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| That'd be my dad, me and my Aunt Grace at Mission BC |
I bought this car when I was fifteen years old, in 1975. I had some money saved up from chores and neighborhood lawn mowing, and my grandmother kicked in some birthday cash. I paid two hundred bucks for a rolling shell of a car, with a non running small block engine.
The guy who owned it previously had been killed in a car accident while street racing. He was barreling down a quiet rural road, in a race with another car, when a lady pulled out of her driveway. With few options, Larry steered into the trees on the left hand side of the road. With no seat belt, and in a piece of crap car, in a high speed crash...he did not survive.The 57 wagon was a project car that he was working on at the time of his death. I bought the car from his parents some time after the crash. Even at that point, I remember it as an awkward moment in their driveway, the look on the mom and dad's faces. They looked lost, defeated and profoundly sad.
There was another weird connection that I had forgotten about. The tow truck driver, that dragged my new purchase home, would go on to be killed in the crash of a gorgeous 55 Chevy wagon/straight axle street car.
There seemed to be a lot of automotive carnage back then.
Starting at fifteen years old, I started to work summers and weekends at Jackson's Bros Logging in Wilson Creek. I was the mechanics/welders helper and chief floor sweeper. This paid union chokermans rate, and for a young guy with a project car, it was a great source of badly needed cash. I bought several of Petersens Automotive books on small block Chevy engines and a few on body work techniques. I studied these feverishly to try and get a handle on what I needed to do. I also gulped down the latest and greatest from the hot rod magazines, Car Craft and Hot Rodder.
Several people and events lined up in my favor. My mechanic friends at work helped me to unlock some of technical puzzles. My high school auto mechanics teacher, Mr Ayles was an ex-General Motors instructor, so he was a great resource. Two of my schoolmates had a wonderful collection of engines and still boxed hi-performance parts, and they needed money more than they needed the parts. So I ended up with a partially built 327 and a box full of cam kits, aluminum intake manifold, Hooker headers and some reasonable heads.
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| Feeding my thirst for speed and power...Seattle Raceway "64 Funny Cars" event...mid 1970's...the Holy Grail of noise and acceleration ...Hmmm....breathe those nitro-methane and ethanol fumes in |
By some miracle and a lot of cursing and swearing, I managed to swap camshafts and other miscellaneous parts into the 327 block. I did this right in the driveway of my parents house. I kept the engine on a home made stand and covered it in oily rags and then a tarp when I wasn't working on it. I paid through the nose for other parts by shopping at the local auto parts store and selecting items from their "special" catalog. Things like flex fans, yellow Accell spark plug wires and fancy chrome air cleaners were like gold.
The idea for the front spoiler came when I had removed the front bumper assembly to chase some rust away with brazing and Bondo. When the front end sat there without all the heavy chrome and steel hanging on it, I decided to go for the custom look. Being heavily influenced by drag racing ( going to Seattle International Speedway as a spectator since I was fourteen years old ) having a lighter front end was a good thing.
I made the curved fender extensions in metal work class and then riveted and brazed them on. A piece of mild steel, about 3/4 by 3/16 spanned the two extensions. Then, not having a lot of custom body work experience ( OK ...none ) I covered the framework in masking tape several layers deep. Over this, I laid several layers of fiberglas cloth and matting....over that, went the filler to cover up the imperfections. All in all, it looked pretty cool...I don't recall ever seeing a similar treatment on a "5 6 7" car.
I built the hood bulge myself in a similar "glass over frame" style...this was in anticipation of a high rise manifold and two fours set-up that never happened.
The original car had full glass windows all around. I loved the sedan delivery look, so I cooked up a plan to achieve that. I removed the rear side glass and used them to make sheet aluminum copies. These got riveted and glued into place. And Shazaam! the sedan delivery look.
The entire brake system was replaced over the period of about two years. Every steel and rubber brake fluid line, master cylinder, shoes and drums, springs and retainers...all new.
While the car was getting built, my friends and I would get beers ( I have no idea where they came from ) and sit in the car that was on jack-stands. I had installed a Craig PowerPlay cassette deck, amp and Jensen Triax speakers...all the hot stuff of the day. We would listen to Steppenwolf, Nazareth and the Rolling Stones, drink beer and make brave plans for our lives. On occasion, I would start the open headered, cammed and over-carbed 327, right there in the driveway...up on the jack-stands....and just listen to the rumble/crackle and pop of the un-muffled engine. And you know, this was right outside the kitchen window and no one said a thing...my dad didn't freak out and the neighbors never complained
I feel like I put about 22 million cans of Bondo on that thing over the length of the project. I would lay a coat on, and then sand and grind the whole works off. I was trying to get the "perfect' finish...and that wasn't going to happen because I didn't know what the fuck I was doing. I had all the right tools and all the books...but no obvious talent for being a autobody man.
I re-did all the wiring myself...all the engine, gauges and lights. I melted the the whole system at least 3 times in the process.
The hood flew off on a test run one day. I removed all the original hood latch gear, and just used hood pins instead. I left the pins out on this day...because it wasn't meant to be a high speed run. But...the engine tuning worked out so well that it became necessary to do a hard launch and then hit second gear real quick ( 4 spd manual trans ) this violent lurch spit the hood right off and into the ditch. As me and my buddy were trying to fit the hood back onto the idling, open header car...the cops drove by. We were screwed in so many ways, I couldn't even count them.The two policeman drove by... staring out of their patrol car and never even slowed down. I have no clue what they thought we were doing, but whatever it was didn't interest them. ( they would make up for that day in later years )
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| My 57 wagon behind my parents 56 4-door that became mine a few years later for a thousand bucks....notice the funky fit of the hood in this photo after it got launched into a ditch. |
The 57 wagon project lasted for three years, from fifteen to eighteen years of age. All told I had about 3500 to 4000 bucks into it...including the 22 million cans of Bondo. When I was eighteen and out in the world working, I bought a 68 big block/4 speed Roadrunner. The 57 project fell out of favor when the big black "Nasty" came home.
I tried to sell the 57, but no decent offers came in. One weekend, I made the decision to abandon the wagon all together. I removed all the running gear and hi-perf parts, the stereo, electric fuel pump, doors, front glass,gauges...everything. I had the remaining body towed to the dump on dollies. When it got to the dump, I set about kicking the crap out of it, leaving no panel un-dented.
My teenage thinking was this...if they weren't going to buy it from me...then they bloody well aren't going to get it for free at the dump.
The engine got sold and went into bitchin' little Chevy II, the trans and hi-perf clutch went into a nice 68 Camaro, the wheels and tires went on a 57 two door coupe.
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