#got that hydraulic jack in his leg for Big Ups

[dridersgeorg]

Jack In and Tune Out

Holly "Helleb0r3" Winters, Ex-Tir trash reporting for duty in Cal-Free. Stay Frosty, Winter Roses!

[deceptichubs]

Just came across your writings and they rock! I've had this idea for a while of Bulkhead indulging himself so much that he gets his fat aft stuck in a mine (Like Winnie the Pooh lol). Do you have any HCs/ideas for this?

Mineshafts are humbling, a triumph of geology over technology; even an experienced miner can be blindsided by a partial collapse. Cave-ins on Earth are eminently survivable for a big mech, more of an annoyance than a disaster. As long as a bot can dig his way out...

Con mineshafts are cavernous, intended to fuel a warship and its massive crew. A single Con shaft, cleared of its miners, can fuel the ragtag band of Bots for weeks. Months.

Bulk/head’s never been fully cognizant of how much space he takes up. He’s wide, he knows. His backside’s the butt (pun intended) of every joke, from the Wreck/ers and from Ar/cee. Beneath his armor, his aft’s plump and thickly-padded, a soft and jiggling cushion; with every thunderous step his aft fat shakes. Wheel/jack gives it the occasional smack, chuckling. Bulk/head’s a big bot.

He’s never been too aware of his body. Not even when he sits a bit higher in his seat, spilling wider on either side. Not when a freshly-formed back roll forms a crease at his waist, settling on top of his fuller aft. Not when his armor complains, squeaking and stretching around new bulges of mesh at his sides; absently he scratches fresh stress-marks, barely feeling them. His aft wobbles like an earthquake with every step. He’s big--and getting bigger...

Bulk/head keeps his wits about him in the cave-in. As the reeking dust settles and his fans sputter to life in the cramped darkness, he thinks only of his squad. His comms are dead; the surface might as well be miles overhead. But he’s survived worse.

His pistons slam home. He hurls one boulder. Two. The shaft glows with a sickly, exposed seam of Ener/gon. Far above, daylight glimmers. Bulk/head sucks in his belly. Hauls himself into the crack, one arm at a time. His hydraulics squeal; his armor spits sparks as he crawls forward.

Then his aft-armor catches on the stone with a squeak. At once, his aft-fat plugs the crack, molding softly to the rock. With a jolt of surprise he relaxes his armor. A mistake. His belly surges outward, the mesh crushed against the stone. He is well and truly stuck.

He wiggles forward; he wiggles backward, legs kicking in the air. No luck. His armor whines pathetically against the stone.

Bulk/head grunts with frustration, his voicebox buzzing against the rock. If he could just move--

He thinks of his squad, sitting cyberducks without his strength. He thinks of the Cons, who could be anywhere while he sits, soft and fat and helpless, wedged in the mineshaft.

The stone shifts. With a sickeningly familiar grunt, someone lifts away a layer of rock. Stale air rushes over his aft, carrying dry dust into his armor-seams.

“Break/down.” KO’s voice carries, brassy and bold. “Looky here. Big boy’s got a real bum deal--”

KO’s cold claws rake across Bulk/head’s aft; his knuckles rap the armor. The sound’s icy enough to drop the temperature in the shaft instantly to freezing.

BD snorts. “Looks like he ate the whole shaft.”

[chiefbeck]

Chapter 18: Harley and Me A basket case...

I was born in 1966; I know a lady never mentions her age, but I never got a rule book, and to tell the truth, I don’t follow most of those antiquated sexist rules anyway. I believe we can all do what we need and what we want across gender barriers; it just isn’t that big a deal. Most of those silly rules are there to keep women in their place anyway. Face it, most women are not Barbie, and women do get a year older every year. We just age well I guess, kind of like wine.

So on with the story, I was born in 1966 and a friend of mine builds Harley Davidson motorcycles as a hobby. He is a technical genius and retired from the Navy and is now a firefighter. God knows why he went into saving more lives after 20 years of combat in the Navy, but that is what he’s up to. He builds these awesome motorcycles for fun.

