I lost count a long time ago how many times I've heard a guy say his muscle car is a real daily driver. Sometimes the claims are believable, but all too often, it's a load of manure. Take, for instance, another big car magazine that built a 1,000-plus-hp twin-turbo Camaro with the bold promise that it would be driven to work every day for a month. Yeah, sure thing, pal. Two years after it was finished, you're still waiting on that.
We're guilty of it too. My '68 Chevelle gets driven every day, sort of. It's only two miles to the gym in the morning. It spends the rest of the time languishing in the garage. I normally drive my '03 Mustang the 112 miles round-trip to work, mostly because it gets better mileage. But a month ago, that changed. We had to take the Mustang to the shop for a hard-to-diagnose driveability problem, and it's been there ever since. In those four weeks, I've had to drive the big-block Chevelle everywhere, and it's been a great experience.
Overall, I'd have to say that the Street Sweeper Chevelle has vindicated itself nicely. After getting reader complaints for not stepping up to a solid roller cam, electric fans, electric water pump, electric fuel pump, a Dominator carb, a single-plane intake, and a fancy CD ignition box, I can honestly say we made the right decision to keep things simple. When we built the 496 big-block, it dyno'd at 626 hp, which is about 100 hp shy of what it could've been. We went with a dual-plane intake, an 850-cfm Mighty Demon double-pumper, a box-stock hydraulic roller cam, a mechanical water pump and clutch fan, a mechanical fuel pump, and a budget HEI distributor--and stuffed it all under a flat hood. Even with that, it still uncorks 11.30 e.t.'s with just a change to slicks. With a few well-chosen mods (and a rollbar), we could easily poke it into the 10s.
The Chevelle's been as reliable as a rock, too. It always starts and runs, and it always looks and sounds good doing it. When your work day is bookended with double hour-and-a-half drives in a car like this, it has a way of making you feel really alive. On my commute home, I'll fire up a nice cigar to unwind, and let the sensory experience of exhaust pulses, valvetrain clatter, and cigar smoke carry me away. For the few extra bucks in gas, it's been worth the vacation I get twice a day.
That's not to say everything's been perfect. Occasional cruising is one thing, but when you drive a 41-year-old car every day at more than 100 miles a pop, small things begin to annoy. Some of these things include: a turn signal that doesn't cancel, a cigar lighter that doesn't work, a horn that blows weak, wipers that won't go completely down, a throttle cable that only opens the secondaries halfway, a right rear brake light socket that keeps popping out, a leaky windshield, a right rear tire with a slow leak, an odometer that stopped decades ago, no radio, no heater, no A/C, ad nauseam.
But the worst problem was the spark plug fouling. I was pulling the plugs and cleaning them every few days just to keep it running on all eight. For some reason I can't remember, I had been gapping them (ACCEL 762s) with an 0.035-inch gap. I finally tried swapping to some new MSD wires and gapping the plugs at 0.050 inch, and that seems to have fixed it. If it happens again, I'll try moving my base timing up to 16-18 degrees initial (from 12), and recurving the HEI distributor for the same 37 degrees total. When I asked Barry Grant the possible cause for the fouling (explaining how I'd already set the idle mixture to spec, tried different power valves, and experimented with primary jetting to no effect), he suggested that I use more initial timing to keep it clean.
And I love every minute of it. The process of constant tinkering is just as fun as driving it. Something is learned with every problem, and every fix. I doubt I'll ever get finished with the Chevelle, and I hope I never do. The joy of driving and working on my dream car is hard to express. All I can say is that if you've got one, then drive the snot out of it! If you don't, start by dreaming, then set out to build it!
Got Something to Say? I want to hear from you.Drop me an email at john.hunkins@sourceinterlink.com.