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This is my 1970 Chevy El Camino SS 396 g-Machine. g-Machine is a term used to describe an older vehicle that has been modified to handle, brake, and perform better than it did when it left the factory. It has a mixture of original, higher performance original style replacement, and home fabricated parts. It even has some aftermarket parts that were designed to be used on a different vehicle. All carefully selected to improve acceleration, handling, braking, and visual appearance. The results have been phenomenal.

If you'd like to read about the car's history,
you can skip ahead by clicking HERE.

It is featured in the February 2007 issue of Chevy High Performance Magazine.

It was the March 2006 Feature car on Lateral-g.net.

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I built the engine in 2000. It's a big block 454 that's been bored and stroked to 496 cubic inches with a steel crank & forged pistons. The heads are stock unported GM Performance aluminum oval ports with 2.19" intake and 1.88" exhaust valves and 110cc chambers. Compression is a pump friendly 10:1.

The valve train consists of an Ultradyne 288/296F10 solid flat tappet cam, Comp Cams 3/8" pushrods, and Comp Cams Pro Magnum roller rockers. A double row timing chain hides behind an aluminum timing chain cover.

A multi-point fuel injection system keeps the cylinders fed via 42lb/hr injectors, a single plane high rise EFI manifold, 255lph fuel pump and an Aeromotive fuel pressure regulator. The ECU is a Holley Commander 950 Pro with wideband 02 sensor feedback. An MSD Digital E-Curve distributor, MSD Blaster 3 coil, MSD 8.5mm plug wires, and NGK spark plugs provide the fire. A CVR high torque mini starter gets the engine started. The headers are Dynomax Pro-Series Jet Hot coated with 2" primaries & 3.5" collectors.

Click HERE for a short video of it idling.

Cooling is handled by a Weiand high flow aluminum water pump, aluminum radiator, and twin Spal 1630cfm fans. The fans are controlled by the Holley Commander ECU with separate programmable on & off temp. settings.

To make sure everything was up to snuff prior to selling the car, I disassembled the engine and inspected it. I upgraded the rings to Sealed Power R-series plasma moly rings.

The heads received a valve job and new seals. The valves and guides were perfect.

Double checking my cam installation.

Brand new ARP heads studs. I also installed brand new ARP rocker arms studs.

Looks like an engine again.

The transmission I chose is a Tremec T56 6 speed, the version they put in Dodge Vipers. It was modified by D&D Performance to bolt up to early GM big or small block engines with a standard 4 speed bellhousing. D&D takes a brand new Viper T56 and does some internal modifications to add strength and durability and external modifications to adapt to GM vehicles.

You can see how much larger the T56 is than the Richmond 5 speed it replaced. It's also a lot heavier weighing in at a whopping 140lbs. The richmond was 100lbs and my original Muncie M21 4 speed is 70lbs!!

The T56 is about 5 inches longer than the Richmond and required some modifications to the crossmember. My original 4 speed crossmember is shown below and the spare crossmember I modified is on top. I had to trim the trans mount pad, flip it upside down and weld it back on so that it was 1" lower than stock. I also installed a brand new Lakewood SFI scattershield.

Since the driveshaft would have to be shortened about 5 inches to work with the T56, I decided to just buy a brand new shaft. This is a Denny's nitrous ready 3" steel shaft with 1350 u-joints.

The T56 has a 26 spline input shaft so a new clutch was needed. This is a Centerforce Dual Friction clutch.

The El Camino getting it's heartbeat back.

I fabricated this 3" mandrel bent, TIG welded, X-pipe exhaust system.

The mufflers are Dynomax Ultra-Flo 6" round welded. Switching from a Flowmaster American Thunder full 2.5" H-pipe exhaust system to this 3" X-pipe system gave me an additional 36 hp and 25 fl/lbs of toque at the rear wheels!

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The front suspension got new tubular lower A-arms from Global West. This arm is designed to be used with coil over springs and the taller "B" body spindles. It comes complete with correct balljoint and Del-A-Lum bushings.

These tubular upper A-arms from Pole Position Racing are fully adjustable and eliminate the need for shims to adjust caster and camber. All you have to do is loosen the lock nuts and turn the tubes.

This is the QA1 front coil over kit with their new double adjustable shocks. They have seperate adjustments for compression and rebound. The springs are 450lb progressive type. They're a little on the light side. A 650-750lb constant rate spring would be better considering how much weight is over the front end. Still, they work very well.

These are Impala fabricated steel asphalt spindles from Coleman Racing. They are normally found on IMCA oval track race cars. They use a bolt on billet aluminum steering arm. They're 1.5" taller than the stock spindle with about a 2" pin drop.

The billet aluminum hubs are also Impala spec. The wheel stud pattern is 5 x 5 so, in order to make these work, I had to have the standard Chevy 5 x 4.75 wheel stud pattern drilled in them. The snout is 3" diameter vs. 2.78" on the stock snout so I had to have the center bore on my wheels and disc brake rotor hats machined out to 3".

The stock outer tie rod ends had to be replaced by the chrome moly tie rod sleeves and rod ends. The 15/16" sway bar is factory original.

My El Camino came from the factory with manual steering. In 2000 I finally installed power steering but the box was old and worn out and leaked badly so I replaced it with a brand new AGR quick ratio unit.

