The Monza build/ resto-modification
I really like this website and this seems like a good place to document this project. I was gonna put it on H-body.org to get some H-body specific input, but there is more Rally-specific stuff to this car than H-body stuff… plus I have no other reason to go there.
I love a car with a story, and this one has a story that might be interesting to some of you… maybe, maybe not.
Here goes: I live in Huntsville, Alabama and I’m a longtime member of Twickenham Auto Club
http://www.teamtac.org/ TAC is a 50+ year club, one of the oldest in the nation and completely independent of any and all national organizations. It’s early focus was on road rallies and gymkanas, but shifted in the 80’s to mostly autocross. It’s sister club is Tennessee Valley Region, SCCA. Many members are cross-pollinated. TAC was formed in 1954 from local guys who moved to Huntsville from all over the world to work for the Army command and NASA, Boeing, etc… things that go boom and go to the moon.. These guys moving to what was then not much more than a cowfield from all over with their “funny little sports cars†soon spotted their brothern riding around town and got together and formed a car club. This club, like the small Alabama town that has since become a tech-powerhouse, was quite a cross-section of people from across the country. There are many neat cars stashed here and there around this medium-sized town and I came across one that was very interesting.
A long-time member of both TAC/SCCA is Electrical Engineer and robotics pioneer Darryl Holder:
http://www.rallyalmanac.com/gallerylist.asp?category=driver&driver=Daryl%20Holder
Darryl’s permanent navvie was Joe Long, and on several rallies they split the driving 50/50. This team did many major rallies in the late 60’s and early 70’s. They Rallied one of the first 240Z’s (Joe’s car) to come off the boat to the US. From what I understand, they flipped over and smacked a tree (upside down) at a in the early 70’s and that was the end of the Z unfortunately. Somewhere in there, I think before the Z, Daryl had a MGB-GT with a rover V-8 stuck in it and a corvair tranny. The MGB was run at POR I think he said, and several other events, and Daryl said that from all the jumps the frame got too weak to go on. I’m still trying to get more info on this time period, just out of my own curiosity. Maybe they were rallying the Z while the Monza was being built and the Z's crash burst the bubble, I dunno. There is a sweet picture of the MGB a couple feet off the ground at Belle Isle and several other pictures that D has that I want to scan.
After the B, Darryl decided to build a new car. He wanted something as strong as possible, with lots of power, but still relatively small and something that could be made to handle. In 1974 he ordered a “body in white†75 Chevy Monza, Chevy’s new uni-body car. Darryl was able to get a bare body through a connection drag-racing friend. The body came crated up by railcar to Decatur, AL where Darryl got it off the train. He built the car from a bare shell using a wrecked 75 Monza (once he waited till one was available) for glass, trim and other things he needed. There isn’t a bolt, a nut, or a washer that wasn’t expressly wanted to be on the car. The 4-bolt main 350 small block came from a 6,000-mile wrecked ¾-ton pickup truck in 75 or 76. Many nice things like shorty headers, rare Mickey Thompson valve covers, high-rise torquer intake manifold, and more… M-22 4-speed, shortened Z-28 driveshaft, 3:83 rearend with strange axles, double panhard bar, Chevelle SS front spindles and brakes, Bilstein shocks, custom front adjustable swaybar, 5-lug conversion…. The car was made to be a real sledgehammer in the pre-4wd days. I keep finding more goodies and surprises every time I look at it or do something to it. Stuart-Warner mech gauges, twin Haldas with separate hub cables, vintage CB radio, metal maplights, “Safari†lights on the top corners of the windshield (I assume for letting workers know it’s a rally car coming at them for night stages) fuel cell with dry break double-capped and rear overflow vent, Titanium belly pan/scatter shield, safety chain in case driveshaft breaks, bolt-on Cibie light setup, and on and on.
The travesty here (but good for me I suppose) was that Darryl got the car 99% done but never logbooked it or made it to a ProRally. Joe Long lost interest and I think Darryl didn’t want to have another Navvie and at the same time was feeling that he was getting too old to rally competitively… again I don’t know the actual timeline or details. It’s a shame the car was never rallied but such is life. The upside for me is the car was never hit, bent, wrecked, stressed, etc. He drove the car occasionally to work or the store and did some TSD rallying in it, but mostly it just sat in the driveway.
Darryl was a robotics and electrical engineer and wired the car from scratch the way he wanted, with one purpose in mind. Everything is heavy-wired, fused, and separate. Most everything is on its own switch. Some of the wiring is rotten and I’ll go through it all, but most of it has held up handsomely. Darryl made his own wiring diagram (!!) of the custom dash and all switches that I will have to get someone to help me interpret…. I’ve put little pieces of tape around here and there to mark what I’ve figured out so far… I’m over my head with that.
