But It Was Cheap!

Now that I was a muscle car owner (muscle car shell anyways) I had to take stock in what was needed and man, I needed a lot: every front panel, all the glass, wiring, engine, transmission, every single part of the interior including the dash and all of it’s contents, tail panel, brakes, floor pans, you name it!

I could rattle on about turning this bolt and that bolt, but one thing I learned first was that the fastest way to get my car back on the road was to network. I connected with anyone and everyone I could who was upgrading, perpetually projecting, hoarding or divorcing. Through the scouring of Craiglist, Ebay-local pickup and friend’s stock cast offs, I managed to source most of my car. I was shameless; if a guy came in swapping out brakes, I asked about the old stuff. If a shop was going out of business, I asked what they were getting rid of. If I found an ad on Craigslist, I asked “what else you got?”. Back when I worked at Steve’s Camaros a lady called asking if we bought old Camaro parts – we didn’t but I needed stuff (as you may recall, this is how I got the car in the first place.) so I stopped by her house to see what I could forage for. Turns out the woman was going through a divorce and she sold me a sub-frame for $50 bucks and she must have taken pity on me because she tossed in the inner fender wells, two cowl panels, two header panels, and two transmission cross members for fifty bucks total. I’m pretty sure her husband was mighty pissed when it was his turn to clean out the garage. I responded to an ad on Craigslist for brakes and wound up at Liz Miles’ house — $70 bucks for rotors, bearings, calipers, backing plates, hoses and the master, proportioning valve. All of this was long before I had actually met Liz at an event but after I’d seen her on Boyd Coddington’s TV show. The icing on the cake was the engine. We had a guy come in the shop all the time buying parts who looked just like Elvis, complete with Pompadour, sideburns, white jumpsuit and gold rimmed glasses who went by JW. One day JW says that he’s cleaning out his shop (JW performance) because he’s going to ‘retire’ and go work as a mechanic for the city of San Francisco. I stopped by JW’s shop that evening after work and JW and I chatted for a while after I told him about my build, he told me I should pick and engine and take it for FREE! I had my pick of a few 350s already rebuilt and ready to install. I finalized on one that he had rebuilt for “an old lady” but when it was installed it had a rod knock. Once they pulled the engine and replaced it with another, it turned out the rod knock was actually a cracked flexplate and not catastrophic by any means. More on the engine in a minute. Added to my stash were some Covette stock rims with tires for $300 bucks from a guy in the Haight district in San Francisco (a funny weird Asian hippie dude), a hood from a guy in the East Bay, a “rebuilt” transmission from another guy in the East Bay (that was actually the only item that wasn’t as-promised and needed a complete rebuild – and several more rebuilds since) and some seats/seat parts from various places including Goodguys and eBay.

I should point out that my goal at this point was to get my car rolling on it’s own volition. I wanted to be able to drive the car and figure out what I wanted, once I had what was needed to get it running.

In my original build, I had only three performance parts to get started: Hotchkis front coils, rear leafs and a front sway bar.–that’s it. Having an almost stock base as a starting point (without knowing it) was the best thing I could have done. Knowing that I wanted to have a Pro-Tour car that I could auto-cross, gave me a direction for my build. I had a goal of two years and an intended use for my build from the start – these are key considerations if you ever want to finish your build.

I sanded, welded, hammered, bled, bolted, pried, swore at and rebuilt every piece of that hunk of steel myself. I didn’t know how to do it all but I bought books, manuals, and just plain tried it– if it worked, awesome; if not, then I would try again. After 18 months, I opened up the garage door and without any door panels, lacking carpet, wearing 7 different colors of primer, rolling on rock hard run-flat tires, I drove it out of the garage and off to an SCCA event in the Candlestick Park parking lot; a narrow, and long (1 min 45 sec lap) with no straightaways and designed for Porsches, Miatas and Subarus. That day was both exhilarating (I made it all the way to Candlestick Park without breaking down for God’s sake!) and fun, but I was slow and was scoffed at by nearly everyone there. I mean c’mon, can you imagine if you saw me pull up to your race day? I don’t know if I even realized that I was being given the stink eye left and right – I was on cloud nine to be driving MY Camaro, that I built, on a racetrack. In my head I just wanted to yell “I built this! Yeah, that’s right Mr. Porschey-Porsche, I built MY CAR!”

I continued to work on the car and make subtle improvements—mostly stuff that would prevent other stuff from falling off. After three SCCA events, I stumbled upon the GoodGuys autocross, after watching one of the events at the Pleasanton, CA Fairgrounds, I registered for the next event. I showed up bright and early and in the early morning fog, drivers were wiping down their beautiful cars. My car was a sorta-grey primer that I had painted with a rattle can the night before so that the car would be all one color. No wiping necessary. While others were checking tire pressures, I was happy mine were holding air at all. There I was No bumpers, No interior, or No talent, I might not have been the slowest guy there but I was nowhere near memorable. I was learning; learning that Goodguy’s auto-cross was a good fit for me. Learning that auto-cross for big cars was not only a reality but it was fun as hell. Learning that you don’t have to be pretty or even competitive and people were okay chatting you up. Learning that while my car had a ways to go, (primarily a lot more suspension) the people I met and the encouragement I garnered was invaluable.

I was hooked.

I want to end on a note of encouragement and go back to my bright orange small block, carted away from a guy named JW who looked like Elvis. Regardless of how bad my tires were or my lack of interior, the car was fast. I knew it was fast and when I put the pedal down, the car wanted nothing more than to go and keep going. I had a couple of people I knew in the car world drive the car and they agreed that the car was fast with great pick-up and amazing torque. I drove with that original small block 350 for almost three years of auto-cross – I beat the crap out of it at every opportunity. Eventually, a nagging noise had suddenly become a serious un-driveable circumstance that started when I blew a rear main seal on my way into the Pleasanton Fairgrounds for a Spring Goodguys event. Needless to say, I didn’t make it through the first day with fluids spewing out like a beat-up garden hose, they kindly asked me to take care of it before racing anymore. That following Monday I procured a six liter LS (salvaged from a wrecked truck and a bargain on eBay) and pulled apart the 350. I won’t go into the morbid details but that little orange block had been bored out 80 over – yes, you read that right, 80 over! And stroked with a 400 crank! I think ‘ol JW was confused about the old lady and that’s all I’m going to say about that. That block and heads have since been rebuilt and installed on some guy’s project, I hope he has as good a time with it as I did.

Rodney Prouty

Editor’s Note: Big thanks to Rodney for contacting us and asking if we would be interested in his story. If you have an idea for BangShift.com content, please CLICK HERE and submit your idea, story lead, or whatever.