'68 Camaro - Another one?! Again?! Really? - Page 2 - Lateral-g Forums

Leroy Rochester · #11 03-29-2014, 12:32 AM

So, back to the story... But first another quick interjection about the '67, since you guys got a kick out of my '68 being a "family" car. If any of you guys know Ryan Flaherty from NASA, you'll enjoy hearing that his mom bought my '67 brand new and I dug that car out of Ryan's grandparents back yard in Tarzana back in 2001.

Anyhow, since I already had a road-race Camaro, I began to flirt with the notion of cloning a 396 SS with this car. My wife actually came with an all original iron head, solid lifter L71/L72 427 when I married her (ain't she cool?!) so that made its way into the car, backed by a Muncie 4 speed I had kicking around after I sold my '66 Impala convertible as a roller).

But before long, I developed a bit of a fantasy about possibly using the car for some sort of drag racing, and it begain to take on that persona, with a bit of "Aloha Bobby and Rose" thrown in for good measure.

At the end of the "big block drag car" posing phase, it had a TH400 in it instead of the 4 speed.

I couldn't find any good underhood pictures with the 427 in the car, other than a close up of the lifter valley... After I blew up the 427 out on PCH acting like a 13 year-old (the pictures with the radials and the black hood were taking immediately after it came screeching and rattling to a stop across PCH from Bolsa Chica State Beach).

Leroy Rochester · #12 03-29-2014, 12:41 AM

So with the motor blown, my '67 and my boat sold (boat nonsense it a whole different episode of Jerry Springer) I decided to do something stupid and rebuild the car to corner based on the random spare stuff I had kicking around...

I still had the CCWs from trying DOT radial race rubber on the '67 (yes, I was wearing arm restraints in that pic, hated the window net), I still had a 570" Merlin wide rail block motor from the boat and my buddy had a pretty slick looking T101A kicking around... Sounds like fun to me!

At one point, I even decided that I was going to cage the car and picked up a fiberglass front clip, doors and truck lid!

I'll admit it, I was still kind of trying to "find myself" and a direction on this project!

Rick D · #13 03-29-2014, 07:59 AM

Wow very cool story, I just the back story on our cars!! Can't wait to see where it goes from here.

**214Chevy** · #14 03-29-2014, 08:56 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Leroy Rochester

..... I will tell you that a) I did have a mullet!

Somewhere...somehow, during the course of this build thread, we gotta see the infamous "Joe Dirt" styled mullet.

**Ron in SoCal** · #15 03-29-2014, 09:03 AM

intocarss · #16 03-29-2014, 10:20 AM

Keep it coming Sean!! BTW did you ever live in Tarzana?

Leroy Rochester · #17 03-29-2014, 09:23 PM

Kids baseball all day today. If I can stay awake I'll add some more later.

I didn't live in Tarzana. My wife is from Van Nuys though and my buddy responsible for the T101A had a effects shop up in Van Nuys as well.

TimeWarpF100 · #18 03-29-2014, 09:51 PM

waaay cool story!

Leroy Rochester · #19 03-30-2014, 09:29 AM

It was really more of a Kelly "F-in'" Powers mullet than Joe Dirt, truth be told...

Leroy Rochester · #20 03-30-2014, 09:46 AM

All right, I actually just found some "in progress" pictures that I can add as we go, but at this point I think it's probably time to explain what the overall goal is for this project and what my plans are. Ya know, so a year from now, when I'm doing something completely different, we can all come back to this post and laugh at me!

As I said, the car has been pointed a number of different directions before finally setting on a return to my first-love, the road racing theme... I will say that when I finally decided on this direction, it felt "Right" and I'm glad I finally got back to this.

When I had the '67 built, I stripped the car down to the tub myself, in a three car deep, one car wide garage under my apartment in the Sunset section of San Franciso (California and 17th if anyone is familiar with the area). Then I loaded it on a trailer and the car (and large stacks of money) dissapeard for about three years.

With that perspective in mind, I really wanted to do the '68 project in phases to minimze downtime and kind of develop how the car was going to work and what I was going to do with it as I went. That's stil an overriding philosophy of this project, even though it has taken an astronomical amount of time to get even part way through this first phase.

I wanted to use as much "off-the-shelf" upgrades as I could on this project.

I wanted a "real car" that I could drive every day if I wanted to.

I wanted to do most of the work myself.

So my expectation is that the car isn't going to be anything radical, but should be fun to drive, look decent and give me the ability to make relatively simple short term upgrades over time.