Grizzly old man

When I was younger {in the early 70's} I could buy a car for around $25 almost any time, so I did so.

Pretty soon I had around 50 cars in my yard. The city decided I had to many cars and started giving me problems so, I bought a dealers license and hung out a shingle. The dealers license cost $175.00 and was good for three years. This got the city off my back and I even did sell a few cars.

Most of the cars I bought were Fords and most had 302 V8's and automatic transmissions in them.

A friend said I should build a stock car since I had so many cars to choose from. He kept bugging me to do this small task so one day I gave him a '67 Fairlane with a 3 on the tree and a 302 and told him to handle it.

In a week or so he called and told me to come check the progress. He had removed all the glass, the entire interior, mounted a bucket seat from an old Cadillac and was proceeding to empty a half barrel of beer so he could use the keg for a fuel tank.

Back then the rules on what your stock car was really like were a lot different. Full roll cages were not required. Since I was part owner of the car I insisted we get a bunch of well pipe and make one. My buddy was against it because it would make the car much heavier than he wanted it to be.

I won.

He couldn't weld worth a hood but I was pretty darn good at it. As time passed I found an electric overdrive rear end from a '67 Ford, just not a Fairlane and the officials passed it. That gave us a little advantage over what most of the other guys had going on. You could flip a switch blip the throttle and just go when coming out of a turn.

As more time passed my buddy wanted to rebuild the whole frame using well pipe. He gathered up way more pipe than 5 frames would have taken and I welded it together. The finished product without the body on it probably weighed more than a street legal car would have.

It was never raced on the track but it was a blast to rip around on his farm with. A 302 was plenty enough engine to whip it around with. Later he dropped a 390 police interceptor engine in along with the heavy duty automatic those old police cruiser had in them. It was hard to keep rear tires on the thing.

lasater

Today I finished the cut out areas for the cats. I still need to do some grinding and any welding areas I might have missed. This shot is taken with the car up on the lift and me laying on my back on the floor. I'm really hoping I have enough ground clearance for all this stuff I gotta put in. I'm now getting into areas that YearOne and Unique never went....making it a REAL driver.

BlindLizard

What u are doing is incredible, so will it be small cats like an HHR or much larger?

lasater

I have to use the Camaro cats so the computers will recognize them. Cats are very particular on where they are located. Too far away from the headers and the O2 sensors won't work right.

Radco

Thanks for the updates awesome job

lasater

The engine is coming along. The long block is complete. Heads are next week. Intake is ready for install as soon as heads are on.

Oldblue

Neat

arie21

Ive been thinking over what vehicle I would like to use as my donor. And Ive been thinking about something that is AWD. And I thought of a Silverado since I would think there is a good aftermarket for the Silverados engine and what not. Would you have considered a Silverado in your build if you could have had that? Or were you set on using a "car" that would be more proportional to your HHR?

lasater

Wow, where do I start. First off I wouldn't use a Silverado because in California it is illegal to put a truck engine in a car........yes really. Next, a 4wd truck transfer case is huge. You couldn't use the HHR engine cradle, which means you couldn't use the HHR front suspension . If you wanted 4wd I would mate a HHR body to an S10 or Jeep chassis. The problem with this concept is the non matching vin numbers. Remember, this is not like putting a V8 in a model A. New cars are subject to completely different rules. This is why it's so rare to see these done.

As far as a donor car, I always wanted a Camaro. First, I wanted to keep all Chevrolet. Then it was an Ls engine because they are an amazing power plant, easily produces 500+ hp. Couple this with a good trans and rear end from the Camaro and to me it was a no brainer. Also remember that I am basing this build off the YearOne build and that's what they used.

Frenchy42

If I'm not mistaken, the AWD T-case(found in the later Silverado SS) would be smaller, due to it not having a 4 lo or 2wd option. It would still be big and cause lots of issues, but should be easier than an actual 4wd t-case.

And I remember something in a Hot Rod magazine about a LS motor, 5.3 IIRC. They bought an Ebay turbo and made their own plumbing. With a few mods and stock internals, it made in excess of 550hp on 12ish PSI. They made enough dyno runs to be equivalent to a track season with no problems what so ever. Yeah, LS motors are bada$$, the LS1 being one of the top ones.

Found it. http://www.hotrod.com/how-to/engine/...lock-for-3252/