$2.4mil?OK, you win, I'll message my bank details :)
Handling is surprisingly good, brakes excellent, lots of torque and a great sound track. Steering heavy at low speed and vague at straight ahead, but road feel good. It's nowhere near a modern car, but not much could stay with it in 1966. Passing is only a problem with trucks, I hang back until I can get a sight line. On the other hand parallel parking is a cinch
LOL, I'm definitely a STC. I spent 3 years looking for a car, many weekends in the US schlepping across country. I started out trying to buy a splitty, but the prices ran away from me. The thing about C2 vettes is that 80% were base model cars, 300hp, drum brakes, soggy suspension. They're rubbish to drive. The good cars are 340 or 365hp, with correct suspension and brake options. Such a combination in a splitty was US$200K, $400K landed here - impossible to resell in the local market. Anything cheaper usually had rust in the birdcage (the steel hoop that goes up from the front of the rear wheel arch and over the roof) or significant accident damage, not matching numbers, etc, etc. Lots of cars were also ruined in the 70's and 80's when teenagers could afford them. One step down from a split window is big block (396 & 427) cars, which came with stiff suspension and big brakes (4 wheel 4-spot ventilated disks) and were about 20% of production. So I started looking for manual gearbox and air conditioning big block, less than 300 made, and eventually the car I have today came up.
Yes, fuel injected small blocks ran from 63 to 65. Fuelies are rare and sought after, although 64 cars still had drum brakes, although with much better variable rate springs. A '65 Fuelie with 4 wheel discs is the best small block combination. Problem was that people could tick the box for the high power engine but ignore the better suspension and/or brakes options. Same thing happened with Mustangs. Big block C2's avoid this problem because the factory mandated performance brakes & suspension.
I had a small block 350 with fuelie heads many years ago, does this mean the heads that were fitted were meant to have fuel injection or was this just some marketing gimmick back then ? I had a "Saturday night special" from a place in Newcastle back in '81 which supposedly put out 400hp Mated it to a 400 auto and stupidly left the brakes stock, which meant braking was pointless at anything over 100mph. When the engine broke I got good money for the heads and tranny but the rest went to the wreckers
most likely standard heads with bigger intake valves. 461 heads from Chevrolet would have cost a lot of money back in the day and probably wouldn't have given extra power. btw 461 is the last 3 digits of the casting number on a fuelie head.
Well, it was before the internet so how would I know ? I was "told" that the engine I ordered had fuelie heads and I sold them as fuelies but the truth is in the end I had know eye deer what they were Fun fact, I was cleaning the double pump Holley one day and because I was mucking around with a mate on his car as well , I forgot to put the jets back in and started the car, mild cam, and it ran like crap at idle, took it for a run and it didn't run smooth until it got above 80 mph When I got back the boys had the jets in their handd and asked how did it run
I think you're right Ian, that twigged with what I knew back then about measuring the valves and from memory they were in excess of 2" for the exhaust. I think I remember reading a book on it and it said if they were in excess of 2.1" , (just), they were considered fuelies And as for the so called 400+ hp for the "Saturday night special", I never thought it had 300 let alone 400. I lined up a Boxer and a Dino at the lights in Surfers back in the 80s and the Boxer and I blew the Dino away but the Boxer blew me away
