Raise up those hands if you love Monte Carlos! No? Yes? Anybody? Ok, now raise your hands higher if you love the subtle lower fender 454 SS emblem on the 1st generation bodies. It’s nothing, just a mere 500 foot pounds of torque at 3500 rpm. Whhhaaaaaaaa??! Oh it’s no big deal really. Sure you can smolder your tires into a pile of molten goo at every intersection, but then you are just a show off, and who wants that? Read More
If you are a car enthusiast, you must have a favorite muscle car. I know the time frame is debatable, but if we set the muscle car era to be from 1964 – 1972, we can all have a good starting point. So now which car will it be? and why?
Me? I’m going with the 1970-72 Chevy Monte Carlo. If and when I own one, it won’t be stock. It needs to have an obnoxiously violent sounding engine in it. I want to hear every cylinder of the big block ignite and blow it’s 11:1 compression out the open headers in the form of hellfire. Behind the massive injected big block will probably sit an M-22 Muncie 4-speed. It will whine in every gear, but it won’t matter because I won’t hear it over the open headers. I’ll be shifting it at the edge of it’s life, and making my valve springs work overtime. My Monte will sit on the ground, it will be so low that ants will be ducking their antennae. Read More
Chevette’s don’t exist anymore because they were considered “throw away cars” that were so cheap and slow that nobody cared about them. They were rarely, if ever, loved by their owners, and never taken car of. All, except this one. This car is owned by a coworker that has owned it since it was practically new. It has something like 30K original miles, and it is pristine from every angle. Every time I walk buy it I battle ideas in my head of what I would do with it if it were mine. On one hand, this little Scooter would be incredible with a new turbocharged ECOTEC engine, 6 gears, and tires wide enough to make it corner like an Enzo. Then on the other hand, it would be an absolute tragedy to cut up such a perfect low mileage original car. I just can’t make sense of it all. Read More
Last Wednesday, we talked about Curb Weight, GVWR, GCWR, GAWR, payload capacity and how “tonnage” slang terminology is not reality. Now, let’s put all of that great knowledge to use by deciphering the name’s of old Chevy truck models and old GMC truck models. The automotive slang is in quotes for your reference. To determine which truck you have, just look at the 5th digit of the VIN number. This is the digit of the VIN that tells you the series of the vehicle. Interested in learning more about deciphering your vehicle’s VIN number? For Chevy and GMC full size trucks built after 1980, it will be C, K, R or V. Oooooh, a secret code? Read on…
First off, I love Chevelle’s in a very bad way, especially the front end of a 1970, and the back of a 71-72. Combining those two aspects together would make the ideal A-Body in my mind. But anywho, that’s not the topic at hand. I want to know why the heck GM decided that the SS packages so desperately needed hood pins? Was there really a chance of a hood flying up? The Chevelle hood weighs in at just less than 400,000 lbs, do you really think it’s going to fly away? Maybe the latch just wasn’t able to handle the job alone? Or maybe it was done strictly for the mean muscle car look? I don’t know, I’m probably alone here, but I just think the hood pins take away from the clean Chevelle hood lines, and they make it look like a factory installed hack job. Hey, just my 2 cents.
Somebody please school me.
Oh yeah, here are some pictures of an absolutely mint ’70 SS with a 582 cubic inch engine, pushing out ~750hp, through a 5 speed manual transmission at the 1A Auto car show. MMMMMM,
Last night I had the pleasure of working on a truly amazing 1992 Chevy Lumina. I am forced to describe it this way for two distinct reasons. The first one being that it was daily driving with two front strut spring mounts that were moments away from catastrophic failure. I’m not talking about a small scale failure here like when you step on a rake, it’s way more unpredictable than that. Just imagine stepping on the end of a rake, and when it swings up to whack you in the forehead, you get hit with a lemon maringue pie instead. Yes, strut failure would be that crazy. I’m talking about the kind of failure that you read about in text books, and the type that induces Y2K sort of fear. I mean if these struts had failed, it would have blown out the new tires in grand fashion. There would have been violent bull-ride steering, foot-through-the-floor braking, and enough spinning to find yourself being the first one at the scene of the accident. At that point, the car is totaled because let’s be honest, its a 1992 Lumina. NADA values it between $362 – $2062. Ouch. The second reason that this car was truly amazing is that Read More
Watching a gross display of horsepower is probably the only thing better than the actual act of building a vehicle with such mouth watering abilities. Today I bring to you a 1999 Chevy S10 Xtreme with a 2003 Corvette Z06 LS6 hiding under the hood. Hanging off the back of the all aluminum V8 is a T-56 6-speed manual transmission that sends power out to the 275/40/17’s. This really is a great way to start a Monday. Maybe every monday will begin with a burnout video…. hmmmm.
Picture Credit = “LowSub” @ S10forum.com:
http://www.s10forum.com/forum/f213/xtreme-ls6-take-2-a-435759/