What do you get when you combine a late ‘60s pickup, an early ‘70s personal luxury car, a mid-‘60s full-sized wagon, a Pro-Touring Chevelle, a couple G-bodies, a late-model F-car, a Fox-body Thunderbird, and an EcoBoost Mustang- a schizophrenic car collection? No, you have a nearly perfect blend of project cars for Car Craft. In this installment, we check in on our regular and no-so regular projects, as well as introducing a couple new cars to the fleet. We hope you like what you see.
Truck Norris
Our project 1967 C10 is keeping us entertained with some clutch hydraulic issues and a nagging oil leak. Otherwise, the BluePrint Engines 540 big block is running great with AEM’s Infinity EFI, so much so that it is your author’s current daily driver as the CC/Malibu is out of town for another project and my long-suffering Subaru wagon recently experienced a catastrophic engine failure. Let us know if you want to see a Coyote engine swap into a 1999 Legacy, by the way!
In about four months worth of driving, we’ve worn through two clutch master cylinders. These pictures show the damage. The piston should be uniformly gray from the anodizing it received prior to assembly, but notice how it’s worn through on the rear portion of the piston. The fluid is thick and contaminated with aluminum essentially machined away where the piston and bore made contact.
We suspect the culprit is a misalignment between the clutch linkage and the master cylinder. Our sources at Wilwood Engineering explained that the linkage must be concentric with the master cylinder bore. In other words, it must be centered on the piston and travel straight into the master. We suspect that because we altered the master cylinder’s location, this accounts for the misalignment. American Powertrain’s hydraulic clutch conversion was designed for a small block. With our big block, the master cylinder location would have been touching the exhaust, so we moved it up and outboard from where it should have been.After the second master cylinder failure, we decided to try a different setup. This came via a member of the 67-72chevytrucks.com message board. His design uses a linkage that comes straight off the clutch pedal, and stepped down via a rocker arm to reduce the travel to about 1.4-inches.We combined it with Wilwood’s high-volume master cylinder, which has a ¾-inch bore to match our hydraulic throwout bearing. The guys at Wilwood were even kind enough to bench-bleed it for us.Sometime in this engine’s travels to and from three shops, three different engine dyno sessions, and two mockups in the truck before final assembly, the oil pan developed a stress crack on the left side near the drain plug.The leak grew worse as the crack slowly spread. This shows the size of the puddle after sitting for 24 hours. For reference, that’s a gallon jug of motor oil next to it.We know the best fix is to remove the pan, clean it, and weld the crack closed, or simply replace the pan outright. However, as mentioned in the intro, Truck Norris is our only means of transportation right now. We were reluctant to weld it with the pan on the engine, so we tried a series of temporary fixes in the interim: black RTV silicone, JB Weld, Permatex fuel tank repair, but they only slowed the leak. This product has fared the best of all: JB Weld’s Water Weld. It’s resistant to most automotive fluids, and it will set under water. It’s managed to stop the leak for a week already, and will serve as a stopgap until we have backup transportation and attempt to weld the pan.
The CC/Malibu
Our cream-puff 1978 Malibu has been a great runner, now that the cooling system is sorted out. On the rollers at Westech, it cranked out 320 hp and 386 lb-ft of torque, which was more than we had expected. That means the 350 built with Trick Flow’s 400 hp top end kit makes every bit of power it’s advertised to, and maybe a bit more. Either way it’s been a rock-solid reliable road-tripper, and we’ve already taken it to Tucson for the ZipTie Drags, to Las Vegas for Holley’s LS Fest West, and to Northern California for Anti Tour. Still, it wouldn’t be much of a project car without some things breaking…
One annoying problem with the Malibu was an erratic idle, dieseling, and oil-fouled plugs, which caused a few perplexing looks to be directed at the engine.Some sleuthing revealed leaky intake manifold gaskets that were sucking air and oil into the engine from the lifter valley. Replacing them solved all the aforementioned problems.If you remember, we’re using a Vortec engine block with no provision for a mechanical fuel pump, so there’s a low-pressure electric pump mounted in the back next to the gas tank, and it would occasionally stop running. We tracked that problem down to this circuit breaker in the fuel pump wiring. It was installed near the hood panel gap and would get doused with water each time it rained or when we washed the car. Obviously, it’s not designed to get wet, so we replaced it with a waterproof inline fuse. The fuel pump has been happily humming along since then.Most recently, we ditched the stock 14-inch steel wheels for these 15-inch wheels from Rock Auto. They were an optional for 3rd Gen Firebirds for a few years, and we especially like them because they look similar to the hubcaps that came with the car. Rock Auto sells them for a great price, too.