I upgraded the rear suspension with Wolfe Race Craft spherical bearings in the axle housing, Edelbrock adjustable upper control arms, Wolfe Race Craft double adjustable lower control arms with rod ends, QA1 Stocker Star 12-way adjustable shocks, and O.P.G. 2" drop springs. The Air Lift air bags are for ride height adjustments only. They are deflated when road racing or drag racing.

This is the Wilwood 6 piston big brake kit for 93-97 "F" body cars (Camaro/Firebird). It has 13" drilled & slotted rotors, 6 piston billet aluminum calipers and a separate aluminum rotor hat. I chose this kit over the 68-72 "A" body kit because it didn't come with hubs which lowered the price and it also has better brake pads.

The rear brakes are also Wilwood. 4 piston forged billet dynalite calipers and 12" drilled & slotted rotors with integral parking brakes.

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This is Wilwood's new polished aluminum tandem chamber master cylinder.

I also added a hydraulic brake assist unit from Hydratech Braking Systems. It uses hydraulic pressure from the power steering pump. The braking performance is phenomenal!

In order to take advantage of all the suspension modifications, a good wheel & tire combination would be required. So, the 15 inch wheels and low performance BFG T/A radials I had on the car surely had to go. Deciding on a wheel and tire combination was probably the hardest decision I had to make. I knew I wanted 17" wheels. But finding a 17" wheel with the correct backspacing is not an easy task. Unless you want to be like everyone else and have American Racing Torque Thrust II's. They are very nice wheels but they are everywhere. I wanted something somewhat unique. I finally ran across these Corvette ZR1 polished replicas. They fit the bill perfectly.

They look great on the car, they're not too flashy, and they're actually a wheel that Chevrolet put on a production car. I've always liked the 5 spoke design. They're the widest wheel I could stuff into my stock wheel wells without modification. 17 x 9.5 front and 17 x 11 rear. And I got very lucky with the center caps. I had a set of SS wheel center cap inserts that fit perfectly in the center of the ZR1 wheel caps.

The tires I chose are Sumitomo HTRZ's, 275/40-17 for the front and 315/35-17 for the rear. Same size that came on the ZR1.

The interior is all original except for the carpet, steering wheel, custom leather racing seats, Simpson racing harnesses, and Autometer gauges. I replaced the original cushion grip steering wheel with the Grant wheel. Not only to preserve the original, but the Grant has a thicker grip and a smaller diameter. It has a much better feel.

A custom made center console is in the works.

New custom leather racing seats.

That's the original shifter bezel with the short handle of the Triax shifter poking through. The knob is a Hurst Classic White nob with the correct shift pattern on it.

As I mentioned above, I built this car to go first, then show. So what is the result of all this work? It puts 490 horsepower and 513 lb/ft of torque to the rear wheels.

Click here for an older video of the car on the dyno. This was in Oct. 2005 before I switched to EFI.

It runs solid 12.0x to 12.1x second 1/4 mile times at 117 to 118 mph. At the Sep 2006 Rock Falls Raceway Test Day, I set a new personal best 11.85 @ 118.3.

But where it really shines, believe it or not, is on the road course. In Sep 2005, I attended an open track day at B.I.R. I put over 110 track miles on it, hit 147 mph on the front straight, ran 2:05 lap times, and averaged 89-90 mph per lap on the 3.1 mile course.

Here are some links to in car videos of my El Camino in action on the road coarse.

Chasing a ZR-1 Corvette around the track.

In this one I'm passed by a brand new Ford GT and I try to keep up. He would later go off the track and sustain major damage. Ford GT Chase

In this one a race prepped '69 Corvette passes me and then a couple laps later ends up in the ditch. You can see it at the end of the video. Vette in ditch

Overtaking two C5 Corvettes
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I attended a NASA event on Memorial Day weekend, 5-27-06, held at B.I.R. in Brainerd, MN. I ran in the HPDE group. The three videos are from one session that I split into three parts.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

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Here are some pictures from my most recent open track day, Oct. 2, 2006 at B.I.R.

Several new personal bests were set:

Top Speed: 148.17 mph
Lateral-G: 1.17
Braking G: .86
Lap Time: 2:02:67

Click here for a short video of the 148 mph blast.

This is a continuation of the above video and running down a Lotus Elise.

Click here for a video of the 2:02 lap.

Click here for a short drive-by video.

The gauge panel video overlay was produced by exporting the data from my G2X data logger to a program called Trackvision.

See page 4 for more road course pics.

The car is also capable of making long cross country trips. My wife and I participated in the 2004 Hot Rod Power Tour. We drove all the way to Arlington, TX and did the long haul from Arlington, TX to Green Bay, WI.

Nearly 3000 miles round trip! We drove the whole way. NO TRAILERING! The El Camino performed flawlessly. I also drove a portion of the 2005 Power Tour from Milwaukee, WI to Nashville, TN. I stayed in Nashville to participate in the annual A.C.E.S. car show called Chevellabration where I won a top three award in the modified El Camino class.

This was taken at the Nashville stop on the 2005 Hot Rod Power Tour. Getting a little roudy leaving the Gaylord Opryland resort.

Parked under the Dynomax display at the 2005 Car Craft Summer Nationals in St. Paul, MN.