In his garage spread around in half a dozen milk crates and baskets was a 1966 Harley engine. A basket case. Now this is a special engine; it was the year of my birth, and it was also the first year Harley made a shovel head engine. I had an old 1960 Harley, which is still in the family, but a 1966 bumps me up into a more reliable engine with the newly designed head and cam design. The problem is this was a Panhead lower and shovel upper. If you don’t know what I am talking about with all this “Harley head” stuff, look up those couple of things.... it’s kind of cool.

So the problem, it was mixed up, but that was also a really cool part ‘cause this engine number’s in the few thousands and is kind of rare. Other problem was it was all torn apart and all over his garage. There were broken and worn out parts mixed with a few Honda parts, dang. Oh yeah, a mouse was living in one of the jugs. Oh, yeah, the jug is a cylinder; that’s the part that holds the piston and the pressure from the explosions.

I begged him for the engine. He said no, he had an idea for a bike.

I deployed to Afghanistan and got back a half a year later.

I begged him for the engine, even pointing out that the mouse had kids, and I needed that engine for my project bike. It was my dream bike; one that was born the same year as me. It needed a bunch of work; it was a torn up and old broken barely anything left...kind of like me.

He said no.

Months go by and I see him at work down there in Dam Neck Navy base, and we go to some bars, and the engine is never brought up. A few months go by, and I am getting ready to go back to Afghanistan, and he sees me at the bar. “Hey Chris, you want that engine?” “Hell Yeah!” “Two Thousand and it’s yours.”

I am the proud new owner of 7 baskets of parts. I haul them to my garage in Virginia Beach. He gets to keep the mouse.

I deploy to Afghanistan. In my will that we all write up before we deploy, I leave this pile of parts and my 1960 Harley to him. He is one of my best friends and still is by the way.

When I get back from the war, I take 4 weeks off. I am going to build me a motor-sickle. I spread all the parts out on my work bench and start cleaning stuff up and measuring them out to see if they are in specifications to re-use. Three days later I have a list of parts that I need to buy to complete the engine. I start making up another list of parts to actually build the bike.

My favorite builders are “Zero Choppers.” So I build a combat style zero chopper. I get a sweet rigid gooseneck frame and some pretty big rims and tires. This is going to look a little like a Mad Max meets WWII combat motorcycle with barely any chrome or flashy junk. “Chrome don’t get you home; flash is trash.”

I start building the engine, and in a few weeks, I have a complete engine. Ported and polished out the intake and exhaust and cut some of the engine off to “customize” it. I used tractor hydraulic hoses for all the oil lines. The engine looked real cool. Hope it runs.

I get the frame, fenders and bars and all kinds of stuff sent in the mail. Luckily I have my own MIG welder at the house like any girl would, duh. And I am a welding, cutting and chopping. I am in heaven.

I go out on some more work out of the country and am gone a lot during these years. So I work like a madwoman on the motorcycle, then I am gone for a while. The project is going on near two years, dang war.

I have a buddy that owns a shop a few miles from my house, so I get back from one of my trips and ask him if I could bring the bike over to finish it out. He says yes, just keep the beer fridge full. Cool.

I load the bike up; its three quarters done. Fine tuning and then a once over to make sure I didn’t jack anything up. The shop is a story to itself. We work hard, but then start drinking beer and moonshine every afternoon, and then, the chainsaw comes out or we start welding some crazy shit. Once in a while we pull the guns out and start doing real stupid stuff. You got to love Virginia; there is no other place like it.

I get parts from all over the place. I use an old thrown away oxygen tank that was used for thermo baric cutting torches as an oil tank and old surplus weapons parts all over the bike. NO parts were added to the bike that didn’t need to be there to make it run. This is not a bozo bike like Orange County with stuff just pasted on to make it look good.

I minimized Chrome and for some things that only come in chrome I sand blasted the parts to dull them out. For paint, I used rattle can olive drab for the tanks and fenders. Frame was black. A lot of black parts, like the foot pegs and controls, needed to be powder coated to make them last. I couldn’t afford the powdered coating at the time, so I did it myself. Sprayed the powder on and used the kitchen oven to bake them at 250 degrees for half an hour. It worked great, but made the kitchen smell real bad. The oven won’t be baking any cookies ever again unless they use some of that easy off or some engine cleaner or something. Oh well.

