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I have a project car with a chevette front end. I would like to drop a V8 in it but am being told that the chevette front end will not handle the weight. If this is true, does anyone know of an upgrade kit for the front end? Any help or info would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Hey 70mopar.
ur right boredom makes a person do strange things. Not sure how many pics of the car i have. Always bulit and wished i had taken pics after kinda guy. The car was built as a joke but ran very well. I still have the car although it has a sbc with a 142 cid blower in it now. I do however have a video of the car running a 12 second pass on my wife's website when it had the 396 in it, you can even hear the announcer say its et and mph(u gotta listen though).Not to mention u can hear the car shortshift into high gear b4 the 60 foot mark and in the video i was waiting for my spool to show up so the car has an open rearend .www.krystalpineo.com/vette.htmlis the site .If u really want to see pics of it with the big block i might be able to dig them up. Small block pics would be fairly easy to find.
Hi mombofan1
You ask alot of good questions the main one being why? lol I don't blame you Chevettes are not much of a car compared to lots of others and you are right motor swaps are tough sometimes. If this car were made a street car it would need lots more money to make it right but it was just a fun thing I decided to do. The motor was actually built for my 82 trans am that was like new but after 3 years of it overheating and killing starters from compression and heat never ending upgrades and never impressive results in the 1/4 we decided that motor wasn't a street motor. So drag car here we go. Had lots of parts and time so I sat back and thought whats light cheap and rearwheel drive. Up in Nova Scotia where i live salt in the winter eats everything so any cool cars were going to be pricy. The only anwser that was easy to live with was chevette. Finding one in fairly good shape and 2 door took me a day to find and drag home. The car was built in about a month with help from friends and parts from everwhere. I bet if you add up what was spent it came in closer to 1500 bucks Canadian(if you don't count parts that i already had).The best part about the car was when you run a fast car with it like a corvette or mustang or camaro they always thought they had an easy run LOL most were 13 second cars if they were lucky. But the main reason to do something stupid like this was to be different and have fun. The first weelend it was run it ran 12.90 at 121 mph and was the most looked at car at the track. And it was a 100 dollar beater parked next to 50 thousand dollar cars sometimes i had to fight my way back to it to get in. All n all it was a fun car to build and race went straight had a blast with it. Is building a chevette for everybody? I hope not or Im going to have to build a geo or something.
the chevette project ya mentioned by hot rod magazine is called the bad seed.. this car did 11 second quarter miles with a stock 500 cubic inch caddy motor in it ...pretty insane...[8D]
Hey why do you want to weigh it down with an ironblock? I have a 76 chevette and a 4.6 northstar v8 from a sts 300hp and a adapter kit to a 700r4 this i think would be the way to go or even a 3.8 series II would be enough with 200hp.
The famous Pro Mod racer Jim Oddy had yrs ago a blown B.B.C. Chevette.Being it is a short wheel base car,it was hard to handle at the top end and he ended up crashing at Lancaster Speedway totally destroying the car.Surely it was only a Chevette body hung off a tube frame.The crash was the last straw for his wife at that time and they split up because of it.
I built a Chevette using a Bowtie Bush Grand National Chevy common forged crank V6 4.3 with aluminum heads.I bought this bare block at auction from Hendrick racing once N.A.C.A.R. stop using the V6's in Bush Grand National classes.I used a Monza 350 tranny and torque arm style rearend which was a imitating 3 link traction device.I ran the car in a 10.90 class and it was amazingly consistent.I ran it on a throttle stop and without the stop would run in the low "tens".But make no mistake about it,this was a race car and never intended to be used on the street.
RE: A 350
