Antique & Classic Cars Blog
Sweet 1965 in for an Engine Swap
Monday, December 17th, 2007We invited readers to submit photos of your classics, plus whatever details you wish to provide. Brent Lundquist with Minnesota Rolling Thunder Car Club stepped forward with his in-the-works ‘65 Chevy Chevelle.
Here are some comments from Brent:
“I’m glad to see the big local paper dedicating a section to this great hobby!… My current project is a 1965 Chevelle 300 Deluxe Post in beautiful grey primmer. It currently sports a very sluggish and not so clean inline 6 cylinder with a manual 3 speed on the tree.”
Now that’s a classic engine-swap candidate. The Chevelle has nice lines and lots of potential, but an inline six offers neither great performance nor exceptional economy by modern standards, and a “three-on-the-tree”–that is a steering-column shifter–is a long way from sporty.
“Plans for this winter are to replace the tired old inline 6 with a very healthy 489 (.30 over 454 with a 4.25″ stroke crank) a built TH350 automatic transmission and a ford 9″ rear end with 4.11 gears. The 489 and TH350 were taken form a past project and are ready and waiting in the garage for their new residence. And of course there’s plenty of interior work yet to do as well as suspension. I plan to have all this done and have it on the road by April 1st (with help from some good friends of course). Paint and body will have to wait till next year–horsepower first right? Anyway thanks for the great automotive pit stop on the web; it really is nice to have another local outlet to the classic automobile.”
Thanks to you, Brent, for writing in and sharing a cool project. Any glamour hidden by primer is made up for in spades by that awesome lift. Beats scooting around on cold concrete, which is how work gets done on the underside of my car!
–Motormouth
6 Responses to "Sweet 1965 in for an Engine Swap"
Looks like it’s going to be a nice car when completed. (Are they ever really “completed?” I don’t think so!)
I remember a time when any sedan was a “parts car” because people wouldn’t mess with anything but a hard top. It’s nice to see tudor, even fourdoor sedans given the “treatment” these days.
Personally, my preferece has always been sticks, but I’ve ridden in some auto cars that are pretty stout. I just prefer to row my own boat.
Yeah I’m a stickshift agitator too, but lots of drive-with-one-hand folks out there.
What a great era when people are realizing the cool lines all the cars from the ’60s have. If I won the lottery I could happily spend the rest of my days pulling cars from 1960-1972 out of junkyards and restoring them one by one, piece by piece.
Hope some other folks step up with their winter project cars to keep us all psyched.
Dave,
Was thumbing through Auto Week today, looking at some modern cars–which don’t interest me as much as classics–too overrefined, too much machine, calculation, modulation–not enough driver…and shifting in particular came to mind….
I wonder if part of the preference is simple nature versus nurture–more habit than active decisionmaking. Throughout my 43 years, my family has had one automatic transmission car, a 1974 Plymouth Satellite. Every other car that my mother, father, sister, brother, wife, brothers-in-law have had during that time has been a stick. Here’s the list:
‘64(?) Peugeut 404: 4 speed
‘65 Plymouth Fury II: 3 on the column
‘68 VW Squareback: 4 speed
‘71 MG Midget: 4 speed
‘72 Triumph TR6: 4 speed
‘73 VW Beetle: 4 speed
‘74 Plymouth Satellite: automatic
‘77 VW Scirocco: 4 speed
‘79 VW Rabbit: 4 speed
‘79 Toyota Corolla: 5 speed
‘83 Toyota Camry: 5 speed
‘84(?) Honda Accord: 5 speed
‘84(?) VW Golf: 5 speed
‘85 Toyota Tercel: 5 speed
‘85 VW GTi: 5 speed
‘93 Toyota Camry: 5 speed
‘94 Dodge Dakota: 5 speed
‘96 VW Golf: 5 speed
‘00(?) Mazda Protege: 5 speed
There’s 4 other brothers-in-law vehicles in there, a Datsun, two Renaults and a Subaru, but the years escape me, all stickshift.
Funny enough, I put my formative driving miles on that ‘74 Satellite, whose column-shift auto trans proved very conducive to keeping my girlfriend close by. Yep, the auto trans has a place in my heart too. Heh.
Some similarities; my family and I had the Squarebacks, Bugs, and Rabbits too. I prefer to row my own gears too but in the case of trucks used for pulling I kind of like the a/t better. Plus, the newer a/ts are just as good as the m/ts for fuel economy.
Hey Sweet 65,
You may want to concider a early 80’s 700R4 for a trany. With 4.11 gears that big motor will be turning some high rpm’s at 70 mph. That gets old if going on long trips. I say early 80’s because with the first 700R4’s you don’t need a computer to lockup the T.C. you can put a toggle switch in the system and feed power to the lockup solenoid and lock or unlock the T.C. at will. If you forget to unlock the T.C. when you come to a stop the early 700R4’s have a valve in the valve body to unlock the T.C. for you so you don’t stall the engine at stop signs but, it will lockup again as soon as it shifts out of first gear. I put one of these in a 64 C-20 Chevy PU with 4.57 gears, with the overdrive I end up with a 3.43 ratio. About 2300 rpm at 65 mph. The 283 likes it.
Nice suggestion and some cool tranny details for readers to think about. Thanks for posting it.
Please leave a comment
MotorMouth Kris Palmer, freelance auto writer and editor, blogs about vintage cars, the collectible auto scene and just about anything else that goes vroom.
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