62ChevyII
Well-known member
This isn't technically a "muscle car" more of a "grandma car" that packs a little muscle.
We originally bought this in the early 90's and we were the 2nd owners. The elderly woman who had it before us passed away and we were lucky enough to get it for a bargain price. It had 16k original miles on it and still had the original paint on it when we got it, it was still shiney other than the tail gate (she didn't have a garage door). It also had several interesting items inside, like receipts from the 60s and 70s for service or tire repairs and such. One of the coolest things was a visor calendar that was on the driver's side sun visor... from 1968. It's still there.
My wife drove it for a daily driver and got into a little fender bender eventually so I repainted it. Once we had our first kid, she wanted something easier to drive (three on the tree) and something that didn't require locking with the key. For some reason she thought holding a baby and diaper bag and fiddling with a key to lock the door was a hassle. We bought her a more modern car and parked the wagon for a while with just under 40k miles on it...
I knew eventually I wanted to put a V8 in it and I wanted to put 5 lug wheels on it so I put a 9" Ford under it with a 3.70 gear and posi unit. We drove it once in a while but not much.
After a while I started gathering parts to build a mild street/strip SBC and T10 4 speed combo. Things kinda got out of hand a little... I ran across a killer deal on some nice aluminum heads... got a good deal on some stroker parts and next thing you know it has a roller cammed 385" SBC in it. The T10 put a up a valiant effort but after a few trips to the drag strip it went to that tranny shop the sky, LOL! Also the drive shaft u-joint and the factory 9" third member broke on the boss that holds the back of the pinion up. It was an expensive trip to the track.
I had to sell some parts off my race car to pay for the new drive train stuff. I bought a Tremec TKO600 5 speed, had a new drive shaft built, and bought a new Strange S/S case for the rear end. Since I was gonna have overdrive with the new transmission, I went with a 4.30 gear. So far this drive train has been bullet proof. It has held up well enough to go 11.77 at 117mph in the 1/4 mile. The dinky tires really hurt the ET and I have to baby it out of the gate.
Now a few pics.
Here it is after the 5 lug conversion before the V8 swap:
Here's the engine getting ready to go in:
We originally bought this in the early 90's and we were the 2nd owners. The elderly woman who had it before us passed away and we were lucky enough to get it for a bargain price. It had 16k original miles on it and still had the original paint on it when we got it, it was still shiney other than the tail gate (she didn't have a garage door). It also had several interesting items inside, like receipts from the 60s and 70s for service or tire repairs and such. One of the coolest things was a visor calendar that was on the driver's side sun visor... from 1968. It's still there.
My wife drove it for a daily driver and got into a little fender bender eventually so I repainted it. Once we had our first kid, she wanted something easier to drive (three on the tree) and something that didn't require locking with the key. For some reason she thought holding a baby and diaper bag and fiddling with a key to lock the door was a hassle. We bought her a more modern car and parked the wagon for a while with just under 40k miles on it...
I knew eventually I wanted to put a V8 in it and I wanted to put 5 lug wheels on it so I put a 9" Ford under it with a 3.70 gear and posi unit. We drove it once in a while but not much.
After a while I started gathering parts to build a mild street/strip SBC and T10 4 speed combo. Things kinda got out of hand a little... I ran across a killer deal on some nice aluminum heads... got a good deal on some stroker parts and next thing you know it has a roller cammed 385" SBC in it. The T10 put a up a valiant effort but after a few trips to the drag strip it went to that tranny shop the sky, LOL! Also the drive shaft u-joint and the factory 9" third member broke on the boss that holds the back of the pinion up. It was an expensive trip to the track.
I had to sell some parts off my race car to pay for the new drive train stuff. I bought a Tremec TKO600 5 speed, had a new drive shaft built, and bought a new Strange S/S case for the rear end. Since I was gonna have overdrive with the new transmission, I went with a 4.30 gear. So far this drive train has been bullet proof. It has held up well enough to go 11.77 at 117mph in the 1/4 mile. The dinky tires really hurt the ET and I have to baby it out of the gate.
Now a few pics.
Here it is after the 5 lug conversion before the V8 swap:
Here's the engine getting ready to go in:
