The total money out of pocket required to install the headers and mufflers was about $50.00 including the cost of a case of Budweiser. When the installation was finished I actually got to drive the El Camino for the first time as I drove it back to the garage. The mufflers are quiet but when you hit the pedal there is enough sound to let you and your neighbors know there is a big block behind them.

OK. The El Camino is now actually driveable, but I found out in that short drive that the stock suspension wasn't going to be up to the abuse we planned for our Wednesday night warrior. The first time I brake-torqued the motor and hit the gas pedal, the rear wheels hopped like a worm on a griddle. The El Camino still had the stock shocks and springs in front and air shocks in the rear and unless I planned to haul a lot of weight in the bed or pull a trailer the stock shocks weren't going to cut it. I called my buddy Jim Salemi at G-Force Race Cars and asked what we could do to make the suspension and ride better short of putting on one of his swing arm suspensions. I didn't like his first suggestions of me lying down in the bed to improve weight transfer or letting someone else drive, so after the hysterical laughter died down he told me to replace the stock front shocks and rear air shocks with a good aftermarket shock.

I called Hal Lees at HAL/QA1 shocks and told him what I was trying to do and promised him a lot of good press in return for a set of shocks. He fell for it and sent me four adjustable shocks for the front and rear. When those arrived we put the El Camino up on a borrowed lift and prepared to do the installation. The good news was that the bolts that had been holding the shocks in place for over 40 years freed up easily; the bad news was that the barrels of the 40 year old stock shocks were considerably smaller in diameter than those of the aftermarket shocks. As a result, the holes in the control arms that the shocks fit through had to be enlarged. A couple of minutes with a grinder solved that problem and the front shocks were bolted in. Replacing the rear shocks was a much easier program as they simply bolted in. The total time to remove and replace the shocks was about an hour.

About the time we tightened up the last nut on the last shock we ran out of daylight, adult beverages and energy so we decided to retire to the local pub to do a little bench racing.

In the next installment we are going to put a 3.73 gear in the 10 bolt posi that was in the truck when we got it. We will also hook up the gauges, attach a manual chock to the quadra-jet and show you the trick steel wheels we came up with. A trip to the Wednesday night drags with Drag Racing Online's crew to see if we can smoke a set of used, hard tires for a quarter-mile now seem attainable. Hope springs eternal in the ignorant project crew and we are still delusional about the project as you dear reader will see in part III.  

 

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