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 Ebay has a lot to answer for ! Trawling around US Ebay is a dangerous occupation. You can't fail to find something that will drive you mad with desire ! I often bookmark a car to just see what it makes and drive myself nuts. On one particular occasion it was a '78 Z28 Camaro that caught my eye.
The photographs were not good. The quality was, but the cars owner was no budding David Bailey ! He'd taken them from dreadful angles and they looked very unflattering. However one shot in particular caught my eye. The engine. A huge Weiand blower poked menacingly through the hood ! Studying the photo it seemed quite impressive. Just as impressive was the spec sheet. Whilst the photography was poor the cars description was very comprehensive. It certainly read well.
I was therefore quite suprised that a few days later the auction had ended and the car had failed to reach it's reserve. In fact the auction hadn't reached very much at and I couldn't help wonder what the reserve had been on the car. I mailed the owner and he replied pretty quickly. He said that he needed to sell the car because he was all ' loved up' and he and his girlfriend were looking to set up home. He then revealed the asking price. I can only say it was jaw dropping.
At that time I was in the midst of importing two other cars and had planned a trip to Florida for a long weekend with my business partner. I had a word with him (he loves Yanks) and we agreed that if the car was how it was described we would buy it. I mailed the fella back and told him our plan.
A week or so later saw Allan and I in Florida shopping. We hired a trailer and a good friend of mine took us to view the car. The owner turned out to be a 100% good guy. He was an aircraft engineer by trade and his description of the car was spot on. He had a full photographic record of the engine build and receipts for literally tens of thousands of dollars of components. I couldn't fault him, the car was as good as his word. He took us for a spin around the block, then calmly pulled over and said "you best try her out buddy". Climbing into the seat as she growled and snarled for the first time was quite awesome. However in the event it was quite a surprise. She is actually very tractable ! Eventually we handed over .......... well if I told you you'ld call me a mercenary, so lets just say it was stonking good value !!
The car was again shipped by Kevin Hill at club sponsors Rybec Shipping and before long stood sneering at me on my drive in deepest Suffolk. I slotted it in the garage along with the '57 Chevy and the '50 Buick and there it sat for nearly two years !!
 Eventually though it was the Camaro's turn to go to the workshop for the once over and MOT in readiness for registration. After a few days I had a call from Tim my American car guru. "Yep, all pretty straight forward," he said "just one thing, she's got no wipers". Okay I thought, no problem. "Just bung some on Tim", I said. "No mate, you don't get it, there are no wipers. No wipers, wiper arms, wiper motors or switches". I hadn't even noticed!
A fibreglass hood had been installed without clearance for wipers, so they had been stripped out. The car had basically been built for bracket racing and really was only driven to the strip and back. So back to Ebay to source the missing parts. I located them in the US too and pretty soon they arrived. Amazingly Tim had her MOT'ed and ready for the road very quickly.
I must say she goes a bit. Though she is very tractable on the road, you have to treat her with respect. She'll spin the wheels up at the least provocation, so you have to use a little restraint at times ! I've not got around to taking her to the strip yet, so that pleasure is to come.
That said we did have a bit of a mishap recently. Just poodling through Colchester town centre suddenly a loud noise came from the engine bay. The engine continued to run, but obviously the noise had to be investigated. Closer inspection revealed that the harmony balancer and blower pulley had left the building ! Looking back down the road it could be seen rolling down the pavement in persuit of some innocent pedestrians ! Fortunately it veered into the road and came to a halt in the kerbside.
The post mortem revealed that whilst our aircraft engineer had done most other things spot on, he had relied on a single keyway on the nose of the crank, carrying the balancer, blower pulley etc. There's quite a bit of additional forces on a blower engine and Tim told me that it would be normal practice to have gone with a double keyway. In the event the key had sheared allowing the balancer to rotate on the crank, this did an excellent job of undoing the pulley retaining bolt and allowed it it's freedom !
The consequences of this was a scrap crank ! But don't worry, there's bits arriving from all over as I write. We're taking the opportunity to beef up the engine internals and giving her a 'make-over' at the same time. With any luck she'll still be back on the road for at least one Billing trip this year !!
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