Tweety (or Bubba #2) came into our possesion shortly after Jacki's accident with her first Chevelle. Our close friends, Bill and Michelle Eastman, knew we were looking for another 1970 Chevelle to replace Bubba, who was way beyond repair. They found this car and gave us the phone number. The car was located in Bay City, Michigan and one look told us it had plenty of potential.

Fortunately, the car was in pretty good shape to begin with. It was owned by a man that had bought the car in North Carolina and brought it up to Michigan in 1991. He only drove the car during the summer months and mainly used it to tow his boat a few miles to the lake.

The car had some minor surface rust and one bad spot in the lower rear left wheel well. It had origianlly been an odd light tan color that at some point had been repainted a pale yellow and the dark green interior had been spray painted black. It had Keystone wheels and was in major need of tires. The car also had the original 250hp 350 small block, a 350TH automatic with a shift kit and a 10 bolt open rearend.

It took us less than a week to buy the car and get it home, where we started making a list of things that either needed fixing or replacing. The Keystones were one of the first things to go, replaced with a set of Ultra aluminum wheels and Defender series P245-60-15s all the way around. The car then received the engine/trans/rearend combo from the original Bubba, along with a few interior and exterior trim pieces.

The bodywork and paint was handled by Steve Eastman of Quality Bump & Paint in Midland, Michigan. The color is 1995 Electric Yellow and pictures don't do the color justice. The car also received brand new emblems from Year One and they look great!

We've replaced the carpeting and underlay with brand new stuff from Year One, which made a huge improvement. The front seat has now been recovered with seat covers from Year One and looks great. We'll be adding a new headliner and maybe some new door panels in the future.

Unexpectedly, in the late spring of 1998, the oil pump went and caused the engine to spin a couple rod bearings. Major bummer. We yanked it out and sent it over to a shop in Owosso, Michigan called Reichert's. Bill Reichert is a great guy! He went through the engine completely, adding brand new 10.25:1 flat top pistons, a couple new rods (resizing all of them an adding fresh rod bolts), turned the crank, rebalanced the entire bottom end, added a new double roller timing set, a new Federal Mogul cam (same specs as the Crane Fireball 2 that was in it) and of course a high volume oil pump with a welded pickup.

He then went upstairs and re-did the heads. Safe to say, the only original part of the heads are the castings. They've got brand new Manley stainless valves, new springs, bronze guides and hardened seats. We've added a set of Crane roller rockers and new pushrods to complete that set up.

We then topped it off with a brand new Edlebrock Performer aluminum intake and the factory Q-jet carb. Spark is created with the HEI distributor and coil we already had and new Taylor silicone wires. Exhaust chores are handled by a set of Dynomax HPC coated headers (man are they pretty!) and 2 1/2" aluminized pipe with a set of Dynomax aluminized Super Turbo mufflers.

Update! After getting the engine in the car, we found a couple of areas that needed improvement. The stock Q-jet was unable to feed the engine, even after jumping up the jets. So we ordered an Edlebrock Performer Q-jet. It works wonderfully! We also updated the HEI we had to an Accel blueprinted HEI unit and that seems to have helped too. After some road testing, and some future planning, we yanked the cam and plugged in a Comp Cams 260 unit. This gives the car a little bit better driveability and puts us one step close to the next project, which will be putting in a 700R4 automatic overdrive trans.

A cautionary word to everyone out there... we are running a set of Dynomax ceramic coated headers on the car, however it took us ordering 3 sets to get one that would work. The welds between the header flange and the header tube, specifically the rear-most tube on the left header, kept the header from sealing well. It leaked. No matter what gasket we used or how often we retightened it, it leaked. The last set we ordered, we found that there was enough weld that we could resurface the flange. So we had it done at a machine shop, and lo and behold, it seals. Needless to say, we have contacted Dynomax to let them know about the problems. So, if you order a set ALWAYS make sure you test fit them to the engine.

Pictures of the new engine are on the way, if I can get her to leave the car sitting still long enough for me to snap some! So stay tuned!