A few weeks into our drunken monkey wrenching, the bike is rolling, and we got the engine and all the pertinence hooked up. Time to kick it. YES, kick it.

You see there are t-shirts that say “ole skool biker,” but that type of person is rare now-a-days. A Harley of this era didn’t have no electric start. As a matter of fact, the bike I built didn’t even have a battery. This was truly an ole skool bike.

We added about a gallon of gas to the tank, let the carburetor fill up and then I started giving it some prime kicks to get the gas in the cylinders and move some oil a bit.

Then, I retarded the magneto, so the spark would be late. Yes, you want it retarded a bit, which is a late spark, so when it fires off, the engine it doesn’t catch the kick peddle and break your leg. It does happen.

Ignition on, primed, spark late.... I kick with all my might. Nothing. I kick again. Nothing. Ok to keep this from going on tooooooo long. I am kicking for ten minutes, one of the guys says let me try. No way. I kick another five minutes and fall off the bike onto the ground, freaking beat me. Dang it. We go over the whole bike and find a short, dang. Well off to the races.

I start kicking and five minutes later it coughs. I am jumping up and down like crazy. It coughed. We are drinking beers and toasting.

My legs are spaghetti so I am was surprised that it even did that. I look over my beer and ask if anyone else wanted to try a kick. Bear, yes his nickname is Bear and he is a big dude. One of his legs is the weight of my whole body. He can bench press five hundred and still runs like a gazelle, SEAL Team shit....don’t ask where these dudes come from.

He steps over the bike and cranks the throttle a couple times to prime it. Gives it a kick and ...rumble, rumble. It was like ten seconds of coughing. That was awesome. It looked like he was only half kicking it. Then he gives it anther kick and bam, it roars to life.

We are all cheering. Toasting and hooting and hollering.

It is the loudest bike ever made. The rear pipe is a cut up Russian Rocket Propelled Grenade Launcher (RPG-7), and it is tuned to the loudest most obnoxious Harley ever built.

It was so cool and the coolest bike to ride. I rode it from Tampa to Daytona for bike week. Rigid frame wasn’t so nice, but I did it. I entered it into the “Willie’s Old School Chopper Show.” It came in first place for shovel heads. It was awesome. They took a photo of me with the trophy and a couple of girls who were models in the magazines.

I ended up in Easy Rider Magazine for that bike.

It was a cool bike; it started out as a broken up pile of junk with a mouse living in it. Really messed up. It reminds me of me. i was messed up and broken from the many injuries that I have survived. I am barely

holding it together in my mental and physical sense. How am I even still here? I am in the basket under a work bench in a dusty garage. I had a boost when I came out to live a new life. That boost started me working on myself. Dang in the old days I took a shower when I really needed it. Didn’t shave and barely brushed my teeth. I didn’t care; I was almost dead and didn’t need this body much longer. I didn’t care what anyone thought, pain didn’t care.

Living a new life, turning a new leaf. I use products in my hair now. I brush my teeth in the morning and at night before bed; even use some whitener. I use moisturizers now and take care of myself; kind of like re-welding the parts back in place and shining up the rough spots.

I think everyone needs this once in a while. We all need someone even if it’s ourselves to clean up and rebuild. Stop waiting and do it; color your hair or get your teeth whitened; every bit counts, and sometimes that little start will lead you to bigger and better experiences and challenges. With these great challenges comes great reward; trust me.

I am glad that I was able to do this with an old 1966 Harley and this old 1966 chick.

[itsworn]

Amazing Custom-Built Pro Touring 1967 Camaro Like No Other

Maybe you remember like it was yesterday: lighting the fuse on your first cherry bomb but fumbling it before you could launch it toward the enemy, the first time you dropped the hammer at the dragstrip, maybe your first kiss. Or your first cap gun or your first pair of blue suede Thom McAn Snap-Jacks. Or maybe you were 16, the day you finally got your ticket to the kingdom and couldn’t go back home until you’d driven the wheels off your first damn car.

