huge build thread on the vette

Ok I was building and modding the PT when i sat there and thought WTF am i doing if im going to spend this kinds of money might as well build something really fast.

so i bought this







it was a family friends and sat in the guys shop for 10 years. when I bought it it had a 396 with the tri-power and a 4 speed. It took me two weeks to get it running took it out and it ran very poorly had to do some tuning got it running well and beat on it for about two weeks before I broke one of the outer axles then came the modding.

this is kind of what i had in mind when i started my build


but with the broken rearend i knew that the IRS was going to be a problem so i started looking around for other options i could keep the IRS and make it strong but that was going to be over 6K to get it the way i wanted so i found a kit to swap in a solid rear axle and that is where we started





had to do some trimming to get things to fit this was my first rough cut



for this



amd this

the old rims had to go so here is what i went with got them from a guy on a forum for cheap....



mounted up some tires







these are 325/50/15 drag radials these are BFG's the other set i have are M/T's

from the rear




while trying to get the rear end to sit how i wanted aka a little lower i had to do some more mods to the floor. I cut the hole rear floor out of the car and made an aluminum rear deck for it. I then fiber glassed it all in

This was before I cut the area out above and in front of the rear but here is what the rear looked like in the car



I had to do some modding to make the fuel system hold up to what i was going to do so i had the tank sumped





I had to do something about the shitty little 396 so we started with selling it LOL



and started with a 454 4 bolt main block threw in some ARP main studs put in a Scat 4340 forged steal crank forged eagle H beam rods with ARP 2000 bolt upgrade topped with diamond pistons that have ceramic coated tops and a 10:1 compression ratio. threw some dart pro one heads on with 310cc runners filled with roller rockers and a roller cam. the cam was specd out by a that designed all the voo doo series cams for lunati it is a small roller 229 236 @ .050 and .640 lift on a 112 LSA top that all off with the stock tri-power. throw on an msd ignition and your ready to go. Back it up with a built TH400 with PTC converter.

When you put those parts together you get a motor that makes







but when i put it in the car it didn't feel like it had the power it should..... put it on the rollers and found out i was right the first roll was 316hp 325 with out the air filter



found this was the problem shitty baffles in the side pipes





so i changed out to some STS spiral baffles


and that jumped me up to around 400



here it is with the old baffles



and open pipes

so this year I have been working on the new combo..... holley strip dominator, HP950, and Wilson fogger.

Here is the new tires



the lastest engine pic



and what is going behind the seat

damn thats hell of a build thread. that thing has came far ways.

Nice build

beautiful

Christ! Nice work.

wow that new rear end is a work of art

Wow, I had no idea....nice work big boy

thats awesome man. it'll be cool to see what it does on the bottle.

NICE

Steve

It is a very very cool car, and you have done a lot of work on it! I salute you!

Mike

thanks guys for the kind words

MUCH better without those baffles! Great work!

yeah, wow man...thats tight. nice numbers too

wow, thats a build. your torque curve looks delicious

Niceeeee.

I was waiting for that tri power setup to come off the whole time i was looking thru everything. Did you ever dyno it with the new intake and carb setup??? Nice work by the way and you are right about the IRS that stuff is expensive glad you swaped something great in there.

yeah it went to a different dyno so the numbers are not compairable but when it first went on the dyno with the HP950 it made like 350WHP and after i did some tuning it made like 370WHP the second dyno was a mustang dyno the first one was a dynojet FWIW it does run stronger with the single 4 on there.

I can't believe it only makes that much power it seems like it should make alot more with that setup... I mean in that car that thing has to go like a rocket buy still...

it is ok but the reason for low dyno numbers is the 3000 stall and the heavy ass nine inch. I know a fox body that made about 500WHP and my car and that one are side by side. along with a LSX motored f body that made 460WHP through a 3500+ stalled th400 and nine inch and i beat him too till i toped out at 150ish