Well, it appears that I've finally learned how to post pics here, so I thought that I'd post a few. This is my '74 LS-4 that was delivered to me in January by a dealer who took this beast to his "repair shop" to have it "tuned up" before it was delivered to me. I purchased the vehicle knowing that it was running a bit rough and the tune-up was done without my knowledge. The "mechanic" decided that since it was one of those old hotrod cars, it must need a valve adjustment. He pulled the valve covers and proceded to tighten all of the rocker arms down as far as they would go and cranked the engine over. At that point, he put the engine back together and the car was delivered to me.

The pictures show the damage that resulted. After 4 months of rebuilding the heads, carburetor and distributor and gathering new parts, the neighborhood began reassembly at 9:00 early in September on a Saturday morning. We started with only the short block still in the car, and at 2:30 hit the switch. As you can see in the picture with oil smoke rising off the headers, she lit off as soon as the carburetor had fuel.

You can also see how much "help" the neighborhood provided! We fired it up in the garage with open headers (Hooker Super Comps) and as in Len's case (Jughead), one of the guys was so startled that he ran out of the garage. A lot of thanks go out to many, many people on this forum for informational and parts help. I have purchased a pile of parts from many here and never once had a problem. Now I only have hundreds of other problems to correct to get the car street legal. Then we can begin worrying about paint and interior.

Steve

A few bent pushrods...


Valves collided with pistons


It takes a lot of guys to hold down the front of a Vette...


All assembled, ready to crank!


Where there's smoke there must be fire!


edit: crap, just when I figure how to post pics, the host crashes their server. Photobucket is down and doesn't know if they will come back with my pics. I'll have to look elsewhere, I guess.

edit: well, it looks like Photobucket is back up. Good.

 

Great update. I'm glad you had help, I could not have finished my car without the forum guys coming over. Looks great.

 

Congrats on the engine. You should be able to enjoy your car for a little while before it gets too cold.
Unbelievable that they would deliver a car in that kind of shape. I am sure the delivery guy knew there was some damage done when he loaded the car. That amazes me.

 

Wow, that's some damage there. Glad to hear you got it running again.

 

Len, it's sort of like your's at the moment. The engine runs, and sounds great. But she won't move under her own power quite yet. And with no exhaust, no brakes, and a few other concerns, it may be a while before she does. Again, this forum was an incredible help.

Steve

 

Someone take away that "mechanic's" wrenches!!

Brett

 

That's crazy! Isn't the dealership responsible for this damage and shouldn't they pay you to repair the damage?

 

From what I'm reading, it sounds as if the "tune-up" was done pre-purchase/pre-delivery. Vehicle most likely was then sold/delivered "as-is". "Dealership" and "Used Car Dealer" are two different things.

D. Ocean
Miami, FLA

 

Quite right in both points. The '74 was purchased from a used car dealer out of state after an inspection, and taken to an independent repair shop that the dealer used after the purchase without my knowledge. The dealer says he was trying to do me a favor by correcting the rough running engine. The car was picked up at the shop by a driver, who couldn't get the car running and had to winch the car onto the trailer. The "mechanic" just happened to be off that day; called in sick. Since the dealer was out of town on the delivery day, the driver just delivered the car the way it was and left.

And yes, this situation wound up in court. The dealer refused to acknowledge responsibility, but the court said yes. We're now working to get the judgement entered in his state.

It's an ugly situation that I'm trying to put past me.

Steve

 

Sometimes it's not worth the time, money & effort.

 

That's where I'm at right now Len.

Hhmmm..... The images are gone and photobucket says that my album doesn't exist. I wonder what happened?

Steve

edit: It appears that Photobucket.com has had an unrecoverable array crash, likely loosing all pictures. We'll see if they can pull anything back together, if not I'll have to find another host and reload the photos. It figures, when I finally figure it out, everything goes bust.

