FOLK67

Background - I bought this car when I was 14 as a roller/bank repo. My dad and I fixed everything we could with factory parts, stuffed a ZZ4, a muncie and 12 bolt under it so I could drive it when I was 16. Never painted the car. Never underwent any significant changes. The car has never missed a summer of driving. I've slowly updated things when I could and just kept beating on the ol girl! Went thru a couple muncie's and finally upgraded to a steel cased super t10. Swapped carbs numerous times. Swapped wheels and tires numerous times. Always evolving with who I was and what I had going on at the time.

Fast forward nearly 20 years...Just when I thought I was doing a routine throw out bearing swap we heard a mysterious knock in the motor...turned into yanking the motor and starting the rebuild. #6 rod bearing was sloppy. So just like 20 years ago when we put the motor in together...we are taking it out together. More pics and updates to come!

gesto

LS swap?

FOLK67

Once we got the motor tore apart and found the questionable bearing it was decision time...new bearings and throw it back together? Upgrade the top end? Go all in and completely rebuild the motor? I always told myself that if something were to ever happen to the motor I would rebuild it....so option 3 it was!

As all of you know...an engine rebuild snowballed into much more...which I will get into. Since the motor was out...it was time to clean up the engine bay and make it look presentable. As the block went to the engine builder...the car was getting prepped for some TLC. Then it was going to our local body shop which is owned by a friend of mine and he was going to spray the engine bay. Apparently the car was blue at one time!

FOLK67

It was an option but we were in the process of putting an LS1 in my brother-in-laws 67 Camaro at the time so I didn't want to do the same thing. I had a vision

FOLK67

I've been driving this car with the same look for almost 20 years so I wanted to change things up a bit. So with the freshly painted engine bay I wanted to continue the them on the rest of the car....which was BLACK. Black everything.

So with the newfound vision I started a list of what I could paint or powdercoat to carry it out. And again it snowballed! It wasn't going to be your standard run of the mill stock looking standard 67 Camaro anymore...

FOLK67

With parts coming back from the powdercoater and the car out of the shop I could see it starting to come together and I could start assembling some pieces...and I liked what I saw! A few things I did to change the look was black out the grill, taillights and bumpers along with the emblems and trim. I had the bumper bolts welded on the inside and shaved smooth on the outside. Headlight and taillight bezels painted black along with the gas cap. My vision was becoming reality!

FOLK67

Damn images are showing upside down...sorry bout that.

During the chaos I made a decision on the motor...before I knew the ZZ4 was hurt I had ordered parts for the top end making the decision to stay SBC easy. But it would be bigger. Went with a 383 stroker. RHS 180 aluminum heads (should have went 200cc), Comp XR288 (should have went 292 or bigger), Eagle rotating assembly with hyper pistons (should have went forged), air gap intake, Comp 1.6 magnum full rollers rockers, magnum pushrods and ARP fasteners. It would be a nice streetable 450-500 hp motor. I was ok with it at the time since it was new and fun to build a motor (first time) but looking back on it I would have done numerous things differently. Hindsight 20/20. Either way the motor was coming together and we would be dynoing it soon. I couldn't use my old 600cfm Holley so it was either new carb or try one of my old man's old racing carbs which was a Braswell 830. For convenience and cost savings I went that route. Which would bite me in the *** but I'll get to that later. EFI was another option but with costs rising daily...I stuck with the carb. Plus, the new Holley Sniper EFI that I wanted was backordered 6 months.

FOLK67

I have a little time so I'll continue...

Since I had the car on jacks I tore into the brakes...sanding, grinding, cleaning and painting. They needed it. I would love to upgrade to Wilwoods or something similar but it will have to be done the next round. These will do for now.

If anyone has insight on how to make these images show right side up I'm all ears

FOLK67

The motor is done! After having to order a new oil pan and have it painted I went in to see it get dyno'd. I was pretty happy with the results. I was hoping for 500 at the crank but fell a little short. It made 456 hp and 463 tq. Close to a square motor. This was with the Braswell 830 jetted down and the 4 inch air cleaner on top. After watching Engine Masters air cleaner episode I was happy with my decision.

ZEN357

Very Nice Build!!!

Crf450r420

iTrader: (1)

Really like that color with black trim.