Have you guys seen this MuscleCar collection?

www.corvettes-musclecars.com

Pretty impressive!

Wayne

 

WOW! I bet he works a part time job for extra car money.

 

I would love to see that collection in person. Wonder if he ever opens it up to car clubs, etc

 

So Big Whoops!!!!!!!! He only has one Buick :laugh:

 

Yep,one Buick.If you read the vehicle description,its based on the Chevelle A body. :rant:

 

The 68---

I want the 68 Hurst Olds, only 515 where produced
Sam

 

Pretty impresive collection. He realy loves the Yenkos.

 

Wow!

I heard about this guy a few years ago, when I looked on the net to see who had the 2 ZL1 Corvettes. I actually wrote this guy to see if he'd bring the ZL1, but it was just too far, too risky, too rare, to race. He lives in the northwest. But he did say he likes the Pure Stock Drags, though! :TU:
Man, that's a collection larger than I can dream of, and I can dream up a whole lot! Maybe if I won one of those Mega-Millions game, or invented the
endless keg of beer, then possibly. p

 

HAHAHAHA The endless keg of beer I may have to pattent that first. I always tell people if I ever one that mega-millions game I would have a Buick from the 20's to present date.

 

There is a ZL1 'Vette still in the hands of its' original owner that also still races it. I'm hoping that Chevy454 invites him to the Pure Stock Drags :3gears: :beer

 

How?

Lon,
No offense, but I don't know how that can be.
This Kevin owns the white car - see the link above.
Some guy in Florida has the other car, which is yellow.
Those are the 2; there is a cloned car, with an IL plate of MY ZL 1.
There was also a red factory-mule car, which ran in the 10s at over 130 mph!
Here are some links:

http://www.vetteweb.com/features/vet_0311_badness/

http://www.corvettelegends.com/legends.htm

http://www.rogerscorvette.com/spots/feb98/spot.htm

So, I take it that his car is a clone. Not that there is anything wrong with that! :laugh:

 

Sorry!

OOPS - Never mind.
I found this on yenko.net

http://www.yenko.net/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=99451&page=6&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1

Still, unless it was some mule, I would stick with the 2 built.

 

He is a commercial fisherman. I have known him for over 30 years. He is a car nut and has money to spend on his collection. What you see in the web site is only part of the overall collection. Hemi's and BBC type of stuff mostly. Rare optioned types of vehicles.

He is a great guy and is a blue jeans type of guy. He lives just north of Seattle. Hope to go up and see him again this month if we can make it.

 

No clones here

No offense taken :TU: There is on going research by Rob, aka Chevy454, of this original owner ZL1 that was ordered by this gentleman. In '69 he traded a '68 L-88 w/ 1400 miles on it for the ZL1. I have friends who have known this car from day one.
STAY TUNED!

 

What is with these guys that finance collections like this from the sea? I sold a coupla project 68's (and my backup Ram Rod motor) this year to a guy in New Hampshire that has an awesome Olds collection. I've never seen so many mint Hursts, W cars, and very rare optioned 442's in a private collevtion (probably 45-50 cars). He sold his seafood business to fund the collection. I was drooling (and I don't care for seafood). Started off as a lobster diver, then a clam digger, then bought the clams and lobsters from others, cleaned and sorted them, and distributed to restaurants, stores, etc., then sold the business. God Bless America! :TU:

 

Hey Jack! Yeah, I've known Kevin for a few years via yenko.net, and was I fortunate enough to see his '69 Baldwin-Motion Camaro at Supercar Reunion 5. He's got a STELLAR collection! As for his occupation, he's talked about it briefly in the past: ever see that show on the Travel Channel, the 10 most dangerous jobs? Remember the job (I *believe* #1 or #2) that featured the deep sea fisherman (crab?) that showed the guys in the Bering Strait on these boats flat getting ROCKED by the freezing cold & rough seas? Those were his boats/crews on the show...the loss of life rate is just astronomical, and he talked like it was common for crews to lose a guy overboard each trip! (Correct any of that if it's wrong, JLP, I'm working from memory here, early on a Monday morning!)

