all of you are starting the New Year with anticipation of good things to come.

Since Charlie started this thread a couple months ago and I was told there are some "Super Sleuths" on this site, I was wondering if there had been any success or possible leads as to finding my old car VIN 124379N663539?

GM

**SeattleCarGuy** · #**157** 02-03-2017, 10:31 PM

Thank you for sharing these incredible stories of your Yenko days and current racing pursuits. I was too young to have experienced the musclecar era first hand, but am near obsessed with musclecars now.

If you're ever so inclined, could you tell us any stories of street racing the Yenko back in the day? Was the car a hit at the local cruise spots in 1969? Did people know what a Yenko was at that time?

Thank you again.

**GM_427_Racer** · #**158** 02-05-2017, 06:55 PM

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: SeattleCarGuy</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Thank you for sharing these incredible stories of your Yenko days and current racing pursuits. I was too young to have experienced the musclecar era first hand, but am near obsessed with musclecars now.

If you're ever so inclined, could you tell us any stories of street racing the Yenko back in the day? Was the car a hit at the local cruise spots in 1969? Did people know what a Yenko was at that time?

Thank you again. </div></div>

Seattle Car Guy,

Thanks for the question about back in the day.

Before I take you to 1969 and the Yenko, I want to tell you about the summer of 1967 and another one of my stories and how my DAD was involved.

I graduated from high school in 1967 at the age of 17, would not turn 18 until November, and I was going to go to the local college to start on an Engineering degree. At that time, I think I mentioned previously that my Dad was a FORD guy, so my Mom's daily driver was a 1964 Ford Galaxie 500 two door fastback with a 352 cid, 250 HP, 4 barrel, dual exhaust with a "Cruisomatic 3 speed transmission" and my older brother had shown me quite often how good it ran and I must say it was pretty quick for a 352. My brother left for college at Miami of Ohio after he graduated in 1964, so he did not have enough time to screw up the 64, I say this cause every car my Dad let him drive, he broke it in one way or another. I will get back to the 64 and my brother in a little while cause it is very relevant to this story.

In the summer of 1967, Dad decided he needed to find me a cheap car to drive to college and also my part time gas station job. I really don't remember how he found this car but one day after he got off work, he said after dinner we were going to look at a 1961 Ford. Me being 17, I really didn't care what it was, so long as I had my own car. The two of us left after dinner and my anticipation was "off the chart". In my imagination, I have a Ford Starliner two door fast back with a 406 and a 4 speed on my mind as to be the car that would be my dream car for a 1961 Ford. When we pulled in the driveway where the folks were selling the car, I could not believe what I was seeing. Before we even pulled up to the car and parked Dad looked over at me and said with a grin "What do you think?" I was pretty much speechless because what I was looking at was a 1961 Ford Country Squire 9 passenger station wagon with all the wood grain, painted robins egg blue and chrome skirts. I looked over at Pop and said, "WOW, not what I was expecting!", but I thought, Hey, it has four wheels and I knew that Mom and Dad did not have a lot of money and if this what he wanted to buy me, I was good with it, but I told him the chrome skirts have got to go, period..... After the shock of a 9 passenger station wagon and the chrome skirts (which gotta go), the first thing and I mean the very first thing I see is that this car has dual factory exhausts and in my mind I know that this means only one of two things, either a 390 or a 406 is under the hood and I am thinking this might not be so bad. I head right for the front of the car, pop the hood, and sure enough it looks like a 390 to me with a 4 barrel carb. I have to be honest, I was not the sharpest knife in the drawer back then (well, maybe not now either), but this car could be fun, even if it is a 9 passenger wagon. Dad has been talking to the owner and the next thing on the list is the test drive. Dad drives it first and I am in the passenger seat and this thing is not very impressive. It needs tires, brakes, and definitely a tune up, which I don't think it has seen spark plugs since it came off the assembly line. Since it needs all these things and points them out to the owner, he negotiates a price of $675.00, so he buys it, knowing that I can fix all of the stuff on the cheap since I work at the gas station.

Well, I guess you guys and gals have figured out by now, yup, Pop bought the wagon and for an extra surprise for me he took it to Earl Scheib and got their deluxe paint job (I think he paid $79.95 to get the whole car painted) and if you haven't guessed by now, it was robins egg blue again. Dad was big on the do it yourself type stuff, so he bought wood grain contact paper and redid the wood grain on the sides of the Country Squire, cause the original was pretty well faded and we could not have that, but the chrome skirts did disappear. All the maintenance stuff that I mentioned earlier was fixed in the first couple of weeks that I was driving the car and it ran better, but it was still a "TURD", it had a hard time getting out of its own way. A friend of mine had a 61 Ford two door with a straight six and a manual 3 speed transmission and it would literally walk away from the "BARGE" (I forgot to mention my Dad gave it the nickname "The Barge&quot

, so I was resigned to the fact that even though this car had a 390, it was really, really sloooooow.

Time to back up a little bit and talk about my brother who was 3 years older than me and his driving experiences with the 64 Galaxie. Before I got my driver's license which was in 1965, my brother would take me places occasionally, and when we got to take Mom's car it was a treat. He showed me on more than one occasion, if you pulled the shifter to the Low-Low position, wind the engine up to about 50 MPH, (no tach, no idea what RPM, but the engine seemed HAPPY), move the shifter up to drive and then pull it back down to L2, it would shift just like a shift kit was in the Cruisomatic and that 352 would burn rubber in second gear, wind it up to to about 75-80 MPH and then move the shifter to D (3rd gear), it would shift and you would get a chirp out of the rear tires.

