After almost exactly 15 years of ownership, this thread is a long time coming. You may know me better as the builder of the Rice Rod, the '31 Ford with a 2JZ, and Datsaniti, last year's $2000 Challenge winning station wagon. This car is much more important to me.
This El Camino was my first car, my first project, and the catalyst that ignited my passion for cars and engineering. Throughout all the changes and growth in my life, it has been the one constant. It always fires right up. And it ALWAYS needs something fixed. I've never owned a real truck, so it gets used as a truck. It was my daily driver for 5 years through high school and into college. I've made a lot of memories in and around it, and hope to hold onto it forever. I don't have many plans for it, I don't treat it as nicely as I probably should, but I love fixing the small things that crop up and just having a "cool car" that I can drive around while I wrench on my insane projects.
The day dad and I brought it home, August of 2005, the summer before I started high school. I was 14, and now only the 2nd owner of this car. This was shortly before the rise of craigslist, so I found it in the Sunday newspaper classifieds. Scouring the car classifieds was my sunday morning breakfast ritual throughout middle school. The original owner, then in his 80's, claimed the odometer had turned over twice, making it 215,000 miles. It was a 2-bbl 350 L65 with a TH350 3 speed. He had the engine replaced by in the 90's by the dealership. The Mexico stampings on the heads confirm this. The L65 is one of the tamest 350's ever made, with only 8.5:1 compression and a low lift cam, it made maybe 200 hp. I didn't care, I was a teenage boy that wanted to drive. We were able to get it running and driving, despite the homemade hand controls the owner had fashioned to the steering column. He had developed a leg disability later in life. Old tires, blown out rear air shocks, and a wheezy engine that died at every stop light. Somehow we made it home!
Truth be told, my dad wanted this project at least as much as I did. He grew up in the 70's and adores the classic muscle car era. But it had been many years since he had a project of his own, probably due to life and kids and all that. We quickly tossed the stock exhaust and intake, and fitted an Edelbrock 4-bbl, manifold, long-tube headers, dual exhaust, and HEI distributor. Got it painted "Elkhart green", a Corvette exclusive color in the early 70's. Looking back, it wasn't exactly fast, but it sure felt and sounded that way, and tingled my teenage hormones. I was a pretty good kid in general, but I got into a lot of petty automotive trouble with this truck. No regrets.
My younger sister saw how cool this car was, and wanted a muscle car of her own. Her first car was this '73 Nova. She wasn't comfortable working on it and driving it, so that didn't last long. But for a short while we had the coolest and oldest cars in high school by far!
In college I finally got a reasonable commuter car, so the El Camino became my "fun" car. It was always fun, but now that was its only purpose. Over the years I kept it in good condition, upgrading things here and there, and making hardware store runs with it. One of my first major purchases after starting my career after college was upgrading to front discs and rebuilding the tired old suspension.
I'm just going to post a bunch of pictures from over the years.
Right now it does the same thing it's been doing for 10 years. Taking up garage space, getting driven to work once a week, going to car shows and the hardware store, and periodically crying for new parts to keep it on the road.
Plans? Well, I don't consider this a project car. It's just my awesome truck. But one day I would like to do a frame-off resto-mod it. It's not very pretty underneath, but it's a relatively rust-free Georgia car. I would like better gears, posi-traction, and more power. In the near-ish term, maybe Vortec heads and a mild cam, nothing crazy. Right now I'm happy with what it has always done, which is keep on keepin' on. So don't expect a build thread, more of an ownership log I can post random El Camino pictures to. Thanks for reading, hope you enjoy.
You should get another
