This was my wife's car for many years. I bought her a 2000 Vette a couple of years ago. The car had a little over 145K a the time, looked like a champ, and was paid for. I hated to just sell it. I drove it for a week or two and found myself disgusted with the lack of power and higher RPM excitement eventhough it is a six speed.
So, I sold a little commuter car I had, used the cash to buy a TPIS miniram, 52 tb, headers, and RAM series clutch with single mass flywheel conversion. I then yanked the stock motor complete and dropped in a spare hot V8 I had built for another project car (it only had about 3,000 miles on it).
The replacement motor is:
350 .030 over--fully balanced and degreed
Edlebrock Aluminum RPM heads
Crane Hydraulic Roller cam
full roller rockers
9.6:1 compression
etc. etc. etc.
It ran like the wind, but ate up a clutch right away, so I installed a new one, and dropped the rear gear to the 3.75 to take advantage of the upper breathing capacities of the
www.tpis.com miniram. I then spent nearly $3K on all new suspension (doing the work myself-includes cost of clutch--etc). So, it handles like a brand new car, accelerates like a demon, and looks like a mild clean stock polo green machine.
Right now it is not being used. It sits around and the battery goes dead. Oh, it has new tires, but those will get flat spots at the rate I am going.
So, I realize I will take a bath on the car even at $11,000 or so as is. It would cost $20K to duplicate the car, and months of trial and error. That is why I wonder if I should not just slam the stock motor back in, and sell if for like $7K or so and still take a beating on the fresh suspension, etc.
So...that is it in a nutshell.
.
