Torque and Chrome

July 22 2005 Bluebelle is kind of a rusto rod An original

Summary: July 22 2005 Bluebelle is kind of a rusto rod An original Florida car with only 41 000 miles when we got her way back in 1986 she still has a solid original body despite 19 winters of outside storage under Western New York snowbanks Paint is a 10 year old coat of blue tinted Kondar primer over the original Marina Blue The old girl is still running her original 283 and powerglide with a total of 105 000 miles about 35 000 on pro 060 over rebuild of the engine Original 3 08 rear is a little lame but the engine is real strong and performance is pretty good Recent improvements include Edelbrock Performer intake and 600 CFM carb Carter Hi Perf Fuel Pump K N Stainless Air Cleaner and Summit Braided Lines Running a Pertronix module in Accel blueprinted distributor Autolite custom wires that were a real nice fit and Bosch platinum plugs right now Compression is pretty high with unleaded gas and it will ping if I bump spark up to the point where it should be for maximum performance Gas milage looks like better than 17 mpg on first full tank so far better than with the stock intake and 2 barrel Also new last year are the Wheel Vintiques 15 by 7 4 5 inch b s Chrome Corvette Rally wheels and Dunlop 195 60s on front Goodyear 205 60s on rear Right now I have a set of original Chevy derby caps on the wheels but I have a set of the Wheel Vintiques 56 Chevy style caps on order these will look like the original 55 center caps I have on my 55 Chevy 210 2 door Interior is all original except Custom Autosound AM FM cassette and S W Oil Pressure and Water Temp gauges The cloth upholstery is slowly disintegrating and door panel cardboard is going bad but the carpet is like new A good deal of space under the dash is taken up by the Frigidaire Dealer installed A C unit the compressor clutch froze up on me several years ago but I am still dragging around about 250 of A C hardware even though it doesn t work The cost of freon alone is prohibitive to getting the system back in running order but it looks impressive The suspension is all new over the past 10 years or so with new front springs from National Nostalgic Nova new 5 leaf rear springs and Gabriel gas shocks on all four corners The front springs had the wrong twist on them NNN s vendor screwed up and they had a whole shelf full of these so I had part of a coil cut off When I broke one of the original mono leafs a few years ago I opted to replace them with 5 leaf springs The net result of the lowered ride height in front and stronger than original springs in the back is about a 2 inch rake in her stance with which I am not entirely happy The problem comes in with the strong 292 inch engine which now spins the tires with minor provocation any attempt to jack it up with the PG s big torque multiplication results in seemingly endless quantities of tire smoke I m running the original rams horn exhaust manifolds with custom bent 2 1 4 inch duals and turbo mufflers The stainless exhaust tips came from JC Whitney and were a great deal If you look closely you can see that I have painted every other alternate rectangles on the trunk lid diecast trim plate black white it looks pretty cool I wonder why nobody else has done this I bought a Nova SS emblem for the grille and put a pink pinstripe in the center The pinstripe matches the one on the aluminum body side moldings that I painted dark blue matte color to contrast with the light blue primer The beach towels on the front seat cover up a multitude of splits and tears in the original fabric you can see the back seat is really nice These are seats from another 67 Nova 4 door Bluebelle s original seats were re upholstered once already with after market cloth and that has worn out now too The original seats are standing by for a second re upholstery job July 22 2005 Bluebelle is kind of a rusto rod An original Florida car with only 41 000 miles when we got her way back in 1986 she still has a solid original body despite 19 winters of outside storage under Western New York snowbanks Paint is a 10 year old coat of blue tinted Kondar primer over the original Marina Blue The old girl is still running her original 283 and powerglide with a total of 105 000 miles about 35 000 on pro 060 over rebuild of the engine Original 3 08 rear is a little lame but the engine is real strong and performance is pretty good Recent improvements include Edelbrock Performer intake and 600 CFM carb Carter Hi Perf Fuel Pump K N Stainless Air Cleaner and Summit Braided Lines Running a Pertronix module in Accel blueprinted distributor Autolite custom wires that were a real nice fit and Bosch platinum plugs right now Compression is pretty high with unleaded gas and it will ping if I bump spark up to the point where it should be for maximum performance Gas milage looks like better than 17 mpg on first full tank so far better than with the stock intake and 2 barrel Also new last year are the Wheel Vintiques 15 by 7 4 5 inch b s Chrome Corvette Rally wheels and Dunlop 195 60s on front Goodyear 205 60s on rear Right now I have a set of original Chevy derby caps on the wheels but I have a set of the Wheel Vintiques 56 Chevy style caps on order these will look like the original 55 center caps I have on my 55 Chevy 210 2 door Interior is all original except Custom Autosound AM FM cassette and S W Oil Pressure and Water Temp gauges The cloth upholstery is slowly disintegrating and door panel cardboard is going bad but the carpet is like new A good deal of space under the dash is taken up by the Frigidaire Dealer installed A C unit the compressor clutch froze up on me several years ago but I am still dragging around about 250 of A C hardware even though it doesn t work The cost of freon alone is prohibitive to getting the system back in running order but it looks impressive The suspension is all new over the past 10 years or so with new front springs from National Nostalgic Nova new 5 leaf rear springs and Gabriel gas shocks on all four corners The front springs had the wrong twist on them NNN s vendor screwed up and they had a whole shelf full of these so I had part of a coil cut off When I broke one of the original mono leafs a few years ago I opted to replace them with 5 leaf springs The net result of the lowered ride height in front and stronger than original springs in the back is about a 2 inch rake in her stance with which I am not entirely happy The problem comes in with the strong 292 inch engine which now spins the tires with minor provocation any attempt to jack it up with the PG s big torque multiplication results in seemingly endless quantities of tire smoke I m running the original rams horn exhaust manifolds with custom bent 2 1 4 inch duals and turbo mufflers The stainless exhaust tips came from JC Whitney and were a great deal If you look closely you can see that I have painted every other alternate rectangles on the trunk lid diecast trim plate black white it looks pretty cool I wonder why nobody else has done this I bought a Nova SS emblem for the grille and put a pink pinstripe in the center The pinstripe matches the one on the aluminum body side moldings that I painted dark blue matte color to contrast with the light blue primer The beach towels on the front seat cover up a multitude of splits and tears in the original fabric you can see the back seat is really nice These are seats from another 67 Nova 4 door Bluebelle s original seats were re upholstered once already with after market cloth and that has worn out now too The original seats are standing by for a second re upholstery job

Image Dimensions: 400 x 177