Obviously, I like to set things up a little and tell you about the day the "BARGE" came to life. I had probably been driving the wagon about a month and one day I was on my way to work to the gas station and I got behind a couple of slow cars that were going 20 in a 35 zone. I was running late and getting more ticked off, cause it was taking forever. Once I saw my opening with no on-coming traffic, I ripped the shifter to low gear (all the way down, I had NEVER done this before), floored it and the "BARGE" showed its stuff when I put the gas pedal to the floor, the front end jumped up in the air (I mean it "REALLY JUMPED UP IN THE AIR&quot

, something I had never felt before and we (the wagon and me) were HAULING ASS around the car in front of me, I pushed the shifter up and brought it right back down (just like the 64), it shifted into second gear and smoked the tires (it had a posi). I had to slow down, so I didn't get a chance to wind it up and shift to high, but I am thinking "What the HELL just happened???" Holy Crap, I have been driving this car all summer and had never experienced anything like this EVER..... The next red light I came to, I put the shifter back into drive and the "BARGE" turned into the TURD it had always been and went back to being the Country Squire. Once I got moving, no traffic in front of me, I pulled the shifter back to Low-Low, floored the accelerator and the front end jumped back up in the air again and the ole 390 was breathing heavy... The bad part of this story was that I had to go to work and had to wait 8 hours to experience how fast this thing was, but it was great anticipation and I wasn't disappointed on the way home. While at work, I figured out what was going on, the shift linkage was out of adjustment, so when the car was in Drive, it was not starting out in low gear, it was starting out in 2nd and that is why it was so slow, it never saw first gear unless you did it manually. I never fixed it, it was like our little secret between the "BARGE" and me. So whenever, Dad would drive the car, he would comment about how slow it was. I would just smile say "Yeah, that's OK, it gets me to where I want to go".

Now, since all of you that have been reading these posts, know I like to build it up, well this is no exception. I think this is the best story about the Barge. Youngstown, Ohio back in the day had a street you cruised on, it is called Market Street, which is a four lane road. When you would go South on Market Street, you would go a couple miles to an intersection of Rt 224, which is in a suburb called Boardman. On the corner of Rt. 224 and Market Street, there used to be the hang-out at a Morgan's restaurant, which had a pretty big parking area and all the guys with cool muscle cars would park there, shoot the breeze and usually set-up some street races. Now being a 17 year old that wanted to have a muscle car in the worst way, but I could not afford squat and had to drive a 9 passenger station wagon with fake wood grain on the sides would just look at all the cool cars and drool. As you would expect, the barge got a lot of sneers and laughter when I did cruise through Morgan's, but one night it did get revenge against a certain GTO and its owner. This was not a set-up race, it just kind of happened, which was the way most street races occurred, one guy pulled up along side somebody else, they would look over at each other and when the light turned green the race was on. Me and a friend of mine were heading North on Market St, going home and a 66 - 396 Chevelle and a 66 GTO were lined up in front of me (I was behind the Chevelle), and then another GTO pulled up beside me, my buddy was looking at the 2nd GTO and admiring it. I told him these two in front of us are going to race and I am going to see how long the "BARGE" would hang with them. I shifted to LOW gear and then started to foot brake and get up on the convertor a little bit and the back end of the "BARGE" started to lift, we were ready. The light turned green and the two in front of me did not disappoint, they both took off and in true "BARGE" fashion, the front end shot skyward and this probably the point where you figure that I just cleaned the GTO's clock beside me, well, that kind of happened cause my buddy was watching the GTO beside us and from what he told me when we went skyward, the GTO driver's cigarette fell out of his mouth and he stalled his car looking for the cigarette between his legs. Needless to say, the "BARGE" held on for about half way thru low gear and then the Chevelle and GTO just started pulling away rather quickly, so I just shifted it back to drive and backed off. Shortly, after I backed off and shifted, a police car came out of a side street in hot pursuit, well as hot pursuit as the cruisers were in those days, (I have a story about the Yenko and a police cruiser I will tell at another time). One of the muscle cars let off and got pulled over and the other one kept going, while the BARGE just cruised on by.

Just another little note about my DAD (I think I mentioned how much I LOVED that guy). This was probably in the fall of the year (1967) and he asked me how come the tires on the back of the wagon were pretty much bald? I told him that they were just cheap tires and were probably defective. I don't think he bought it, but it was probably ten years later before I told him about the shift linkage and how fast the "BARGE" really was. I figured by that time the statute of limitations had probably run out.

More to come........

**SeattleCarGuy** · #**159** 02-08-2017, 03:41 PM

Awesome story! Glued to my seat waiting for more!

The best thing about going to car shows or cruise nights nowadays is hearing stories like this from guys that lived it! Thank you Sir!

**Xplantdad** · #**160** 02-08-2017, 07:04 PM

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: SeattleCarGuy</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Awesome story! Glued to my seat waiting for more!

The best thing about going to car shows or cruise nights nowadays is hearing stories like this from guys that lived it! Thank you Sir! </div></div>

Times two.... [img]<<GRAEMLIN_URL>>/beers.gif[/img]

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