While in its stock form the car was fun, it wasn't my dads dream car. The bushings in nearly everything were shot, the manual steering with the sticky 275 front tires got old real quick and the 327 SBC in the car was lackluster at best. The factory 4 speed was also an annoyance for me, having grown up spoiled by modern tremecs.
So one weekend afternoon when we weren't racing, my dad and I teamed up and out came the motor and trans.
In its place we dropped back in the 400 ci GM small block Bow Tie race block that had come out of the Camaro earlier in the year. We had to reseal the motor and put on a new intake as the old one would not fit under the hood of the vette, even though the '67 big block hood allowed a little more clearance than what would have come on our car. With a full forged rotating assembly and 540hp,505lbf tq at the crank this motor will be more than enough for this autocross car.
Behind it we put in a Tremec TKO 600 which was an incredibly tight fit, but did squeeze in without any modifications to the car. It came from Hurst who makes this trans with a special side shifter to fit in old corvettes. Before putting the motor back in I also took the time to sand down the engine bay and front section of the frame and coat it all in POR15 gloss black.
A dual electric fan radiator was also added as past experience has taught us this big displacement small block needs a lot of cooling:
The stock exhaust was chucked at this time and the car now has a cheap and quick 2 1/2" system in place until we have time to do it proper. We are using Black Widow mufflers that we run on all our performance cars for their wicked sound.
A Borgeson Power steering box was also added with its quick 12:1 ratio. This allowed us to get rid of the massive steering wheel that had come on the car for the leverage needed to turn the wheels and replace it with something a little more autocross worthy.
Not really a performance mod but for his birthday my sister and I got my dad a new radio that fits in the stock location that you can see in the bottom right of that last pic. It is iPod compatible which I installed along with a much better speaker in place of the blown out stock unit. My dad is always more on the 'street' car side of things like radios and sound deading while I am definitely more speed oriented so working together usually ends in a nice middle ground.
One more update until we are current, suspension!
Brian Hobaugh SCCA National Tour June 2014
First Hemi 'Cuda Convertible Ever Built
Short clips: Goodguys Pleasanton autocross and pit videos
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