Certainly, Gary Popolizio has his own take on this. “My first car was a 1967 Camaro that I purchased from the original owner. I reworked the body, engine, and finished it with a new coat of paint. The car actually looked good … so good that someone else apparently liked it, too, and it ended up disappearing. It broke my heart and I always said if I could get another one I would.”

Real life became his life and it steamrolled right on down the line without regard for Gary or anyone else. His children grew up, got married, and set off on their own. He cracked the empty-nest syndrome. He took a chance. He wanted to revisit a first-gen. He found someone else’s pile on the Internet. It was in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Soon, he and a buddy drove the 24 hours up and back from Pennsylvania. He had the crate shipped to Pennsy where the transition, or evolution, as Gary calls it, began. So then, Evolution the car would grow the guise of Pro Touring and was slated for completion in 2017 to correspond with the anniversary of the Camaro’s 50-year run.

The F-body in Grand Rapids had a 427 backed by a Muncie. “It was being converted to a Yenko clone,” said Gary. “It had the power but all its bones were six-cylinder stuff.” Gary drove it diligently; he learned how the car felt beneath him and then used that interpretation as a guide for the car’s next chapters.

“That big-block just didn’t work as well as I would have liked with suspension intended for a lighter engine. This started me on the path that led to a frame-off restoration,” he opined. He surveyed the custom-car crews in proximity and then “partnered” with Justin Brunner and Bent Metal Customs in nearby Lansdale, Pennsylvania. Bent Metal handled all the mechanicals as well as the paintwork, but the magic bullet and the upholstery were farmed out.

When it came to the big picture, Gary’s background and training as a forensic engineer undoubtedly gave him a leg up. His working life is rife with details as it is his responsibility to investigate materials, products, structures, or components that fail or do not operate or function as intended, often causing personal injury or property damage. In other words, eyes are on him. If anyone would have a bulletproof floor plan, it would be Popolizio.

For this big adventure, he was of a mind to incorporate some of the best systems in the world. Bent Metal supported both ends of the car with Detroit Speed (DSE) suspension and cinched the structures with subframe connectors. Damping comes from adjustable coilover assemblies, directional duties from the rack steering, and positive traction from a DSE 9-inch axle prepped with a Truetrac differential and Moser 35-spline axles.

The poets at Mast Motorsports supplied the latent power with a 427 that nets more than 600 horsepower at the tires. Its cross-ram induction is an exciter. To highlight the red horns, Bent Metal did an exemplary job on finishing off the engine compartment. The hand-hewn panels they made are coolly distinctive and don’t diminish the glory of the engine one bit.

There were the usual trials and tribulations to assume but what sticks out in Gary’s mind like flashing neon is this: “The day we realized that the intake manifold wouldn’t fit under a standard hood or cowl.” They had crafted mounts that would position the engine lower and a tad farther back in the chassis but that didn’t solve the issue so they did some hot rodding and built a bonnet from scratch. “In hindsight, I think [the hood] ultimately proved to be an asset providing one of the best features on the car, setting it apart in looks and style without going too overboard.” As mandated by the PPG Black, Bent Metal crafted the bodywork absolutely straight and highlighted the whole, tucking the front bumper, adding Dapper Lighting headlamps and Digi-Tails LED rear lights, and Speed Source door mirrors.

For the inside job, the Camaro went up to Gillin Custom Design in Middletown, New York, that brought all its expertise to bear with Mercedes carpet and Mercedes leather for the Procar seats and in all that black, the red of the Cipher Auto five-point harnesses. The safety umbrella is a four-point 1026 DOM rollbar. Since this is a true Pro Touring build that demands creature comforts known to reduce stress and fatigue over the long haul, it maintains a potent collection of audio equipment as well as a modern HVAC system.

