and built up a 327 with a mild cam, Offenhouser spreadbore manifold with 650 spreadbore Holly, Acel dual point with Acel coil and headers/glass packs the clutch was Mcloud ( had to straighten the 1/4” clutch rod once a month) it was coupled to a Muncie 3 speed.
I had a '68 El Camino with a 327. I put in a Schieffer street clutch and found about 50 more horsepower (because the stock clutch was slipping) I never bent the clutch rod but I snapped one of the arms off the clutch linkage. Stopped playing with stuff like that when I was 19 but I have gone back to it now, forty odd years later.I liked sleepers I always told my son don’t make it easy to have the cops pick you out. My sleeper was a 58 Chev four door I pulled the six our while on suspension
Don't give up on the young guys yet fellas. We just hired a 22 year old who's done a 350 manual swap in an 80's camero v6 car. He's a gearhead. Knows his way around tools, and I'm pushing to teach him CNC. Breath of fresh air. Here's hoping we can hang on to him for a while before the lure of big hydro takes another one. He's a rare case I know, but they are out there.This thread is great! It’s ironical because most of the language in this thread will mean nothing to most people under 40.
It’s also funny because Accel coils and dizzy’s really weren’t much of an improvement
It’s also kinda sad how the older gearheads are being weeded out by my generation who don’t wrench at all, yet the older guys were changing a starter on Friday night to go out on a date or to go racing Saturday
The generation after me coming up don’t even know what a wrench is
The old man has a 1970 LS7 sitting in my shop, factory 4 bolt main, cross drilled mains, steel crank, pink connecting rods, 7/16 pushrods, 12.5/1 pistons, aluminum heads/intake, Harland sharp roller rockers, etcill give up another sleeper i had, a 1996 ford ranger ext cab with a 383 small block and a th350 (you read that right, a chevy 383 small block)
383 was balanced w/forged pistons, i beam rods, scat crank, roller cam, roller rockers, edelbrock aluminum heads, msi points disty w/spark box, aluminum intake, 650dbl pumper carb, shorty headers, around 10.2:1, i dont remember what stall i had, 3k maybe slightly higher
truck had an 8.8 from an exploder with 3.73 and rebuilt stock exploder limited slip, an aluminum tool box, and stock rims with oversized tires, it was outright dangerous in the rain, and looked like a regular old work truck
it was good enough to keep up with 600cc sport bikes on the street, it was hard to get anyone to race me though, no one with a car i knew would do race me, only the bike guys, and no one on the street wanted to race a 1996 ford ranger.
I did get nailed by the cops in that one however, doing 140 in an 80 on Glenmore when it had that speed trap 80 zone, before it had those overpasses, managed to talk it down to 119 in an 80 and avoided the stunting ticket...lucky again
I did add up the receipts for that, without the machine work and without the rotating assembly, i was into that very basic setup for over 7k
ended up pulling that motor and trans, scrapped the truck, motor ended up in a 3rd gen rx7 for a while, before i pulled it, sold the 383 for 3700, and tossed an ls into it....eventually sold that rx7 with the ls for everything i had into it including purchase price, sometimes i regret that....it would have been sweet with a pair of turbos.....but maybe for the best
True. One of my neighbours has a 3rd gen Camaro with a 350, tunnel ram, dart heads, msd dizzy, decent comp cam etc and he’s younger than me
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