This car is sold
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1973 Chevrolet Chevelle Malibu 350
Car owned by The Street Lightning Team
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Team members are:
Sondre - mechanic (born 1994) - Fredrik - mechanic (born 1997)
Hans Tore - driver (born 1964, same year as the first Chevelle was introduced)
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We bought Chevelle august the 5th 2006
This car is for our kids.We bought it so they can learn how to repair/restore.
Plan is to make it look cool, be very noisy and burn lots of rubber :-)
The car looked like a wreck, but was in a very good mechanical condition.
Engine is a tuned 350 Cu-in (5,7 litres) V8 with about 300 HP. The gear
box is a three speed TH 350 automatic, and it has a positraction rear end.
If all goes well we will try to attend some street legal dragracing.
Kids already have a team name ready.
We are The Street Lightning Team.
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(Year 2006 pictures)
Burnout pictures with the kids may look like an irresponsible move. We understand that, so to
calm everybody down. We warmed the tires in advance so they where very slippery.
Burnout was made out with engine running just above idling speed.
Front brakes applied with drivers hand on the main power switch.
(Year 2007 pictures)
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Holy smoke! Here we go.....
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Moviefiles
Here is a 22 mb - 4 minute moviefile from our television apperance.(27th oktober 2006 / TV-Sor)
We race a blown 700 HP Corvette.
Take off is made television friendly with rubber burning tires :-)
1. September 2007.
We go dragracing.
On the first movie Fredrik films from inside the car, second movie is filmed by Sondre.
Can't see the car to the left during the race? That's because we won:-)
Later we lost, but hey we don't feel like publishing that :-)Enjoy.
Both moviefiles are 16 megabytes each.
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Before & After
Left picture shows where we started, right picture is where we are today.
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Cool car in progress
11 august 2006:
We will post pictures and words as we (the kids) work on the car.
What you see on this first section of pics is what we bought.
Hopefully it will get much better.
12 august 2006:
Here we go,
removing that stinky dirty interior
13 august 2006:
Back seat cleaned and repaired.
Seatbelts from 1988 Chevrolet Caprice installed.
Also new carpet and "restored" front seat installed.
The American flag is a temporarily seatback fix.
15 august 2006:
Inspecting the brakes, everything looking good.
Front brakes even had new disks.
22 august 2006:
Cleaning, painting
and removing unnecessary underhood parts.
24 august 2006:
New oil and filter for the gearbox. Detailing inside.
29 august 2006:
New oil for the rear axle.
31 august 2006:
Bodywork preparation for new paint.
04 september 2006:
Body painted and decor stripes and decals added.
We also mounted some cool latches for the hood.
Rear wheels changed to older type, ready for some hot burn outs :-)
05 september 2006:
More paint details added.
10 september 2006:
More details finished.
Remember, this car is not going to be a show car.
We use very little money to restore to our desired condition.
We just want it to look cool, so quality on details are race car rough.
14 september 2006:
More body decor details finished.
15 september 2006:
Installing Headers.
21 september:
Headliner restored.
Working on the exhaust system.
Grandpa gives us a helping hand.
We had to do some welding, and he's got the skills and the tools.
The old mufflers were ok, so we decided to restore the outside and reuse them.
New and shiny parts for the engine
Engine running/idling with headers only
Turn up the volume :-)
(8 mb avi moviefile)
24 september 2006:
Finishing the exhaust system.
Compare these engine pics.
Left picture shows where we started, right pictures is where we are today.
We will detail a little more, but this is close to where we are satisfied.
25 september 2006:
Wonder why we use number 8?
Because kids favorite racecar driver is Dale Earnhardt JR.
We saw Dale racing at Daytona on our USA vacation last year.
01 october 2006:
Installing main power-switch.
Painting spare rear wheels, and adding some more decals.
07 october 2006:
Just a few more pitures.
13 october 2006:
We gotta have flames dad, OK!
25 october 2006:
A few new decals.
We race against a 700 HP Corvette and eat lots of dust :-)
1974 Chevrolet Corvette. Owner Geir Bjørgsvik
Photoshoot from the making of a story for the local newspaper and the TV network. (Fedrelandsvennen and TV-Sør)
04 november 2006:
A few new decals.
New tires, again.
This is the third pair of tires since august,
we seriously need a tire sponsor :-)
26 november 2006:
We have a sponsor.
Bilteknikk, a local garage
will help us out now and then, Thanks :-)
6 december 2006:
Today we have bought a parts car.
We don't like the front sofa in our Chevelle,
so we have been looking for nice seats that will fit.
We found this wreckage. A 1981 Oldsmobile with the kind of seats
that we wanted. The owner didn't want to sell them separately from the car,
so we had to buy the whole car. Fortunately there are many other parts that we can use.
Most important parts are: A nice center console and a working TH350 gearbox, same as we have in the Chevelle.
There are of course many other parts to save, time will show. Engine is garbage, 5.7 liter diesel, it stinks and will not start.
Wonder why this Oldsmobile is a piece of junk? Take a look at the picture series and description below.
First up is that diesel engine, it does not start anymore. That's just fine I hate diesel engines :-)
Brakes don't work, same thing with the parking brake. All four tires are flat. Dead batttery.
Outside mirrors missing. Inside mirror missing. Locking mechanism for thrunk missing
Ignition switch broken, glove compartment locking mechanism broken.
Floor mounted gear shifter broken. Rust hole in the b-pillar.
Exhaust system severely rusted and leaky.
Suspension parts broken by rust.
Car is leaky and wet inside
Headliner sags
Did I earlier say that the brakes did not work? Wrong!
Look at this picture. They work very well.
This car is going nowhere :-)
10 december 2006:
Installing Oldsmobile carpet in Chevelle.
I believe we where very lucky that it did fit :-)
We have cleaned carpet once, but will do it one more time while in car.
Seats cleaned and ready to be installed. (We will install at a later time).
05 february 2007:
Not much left. Junkyard next.
08 february 2007:
Junkyard, here we come.
5,7 liter Oldsmobile diesel V8 for sale.
04 march 2007:
New Grant steering wheel installed.
31 march 2007:
New larger air-cleaner installed.
31 march 2007:
Nobody wants that Oldsmobile diesel, so we have decided to make a grill/barbecue out of it.
More pics of the finished product soon :-)
01 april 2007:
Fredrik performing the first test.
13 april 2007:
Sondre barbecuing the first V8-burgers.
Coke "sun umbrella" added.
20 april 2007:
Installing electroinc HEI distributor (High Energy Ignition).
It came off from one of my Caprice parts cars.
Bilteknikk, our sponsor helped us with the installation. Thanks a lot.
This beautiful 1969 Chevrolet Camaro SS was visiting the auto repair shop the same day.
19 may 2007:
Oldsmobile seats and center console installed.
Grandpa helps us again :-) Thanks a lot
25 june 2007:
Sondre is installing a new set of tires, again.
08 august 2007:
Today Chevelle had to go to the EU-inspection test.
It ended well, they found no defects. Chevelle passed the test :-)
14 October 2007:
We sell the Chevelle.
The last pictures of Chevelle before we sold it.
Here's a hot take off moviefile. (4,5 MB)
So, why did we sell?
After buying the Corvette we had four cars.
Storage/parking space is limited where we live so one of the cars had to go.
It was a difficult choice, but together we came to an agreement.
We learned a lot and had lots of fun restoring and driving the Chevelle.
One thing is for sure, the classic car hobby now has two new recruits :-)