I got a call from my dad the other day. He was telling me that he was getting a new rack for alignment and was getting rid of his old one. His old rack consisted of a drive on hoiste and a seperate computer station. He sent word out to ther shops seeing if they would be interested in a drive on hoist and rack and the only person that responded back was a transmission shop guy. He came to my father's shop to review the hoist and said I will take it for the price that you are asking for, $1000.00. Then dad got into his wheeling and dealing mode and said to the guy, "All I want from you is a 700R4 transmission, 2200 rpm stall converter, 4 gears, and a manual/automatic shifting." The manual/automatic shifting allows the user to either have it in automatic mode or if they plan to race, shift it manual style.

Dad told him that it does not have to be done right away, but he would like it before the next summer. This will grant the guy plenty of time to do a great job on a transmission that will need to be beaten and also just driven.

All now that is left is a Ford rear-end and disc brakes and the drive trane will be complete.

It is hard to keep the tires from spinning and also being able to take off relatively quickly. Since the rear-end is still stock, the one tire will spin at a seconds notice, but I thought dad did a great job keeping it together and not spinning it out.

The idle was adjusted to something a little higher. This way we can avoid fouling out the plugs. We were just about to go into McDonalds for some breakfast when I thought about video taping the car as a 360 view. We are going to slowly see some changes in the future on this car. We are looking at a 9 inch rear end and to add on top of that, going to put on rear disk breaks. You won't find to many caprices in that year with disk breaks on the back.

I started out gentle but you can tell that the car was spinning the tires because the tire finally hooked up and had a little squeak and then I slowly gave it more gas. The raod was a little bit damp so I was trying to keep the car from spinning.

I also tried to keep the car under 75mph because the cops were out that day and we didn't want to chance it.

I had to be careful with the gas because with the road a little wet the car had no problem spinning the tires. This is a short video of us driving. There is another video of us on the highway passing a semi truck while trying to obey the speed limits.

Here is how the engine was tuned for the 400 plus horsepower.

Engine was bored 30 over.
The heads were ported and polished
525 camshaft
Holley 650 Spread Bore Carburetor
Stock Exhaust Manifold
Edlebrock Performance Manifold (matched to the engine)
Mallory Performance Electronic Ignition
Dual 2 1/2" Xlerator Performance Mufflers
Stainless Steel Exhaust Tips

The transmission and rear-end are the next to be worked on. I will be posting specs on the tranny soon.

The same day that I came up to see family, dad and I went to the gym and we took the car too. I did some 360 degree walk around and one video behind the wheel. If you are going to watch these, you must have your bass turned up so you can hear the engine properly. The cylinders on a 454 are not small so the sound is quite low.

Last time I was up to see my family, dad told me that the engine kept over heating. His thoughts were because of the radiator that he had just put in. He didn't think it was quite right for this engine so he replaced it was an aluminum radiator built to cool down a 1000hp engine ($650).

Needless to say, the radiator did the trick and the car has zero faults in it.

The car does have some weak points but those will be getting replaced. 1) The transmission is a 350 turbo which will not hold up to the engine if you give it to much. The transmission will be replaced with a 700R4 with a manual shift. 2) The rear-end is still stock and not built for 400hp. 3) The rims and tires are old and not wide enough. The width on the rim is determinate to the max with that the car can handle on all four locations. We want to be able to service this thing with some ease and not be replacing rear tires every so often. These are later topics to talk about.

Years have gone by that I have not driven the car. I came up to see my family and get an oil change for my mini van when I realized that the caprice was sitting out back of my dad's shop (Olson Auto Service Inc.). I asked dad about it but he was kind of quiet on the matter and I also noticed that his Bronco was missing. It turns out that he traded the Bronco for work and a new engine for the car. The engine is a 454 putting out over 400hp. Apparently someone built it for a street car and ran out of money. We have always wanted a big engine to replace the 4.3L, and now we have it.

After a couple of months went by, dad informed me that the engine and exhaust have been installed and he let me hear that thing on my cell phone. You can see what I mean by listening and watching this video.