John Ross
04-19-2011, 01:57 PM
The Chevy II wasn’t titled yet and I couldn’t have it in my name at age 15 so I called my uncle Graves and showed him what I had bought. He looked pained and asked why I hadn’t talked to him first before buying such a piece of junk. I laughed and explained that I wanted to learn about engines and this was a cheap way to do it. I pointed out that the car was light and with a healthy rebuilt V8, ought to be fun. I told him I would challenge him to a race when I was all done. He howled at that one, as he drove a 1967 Porsche 911S with a 7700 RPM redline. He had let me drive the 911 several times when we went out to hunt clubs in sparsely-populated areas of Missouri.
With my uncle now in a good mood, I asked if he’d put my Chevy II in his name and not mention it to Mom. Mom wanted me to have her 1968 Opel GT to drive when I turned 16.
http://i307.photobucket.com/albums/nn302/JohnRoss_07/Opel_GT.jpg
She didn’t like getting in and out of it anymore. My uncle had driven the Opel and proclaimed that it “didn’t have enough power to get out of its own way,” a sentiment I shared. The car also understeered worse than any car I had ever driven.
I told him Mom would just say I was wasting time obsessing about cars and I didn’t need that kind of nuisance. My uncle knew we weren’t getting along so well since she’d sold the Corvette, and she’d been drinking more than usual in the two years since Dad had died. He agreed to keep the Chevy II our secret. That was one roadblock out of the way.
I didn’t mention the L88 motor that was sitting in the corner of the welding shop…
Jerry and I pulled the 327 and tore it down for a rebuild. The crank was forged, which surprised me, but the rest of the motor appeared to have been pieced together from leftover parts—for example, the pistons didn’t match and there were three different makes of pushrods in the engine. I had a local shop grind the crank and modify the block for four-bolt main caps after they gave the block a clean-up bore. Speed-O-Motive supplied a master rebuild kit with reconditioned GM “pink sheet” rods, forged pistons, cam, lifters, pushrods, and valve springs.
At the same time I was collecting the remaining parts needed to make the Chevy II what I wanted: Camaro front disc brakes and dual master cylinder from a junkyard, custom heavier rear springs made by Launer-Voss in St. Louis, Summers Brothers oversize axles and spool for the rearend, steel 15” rear wheels that used up all the available space in the rear wheelwells, Doug Thorley headers for the L88, a thicker radiator, seamless steel tubing for the driveshaft from Ryerson Steel, truck U-joints, and some rear tires retreaded with a super-sticky compound by West Coast racer Jack McCoy in Modesto, CA.
I added up my receipts and the total investment was about $2900, including the L88 and the parts to rebuild the 327.
With the rebuilt 327 hooked up to the Clutch-Turbo, and the stock iron exhaust manifolds plumbed back into the stock exhaust system, the car ran well. It was no fire-breather, but everything worked and it had some snap.
It was time to try to build a nitrous system.
A local scuba shop (they actually have a few in St. Louis) provided two “bail-out bottles” and Puritan-Bennett filled them.
I’d been talking to a Monsanto engineer (another shooting friend) about how to measure nitrous flow and he said he had a way to do it if I provided him with the hardware I intended to use. I came up with a bunch of different injector nozzles (I think they were off an old Hilborn unit) from a local sprint car racer. I was deathly afraid of poor mixing of the nitrous with the gasoline and having one or more cylinders get mostly nitrous with disastrous results. Art Freund machined up an aluminum Y-block fitting to feed the fuel and nitrous into two legs of the Y and the mixture out the third leg. It was my theory that the vaporizing nitrous would better atomize the liquid spray of gasoline, but I didn’t tell anyone this. Years later, a company would patent this design as their “Fogger” nozzle.
The end of the school year and my 16th birthday were fast approaching, and I had a summer job lined up at a municipal swimming pool in a small town outside Chicago. I put the nitrous plan on hold until my return in August to study for final exams.
More later...
With my uncle now in a good mood, I asked if he’d put my Chevy II in his name and not mention it to Mom. Mom wanted me to have her 1968 Opel GT to drive when I turned 16.
http://i307.photobucket.com/albums/nn302/JohnRoss_07/Opel_GT.jpg
She didn’t like getting in and out of it anymore. My uncle had driven the Opel and proclaimed that it “didn’t have enough power to get out of its own way,” a sentiment I shared. The car also understeered worse than any car I had ever driven.
I told him Mom would just say I was wasting time obsessing about cars and I didn’t need that kind of nuisance. My uncle knew we weren’t getting along so well since she’d sold the Corvette, and she’d been drinking more than usual in the two years since Dad had died. He agreed to keep the Chevy II our secret. That was one roadblock out of the way.
I didn’t mention the L88 motor that was sitting in the corner of the welding shop…
Jerry and I pulled the 327 and tore it down for a rebuild. The crank was forged, which surprised me, but the rest of the motor appeared to have been pieced together from leftover parts—for example, the pistons didn’t match and there were three different makes of pushrods in the engine. I had a local shop grind the crank and modify the block for four-bolt main caps after they gave the block a clean-up bore. Speed-O-Motive supplied a master rebuild kit with reconditioned GM “pink sheet” rods, forged pistons, cam, lifters, pushrods, and valve springs.
At the same time I was collecting the remaining parts needed to make the Chevy II what I wanted: Camaro front disc brakes and dual master cylinder from a junkyard, custom heavier rear springs made by Launer-Voss in St. Louis, Summers Brothers oversize axles and spool for the rearend, steel 15” rear wheels that used up all the available space in the rear wheelwells, Doug Thorley headers for the L88, a thicker radiator, seamless steel tubing for the driveshaft from Ryerson Steel, truck U-joints, and some rear tires retreaded with a super-sticky compound by West Coast racer Jack McCoy in Modesto, CA.
I added up my receipts and the total investment was about $2900, including the L88 and the parts to rebuild the 327.
With the rebuilt 327 hooked up to the Clutch-Turbo, and the stock iron exhaust manifolds plumbed back into the stock exhaust system, the car ran well. It was no fire-breather, but everything worked and it had some snap.
It was time to try to build a nitrous system.
A local scuba shop (they actually have a few in St. Louis) provided two “bail-out bottles” and Puritan-Bennett filled them.
I’d been talking to a Monsanto engineer (another shooting friend) about how to measure nitrous flow and he said he had a way to do it if I provided him with the hardware I intended to use. I came up with a bunch of different injector nozzles (I think they were off an old Hilborn unit) from a local sprint car racer. I was deathly afraid of poor mixing of the nitrous with the gasoline and having one or more cylinders get mostly nitrous with disastrous results. Art Freund machined up an aluminum Y-block fitting to feed the fuel and nitrous into two legs of the Y and the mixture out the third leg. It was my theory that the vaporizing nitrous would better atomize the liquid spray of gasoline, but I didn’t tell anyone this. Years later, a company would patent this design as their “Fogger” nozzle.
The end of the school year and my 16th birthday were fast approaching, and I had a summer job lined up at a municipal swimming pool in a small town outside Chicago. I put the nitrous plan on hold until my return in August to study for final exams.
More later...