Pontiac Gurus - Nunzi and Herb
 

These (2) guy's were instrumental in Pontiac Performance. I attached a few of their Catalogue pages for reference and some nostalgia. I have had these since 1977.

You could buy from Nunzi a SD455 short block for $660, and the SD455 Heads for $270. Good luck finding any of this today.
I did buy RAIII heads from him at $100/ea, and his custom cast aluminum Oil Pan for $80. I passed on the SD Rods at $450, and found them from a local guy who parted his SD engine out, and got them for "only" $200. My machining shop wanted to buy them on the spot - I said like, no.

Next post will be some Herb's catalogue stuff

Herb Adams.
Man this guy knew his suspension stuff.

I did much of this catalogue stuff, and was astounded at how my car handled afterwards. This was back in May 1979!!!

Bought his Front & Rear Sways, Koni's, cut a coil off the front springs, control arm bushings, mod to the Rear Spring Eye Bracket, Tire Clearance mods, Brake Cooling Ducts, Front End Lowering and Structure Kit, etc.

Remember - this was before the era of Coil Over Shocks, Tubular Control Arms, etc.

Moroso sold Herb's stuff. I don't know if they still do. My brother has front and rear sway bar stuff on his 73 Camaro....

Is Nunzi still alive ?

I believe so...A couple of folks here, have interactions with him, and maybe even his son, is on here...

Yes,, Nunzi is very much alive and still very sharp. He’s still at it working on his own projects. I always joke with him saying that if he came out of retirement he could pick up where he left off.😊 As a matter of fact I just spoke with his son this morning.

Herb Adams is an awesome guy. I met him a couple of times. I still have a VSE catalog from the early 80'S. My buddy built the 454 engine for Herb's old yellow Daytona Camaro that he found a few years ago. He originally built it and raced it at the 24 hours of Daytona in the early 80's. A friend of Herb's found the old car and Herb rebuilt it to its former glory. He used to live in the Detroit Metro area before he moved several years ago, I think to Tennessee. The Countessa car he builds was in his shop. My buddy also built an LS engine for one of the Countessas. What a beautiful car. Herb autographed a couple of Fire Am posters for my son and I.

Enjoying these stories!

Yep. He retired a few years ago. Still racing a 195 inline four with an E-head on it

Thanks for posting. I really like the look of the second gen road racers. So wide and cool!

I just recently watched an episode of Dennis Collins Coffee Walk on YouTube. He was buying a 72 Trans Am from his friend Tom who you see on Gas Monkey Garage and Misfit Garage. He then bought a Nunzi 455 SD motor with no VIN number for $3,500. I guess it was filmed a couple of years ago. When I lived in Brooklyn I went by Nunzi’s place with my 70 Judge, he was a nice guy. I only lived about 15 minutes from him. The most GTO’s in his garage that I ever seen in Brooklyn.

Nunzi is doing well,talk to him about once a month.Tom

Yep. The episode where Dennis kept referring to NUNZI as NOONZI. I yelled at the screen everytime he did it!

Friends and I got to chat with Nunzi at the Car Craft Street Machine Nationals in the early 80's. Good guy that was willing to share his knowledge freely.

I followed Herb Adams and did a bunch of his VSE mods to my '77 T/A. Fortunately, I saved his VSE catalog. Now that I'm building a road race Firebird, I'm referring to his catalog again. National Parts Depot is selling his parts and his son is keeping the VSE products in production. I got to meet Herb and his son at the Trans Am Nationals this past August and had a good time discussing my new project. Nice guy with some interesting stories. Even though he was the suspension engineer, he designed the blue stripes for the '69 and '70 Trans Ams.

Eric

Please send him our best regards, Tom, from the forum folks.

Old Herb Adams article from Thunder Am Mag dated February 1982

Not meaning to take away for the tile of this thread, but maybe possibly add to it.....

There's a picture here and around, of Jim Mino and Truman Fields at some event that I'm not that familiar with PRI???
Mr. Mino passed this past year. I am fairly certain that Truman is still around, although not getting any younger. My good friend and Pontiac enthusiast that I went to Pontiac events with passed in Oct 2018. He owned Trumans 72 GTO from 1980 to 2012. It is now (thankfully) owned by a seldom posting member here.

Anybody got a line on Truman???

I was a friend of Tom Nell and his wife for all of the years he was in the Pontiac area with his Bicycle Shop (after he was let go by Pontiac management).
He later retired to the Lake Michigan side of Michigan and lived there until his passing.

Herb was one of my Heroes at Pontiac Engineering. I had hours of conversation with him at the Edsel Ford Estate car shows over the years. He always brought his Contessa custom car there for the Car Show held there each year.

After the 64 Tempest was sold to the Spoerl Family and road raced by them, they had the engine rebuilt by some Ford Guys, I consulted on the Pontiac Engine rebuild.
Not sure who owns that car today.

Nunzi and Tommy and the Romano family (when they came to Norwalk with Nunzi's
Tempest) always invited me to have dinner with them at least one night each year.
Rarely talk to Nunzi, but talk to Tommy occasionally. One year Nunzi sent me some of his homemade wine. It was excellent. I do not bother him or Tommy while they are working. Tom S has a different relationship with them.

Dudley "Skip" McCully and I had discussions about a vehicle/engine project he was doing mounting TWO Turbo systems on one of his vehicles. I still have some of those parts laying around somewhere.

I only had a conversation with Truman Fields (for any period of time) at the US-131
Drag Strip sitting on the back of my Truck Tailgate and drinking beer.

