EL CAMINO White lightning our 81 street/strip car

This is our 81 el Camino. Picked it up late April 2023.

This will probably be a bit slow moving but want to document it. And just kinda tell the story of the car

My son had out grown his jr dragster and we sold it. One less item in the garage and a pocket full of cash the search begins.

On Facebook marketplace looking at a number of different cars for our new jr street car as my son had been racing grandma’s 17 equinox. We needed something cooler and hopefully a little faster

Enter white lightening

Sent the add to my may as well be wife I go down stairs and she goes so are we going to look at it?

Call our son down asked him if he’d race it he says yes. Message the guy and he’s slow to respond finally after 3 hrs of slow back and forth drive the hr up there check it over and make the deal we drive it home and introduce the driver to the new car



First order of business toss a decal on it

Then I got to cleaning
Cragar baby moons were first


Spent a lot of time cleaning and buffing the old respray that was rather oxidized

Top is before bottom is after

Picked up new rears for racing can’t wait to get the front runners.

Elco and my monte cuddling up


Needs a locker in a bad way

Tossed in a small tac. Man it was not easy finding a spot I liked


Stole the door lowers from my monte project and tossed them in the elco, they where so sun faded and deteriorated.

Took her to her first show and took home some hardware! 1st in 80’s category

Bunch of shots I got at a rainy gloomy Sunday show at a cool little village that the land owners have bought building and signs and such and had them moved to their farm. My wife really wanted a picture in front of the porkeys since that was a local cruising spot before they moved it there.

Of course you have to take your best friend for a cruise once in a while

Not pictured for some reason I guess I failed to capture it

Removed computer, previous owner tossed a edelbroke on it
Replaced cc dizzy with a vac/mech one
Plug wires cuz I burnt one on the manifold
Replaced the edelbroke with a Holley


Yet another part stolen from my monte a pillar plastics to replace the nasty sun faded and deteriorated ones

mclellan83 said:

Awesome pick up for the kiddo, what else you got planned for the cars?

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White lightening is going to get a 350 swap and trans gone through this winter if all goes to plan.

Locker or possibly a different rear with a little less hwy gearing in it.

Replace suspension parts as a lot of the bushing are old and getting shoty,

When the motor comes out I’m going to clean and paint the engine bay, who knows what else

Fix the rear spring bags cuz I’d love to do a drag and drive with the kid especially since Rocky Mountain race week is now including jr street.
That way we can load it down and put our little trailer behind it without it saggin to the ground

The monte may just get turned into a full blown drag car if he wants to continue and go faster as he gets older. May not look like much but there has been a ton of time and work put into it. Floors were all done, bunch of your typical spots have been cut out and patched frame has been blasted and painted

Holley tuning to make this thing rip

Dogo ready for the track

At our home track

Got race wheels on need to get the fronts, so anyone wondering 15x8 with 4.5 in back spacing and 27.5-8r15 will work with 5/16 spacer, just barely enough clearance to not rub the frame, the problem is the sidewall buldge once I get some radials I shouldn’t have any problem



Right before first time trials

Obligatory helmate pics

Best so far is 11.48 @ 63mph in the 1/8th mile hoping jack can take home some hardware this weekend

Hit up all gm a carshow last weekend.
Afterword we took a drive up to our decal guy to pick up our new decals

Got white lightening, me n my sons first initial and last name, and his competition number made up, had them runnin down the b pillar aswell but didn’t like how I had them so pulled them off and have different ones made up.

Had to figure out how to get the golf cart to the track since my folks were coming out… not a big fan of this but hey sometimes having a cruck pays off since I can’t fit it in the trailer with the elco.


Another race weekend in the books.

Friday night when swapping over the drag wheels I crawled under it and looked at the airbags that one of the previous owners installed. Found the driver side was bad. Perfect only really wanted the passenger side anyways to help it launch level.

Saturday we did some test and tune runs

Swapped plugs and she not as rich as I though, so that’s awsome, tossed on some plug wire protectors while I was at it.

I have been fighting a self induced stumble the 750 Holley is a bit much for this lol 305… really need to get the big motor done. Determined I need to get a smaller squirted for the accelerator pump, ended up backing off the bolt that pushes the ever it to delay it a bit which worked great…might not be right but it works till I get some nozzles.

Decided that since we were testing I’ll play with the timing to see what it liked and didn’t. When I swapped in the vac/mec advance dist I set it at 9* base, adjust, run, adjust run and repeat ended up landing back at 9* ran best there for us .


God this thing is slow but it’s a blast running down the track with my son.

Car was consistently running 11.9’s my son decided to dial a 12.00 and hold that .10 spot dropping at the end of the track

We made it into the finals! He held it just a blonde one too long
We have a few weeks off so I have time to gather some parts and do it all over again then