OMG! That could be it! Except mine was six cylinder, standard shift...and it had the rear end hit so hard that the insurance totaled it.
I had a '62, 70, 71 four door, 72.
All had 6's.
The 62 was a 194 with a power glide.
The 71 had a 250 with a power glide.
The 72 had a 250 with a 350 auto.
But the 70 was my baby.
It had a manual three-on-the-tree with a 230L6. I got it from my dad around 1978 with 140,000 on it. It was worn out. SOooooo..... :laughing:
I took the engine to a place called Shaker Racing, and had it bored out .60 over, and align bored, had the crank polished and whatever they did to it, had the head redone, ported it, etc.... basically got it all back in boxes and put it back together myself the summer between my junior and senior years in high school. Got some stupid radical cam from Isky. Headers and a 4 barrel intake from Clifford's. And a Holley 450 carb.
When I got it all together, that little car would do 114. I blew up the tranny doing burnouts in reverse, so I got a 4spd from a junkyard and cut a hole in the floor for the shifter. For some reason, I lost about 15MPH off the top end when the 4 speed went in, which I don't understand, as I think they all had 1:1 final drive. Maybe I changed the rear end ratio at the same time and forgot? I don't know. Anyhow, the top end dropped down to about 99mph, but man, it got there fast! It would chirp the tires in all 4 gears.
The neat thing about the 230 was it had the same bore as the 250 and the small block V8's, but it had a much shorter stroke, so you could spin it at higher RPMs. I could get 6800rpms out of it, but if you went more than about 1/4 mile, you'd pump the oil out of the lifters! :laughing: It was a great 1/8 mile car. A real good stop-light-to-stoplight pest to larger engined cars.
Sadly, the body rusted out so badly, that around 1985 my mom and I walked up to it and pulled the rear bumper off with our hands. :laughing:
I cut it up with a torch, and we put most of that car out with the trash over several weeks.
However, I kept the engine and put it in a 1971 Toyota Landcruiser FJ40 with a bolt in small block V8 kit. So it lived on. I still have it in a storage shed for a future project. And I still have the hood from the 70 Nova, too, as a keepsake from the first car I ever drove.