I was made aware of Darryl wanting to sell it by another local club member and went to look at it. I talked to him several times and couldn’t justify paying what he wanted, knowing how much time and effort it was probably going take to get it going. I have been on the other side of that and walking away from “yer baby†is humbling… I immediately felt a massive respect for Darryl and didn’t want to insult him with some bullshit low-ball offer… geez I wanted that thing but had just started two other car projects, had just moved to a new house, lost garage space till I get my new shop built… just was the worst possible time, but as you know- where’s there’s a un-crushable and completely unreasonable selfish will, there’s usually a way.
We talked and emailed over a month or two and I felt he wanted me to have it since I wanted to/want to get it legal to actually compete in it, not just chop it up or part it out or make some drag car out of it or something.. We eventually struck a deal that we both could live with, and with a friend’s help I managed to work on it an hour or so and get it fired up and quickly driven on the trailer as I had no idea what condition the motor was in and Darryl couldn’t remember how long it had been since it had been cranked. So I got it loaded it up and stashed it away for a couple months till I could get to doing something on it.
So far I’ve flushed the tank, new battery, tanked the (3-core) radiator, bigger fan setup 2.0, new master brake cylinder (after going through several it crossed with an Impala 427 master or something) header gaskets, changed the Eldelbrock for a Holley 600, HFI ignition and blaster coil replaced the dual-point distributor, and re-timed it… the re-time will come into play soon.
I took it to the Talledega Gran Prix SCCA Time Trials a couple weeks ago (pics above) to try to do a few laps in it after driving it around for 30-40 miles and it doing ok. Definitely is setup for off-road and not track, but I was dying to get it out and throw the gas pedal to it some.. threw a coule numbers and a couple stickers on it, mounted a set of Hoosier slicks, and hoped to see if it would go and stop and turn, or how much of each it would actually do. Alas, it was not ready. I got a couple practice laps before the gasket on the oil breather crumbled and sent oil all over the headers, smoking like crazy and providing the corner workers excitement as they thought I might be on fire. We made a makeshift gasket out of some rubber that held ok, and I tried to go back out after lunch…. Even with both fans on I sat on grid too long waiting to go out on track and it overheated ½ way through the warm-up lap- shit. Got towed back to the paddock and was pissed. I know I know I know- stuff happens and especially with a car that needs lots of things sorted out I should expect it, but a $200 entry fee, $250 in fuel for the rig, $60 in car fuel, a set of tires, new belts, and a bunch of other shit, I got 2 laps for a shitload of money cause I thought it was ready and hadn’t triple-checked every little thing, which I usually don’t have time to do anyway.. By our rudimentary trackside diagnosis I had blown one or both of the head gaskets- crap. Got it back home and pulled the heads to find the 2 head gaskets were ok… BUT= we were shocked to find some real spendy pop-up dome pistons and a ‘not-even-stock’ cam! Nice. We had it timed for a stock 350 bottom end= wrong. I was happy to find these pistons and we did the head gaskets anyway and will re-time some advance and run race gas, er, I mean 93 plus a bunch of additive… that should capture about 30-40 more hp who knows. The Dyno runs are forthcoming.
This car should be a lot of fun. Years of time/sweat/love and over 10,000 dollars (of late-70’s dollars) was put into this thing and it’s a real time-machine. Sounds sappy as hell but I'm proud to have it and want to do right by it. I’d really like to have the time and money to rip it completely apart and do a 5-year nut-n-bolt “whatever it takes†restoration on it, but I realistically cannot do that…yet. I’ll go through things as best I can, try to have some fun with it, and let it nickel-n-dime me for a while. Mechanically the car is good and structurally very sound, mostly everything just looks bad from patina and years of non-use and sitting outside. Darryl put his heart and soul into this car and I want to do what he and God intended this thing to do-
I plan on spending every spare second and a load of cash to try to make Rally Tennessee, God and Anders Green willing. Unreasonable goals are what gets things out of the plotting and planning stage, so damn those torpedos... damn them. If it is not 100% ready (likely will not be for years) BUT we can pass tech @ RT and get a few stages in , possibly even cruise to another finish, then I will be so damn pleased that the car has fulfilled its destiny to be at a rally, and the push to get it '08 legal will get it much, much closer to the car I see when I close my eyes.
John
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/05/2008 03:50PM by Yellowhammer.
