Part of the Family

We purchased her in 2002 with A tired 355 and a ground down cam with broken rocker springs. A quick cam swap with a bit of TLC here and there and she was on the road. In 2005 she went in the garage for an engine rebuild where my ambitions exceeded my back pocket. Years later we scraped up enough to finish the build and finish the body work with the help from a friend that lives around the corner. My fire breathing 4.5 mpg beast was road worthy. It took two years of tweaking to dial her in, but I managed mid 12’s on street tires.

i found out that a track car wasn’t feasible as a daily driver and was even less feasible as a grocery getter let alone trying to drive to work. So, after a day of breaking down at the track, she was again parked in the garage when I got the wild idea I could do an LS swap for $4,000 and build something my wife might enjoy driving in and could be driven as a daily driver. Don’t ask where the $4,000 amount came from, as I found out, it was just an imaginary number I pulled out of my head. As a result, I put my 355 with tranny and fuel cell up for sale. Within weeks somebody wrote me a check for $4,000 and my LS1 swap began.

as usual, things got out of hand and I upgraded to rear disc brakes, as well as adding QA1 control arms and coil overs. And while I’m there... a new wire harness by Painless. Build time was just over 3 years and finished a day before driving the car 4,600 miles from Michigan to Washington and back for my Dads 85th Birthday.