426 Hemi in a '55 Chevy! Roadkill Episode 8

They are in Klamath Falls, Oregon. I woke up this morning, got pulled over by the police, and now I'm waiting for Fryburger to respond to some emails, because it's a big thing on the Internet, and hopefully today we're heading to Lincoln City. Then you'll notice the car is running and we've been getting about six and a half miles per gallon so far on this trip. That doesn't help our cause, I can't turn off the car now, it's customary. Alright, here we go, idle. Come on honey, let's go. Well, the throttles have been pulled back all the way and it doesn't want to stop.

Running and won't turn off. I'm going to have to reach in and disconnect the power cord from the distributor. We just have to do that wherever we go now. Very good, we have a full tank of gasoline and a radiator with water. That's amazing. Less than 300 miles to go and it's still daylight, you're supposed to turn in 39. Well, where was that? Back there, at that sign that says, at 39. No. Okay, let's go around again. Fantastic handling by Mike Finnigan. I told you what to do, but you didn't do it. You know I can't remember anything for more than three seconds.

I have the attention span of a mosquito. We were three-tenths of a mile from the turnoff when I gave you the directions. I know I told you. Mosquito. It's really cool to be here in Oregon instead of in the desert where we normally do our Roadkills. Right now, we're heading northeast across the state and headed toward Lincoln City, which is right on the ocean. Doesn't sound happy, pour some oil. Yesterday we got within 60 miles of Lincoln City, stopped for the night and when we parked the Suburban, it was running great. This morning, we started it up, headed over to Jim Meyer Racing, and the engine started chugging very loudly.

So we stopped and checked the oil, and there was no oil there. I don't know where the oil went. But the camshaft and lifters are not happy with our serious lack of lubrication, so Freiburger is putting in a little more and now we hope we don't flatten the cam loads before we reach our destination. Why was it perfectly fine last night when we stopped? That's what I do not understand. Maybe the guys don't like your review of the Lamborghini that ran out of oil last night. Maybe guys who don't like your goatee. Maybe. That could happen.

We are only 15 miles away. We are so close. Are you excited? Dude, I'm about to pee myself. Please don't do it. Truly, the best thing about this project is that at the end of today it will look like a car. It's not going to rot forever, hoping it's okay. Ask me how close we are. How close are we? One point eight miles from paradise. Let's stop for breakfast, I'm hungry. I'll push you out the car door and keep driving. Jim Meyer Racing is like a gearhead's paradise. Right near the trendy tourist area of ​​Lincoln City, you have this great store hidden in the woods.

He's been here 25 years doing interesting things for gearheads. They've got old motocross bikes, weird old hot rods, but the main thing they do here is make complete rolling chassis that you can just throw under your car. I've heard about this place forever and seen their ads and stuff, but it's always cool to show up and find out it's a real place with real hot rodders. The better you can get the car to start with, of course, the better it will be built and the less expensive it will be. Even with the dents on the side panel as is, it won't take much to put this back together.

We have, I don't know, 24 hours left before we hit the road. So we should probably get to work and fix this. Yes, we will put a plan in place here. I've got five guys here today, so I don't think we'll have any problems making this work. Man, that's good. Wow, that's too good for you. I really don't deserve this. It's better than I imagined. I mean, I've been drooling over such a big photo on the website for a year now. Much better in person. Amazing welds, construction is really nice. These guys don't waste time. We're going to take the chassis out and back the trailer all the way in and try to put it right on the lift.

So far, it seems to be happening very quickly. We lowered the dolly body on the lift and now what we're doing is trying to center it over the chassis and look at what's going to happen with the rear tire mount so we can cut the side panels. I've been looking forward to going to the home of Jim Meyer Racing for a long time because these guys know what they're doing. They've been building hot rods forever. Just being surrounded by grinders, washing machines, and plasma cutters makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside. It's fantastic to be here.

On a traditional gasser style car, the rear panels of a '55 Chevy must be radius cut to fit the 30 inch slick tires. And then they stick out just a hair, which is part of the reason the cut is so high. So when you're driving down the road, if you hit a bump and the suspension compresses, the tire has room to rise without damaging the body. That is awesome. I love the sidewall of that tire. It looks like a truck tire. Yes. We already cut that side, we made a template, now we will transfer it to this side, we will cut this side.

We really wanted to simulate the

hemi

and transmission in the chassis, but we ran into a couple of issues that prevented that. So here we're going to simulate it so that it sticks to the car on the way home in the trailer. We are very close. Break the intake manifold. Yes. This is the key to the look of this car. I've had this Enderle mechanical fuel injection setup on my shelf forever and when I knew we were going to build the car, I knew I had to give it to Finnegan. This seems correct. I didn't buy socks this year.

Wow! The car turned out exactly as I had always imagined. It's cool that we took just a bare body on a trailer and showed up here, put it on a chassis, threw a

hemi

in it, and made it look like a complete radical gaser in a matter of hours. Maybe I'll sleep in the car tonight. See you on the race track. This is the best day at work ever. Once again. Actually this could be so, I agree with you. The ultimate goal of this build is to have an awesome gasser that runs low tens and hopefully does wheelies.

I want the car to look a lot like the '55 Chevy Two Lane Blacktop, except my car will have a hemi, just to piss off the Chevy guys. This is going to motivate us. We have to do this, and when we do, we guarantee it will be the definitive Roadkill

episode

. We've had a lot of fun, but this might be the most fun Roadkill yet simply because it was such a great ride. I love the Macho Grande and we made an amazing car. A lot of success, very few breakdowns that were obstacles, so yes. We're pretty sure it's going to be a lot worse and more violent in the next

episode

of Roadkill.

Word. I froze my balls off in this parking lot. Maybe you can find them and put them back on. I know, right? You make the speech, do it, spit it out. Hey, you're doing great, actually. No, be funny. You are doing very well. I'm number two. Are you still rolling? Did we fail completely again? Mount the front tires on the wheels, cut the firewall and screw the body. I don't know, because I won't be there. Are you going to leave early and leave early? I was wondering why that didn't fit well. Look, now you have lice.

Yes. Merry Christmas. Wait, wait, wait, friend. Be careful, okay?