Angry little Chevy for the Tonner

[carcrazy]

Keep or sell?

I recon it will sell pretty easily actually.

[TK]

Sell, that's the whole point - it'll sell much easier with a cheby than with the twin turbo motor.
Someone will get a damn tough tonner that has soaked up far more of my time than I could ever think of getting back in $$.

If I was gonna keep it it'd still have the turbo donk!

[platinum]

That's awesome - love how clean and perfect all your builds look even while being ridiculously tough and specc'd.

[Merry Vanly Stan]

what sort of $$ do you expect it'lll sell for??

edit; i should read your signature

[CussCuss]

you need to buy a video camera! we wanna hear these monsters too.

[TK]

That's awesome - love how clean and perfect all your builds look even while being ridiculously tough and specc'd.

That's just habit, on customer engines guys expect a good looking engine when they've spent quite a few $$ on it.
With the right cleaning/blasting gear & knowing how to prep engine parts for paint it's really pretty easy to get a good looking result in only a little more time than a real average looking engine.

what sort of $$ do you expect it'lll sell for??

With this drivelin I'd like to think it's sell pretty quick in the $12-15k region, it's a pretty tidy tonner & it's now got a tonka tough driveline, tougher than most people could afford to aspire to for the sort of $$ that a lot of guys could easily aspire to.

Motor alone would cost $8-10k to build, trans another $1500 or so, converter $700, carb, ignition, fuel pump lines etc another $1600, tailshaft & diff add $900.
Add in all the other things like shifter, guages, wheels & tyres etc & you're well above $12k before you even look at stuff like suspension & brakes (which are all pretty fresh & have good bits), then throw in GTS seats & centre console, premier dash & door trims, decent carpet etc etc.
It's got a lot going for it!

[TK]

you need to buy a video camera! we wanna hear these monsters too.

My camera does vid, dunno about sound quality, but if stand a fair distance away the mic may not get overwhelmed.

[Gavatron]

Ready to lay some black at the bbq.

[TK]

LOL, you know what happened last time I got off my leash......

[takai]

Yeah. Will have to make sure gav isn't in the passenger seat.

[Gavatron]

Wasn't my fault. I offered no encouragement whatsoever.

Block off entrance to carpark. Private road.

[TK]

Finally got this on the road yesterday, got the exhaust sorted yesterday arvo & went out last night to run it in - all good.

Tuned this morning, looks like 4.44 diff gears & 235/60/14 tyres are hurting the rw power figures quite a lot - made 246 rwkw at 6600rpm.
Bruce (Heinrich) seems to think that the diff gears are costing 20-25rwkw over a set of 3.5 gears - I didn't think they'd hurt power that much, but apparently he sees it all the time with back to back tests after diff ratio swaps.
I do know the T400 trans is costing a lot - up to 30hp loss as compared to a T350, up to 40hp compared to a trimatic/powerglide.
So given the drivetrain is about the worst possible for rwhp figures I'm happy with it - based on Bruce's guestimate it's making somewhere around 460-470hp at the flywheel.

One real cool thing with it is how it holds on to the power - it only drops a few kw running it out to 7000rpm, we ran it to 7200 & it dropped a little but still didn't nose over hard.

Sounds real nice at 7000rpm - but my camera makes it sound like shit!

I may end up throwing a 2.78 ratio diff in it for a power run, it's only an hour job to swap diffs, so may be worth it to show what it can really do.

[TK]

PS - even with the diff gears & T400 handicapping it it still made 2rwkw more than my old 388 holden - which had 3.5 gears & a T350 behind it.

With the 28" tall drag radials on it it'd run to 125mph @ 7000rpm - so the gearing is just about perfect for 1/4 mile use.
I really didn't need to know that - speedo doesn't work & I ran it out to 6200rpm with the DR's on last night, oops, twas still pulling hard at that speed too...

[Greg Rust]

Yea but if someone buys it they will be stoked with the performance anyway regardless of what diff ratio is in there.

Save yourself the heartache.

[Bermo]

But also if you throw the other gears in it, can give you extra wank value when trying to sell.
To the unlearned they dont understand what diffs / autos / tyres / etc do to dyno figures, they just care about the wank number of my car has 300rwkw or what evs.