1973 Ventura Project
 

Ended up with this 1973 Pontiac Ventura in a trade. Wasn't looking for one but it was too good of a deal to pass up on. After having it for a while it started to grow on me, so I figured I would get it going. Someone many years ago replaced the motor with a 1970 Pontiac 350 with #11 heads. It had been re gasketed and spray painted but that is as far as they got. So I started to collect all of the missing parts (distributor, radiator, etc.) that I needed to get her fired up. I felt pretty good that the motor would be good, who would take all the time to re gasket, paint and 80% install a bad motor. Well I got her to run but it has a bad rod knock from the bottom end.... dang the luck.

What a fun looking project. Interior parts are going to be hard to come by. But at least it has bucket seats already. And, Sport mirrors.

Welcome! Looks like a Custom with a floor shift as well.

My son and I picked up a '74 a few months ago. I'm getting schooled in the availability of parts for these cars. They're kind of a mish-mash between a 1st gen Firebird and a Nova with a handful of unique (and hard to find) parts.

Sorry about the rod knock. Good luck with the project!

Venturas are fun cars. Yours looks like a good one. Get you a good running 400 or 455 and you'll have a great time with the car.

Thanks for the encouragement guys. One of the reasons I pulled the trigger on getting the car was there’s not much missing in the interior. I liked that it was a bucket seat console car and that it had air-conditioning. It will definitely need new carpet, headliner and Seat Upholstery. The dash is cracked but I may have to just hide that with a dash Mat.

Got motivated so the motor had to come out. Turns out the windage tray was full of mouse nest and the mouse was in the sump. Never seen this one before. Too bad the previous owner decided to leave the valve covers off and nothing to plug the distributor hole. Bearings looked pretty bad, but the crank didn’t get messed up. Brand new head and exhaust gaskets. Brand new oil pump. And the top of each piston had blue Ford paint on it from when they rattle canned the motor. All brand new gaskets glued on with about a gallon of RTV. The cam is in really bad shape. Even if the mouse hadn’t got in the motor it was already toast anyway.

dang mice...

It’ll be a unique car w the performance of a firebird.
Great sleeper car.
Kind of like a Granada is to a mustang

Kids cleaned on the interior while I started tearing down and cleaning motor parts. Here are some before and after pictures of their handiwork. Kids are thinking we should build this car for Mom…. Now that’s an idea..

Awesome that it's a family project.

My wife hates my GTO and TransAm, but she loves the quirkiness of the Ventura so your kids may be on to something.

Well, my boys have talked my wife into letting us build the Ventura for her. They showed her pictures of what it could look like from pics on google image. I have 5 boys and 1 girl. All six of them have a 67-72 Chevy trucks they are working on, so they can be pretty passionate and persuasive when it comes to automotive projects.

She had two stipulations. The car must be a stick shift. And the hood must have the intake sticking through. So now I have to find all the bits and pieces for a manual transmission and shaker hood. I guess it’s a good problem to have. Hopefully I can use the hood I have and get a template from someone to cut the hole. I will have to search the forum and see if anyone has documented doing that..

Depending on your location, you may be able to find a '74 GTO hood. Or search for an already modified hood.

I live in southern Idaho, little farm town close to Boise. If anyone knows of anything in my area let me know for sure.

Got the number 11 heads cleaned up. Not sure why they were missing manifold bolt holes, but that was an easy fix. My friend Jon brought his set up in so that we could check what size combustion chamber we had. They measured out to 82cc. Better than I thought they would be, may need to mill them down a bit to bring up the compression. Now I need to decide what I’m going to do with this motor. May have to change out the press in rocker studs to threaded, depending on what we end up doing. I would like to do a 383 stroker but with also putting a manual transmission in cost are quickly going up for the power train.

Both the Mouse & nest in the oil pan & the #11 1970 model year heads not having the outside exhaust manifold bolt holes drilled are odd. Never seen a mouse in an Oil pan before, and I always thought that only 1972 heads could be missing those manifold bolt holes.
Great progress and great progress, I like unusual cars and builds, Thumbs up to the entire Family!

Been a Chevy guy my whole life. Mostly 67 to 72 Chevy trucks. It has been fun to learn more about Pontiacs, I didn’t realize how different they were from the GM I am used to.

If you like 67 to 72 Chevy trucks here is a link to my oldest boys build thread for his 68 C10. He is a senior in high school.

https://67-72chevytrucks.com/vboard/...d.php?t=856356

Kids have been doing a good job of cleaning the interior, it is looking better and better, here are some pics. The steering wheel was so gummy, wiped it down with lacquer thinner and now it feels and looks way better. door panels have cleaned up big time.

Car is pretty solid except for the driver side quarter panel has a lot of cancer. See attached close up pic.

While my oldest son was searching for a junkyard 12 bolt reared for converting his 1968 3/4ton to a 1/2ton he ran in to a picked clean nova hatchback carcass. It is even the right color:) It looks like I could cut out a clean patch panel to fix our rust problem. Would you guys suggest doing that or go with an after market panel like I took this screen shot of?

If it's clean, original sheetmetal is always better than reproduction sheetmetal. I'd go for the carcass.