Lucky Costa’s Chevelle and Fury
You all know Lucky as the enigmatic co-host of Hot Rod Garage, which you can watch at MotorTrendOnDemand.com We recently featured Lucky’s 1966 Chevelle on our July 2017 cover, and his 1966 Plymouth Fury wagon can be seen getting an Vintage Air system installed in this issue. We will continue to work with Lucky on these two cars, and anything else he happens to be working on that we find interesting.
With a used 6.0L and T56, line lock, and a heavy right foot, Lucky’s 1966 Chevelle is a ready-made burnout machine. Holley EFI and overdrive makes it a capable daily driver. We will soon be adding a Glasstek fiberglass hood, new Hooker exhaust, and freshening up the drivetrain, which will likely involve a cam change, and new cylinder heads.A stroked big block under the hood means Lucky’s other car is also a legit burnout machine, and he’s easily coaxed into demonstrating that fact. Read how we chilled out with a new air conditioning system elsewhere in this issue, and stay tuned for some other upgrades. We’ve got sound deadening and heat shield from DEI to install soon, fuel system upgrades, possibly an EFI conversion, and definately more burnouts.
Mike Musto’s 1972 Monte Carlo
You know him as the host of House of Muscle on the MotorTrend channel. This is Mike’s daily driver: a 1972 Monte Carlo he found buried in the back of a radiator and A/C repair shop in San Raphael, California. It’s in great shape except for the fact that it burns oil like a diesel locomotive. We will be fixing that problem then addressing a few other items to make this a modern-running daily driver. Watch for a video series accompanying this build on House of Muscle’s YouTube channel.To establish a baseline, Mike ran the car down the dragstrip at Sonoma Raceway, where it rocketed to a breathtaking 17.896 at 74.85 mph. On the chassis dyno the next day, it churned out 162 hp and 228 lb-ft of torque at the wheels. It’s all uphill from here, folks!Chevrolet Performance answered the call for help with this SP383 crate engine. We ran the engine at Westech a recently, and it impressed us with a stout 446 hp and 448 lb-ft of torque, more than double what Mike’s tired 350 is making right now. We will back the small block with a Gear Star TH200 4R transmission, and outfit it with Holley’s Sniper EFI and Patriot headers. Between the overdrive transmission and fuel injection, Mike will have a modern-running drivetrain that lives for road trips and return gas mileage substantially better than the 10 mpg he’s currently averaging.Mike will do the drivetrain swap with some friends at the home of the flying terriers, Jack Dick Customs in Martinez, California. That’s owner / car builder Ben McCoy and his two mutts.
The CC/Underbird
Who actually likes the Fox-body-era Thunderbirds, anyway? Well, regular contributor John Gatliff does, and so do we, or else we wouldn’t have given him the go-ahead. John’s been plugging away at the Underbird, most recently sussing out a cobbled-together big-brake kit, and ultimately lamenting the fact that it may have been easier and more cost-effective to just have bought one in the first place. Like tech editor Steve Magnante likes to say, “We live this way so you don’t have to.”
Not something you see everyday- these are C5 Corvette brakes on a Fox-body Thunderbird. We show you how to do that and why it’s sometimes better to buy a kit.
The EcoBoost Mustang
Contributor Jason Sands bought a new Mustang and actually skipped past the V8 models for the turbocharged four-cylinder model. We took that as an opportunity to dive into some late model tuning experiments with different octane gasoline, from 87 all the way up to116 octane race gas, backing it up with plenty of time at the dragstrip. We’re testing the limits of the stock turbocharger, before upgrading it and really turning up the boost.There’s a turbocharger somewhere in there. We’ll probably replace it with a bigger one soon.
CC/Olds
This is one project that’s been languishing while we’ve been focusing on the C10 and Malibu. We discovered our time-capsule drag racing Cutlass has a bent pushrod and a bent valve. We will be freeing ourselves up to fix this soon and get the Cutlass back on track.
Project ZedSled
We’re nearing the completion of this build, contributor Kevin Tetz’s 1978 Camaro Z28. Over the last two years it’s undergone a complete transformation from rust bucket to road-tripping show car. It was on display at the SEMA show last year and Kevin just took it on the last leg of the Hot Rod Power Tour. We’ll finish out the series with articles on some interior upgrades, installing a new fiberglass front end, and a custom-built twin turbo set-up to send the project off with a bang!
Get online
Catch up with all our projects online at CarCraft.com, and follow us on Facebook for behind-the-scenes looks at the builds. Truck Norris and the Malibu even have their own Facebook pages: search CarCraftTruckNorris and CarCraftMalibu, respectively.