“I think the evolution from the initial design and concept to the final product provided just what we were looking for,” Gary signs off with. “And best of all, I now gain the benefit of driving a one-of-a-kind custom-built car. Life doesn’t get much better!” CHP

Tech Check

Owner: Gary Popolizio, Birdsboro, Pennsylvania

Vehicle: 1967 Camaro

Engine

Type: LS7

Displacement: 427 ci

Compression Ratio: 11.4:1

Bore: 4.125 inches

Stroke: 4.000 inches

Cylinder Heads: Mast Motorsports Black Label 285cc

Rotating Assembly: Callies crankshaft and H-beam rods, Mahle pistons

Valvetrain: Mast premium valvesprings, pushrods, LS7 lifters

Camshaft: Mast hydraulic (specs proprietary)

Induction: Performance Design cross-ram manifold, billet 6061-T6 aluminum base/carbon-fiber plenum chambers and isolated runners, dual 90mm throttle bodies, Rick’s Stainless fuel tank

Ignition: Holley

Exhaust: DSE headers, 1 7/8-inch primaries, Borla XR-1 mufflers, 3-inch stainless steel system

Ancillaries: Billet Specialties Tru Trac accessory drive, Ron Davis Racing aluminum radiator, SPAL fan

Output (at the wheels): 633 hp, 689 lb-ft

Machine Work: Mast Motorsports

Built By: Mast Motorsports

Drivetrain

Transmission: TREMEC T-56; McLeod flywheel, pressure plate, and dual discs

Rear Axle: DSE 9-inch housing, 3.73:1 gears, Truetrac differential, Moser 35-spline axles, custom driveshaft

Chassis

Front Suspension: DSE hydroformed subframe and antisway bar; C6 spindles; JRi adjustable coilovers

Rear Suspension: DSE QUADRALink, subframe connectors, and antisway bar; JRi coilovers

Brakes: Baer 14-inch rotors, six-piston calipers front and rear, Baer master cylinder

Wheels & Tires

Wheels: Forgeline VR3P 18×8 front, 19×12 rear

Tires: Michelin Pilot Sport 245/35 front, 325/30 rear

Interior

Upholstery: Gillin Custom Design (Middletown, NY)

Material: Mercedes-Benz leather

Seats: Procar, Cipher Auto safety harnesses

Steering: Rack-and-pinion, ididit column, Momo wheel

Shifter: TREMEC

Dash: Factory with custom insert

Instrumentation: AutoMeter Spek-Pro

Audio: Kenwood DNX773S head unit, Rockford Fosgate 4×6 speakers, front; Rockford Fosgate 6×9 speakers, rear; Rockford Fosgate 10-inch subwoofer

HVAC: Restomod Air

Exterior

Bodywork: Bent Metal Customs (Lansdale, PA), custom metalwork by Justin Miller and Karolyn Callahan (door locks and window trim removed, seams deleted)

Paint By: Bent Metal

Paint: PPG Black

Hood: Custom built by Bent Metal

Grille: Stock

Bumpers: Stock front, tucked; stock, rear

The post Amazing Custom-Built Pro Touring 1967 Camaro Like No Other appeared first on Hot Rod Network.

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[itsworn]

The Car Craft Project Car Update What’s happened so far, and what’s next for our fleet?

What do you get when you combine a late ‘60s pickup, an early ‘70s personal luxury car, a mid-‘60s full-sized wagon, a Pro-Touring Chevelle, a couple G-bodies, a late-model F-car, a Fox-body Thunderbird, and an EcoBoost Mustang- a schizophrenic car collection? No, you have a nearly perfect blend of project cars for Car Craft. In this installment, we check in on our regular and no-so regular projects, as well as introducing a couple new cars to the fleet. We hope you like what you see.

Truck Norris

Our project 1967 C10 is keeping us entertained with some clutch hydraulic issues and a nagging oil leak. Otherwise, the BluePrint Engines 540 big block is running great with AEM’s Infinity EFI, so much so that it is your author’s current daily driver as the CC/Malibu is out of town for another project and my long-suffering Subaru wagon recently experienced a catastrophic engine failure. Let us know if you want to see a Coyote engine swap into a 1999 Legacy, by the way!

In about four months worth of driving, we’ve worn through two clutch master cylinders. These pictures show the damage. The piston should be uniformly gray from the anodizing it received prior to assembly, but notice how it’s worn through on the rear portion of the piston. The fluid is thick and contaminated with aluminum essentially machined away where the piston and bore made contact.

