Back in 2001, I picked up a 1964 Fairlane with a 170 inline 6 and a 3 speed. The owner was getting rid of it, and the junkyard towtruck was on its way. A friend started talking to the guy and found out that the junkyard had offered him $100, so he offered him $125, bought the car, and pushed it into his garage. He then sold it to me for the same price. The plan at the time was to put in a 302, C4 trans, fix it up a bit, and use it for a daily driver. Plans changed a bit as I discovered that repair parts were readily available, probably due to a decent sized market for Thunderbolt clones. The plan then became to replace the floor with patch panels rather than sheet metal, build the 302 a little better than stock, put in a 5 speed overdrive manual, install disc brakes on the front and a dual resivoir master cylinder, and get a posi for the rear end.
Work started right away. I rebuilt a 302 as follows:
- Bored .30 over
- New crankshaft
- Windsor Jr heads
- A mild cam (have to find the spec card)
- Aluminum Edlebrock intake
- Holley 4 barrel carb (I can't recall if it was 480 or 600 cfm)
- Hooker headers
I then started on the front end. The radiator core support was kind of rotten, so I stripped the entire front end, and patched that up. Since the engine bay was empty, I cut the shock towers down with a kit from Crites, maybe I'll stcik a 429 in there one day. Got a pair of granada spindles, and installed those, as well as new disc brake rotors. The lower control arms looked a little shabby, so I boxed those in, and reinforced the top with some 1/4" flat stock so I could install a 1" sway bar without it tearing out. In the past 15 years, I know that someone has started making adapters for disc calipers that use the original spindles to avoid the issue of bump steer, I'm not sure I kept the original spindles or not though. Regardless, I'd rather put up with bump steer and have modern brakes so I'll see how it works out.
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At this point, work came to a stop as money was a bit tight, so the car went into storage for a bit. Then we had a house fire, followed by unexpected twin girls, followed by a stint coaching football and baseball with my sons that lasted 10 years. Still left to do is the floor, the rear frame rails are pretty bad, the rear suspension, a T5 trans, a posi, the interior, patching the rear quarters and front fenders, some other dings and dents, paint, and put it all back together. have a few more projects on the to-do list that I need to take care of, but hopefully I'll be able to start back on it in the near future.