Per a very gracious invitation from Ralph, I am very honored to share my build here...

The car and a little background on it:



I bought this car in 2006 after missing out on buying my old 1969 SS 396 Chevelle back. (L78/M21 car) It has 49,xxx miles on the body. Originally a 350 3bbl/TH350 car. I think it may have been a base Malibu, but never found a build sheet. When I got the car, it had a GM domed hood with hood pins, round gauge dash, 12 bolt rear axle, rear control arm braces, and the fenders had holes that were bondo'd where SS emblems had previous been. All of those parts could have been changed/added over the years, so it is anyone's guess as to weather or not it was an "SS" when it left the assembly line. I was laid off a few short months after buying the car and found myself worrying about money. I sold the car to my father. He and I spent the next year getting it to the point it was in the picture above. In that time, he had a heart surgery go wrong that put him in a coma for 44 days. Bad damage was done to his heart and he was put on the transplant list. Fast forward to the Summer of 2007, the old man isn't doing well. I am in a new job, bought my first house, etc. He drops by one day and hands me the title to the car and tells me he thinks he won't live to finish the car. Three weeks later, by some sort of miracle he receives a heart transplant. I offered to give the car back several times as he regained his health. But, he refused to take the car back, saying the he wanted me to have it. At the time, I had a 10 second daily driven 2000 Z28 that I was more interested in, and the Chevelle sat. In the spring of 2009 I got back to work on it and had it nearly finished. But, was really bored with the car and not sure what to do with it. Fall of 2010... I discover Pure Stock and F.A.S.T. racing. It has been a snowball rolling down Mt. Everest since then...

Here are some pictures of my journey with this car starting the tear down in April of 2011...

This is literally the main part that sparked this build, I had a used up .060" over 454 4 bolt main block sitting in my garage collecting dust.



Then I started scouring Craigslist every day looking for parts. My first stop netted me an intake an timing cover.

This is how the engine bay looked before I started tearing it apart.



79' truck 454, .030" over. 049 heads, cheap Chinese edelbrock knock off aluminum intake, 224/230 cam, 1.875" headers, 800 cfm edelbrock carb, backed by a 68' M20 4 speed, and a 3.55:1 12 bolt posi rear. ::yawn::

This is how nutty I am about making this car "authentic." When is the last tme you've seen an NOS heat stove assembly? I know it wasn't needed, but I felt the more stock it looked under the hood - the better.

Nice! I like the detail!

On to the engine build, here are some pictures of the engine parts for anyone interested...

Hyperutectic pistons


These aren't factory connecting rods, but they are I-beams & not lightweight. They are much stronger than a factory rod. I upgraded the materials of a few things just in case I got bored and wanted more out of this short block.



Mostly complete short block, the crank is an NOS GM steel crank.

More date coded, correct part number pieces associated with the rebuild...

On to the valvetrain and associated parts...









Don't laugh at my home made timing pointer, it worked! It was getting late, had to scrounge up some parts. And had a good friend leave his shop to come help me degree the cam... so we improvised a little.

Rear axle resto/rebuild...

Strange 3.73:1 gear set & a solid pinion spacer, hoping they put me where I need to be at the stripe.

I had planned on leaving the domed hood, but stumbled across a good deal on a factory GM cowl induction hood. Then, by more good fortune... managed to find an original 71'-72' air cleaner to go with it.



Cylinder heads anyone? Found these on eBay, supposedly off of a D/SA 72' LS5 Corvette. Valve job and prep done by Juan Mendoza @ Flow technologies.





Had them checked out, three valves were about to commit hairy carry. So, new stainless steel, stock-sized Manley valves were ordered and the valve job was gone over.





Ports are still untouched...

Assembly of the long block...





Remember that crusty old intake manifold? It cleaned up well.

Reuniting the fuel tank and rear axle with the body...





Cheap gas shocks - I hear they work well. The paint is "new ford grey", looks fairly close to what was on the factory spiral shocks. I just happened to have a can laying around from a 90' GT 5 liter I had just rebuilt for a friend.

The empty engine bay... what a mess after sitting under a car cover for 4 months. Mind you... I have the car and most of the parts stored at my parent's house. I have no where else to work on it currently. So I am doing this all with hand tools in a car port next to my father's very cluttered, detatched garage.



Nice dent in the firewall from the HEI distributor.



It is amazing what some soapy water and elbow grease will do...

Bought a used oil pan, sight unseen. Was told it was a "good" oil pan. Buyer beware as usual...





After degreasing and sand blasting the oil pan... it was even scarier. Really didn't want a cheap Chinese repop pan, and didn't feel like taking a chance on another used original... so out came the mig welder. Every one of those spot welds was a hole. It was basically trial and error, I would do some welding, let it cool, then fill it with water and see if it leaked. Then repeated those steps a few more times before no more leaks.



It was now ugly, and I had to address the aesthetics. Enter the beginning of many coats of JB weld, with LOTS of sanding between coats.





In primer, before final paint. Didn't come out too bad considering what I started with.

Time to fix the firewall... the dent wasn't deep. And I felt trying to pull it might make a bigger mess. The interior is mint, and I didn't want to pull the dash out to access it from the backside. So, I decided to fill and sand it.

I really wanted an M22, but spending that much money on a transmission would have taken funds from the rest of the project. Rather than risk running over budget and not being able to finish the car, I settled for the next best thing. My ex girlfriend's father hooked me up with a really solid 67' M21 Muncie from his 20+ year collection of cars & parts.







I would have loved to have broke it down and had the bare case hot tanked. Then had it restored to the correct finish. However, budget and limited resources led me to settle on a through cleaning and then sandblasting.



I decided to use some of Eastwood's alumiblast on it because I intend to drive the wheels off of it and want it to remain clean looking. I know they were as cast from the assembly line, but know it wouldn't last being driven in all kinds of weather.