Memories. I wish I had more time with Mr McKellar at the car shows he attended in his later life. The two valve, three valve, and four valve FORD Modular Engine heads were based on Mac's 1960s Pontiac OHC work.

Tom V.

Does Nunzi still have the 62 burgundy SD Catalina? Just curious. I often wondered if it was an original 62 SD.

From Hemmings -
Sure, today you can jump into any perfectly restored, engine-blueprinted muscle car and it'll start right up and run out through the gears like it has a nitrous tank in the trunk. I can assure you, this was not the case back in the day.
From 1968-'74, bone-stock muscle cars did not run well off the showroom floor. Why?
Emission controls. Frankly, at the time, Detroit engineers had not yet gotten a handle on how to make big V-8 engines run well with emission controls tacked on.
These first-gen smoggers used retarded ignition timing, leaned-out carburetion and exhaust gas recirculation to control unburned hydrocarbons. How do you think muscle cars ran in those years, under those circumstances?
Exactly. Nail the throttle to the floor and they bogged, coughed, wheezed and maybe started to grab some revs. At 5,000 RPM, they were choked off to within an inch of their lives. In 1971, in advance of the switch to unleaded gas, an additional punch in the gut came with the lowering of compression ratios on all GM engines to about 8.5:1.So when my boss at the time, Marty Schorr, editorial director of Hi-Performance Cars, assigned me to road test and review a '72 Pontiac 455 HO Trans Am, I wasn't expecting balls-to-the-wall performance.
And I was right. Yeah, it handled great--but it ran like crap.Lucerne Blue with a white stripe and a black interior, it was sharp-looking, sitting there in the parking lot of the Big Bow Wow on Cross Bay Boulevard. The car was equipped with the heavy-duty M-22 four-speed transmission; as it turns out, it was one of only 458 four-speed Tran Ams manufactured in 1972.The LS5, standard in all Trans Am's, was a worthy successor to Pontiac engines bearing the "High Output" designation, rating 310hp at 4,800 RPM and 410-lbs.ft. of torque at 3,600. All LS5 engine components were select-fitted on the engine assembly line for better matching of tolerances. In effect, they were semi-blueprinted as they came off the line. The 288/302 degrees (intake/exhaust) duration HO cam was used, along with the Ram Air IV round exhaust-port heads. In all, a potent package--but held back by smog controls.
All the four-speed cars ran a 3.42:1 rear axle ratio with Safe-T-Track limited-slip differential. Paired with the 2.20 first gear of the close-ratio four-speed "Rock Crusher" trans, low 8.4:1 compression ratio, the retarded ignition, leaned-out Quadrajet four-barrel and EGR, there wasn't much low-end; I had to slip the clutch quite a bit to get the car going, even around town. A quick trip to Raceway Park in Englishtown, New Jersey, confirmed it: The car ran a best of 14.58 seconds at 98 MPH.
But I could feel it in my butt: There was more there. Lots more.
So I made my way to Nunzi's Automotive in Brooklyn. For more than 40 years, Annunziata Romano was the premier Pontiac racer/tuner/engine builder/restorer east of the Mississippi. Now retired, today Nunzi is content to play with his '63 Tempest four-cylinder race car (driven by son Tony to consistent 13.00-second flat ETs). Oh, and don't forget his stable of restored 421 Super Duty Catalinas, SD-455 Trans Ams and various GTOs, including what may be the world's only existing Ram Air VII--yes, seven--GTO.
Nunzi took one look at the '72 Trans Am test car and immediately diagnosed the problem. "It's not running right," he said. No kidding. Really? "Let's give it a dyno-tune." "But you don't have a dyno in your shop," I said, puzzled. "I don't need no freaking dyno in the shop," Nunzi shot back. "I got a freaking dyno in my heart. "Good enough for me--the man's record spoke for itself. He proceeded to re-curve the unitized Delco-Remy single-point distributor on a Sun machine, changing centrifugal advance weights and springs until he had a curve that dialed in the advance a lot quicker than stock. Now there was 6 degrees advance at 1,400 RPM and total advance of 19 degrees was all in at just 1,900 RPM. He installed new high-performance points and made a few other modifications, including setting initial advance at 11 degrees and dwell at 28 degrees.
Nunzi next turned his attention to the Quadrajet. After removing it from the intake manifold, he disassembled the carb and drilled out the primary jets .003-inch. He substituted secondary metering rods with tips measuring a thinner .043-inch. Back on the intake manifold, Nunzi adjusted the secondary air flaps to open at 3,300 RPM. He did more fiddling with the carb, put a bolt in the EGR line, effectively shutting it off, and installed a set of one range colder plugs. Then he buttoned it all up.
On the way home that night, I could feel the difference. The Trans Am ran fantastic. Both performance and driveability were so much better, just from a thousandth of an inch here and there. It was now smooth and powerful at low revs and throttle response was instantaneous. No more clutch slipping away from every light. Top-end runs on the New Jersey Turnpike were unreal--hard, eyelid-peeling acceleration from the moment I floored it right up to my bravery point at 115 MPH.
Back at Raceway Park a few days later, the Trans Am ran like I expected it could. It came alive with a best of 14.04 seconds at 104 MPH.
Nunzi's "dyno-tune" had knocked off more than a half-second from our ET and added 6 MPH to our trap speed. Which translates to about six or seven car lengths on a drag strip or light-to-light on the street--where I spent the next week blowing off all kinds of stock muscle.
We were convinced from then on: Nunzi did have a dyno in his heart.