So, this car... truck... whatever (I'll use 'car' for simplicity 
) was originally bought shortly after the $2011 Challenge with the intent of my taking it to the $2012 Challenge. Those who were at the Challenge this year know that obviously this didn't happen... work and other 'real life' issues as well as some issues with the vehicle itself kept me from having it anywhere near done. Instead, I lucked into finding the Cadillac 500-powered Fiero that I took to the Challenge this year (and sold less than 24 hours after the Challenge was done, hopefully to be brought back next year better sorted by the new owner). I'm hoping to have it at the Challenge NEXT year, assuming work doesn't mess this up AGAIN (which it looks like it's going to do its best to do...).
It's a 1979 El Camino, but at some point somebody put a 1986 front end on it, so it has the two smaller headlights on each side vs. the one large that it should have for its year. I'm in no hurry to change this, I'm fine with it as it is. It had a 350 in it that I was told 'had a cam', but beyond that and the fact the rear main seal was shot due to the carb dumping fuel down the intake (likely due to the Edelbrock carb it had on it not liking the higher fuel pressure from the mechanical pump...) I didn't know anything about the engine. It ran, albeit with lots of backfiring, one I fed fuel to it.
The driver's side floorpan is pretty badly rusted out, but it at the same time came with the replacement floorpans to be welded in. There are rusted-out patches behind the doors as well, which seems to be normal for these cars. Other than that, by and large it is pretty solid- other than one very bizarre feature: somebody at some point had cut a good sized chunk out of the front of the bed and screwed in a large metal box accessible only from the inside of the car. My best guess is that somebody wanted a MUCH bigger sub box than would otherwise fit, but who knows. Whether or not it gets repaired as part of the Challenge build will depend heavily on whether the spare back half of an El Camino I picked up ends up getting used otherwise.
It was (and still is, as of writing this) painted bass-boat silver fleck. In its own way, it's kind of awesome- but very much not my style. And sevearl parts of it were replaced at some point, so I've got to repaint the whole thing anyway. I am keeping the original gas cap cover-piece as a reminder of what it started out looking like. The pictures just don't do this paint job justice, other than pointing out it was not done the best and is flaking off to show they didn't do much prep it seems.
One of the first things I set out to do though was to pull the engine and get to checking it over and replacing the seal. Once I did this though, I found that the block had been bored 80 over stock- further than I thought you could actually do- and that there was definite pitting on several of the cylinders. This meant that for my purposes the block was largely worthless. Were I JUST planning on using this for the Challenge and trailering it there and back, I might have been willing to just let it ride, but I intend to drive it halfway normally as a hauling/towing/fun car before and after the Challenge and to drive it the 800-some-odd miles there and back, so it needs to be halfway reliable too (reasonably efficient would be nice... but that is well behind 'performance' and 'reliability' in importance ).
To this end, I bought a salvage-titled 1989 Chevy K1500 4wd truck that had a very recently rebuilt 350 TBI engine in it and an almost as recently rebuilt 700R4 (the Elky came with a THM350, so no overdrive for the highway...). The engine was pulled, but I found a buyer for the rest of the vehicle that was interested in the truck-tailed 700R4 and had a car 700R4 he could sell me, so it was sold with the transmission and I bought his car-tailed overdrive transmission (though it likely won't be installed for the Challenge). At the moment I'm less than $100 away from having sold-off enough from the truck to get the engine for free, and there's little doubt I'll sell enough more to erase it from the budget completely (other than eating up half of my sell-off potential).
I also ended up with the back half of a wrecked El Camino fairly inexpensively. It was primarily bought because I really want a camper top for mine, and it came with a really nice-condition one. However, it may get folded into the budget if I use its excellent-condition bed to repair the cutout from mine, and while it unfortunately does not have a posi rear in it, it may have taller gears than the highway-friendly 2.7X mine has in it now and thus the rear end may be useful if I swap it over to mine. It also came with some decent carpets and other interior trim pieces that I can use 'for free' if it gets included in the budget (and as much of it as possible sold off/scrapped after I've pulled what I can myself use from it).
The engine I'm planning on using has been bored .030 over, but as near as I can tell it's otherwise stock. The nice thing about it though is that it is in excellent shape overall and that being an '89 block, it is a roller-cam-ready block and I've picked up the roller hardware from a Vortec block as well as some Vortec heads (already had one pair of heads end up being cracked, hopefully at least one of the two new pairs is good...). I'm still working on cam choices- I'd LOVE the GM HOT cam kit, but I doubt the whole kit will fit into my budget so I may be forced to run with just the cam and without the advantages of the other hardware in the kit.
I'm going to be uploading pictures as I go to the Photobucket album I have set up for the build which is located here:
I had a good time chatting with him about the car, and checked and confirmed that his engine had the right heads for the intake to work.
