Bernie, I haven't been on here for many months...I will post the photos you requested as soon as I get to the storage building where I keep the car.
"Charlotte" has been out-of-commission for nearly a year due to her poorly running 6-banger. To refresh your memories, she sat in a machine shed in Nebraska for about 35 years (1983-2018) on the farm owned by Charlotte's brother Bob (Charlotte was the original owner). Bob and his two sons decided in 2018 to get the Camaro running again. so they did it the old fashioned way by tying it to a pickup truck with a long chain and then dragged it to jump start it by popping the clutch. Unfortunately, they neglected to pull the distributor and pump the engine oil up with a drill on the oil pump shaft. They succeeded in wiping out the camshaft's number 5 exhaust lobe (an NOS GM cam was installed but did not fully correct the problem) and caused another unknown problem inside the engine. It still has a persistent and highly noticeable vibration problem from idle up to 3,000 rpm, which I suspect is due to a bent number 5 exhaust valve.
My intention is to have the Camaro's original 250 "BE" coded engine completely gone through by Tom Lowe who runs a shop called "12 Bolt Engines" in Dysert, IA. Tom is nationally recognized for his expert machine work on GM rear ends, as well as 6-cylinder and 4-cylinder engines of all makes and persuasions. Tom Lowe is good friends with Tom Langdon, who was formerly the recognized expert on 6-cyliner engines and ran a machine shop specializing in them in Utica, MI (he retired in 2017). Unfortunately, my desired machine shop is booked through the rest of this year, so what should I do right now? How about getting on Craigslist and looking for a good running Chevy 6 to swap into Charlotte and allow me to drive her until her original engine is rebuilt? Good idea!
I started looking for the aforementioned 6-banger before Christmas. I found only a few 230s and 250s and none were suitable. Most had been sitting in Chevy pickups that were being converted to LS-power, or had been disassembled and were now basically junk. And then I hit paydirt. I found a guy in Austin. MN who was taking the perfectly-running 230 out of a '70 Nova coupe with 40k original miles, and swapping in a 396/375 hp to create a phony SS. I called the guy (John) and learned he was 74 years-old, retired, and a recent widower. The Nova had belonged to his wife's aunt and was a 100% original museum piece. John's wife would never let him touch her aunt's Nova, but now that he was alone he could recreate the '69 Nova 396/375 he had owned as a young punk.
I pulled my son Alex (age 10) out of school on a Friday with the old "sneezing with a low fever" excuse, and we headed to U-haul to rent an open trailer for 3 days. We drove my beloved 2000 Camry on the trip (simply an AWESOME car) and spent two nights in hotels on the trip. We arrived at John's modest ranch house in Austin at noon on Saturday (2 weekends ago). The Nova was Frost Green (same color as my '69 Camaro) and heartbreakingly original (dark green cloth bench seat, rubber floor mat in pristine condition, radio delete (note the delete plate in attached photo), tinted glass, and Powerglide tranny). In fact, the entire car was in pristine condition. I paid $400 for the engine which included the beautiful, nearly-perfect air cleaner and 1970-dated original Delco plug wires, as well as the original Delco "202" coil and plug wire separators. John was also nice enough to sell me the original front speaker cardboard block-off plate, since he didn't need it.
I anticipate having Charlotte back on the road with the next few weeks, and I will be attending the Camaro Supernats in Ypsilanti, MI this summer. Next year she will get her 3-on-the-tree shifter returned to working condition (she currently has a floor shifter from an early '70s Nova).
My
