Grandpa, The More Door Driver & Auto Crosser
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Your project as well!
My first real build back in '92, was a beater sleeper 73 Nova 4 door. It ran an 11:1 n/a 406 small block Chevy, lots of fiberglass, drag shocks and springs, high stall and steep gears. As my daily driver it ran mid 11s in daily street trim with slicks. Lots of folks thought it was ugly, dumb to build a 4 door, a waste of time and money ... until I spanked them on a back road after cruise night. From that experience I now could care less what it looks like if it performs well, and will argue that a 4 door is just as good as any 2 door, better perhaps, because it's easier for the kids to get into. 😉 That engine now has 12.5:1 compression and is in Pumkinator. 😎
Lol, The "Olds is better than a SBC" crew is doing this right now.Drag racing initial test flight!
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Last evening my son Roman and I took out Bruiser and Grandpa to the old abandoned small airport in our town for some drag race action. Despite being an oil burning factory Bruiserville has some decent torque and can do mean burnouts or donuts with ease. Grandpa can't break the tire loose in a standing burnout and can barely spin the tire in a donut situation. I was piloting Grandpa but my money was on Bruiser laying it down. We ran two runs. I let Roman do the countdown so he had the jump advantage. First run Grandpa caught and passed Bruiser in 1st gear. I had between 2-3 car lengths by the end of the 1/4. 2nd run Bruiser was smoking worse than it has ever before and choked off the line, (I think the timing chain has some gnarly wear, timing is all over the place) so I stopped to let him get it going again. He nailed the throttle and got by me a car length but by the top of 1st gear I was out front and pulling away. In the end the low mileage 307 backed by 2.14 gears is faster than the worn out 305 with 2.41 gears. Needless to say we both had a blast racing each other,
The sad news? Sea Level Altitude corrected G-tech time for Grandpa was 19.47 @ 69.5 mph (20.02 actual). That's like almost blisteringly fast. Pumkinator's original 305 in stock form ran actual 18.70s at RMR raceway in Salt Lake City at 4500 ft latitude, near 1.5 full seconds faster. Point is this 307 is SLOW! ... like a grandpa with a walker slow, lol. I plan to do a tune up, advance the timing, K&N filter and open up exhaust flow a bit. Either way for now it's not going to win any drag races, unless it's against another worn out G-body or maybe someone on a bicycle.
For more This Vs. That shenanigans check out Hoonigan's Youtube channel "This Vs, That" series.
hahahahahahahahaha 🤣Lol, The "Olds is better than a SBC" crew is doing this right now.
Anyway. I am a big fan of sleepers and this sort of foolishness. Can't wait to see this progress!
Save the 2.14s for me. The sheer novelty of owning a set of Bonneville (Salt Flats) gears...
Lol. At a future date I'm swapping in a 350/700R4 and 3.42s so give me a shout when we get there. 👍
The left front of the car looks like it may have hit a curb or something, the wheel was bent pretty bad and the lower arm is clearly bent upwards near the ball joint, giving the car some pretty hardcore positive camber. Since I don't know all the details of the crash I'm going to replace the entire front suspension, everything but the pitman arm anyway. I have an '88 S10 Blazer in line for a future build, so I borrowed the upper and lower control arms from that. The better route to go would be quality geometry correcting tubular arms from one of the major Pro Touring suspension manufacturers, but that's not the intention of this build.
I plan to use Por-15 base paint for a hard protective finish, and having done this multiple times I've found POR sticks the best to sand blasted parts. For my first POR venture I used a wire wheel on an angle grinder to clean/ prep the parts and the base coat just didn't dig in and stick real well. Sandblasting gives it plenty to bite into, and typically the paint is thick enough to fill the blasting texture and give a nice smooth finish. More on that when I paint them. I have a friend that runs a local sand blast company so he hooked me up for no charge. Normal price is $100 per hour, so my guess is normal cost would be in the neighborhood of $25 or so. Note before dropping them off I used a wire wheel on my angle grinder and a scraper to remove all the hardened grease and dirt and then pressure washed them, sand blasters aren't fond of greasy contaminants in their abrasives and may turn you away if they're all greasy. I also double wrapped the threads on the cross shafts with electrical tape to protect them from the blasting.
Next post will cover the quick and simple method I've developed to remove the factory bushings and ball joints. 👍
Retail cost to this point- The car itself, $400; gas in the 'Burby to go pick it up, ~ $50, Title transfer and registration, $112.75; SRD Project Rendering (free to me/) $399; Ebay Funko Pop Grandpa Carl $11.69, Sand Blasting (free to me/) $25. If you're duplicating this type of build let's assume you have good control arms so no cost listed for those. Total full retail to this point $998.44.
I plan to use Por-15 base paint for a hard protective finish, and having done this multiple times I've found POR sticks the best to sand blasted parts. For my first POR venture I used a wire wheel on an angle grinder to clean/ prep the parts and the base coat just didn't dig in and stick real well. Sandblasting gives it plenty to bite into, and typically the paint is thick enough to fill the blasting texture and give a nice smooth finish. More on that when I paint them. I have a friend that runs a local sand blast company so he hooked me up for no charge. Normal price is $100 per hour, so my guess is normal cost would be in the neighborhood of $25 or so. Note before dropping them off I used a wire wheel on my angle grinder and a scraper to remove all the hardened grease and dirt and then pressure washed them, sand blasters aren't fond of greasy contaminants in their abrasives and may turn you away if they're all greasy. I also double wrapped the threads on the cross shafts with electrical tape to protect them from the blasting.
Next post will cover the quick and simple method I've developed to remove the factory bushings and ball joints. 👍
Retail cost to this point- The car itself, $400; gas in the 'Burby to go pick it up, ~ $50, Title transfer and registration, $112.75; SRD Project Rendering (free to me/) $399; Ebay Funko Pop Grandpa Carl $11.69, Sand Blasting (free to me/) $25. If you're duplicating this type of build let's assume you have good control arms so no cost listed for those. Total full retail to this point $998.44.
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Thanks. The 2.14 mountain gears are the goal. I have a good set of 3.08s in the stash for later whims.
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