 

Looks like you've got some pretty cool people sharing your neighborhood It's always nice to have it back together

 

Wow quite a story, looks like a great bunch helping you out

 

Well Steve, I hope everything goes well for you from here on in. Good luck with the new toy.

 

Thanks for the great comments, everyone. I do seem to have a pretty tolerant neighborhood. No one got ticked about the open headers, although one neighbor up the street said that he was initially concerned that we blew something up. At the moment, I'm dealing with some health problems (think Tony Blair and his heart yesterday) that are slowing me down, but once those are solved it's onward and upward. This car is mostly original, but sat outside and unused for 10 years (fortunately, down south), so there isn't much that doesn't need work. It's a trip down memory lane for me, since I spent 1977 through 1980 working the service department of a Chevrolet dealer.

Unfortunately for the NCRS guys, it won't be going back stock (Not Correctly Restored Stuff?). That was part of the reason behind a 1974 model that needs a lot of work; the chrome bumper cars are more popular, this one isn't worth a factory restore and isn't nearly as desirable by most people, so I can build it back the way I want. By the way, I'm the guy on the right in the last photo (the picture with smoke coming off the headers). My wife shot that picture shortly after startup while I was still twisting the distributor to get the timing set (by ear, of course).

The guy on the left with the latex gloves is the professor for the auto department at the local community college. He and I have known each other for 20 years, and he wanted to be involved with the reassembly. The kid with the tatoo and the crew cut is my next door neighbor and an engineering student down the road at VPI and loves cars, but doesn't know a lot yet. He was absolutely stunned that we were able to take the car from only a short block to a running engine in less than 5 hours without a manual. He still talks about that day.

It was pretty cool, as anyone who has assembled and started their own engine already knows!

Steve

 

I think I found another problem Steve. You have too many vacuum hoses.

Pull all that pollution crap off and stored it in a plastic bag incase that crap becomes desirable one day.

When I started my search for an older Vette, I put the age limit to 1974, only because that was the last year of the BB and I could still mod the engine without worrying about emmissions so much. In 1970 the only pollution requirement my engine has is a PCV valve.


Which is the guy who ran out?

 

Yup, I agree. But at the moment the engine is 100% original, and some of that stuff is needed to plug vacuum ports and such. What you can't see is that most of it is already bypassed or inoperative. For example, Bubba soldered shut the EGR valve pintle closed, and then just for good measure, put a plug in the vacuum line going to the valve. I just happened to leave that the way that it was. The distributor vacuum controls are all bypassed as well, but if someone looks at it close during an inspection, it looks original. At some point, the Vette is slated for a 502 or larger gen VI Rat, at which point none of that stuff will exist, but the object at the moment is to get it running. At the suggestion of this forum, I'm bagging and storing everything that comes off the car such as the original smog pump complete system (you'll notice that it's not there), factory exhaust manifolds, and other stuff. Since the block is the original number matching unit, it will eventually be bagged as well. I'll never do a factory restore, but should someone want to 20 years from now, they'll have all the pieces that I removed.

One of the other reasons for the 1974 model was that it was the last year for the 454 option, and I'm a big block junkie from back in the 70's. My first car, a '57 Chevy, had a 396 and Turbo 400 that I transplanted into it. My second car, a 1967 Firebird, had the same engine and transmission put in it (that was the days of no self service, you should have seen the expression of the gas pump jockeys when they "checked the oil"). I used to keep the drivetrain and trade off the car! Another reason was that 1974 was the last year for the dual exhaust and no cats. Actually Len, if memory serves, I think every Chevy 8 cylinder in 1970 had a smog pump on it.

In the last picture, the guy with the baseball cap (my neighbor, and the father of the engineering student) is the one who took off. I think he was just startled at how incredibly loud this thing was, and wasn't expecting it. I ribbed him pretty good over it, especially since he owned a Corvette when he was a kid in high school. As he put it, "I never heard anything like that!". It was a fun day for sure.

Steve