Inertia Sport Home

This was my first car.

1966 Pontiac GTO post coupe; 389, 4-speed, 4.11 geared 10 bolt diff.

To say it was rusty would be a gross understatement.  Even the patch panels the previous owner installed were rotted out.  No trunk, no floors in the passenger compartment, body mount bushings rotted, big dent on a fender, leaks through windows, bald tires, rotted exhaust, you name it.  It was a basket case.  Quite a shame, since ‘66 post coupes were made in very small numbers. Manual everything. Air conditioning? HA, good one.  The steering wheel looked like it belonged in a truck.  The brakes consisted of 4 drums and a master cylinder with a single cylinder. However, to a 15 year old kid, around $700-ish seemed like a heck of a deal.  Pure visceral vehicular experience.  Today’s cars can’t touch the personality this car possessed.

The car was driveable, so my father and I drove the hour home from where it was purchased.  I can still see the excitement in his eyes as he rowed through the gears (he was a smooth stick driver as I can to learn, probably one of the best coaches for someone learning to drive a manual).  He hadn’t been in a muscle car since the 60’s.  Since the exhaust was rotted out, it was loud, but the 389 V8 put out such a sexy sound to my juvenile ears it didn’t matter.

We got it home and began tearing it apart.  Engine and drivetrain were removed, and the interior was stripped.  Rust was everywhere.  The trunk and footwells were rotted through, a few body bushings were gone, but the frame and most of the suspension were in great shape.  The engine and transmission were in good shape, but we wanted to rebuild the engine anyway (learning experience;father son bonding thing).  This would be my first engine rebuild.  I made plenty of mistakes, learned quite a bit, and my experience led to far more successful engines later on.

This is the interior during some point of reassembly, replete with the ubiquitous tiger tail and vintage Sun tachometer (came with the car).

I was in my early teens, so money was tighter than a drum.  I couldn’t afford a carpet, so after we added new floors with riveted aluminum panels, I covered everything with undercoating.  Totally ghetto, but minimum wage at the time was around $3 an hour at my part time jobs, and insurance cost over a grand a year.

The engine rebuild was quite an experience.  Neither my father nor me had any knowledge of Pontiac engines (Dad was a Chevy man), so we dug into the engine with good intentions but not enough information. We later educated ourselves to the point that I could recite part numbers for various Pontiac OEM engine and drivetrain parts.

The engine was stock at the time we tore it down.  We just re-ringed the pistons and replaced the bearings.  Learned how to check ring gap and use Plastigage.  I also learned the right and wrong way to hone the cylinders.  We installed a mild hydraulic flat tappet cam.  We thought we’d go “high speed” and install a set of higher ratio rocker arms, so we had the pushrod holes bored out.  Little did we know that the stock 389 head pushrod holes were the guides for the pushrods.  So we had to find guideplates and have the rocker stud holes drilled and tapped for screw in studs.  Then I learned that soft pushrods riding up and down on hardened guideplates was a quick way to wear out the pushrods.  I should have left the heads alone. Ah, live and learn.

We found an old Pontiac Tri Power intake set up at a swap meet, rebuilt the carbs, painted the cast iron intake (uber heavy), and installed a cheapo set of 3 tube headers.  My father had experience with exploding clutches from his drag days of the 1950s and 60s, so we found a used scattershield that had obvious scars from high rpm shifts and detonating cast iron flywheels.  The scattershield must have weighed a hundred pounds.  We installed a Borg&Beck pressure plate and disk on the stock original flywheel.  We found a 10 bolt rear with 4.11s, but the differential was not a positraction unit.  Then a friend of a friend found us some old Pontiac star wheels and some cheap tires.  I had no money left for the exhaust, so coffee cans and wire hangers kept the rusted mess intact for a while.

The learning curve was great, but we got it running and drove it around the block a few times to break in the engine.

I eventually made it to a drag strip for a street car test and tune, and began my years of drag racing.  The car ran low 15’s, with a high 14-ish second quarter mile pass after learning how to drive.

The tri power had an awesome sound when the outboard 2 carbs mechanically opened, but the intake was incredibly heavy and probably didn’t flow as well as an aftermarket aluminum unit.

I eventually replaced the tri power (sold it to a guy running a 65 Goat that he was restoring) with an old Weiand dual plane intake the previous owner gave us and a Holley 750 vacuum secondary carb.

The car was quicker, but based on the 1/4 mile speeds, it wasn’t as fast as the tri power.

I’m sure I tinkered with the carb jetting and ignition timing. Probably read every Hot Rod and Car Craft magazine from the previous 10 years to learn how to read plugs and adjust things.  The car never saw a dyno.  IIRC, going to a dyno was a “race car” thing that mere street vehicles like mine didn’t do.  That, and I didn’t have the money for such a thing.

I thought I was going to keep the car, restore it, and drive it forever.  I bought a few reproduction badges and some odds and ends, but I eventually realized that it was going to cost thousands to bring the car up to any kind of presentable standard.  I sold it after a couple years and bought my second car, a 1967 Firebird; a car with similar rust problems, but with a 455 torque monster engine.

The Goat was 20 years old at the time we bought it. Rust had consumed quite a bit of it, interior bits needed replacement and/or work, and even the patch panels had rusted. In comparison, cars that are 20 years old today have far less rust issues, and interiors seem to maintain longer. I remember reading an article about the near complete lack of rust preventative on vehicles during that era, and government standards required manufacturers to improve such qualities. Whether the government had interfered or not, I’m sure the standards would have improved since the US had to contend with the Japanese cars that were becoming more popular at the time.

The youth of today probably can’t comprehend how a 14 second street car was quick. Today’s technology has ushered in a level of relative low cost performance that would have been a wet dream back then. If someone had a 13 second street car, they were doing REALLY well. It seems many stock sporty vehicles are now consistent 13 second quarter cars, and V8 vehicles are either running 12s or there’s something wrong with them or their drivers. The 1967 GTO a friend and I built ran consistent low 12s on the quarter while it was still street driven, and we thought it was a beast, yet we still had to contend with manual steering, manual brakes, no AC, manual doors, etc.

Pontiac did not have a large aftermarket following at the time. There were no aftermarket aluminum heads, few intakes, and few shortblock parts. What was available was typically very expensive, beyond the reach of the average hot rodder. The hottest heads for a Poncho engine were Ram Air IV; hottest intakes were either the Edelbrock Torker or Warrior. If you wanted something better than the cast connecting rods typically found in Pontiac engines, you’re best bet were early factory forged Pontiac rods; 1973/74 Super Duty rods may have been available, but they were extremely expensive. I think that’s what attracted me to Pontiac. Chevy, Ford and Chrysler had enormous aftermarket support. I rather enjoyed building an underdog with factory parts and having people constantly ask “how did you get a Pontiac to run that quick?”(came later with the 67 GTO bracket racer we had). At least large displacement engine blocks were still available in the junk yards. I pulled plenty of 400 and 455 engine blocks from salvage yards at the time. I’m sure they are a commodity these days.

More to come….