[NewHemi]

In 1965, I had a 56 chevy hardtop with a monster 283; 327/350 heads, Jahns pistons, Isky E3 cam ()the lift was so high, I had eyebrow the pistons even more than they were), dual quads off a 1963 corvette but couldnt afford a stick changeover so I ran the stock powerglide.

First the good news, once down the track or highway with a hard start and this baby would eat anything I ran up against.

Bad news; you got half of the second hard start and the low range band was toast.

I had learned this early and had a spare tranny with a replaced low range band ready to go. So once I ran it out once hard, I drove it easy until I could get the tranny changed over. THe front fenders came off with 6 bolts, so I just had to disconnect radiator, and a few wires, pop off thefront end, back up to the car with a tractor that had a lift on it, pull the engine, swap trannies and be back on the road in 40 minutes.

But how I learned about the problem is what was most embarrassing. Right after I got the car together, we went racing.

We had a section of route 224 in the Akron area, actually in Norton Ohio, that was not yet completed although it ran for about 2 1/2 miles. It sat that way for about 18 months, so we used it for racing. Every once in a while the police would shoo us off of it, but mostly it was good clean safe fun, and we had our match races there.

So I am lined up against a 273 barracuda. First run, I smoked the tires and outran him on the high end. All was right in the world.

Next run, I am against a GTO. We line up, get the start signal, and I jump out like a jackrabbit at less than full throttle, so as not to smoke em as bad. Then I hammered it. And there was a pause, then the car shifted in to second and I was off and again ran him down as he passed me during the pause. I went to turn around and start back, and I had no low gear.

So with everyone watching and wondering what the heck I was doing, I had to back up down all of the road to the starting line.

Needles to say, my racing day was done. I had some buddies push me to the top of the ramp which then gave me a down hill run down the road to home. And once I got up to speed, the car shifted into second, and I nursed it home never getting below about 25 mph.

But backing down that road, beleiveing that everyone was laughing at me (they probably were...) was real blow to my young ego. So I did pick up a second tranny and got ready to swap it out.

Young, broke and stupid; the recipe for experiences you never forget.


David
The New Hemi Guy