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Originally Posted by Skippy597
Such a cool thread! Love all the history
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A lot of the information on this car evolves as I learn it. Sometimes you get a story and it’s got to be checked between the two drivers of the car. They haven’t talked to eachother since 1971 so usually I can cross check w them and if the story is the same then I know for sure it’s legit
Of course it’s also been almost 60 years and sometimes they can’t remember things right away. Like Tom remembers the car only ever having one paint scheme and bill only remembers it having the other . Why? Idk ��
They both say they tested the RAV in the car and tuned it but they don’t know if it ever raced w that engine or not they had a 1/2 mile area behind the dealership long and straight so they could test the cars there.
They also did some TV commercials with the cars back there ripping the cars down the back of the dealership, but I don’t know how to find copies of them.
I have alot of info on these cars but I don’t want to post it all until (someday) I restore the car I can debut it all with it . Many of my pictures given to me by the original drivers , I posted on a website I had done years ago about the cars. Those pictures got taken and posted elsewhere with other people putting their names on them.
That kind of turned me off on posting my original pictures. And I also took the website down because of that.
Never minded people reposting them
But adding your name like you owned them is annoying
Some things like , when the car was delivered to Stephens (69 car) it was unloaded and “driven” straight to Lebanon valley dragway (2.5 hr ride ) it was run for baseline numbers. Then the car was brought back. Engine pulled and the 68 GTO engine RAII from the season before was put into my car complete and “driven “ back up to Lebanon and raced. Now idk if that means it was trailered or actually driven. Bills hard to get info out of he doesn’t elaborate very well. Some pictures I see of the car it was on the trailer. But it was all back roads back then and they could have driven it. ( today you’d take the highway
At least part of the way but the highway didn’t wxsist there at that time.
The RAII engine had been balanced and blueprinted by Jack Merkel in Long Island . Because they needed it fast they paid a fortune for this engine. So Stephen SR said no way am I paying that again. Take it out of the 68 car ! .so the 2506 RAII short block stayed in my car. How long IDK if it was sold to the public that way ? Idk I do know they had the IV motor and a SR IV motor as backups for the car .
I own the IV SR motor now. I had to buy the car it was in to get it. But I got it.
I also have the RAII block.
What I unfortunately don’t have is the WH that came out of it no idea where it ever went.
There’s variations on whether the Iv top end was swapped onto the RAII block - when I got it the RA early heads were with it. Just gad RA on the heads and tgats what bill says they had.
But that doesn’t make sense to me because the RAIV intake wouldn’t have worked on the II heads unless they had the intakes opened up ( which is possible ) the heads went to BOSS on here and he resold them so I couldn’t check the heads to know.
I just know everything about this car evolves as I get little bits of info in. I’ll see someone at a car show and they will remember the car and give me a tid bit. And then I’ll ask bill Eckstrom about it .
In a couple weeks I’ll give a good story about the car. Need to figure something out first but there’s a good one coming. Maybe I’ll start a Stephen Pontiac thread at some point and post a bunch of info about the cars. Idk