[s2k1]

The following is an explanation of my journey into Pontiacs and 64 GTOs, and the car i'm working on now.......

My dad is a car guy, so I grew up around cars and parts. In about 1985, my dad bought his dream car, a 69 Camaro RS Convertible. This was a project car. Shortly after the Camaro purchase, he picked up a 69 Firebird carcass. This was to be a parts car for the Camaro. He paid a whopping $20 for the Firebird! The Bird was a manual trans Sprint car, with no engine and trans. As I grew up, I decided I liked the Firebird and wanted to put it together. We built a 400 with #16 heads, Ram Air IV cam, 3 tube headers, Flowmaster 2.5" exhaust with cross flow muffler, and put a Muncie M-20 behind it with a Hurst Competition Plus shifter. It had an open carrier 3.55 rear gear. I drove this car to high school in the early 90s. I was fortunate to be able to drag race it at Carlsbad Raceway and also street raced it. My best at Carlsbad was a 13.75 @ 106 mph. It always worked better on the street than the drags and I had some fun with it! Unfortunately the car was hit hard in the driver door and quarter panel in 92 and it was totalled.With the insurance money, I bought a 64 GTO project car. I've had the 64 for 20 years this year and have never driven it. Time to do something about it!!! More about that in a minute.

I ended up replacing the 69 with a 68 Firebird and swapped the drivetrain over since I bought the wrecked 69 back from insurance. It was through street racing the 68 that I met Jim Wangers. Jim's Pontee Carlo was a 12 second car off the bottle then and 11 seconds on the juice. Pretty sure Pontee had a 440 Pontiac at that time. Jim and his crew were also running an 86 IROC Camaro on juice at the time. When I graduated HS, I went off to MMI and then on to a 11 year career at Honda in the Motorcycle Division. When I moved to Torrance CA for my job with Honda, Mr Wangers introduced me to Heinrich Gerhardt. I'm sure many of you will know Heinrich's 66 GTO of Car Craft fame. Heinrich showed me how to use B Body spindles, Cadillac Seville rear disc brakes, and all kinds of tricks for the time. Heinrich was building his Carbon Fiber EFI intake at this time. The Firebird was my daily driver at this time. Sometime during those years, the 400 spun a bearing, I ran it with the original 2 barrel 350 engine, a 65 389 engine, and then one day pulling out of a gas station I broke 1st gear in the Muncie. I am also into offroad vehicles and this consumed more and more of my life, and pretty soon the Firebird was parked and neglected. The 64 was also parked, still.

[s2k1]

The offroad stage led to turbo VWs using a draw through Dellorto carb in mid engine J&J buggies. Then in 2000 I ordered a Suspensions Unlimited 4 seat Long Travel Buggy Chassis. It was state of the art. A-Arm front and 5 link in the rear, FOX coil over shocks with 16" of wheel travel, etc. The first engine I built for it was a Honda H23 Prelude engine. This is a non Vtec engine. Do you know early Honda 4 cylinders? Well, they spin counterclockwise. I removed the balance shafts from the engine, cut the cams off near the end and made them drive from the opposite side, flipped the cams over in the head, etc. This thing ran a stock block with iron sleeves, Cunningham billet rods, Venolia forged pistons, a ported head, cams ground by Web Cams, RD Spring valve springs, four 1600cc injectors, a Weldon 2025A fuel pump and Weldon Regulator, Autronic SMC fuel injection with an MSD DIS-4 to drive the individual "dumb" coils out of a Isuzu Rodeo, and a Garrett ball bearing turbo. It was waste gated by a Tial 46mm gate. Some pretty high end stuff at the time. I spun this engine 9000 rpm, clockwise, with 15+ lbs of boost and did it on straight methanol.
This motor put the power to the wheels through a highly modified VW Vanagon 3spd auto trans. It had a 300m input shaft, oil pump drive, reverse maual valve body, TCS 3000 stall convertor, etc. I shifted it with a modified B&M Quiksilver.
This setup was fun but I had problems with the sleeves in the block and after several expensive rebuilds, I decided to go another direction.

The Honda S2000 was a pretty new car and the engine spins the normal direction. Yay!

I built the S2000 with Darton sleeves, copper wire o-rings in the sleeves (no groove in head), and everything else stock. Stock head, valves, springs, cams, connecting rods, and pistons. This thing is an animal! 28 lbs of boost, and methanol. It has also been super reliable. I have cracked piston pins in it two separate times (gee, wonder how that could happen ), and now have CP tool steel pins in it. Now that the engine was running like a top, I started scattering the trans regularly. Low gear planetary just wasn't happy with all that power and rpm. It then got transformed to a manual trans by way of a Mendeola MD4S-2D transaxle. I then drove it many years with no issues, all the while running big boost on methanol. There is a small picture of this "car" on the chassis dyno in Ben Strader's book, "How to Build and Tune EFI Systems".
In 2008 I sold that car after repowering it with a "friendlier" twin turbo Honda 3.5 V6 on pump gas. Still have the S2K engine and now you know where my screen name comes from.

Turbo S2000


Turbo J35 V6

[s2k1]

OK, back to Pontiacs, or at least street cars!

