My Chevelle project

Some of you probably know something about my car project, maybe some of you don't. Well, its springtime and I've got the bug to get out and do some driving in it. Of course, like other projects, there is always way too many things to be done and never enough time to get to them. Adding a couple little boys into the mix doesn't do much for that schedule thing either.

The car started life with me in 1999 as a more or less basic 1970 Chevelle from North Carolina. The reason I mention where I got it is because that is also where most of the rust in the car came from. When I first bought it, I had big plans for a complete frame off project so I really didn't worry too much about rust and things like that. Also, for the $5,000 I paid for it, I probably didn't have a lot of room to negotiate either. This is a photo of the car shortly after I started working on it over at Donnie's shop. The original 307 small block and 3-speed trans have been removed at this point. What was left was the fake "SS" badging and the fantastic Maaco paint job the covered the original sea green paint but also covered the North Carolina rust patches.

The first steps in the project was to have a motor built for the car and to rebuild the entire running gear. The first part was easy, I called Rob Vischer who owned Rev Racing Engines in Great Falls, MT at the time and asked him to build a blown big block Chevy motor that would make at least 800 hp on pump gas. He got to work on that task and about a year later, I was the proud owner of a 540 c.i. Chevy with a 8-71 blower and a pair of Holley Dominators. On the dyno with a basic street tuneup, the motor made just over 900 hp on bad racing fuel. On pump gas, it made a little over 800 hp. Rob was pretty sure that the motor would make 1100-1200 hp on race fuel with a racing tuneup but since I had no intentions of racing it, we never pushed it that way on the dyno.

At the same time the motor was being built, I attacked the running gear and chassis. The entire suspension and driverain was replaced. This included a Ford 9" from Currie Enterprises, Hotchkis suspension in the front and rear, power disc brakes all the way around and a new 4L-80E transmission from TCI. I wanted to put a Tremec T-56 in but they wouldn't support any installation over 500 hp. There are a number of options now for high horsepower manual transmissions but that the time, it was automatic for this kind of power.

Over the course of the next 8 years or so, I continued to work on tuning the motor to make it run on the street. Unfortunately, the motor as it was originally built just wasn't very streetable and 2 rebuilds later, I think I've managed to get it streetable. Both rebuilds occured because the solid roller lifter's needle bearings exploded and demolished the cam. The first time it happened, I had had the motor for a couple years and had put a few hundred miles on the car. I trucked the motor to Great Falls and asked Rob to rebuild it. After that rebuild, I down jetted the carbs and continued to search for a streetable tuneup. A few years later, basically the same thing happened again. This time, Rob had sold his engine shop and gone off to work for Lotus in Detriot, MI. I turned to a guy in Bozeman, MT, Wes St. John who owns Internal Combustion Machine. Wes had just rebuilt a small motor for a friend of mine and was recommended. Doing a lot of research, I decided to move away from the solid roller lifers and the crazy .750 lift cam that had been in the motor. I opted for a street cam for nitrous motors from Comp Cams and hydraulic roller lifters. This would make the motor more streetable, eliminate the need for constantly setting the valves but at a cost of loss of top end power band. Ok, so I lost about 1000-1500 rpm on the topside and probably 200 hp or so. Probably not much of a loss for my purposes.

Wes is meticulous and very busy. That translated into my engine being at his shop for almost 2 years. However, when I got it back from him, it was in perfect condition, full of new parts and a fresh rebuild. I was happy to get the motor back last summer. At the same time, I added some O2 sensors to the exhaust stream so that I could hopefully tune the motor better using the LM-2 data logger from Innovate Motorsports. By the time I got to working on everything last fall, the summer car season was pretty much over. I did however, have enough time to fire the motor up and play with the data logger a bit. That led to more understanding of what was happening with the motor, which also led to knowing that the Dominator carbs were probably the biggest source of my problems. I simply could not get the motor to idle and operate at a partial throttle without dumping excess gas into the engine. So, the car project was shelved for the winter.

Now, this spring, arrives, with a renewed attack on getting the car up and running. While I would have liked to convert the car to fuel injection, the $4k-$6k for the parts needed for electronic injection just wasn't in the budget. However, a pair of 4150 Double Pumpers specially modified for blowers was, if I could get the Dominators sold. Well, everything worked out and the car now has new carburetors on it and is ready to be tuned up to drive. I just have to have someone hang out with me on a Saturday and get it tuned and running.

I'm sure there will be plenty more to write on the topic of the car but for now, this is going to have to be it.