We suspect the culprit is a misalignment between the clutch linkage and the master cylinder. Our sources at Wilwood Engineering explained that the linkage must be concentric with the master cylinder bore. In other words, it must be centered on the piston and travel straight into the master. We suspect that because we altered the master cylinder’s location, this accounts for the misalignment. American Powertrain’s hydraulic clutch conversion was designed for a small block. With our big block, the master cylinder location would have been touching the exhaust, so we moved it up and outboard from where it should have been.

After the second master cylinder failure, we decided to try a different setup. This came via a member of the 67-72chevytrucks.com message board. His design uses a linkage that comes straight off the clutch pedal, and stepped down via a rocker arm to reduce the travel to about 1.4-inches.

We combined it with Wilwood’s high-volume master cylinder, which has a ¾-inch bore to match our hydraulic throwout bearing. The guys at Wilwood were even kind enough to bench-bleed it for us.

Sometime in this engine’s travels to and from three shops, three different engine dyno sessions, and two mockups in the truck before final assembly, the oil pan developed a stress crack on the left side near the drain plug.

The leak grew worse as the crack slowly spread. This shows the size of the puddle after sitting for 24 hours. For reference, that’s a gallon jug of motor oil next to it.

We know the best fix is to remove the pan, clean it, and weld the crack closed, or simply replace the pan outright. However, as mentioned in the intro, Truck Norris is our only means of transportation right now. We were reluctant to weld it with the pan on the engine, so we tried a series of temporary fixes in the interim: black RTV silicone, JB Weld, Permatex fuel tank repair, but they only slowed the leak. This product has fared the best of all: JB Weld’s Water Weld. It’s resistant to most automotive fluids, and it will set under water. It’s managed to stop the leak for a week already, and will serve as a stopgap until we have backup transportation and attempt to weld the pan.

The CC/Malibu

Our cream-puff 1978 Malibu has been a great runner, now that the cooling system is sorted out. On the rollers at Westech, it cranked out 320 hp and 386 lb-ft of torque, which was more than we had expected. That means the 350 built with Trick Flow’s 400 hp top end kit makes every bit of power it’s advertised to, and maybe a bit more. Either way it’s been a rock-solid reliable road-tripper, and we’ve already taken it to Tucson for the ZipTie Drags, to Las Vegas for Holley’s LS Fest West, and to Northern California for Anti Tour. Still, it wouldn’t be much of a project car without some things breaking…

One annoying problem with the Malibu was an erratic idle, dieseling, and oil-fouled plugs, which caused a few perplexing looks to be directed at the engine.

Some sleuthing revealed leaky intake manifold gaskets that were sucking air and oil into the engine from the lifter valley. Replacing them solved all the aforementioned problems.

If you remember, we’re using a Vortec engine block with no provision for a mechanical fuel pump, so there’s a low-pressure electric pump mounted in the back next to the gas tank, and it would occasionally stop running. We tracked that problem down to this circuit breaker in the fuel pump wiring. It was installed near the hood panel gap and would get doused with water each time it rained or when we washed the car. Obviously, it’s not designed to get wet, so we replaced it with a waterproof inline fuse. The fuel pump has been happily humming along since then.

Most recently, we ditched the stock 14-inch steel wheels for these 15-inch wheels from Rock Auto. They were an optional for 3rd Gen Firebirds for a few years, and we especially like them because they look similar to the hubcaps that came with the car. Rock Auto sells them for a great price, too.

Lucky Costa’s Chevelle and Fury

You all know Lucky as the enigmatic co-host of Hot Rod Garage, which you can watch at MotorTrendOnDemand.com We recently featured Lucky’s 1966 Chevelle on our July 2017 cover, and his 1966 Plymouth Fury wagon can be seen getting an Vintage Air system installed in this issue. We will continue to work with Lucky on these two cars, and anything else he happens to be working on that we find interesting.

With a used 6.0L and T56, line lock, and a heavy right foot, Lucky’s 1966 Chevelle is a ready-made burnout machine. Holley EFI and overdrive makes it a capable daily driver. We will soon be adding a Glasstek fiberglass hood, new Hooker exhaust, and freshening up the drivetrain, which will likely involve a cam change, and new cylinder heads.