Two years ago my dad told me he was entertaining offers for his 69 RS Convertible Camaro. He figured that he was never going to have the money to restore it and was entertaining some cash offers around $15000. He paid $1500 for the car back somewhere around 1983 to 1985. The car was on blocks in his garage with no engine, and no suspension or brakes. I decided that if he was going to sell the car, I wanted to at least get to drive the car once before he sold it. After all, this is his dream car and he's had it a long time. So I hatched a plan. He went out of town to visit family and I figured this was my chance.

He was supposed to to be gone on his trip for 2 weeks. My dad always wanted to make the car a big block 4 speed, and that is what I entended to do! I had the M-20 from my Firebird with the broken 1st gear, and have several BBCs but none of them "ready to go". When he finally left on his trip, I sprang into action and the forst step was to inventory what was there, what could be used, what needed to be purchased, etc. I had planned on powder coating all the front suspension parts and already had a rush order setup preplanned with a shop in El cajon called ECP Powder Coating.
The day I started working on the car, I couldn't find the front a-arms and spindles, brake backing plates, etc. After unloading the trunk of it's contents (tons of extra interior parts, etc), I found the front end parts in the bottom of the trunk. And, they were already powder coated! I had forgotten but years earlier I had had these parts done for him and forgot all about it.

To avoid dragging the story out forever, here is what happened. He shortened the trip from 2 weeks to 3 days!
I ended up getting all the suspension assembled, rebuilt the rear drum brakes, put axle bearings and seals in it, got the front disc brakes on and bled, and got it on wheels. I even had to track down some used 15" rubber to put on the rally wheels. Good used 15" tires are not very plentiful any more!
I moved the Camaro from his garage to his barn, and put his Ford Comet (65?) in the garage where the Camaro was with it's car cover in place.

When he got home (I picked him up at the airport), he immediately went to the garage to make sure everything looked normal. His reaction was priceless and I will always cherish the situation. He was utterly shocked and had no idea. This is an understatement. He was blown away. It was as good as any Overhaulin episode.
I had some good help along the way. One of my dads high school buddies lives near by and is a Mopar nut. "Jim" halped a lot over the 3 day build. I also had my high school auto shop teacher Mike show up and help when he heard what was going on. Mike has a really nice 55 Chevy hot rod.

[s2k1]

Working on suspension and brakes


Some of the help in making this car come back to life.


First time his 69 has been on wheels and out of the garage in about 26 years.


Camaro in the barn


Falcon under cover where the Camaro has lived for 26 years.


Dad still not realizing exactly what has taken place over the last 3 days!

[s2k1]

One of my long time friends heard about what we did with the Camaro and offered up the loan of a 468 BBC with Edelbrock Performer RPM package - heads, cam, intake. A little over a year later we got it in the car, exhaust done, and driving. We put a Magneflow 3" stainless exhaust system on it. The driver header collector hung too low so I chopped up the header and raised it about an inch. If you have seen my Pypes install thread in the exhaust tech section, this project was the warmup for the Lemans exhaust install. On the Camaro we chopped the collector flanges off and used stainless v-band clamps instead. No gaskets and no leaks!

Dropping the 468 in.


Looks good in there!


Working on the tail pipes.




Through the process of getting my dads car on the road, I realized my poor GTO has been in my posession for 20 years this year and i'm not far behind my dad with time owned and not driven! Life is crazy and I have a family of my own now. I need to get this GTO going so we can appreciate it!

The car I bought with insurance money in high school is a solid car. It is the 64 hardtop in my signature. When I bought it, it had zero rust, anywhere. Unfortunately it sat outside uncovered for at least 15 of those years. It now has cancer around the rear window and front window. Although, it isn't terribly bad in my opinion. I will start another thread about this car when I start on it. In the mean time, the car excitement is alive and this led to the purchase of the 64 GTO Sedan this past October 2012.

Rescued from a small back yard in Escondido, CA., 2012




More soon!

[Hedgehead]

[wheelspin]

Great story, Chris, and fascinating engine tweaks and fabrication displayed on your buggy. I raced and rode bikes of all types both on & off-road for 40 years before a couple of bad deer accidents in the Rockies brought me back to hot rodding in 2001.

Very impressive effort for your Dad, you're a good son !

I rode the Three Flags Classic in 1978 on my Luftmiester turboed '75 BMW R90S, limiting the boost to 5 lbs., and using octane booster (toluene) with the then 95 octane gas to quell detonation in the 9 to 5 compression hemi heads.

We bought a Mitsu Eclipse Spyder Turbo new in '97 and I ran it when the TA was down at an open track day at Willow Springs in March. I have added Konis, bigger sway bars, mandrel bent upper & lower intercooler pipes, ported the downpipe, open air box conical filter, and added a 3" Extreme Motorsports 3" cat back exhaust. Unfortunately, convertibles are limited to front drive; wheelspin and torque steer is abundant in the bottom gears and the small stock turbo limits boost in the higher gears, but it's plenty quick and cranking up the rear rebound dampening can get you nice, controlled over steer on turn in .

I'm anxious for the next installment .