Now the ZL-1 'Vette saga...there were reportedly 7-10 ZL-1 'Vettes produced, which includes mules, production cars, press cars, etc...so the water gets muddied REAL fast. The gentleman I've been talking with raced for Gulf Oil back in the day, and he had a '68 L-88 Corvette but wanted an automatic, and ordered an automatic ZL-1 Corvette through his local Chevrolet dealer...the car was *allegedly* tested in Road & Track, but I haven't tracked the article down...yet. He claims to have the original tank sticker, but I haven't gotten to lay my eyes on it as of yet...

 

I'm pretty sure he contacted me, looking for another Buick...

 

"Two" is the number I always heard...

...but now that you mention it that may have been specific to the production units, not including mules, prepilot builds, etc. I always assumed the two production cars were used for the press release, which was held down at the Vehicle Dynamics Pad (ie, "Black Lake") at the Milford Proving Ground, but Rob's response makes more sense.

The yellow car was actually driven as a company owned vehicle by a fellow here at work. His name was George Heberling and he was the Engineering/Assembly liaison for the St Louis Assembly plant at the time.

There was one other engine you might be interested in: the "back up" motor, which was on display during the press show, and was to be used in case something happened to one of the motors in the cars, was an all aluminum "ZL-1" but displaced 454 cubic inches. We eventually stuffed this engine in a company owned 1985 stepside pickup and had it going 10.70's before our boss found out. I do not know the whereabouts of this motor now but am assured by its "owner" that is is "safe" (whatever that means). This is the same motor that appears on the cover of the "How to Hot Rod Chevy Big Blocks" magazine.

K

 

Other thoughts -

My response made me think of two other comments -

1) These "old guys" here at work crack me up. I had a '70 Chevelle SS brochure laying on my desk one day and one of the more mature engineers walked by and saw it.

"Hey, that's cool" he said. "I drove one of those as a company vehicle one time (....long pause...)...it got terrible gas mileage".

2) I have a cool picture that I found when I worked at the GM Desert Proving Ground. It shows Bill Jenkins, in his race prepped 67 Camaro, putting the hurt on a production 68/69 Corvette on the East/West straight with a bunch of engineers (skinny neckties included) standing around. I could try to have it scanned and post it if you are interested.

K

 

Corvettes with Z06 fuel tanks -

I know I am a "thread killer" but the photos about the Z06 Corvettes made me think of a story:

The big fuel tank was one of the first applications of "blow molding" technology, where a bag of parrafin is dropped into a female mold and then air is used to press the plastic into shape (like a plastic milk jug). These tanks were made at Chevrolet Flint Manufacturing where my dad was working on the project.

The desire was to fill the entire cargo area with fuel so, in order to a make the die, the toolmakers attached the rear portion of a Corvette coupe to a "Keller" (a machine which duplicates shapes by tracing them, photo attached below) and used the actual body to make the die.

The next problem they encountered, though, is that the bag of parrafin would not "fill out"; that is, when they hit it with the air it just blew out the bottom of the bag and went "PPPPPPPPPPFFFFFFFFFFTTTTTTTT" (think of the sound a balloon makes when letting the air out).

They struggled with this issue until time was getting tight and the pressure increased to deliver a production run of parts. Dad was driving home one day, after his usual 10 or 12 hour shift, thinking about how to solve this problem. As he drove, he looked over at someone's front lawn and their sprinklers were running. Noticing the fan shaped pattern of the water, Dad thought "hmmmm"....

On the way into work that night he stopped by the hardware store and bought two little sprinkler heads. He went in that night, attached one of the heads to the air drop and POOF formed a perfect tank. He shot 10 or 12 more, set them over in the office to be inspected, removed the sprinkler head and put it in his locker. Then he went home and went to bed.

About the time he got to sleeping real good the phone rings. It's his boss: "SEYMORE, GET YOUR #$%^& IN HERE AND SHOW US HOW YOU MADE THESE FUEL TANKS OR BLAH BLAH BLAH etc. He got up, drove back into work, put the little sprinkler head back in the mold and shot several more tanks. They made the rest of the production run and you can see the results here, a production option that was available over the course of a couple years.

In the attached photo, the Keller machine is shown in the General Motors Area Research Center, where the first 300 Corvettes were produced in Flint, Michigan.