A stroked big block under the hood means Lucky’s other car is also a legit burnout machine, and he’s easily coaxed into demonstrating that fact. Read how we chilled out with a new air conditioning system elsewhere in this issue, and stay tuned for some other upgrades. We’ve got sound deadening and heat shield from DEI to install soon, fuel system upgrades, possibly an EFI conversion, and definately more burnouts.

Mike Musto’s 1972 Monte Carlo

You know him as the host of House of Muscle on the MotorTrend channel. This is Mike’s daily driver: a 1972 Monte Carlo he found buried in the back of a radiator and A/C repair shop in San Raphael, California. It’s in great shape except for the fact that it burns oil like a diesel locomotive. We will be fixing that problem then addressing a few other items to make this a modern-running daily driver. Watch for a video series accompanying this build on House of Muscle’s YouTube channel.

To establish a baseline, Mike ran the car down the dragstrip at Sonoma Raceway, where it rocketed to a breathtaking 17.896 at 74.85 mph. On the chassis dyno the next day, it churned out 162 hp and 228 lb-ft of torque at the wheels. It’s all uphill from here, folks!

Chevrolet Performance answered the call for help with this SP383 crate engine. We ran the engine at Westech a recently, and it impressed us with a stout 446 hp and 448 lb-ft of torque, more than double what Mike’s tired 350 is making right now. We will back the small block with a Gear Star TH200 4R transmission, and outfit it with Holley’s Sniper EFI and Patriot headers. Between the overdrive transmission and fuel injection, Mike will have a modern-running drivetrain that lives for road trips and return gas mileage substantially better than the 10 mpg he’s currently averaging.

Mike will do the drivetrain swap with some friends at the home of the flying terriers, Jack Dick Customs in Martinez, California. That’s owner / car builder Ben McCoy and his two mutts.

The CC/Underbird

Who actually likes the Fox-body-era Thunderbirds, anyway? Well, regular contributor John Gatliff does, and so do we, or else we wouldn’t have given him the go-ahead. John’s been plugging away at the Underbird, most recently sussing out a cobbled-together big-brake kit, and ultimately lamenting the fact that it may have been easier and more cost-effective to just have bought one in the first place. Like tech editor Steve Magnante likes to say, “We live this way so you don’t have to.”

Not something you see everyday- these are C5 Corvette brakes on a Fox-body Thunderbird. We show you how to do that and why it’s sometimes better to buy a kit.

The EcoBoost Mustang

Contributor Jason Sands bought a new Mustang and actually skipped past the V8 models for the turbocharged four-cylinder model. We took that as an opportunity to dive into some late model tuning experiments with different octane gasoline, from 87 all the way up to116 octane race gas, backing it up with plenty of time at the dragstrip. We’re testing the limits of the stock turbocharger, before upgrading it and really turning up the boost.

There’s a turbocharger somewhere in there. We’ll probably replace it with a bigger one soon.

CC/Olds

This is one project that’s been languishing while we’ve been focusing on the C10 and Malibu. We discovered our time-capsule drag racing Cutlass has a bent pushrod and a bent valve. We will be freeing ourselves up to fix this soon and get the Cutlass back on track.

Project ZedSled

We’re nearing the completion of this build, contributor Kevin Tetz’s 1978 Camaro Z28. Over the last two years it’s undergone a complete transformation from rust bucket to road-tripping show car. It was on display at the SEMA show last year and Kevin just took it on the last leg of the Hot Rod Power Tour. We’ll finish out the series with articles on some interior upgrades, installing a new fiberglass front end, and a custom-built twin turbo set-up to send the project off with a bang!

Get online Catch up with all our projects online at CarCraft.com, and follow us on Facebook for behind-the-scenes looks at the builds. Truck Norris and the Malibu even have their own Facebook pages: search CarCraftTruckNorris and CarCraftMalibu, respectively.

The post The Car Craft Project Car Update What’s happened so far, and what’s next for our fleet? appeared first on Hot Rod Network.

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