A 1976 Hornet Sportabout

As in all cases of assembling things from generally questionable sources, the engine has been assembled from not only it's original application of a Mercury Marine stern drive motor but the bits and pieces that make up the accessories mounting brackets originally graced a 305 cu in Pontiac fire bird for the most part and it was a tuned port fuel injection engine, a number of parts were purchases deeply discounted from swap meets.  The hardest part was finding all the brackets required to mount the A/C compressor and to mount the power steering pump with out interfering with the steering box. Then as tune port brackets fit the bolt holes, they had a lot of metal on them that no longer were of any use except to get in the way and a couple of days with a cut off tool were spent taking the ugly out of them.  The alternator (swap meet) turned out to be bad, so it was replaced with alternator (garage sale). The power steering unit was resolved by using a remote reservoir pump for the size and a remote reservoir chrome tank along with the radiator over flow tank which could be mounted on a fender well. Brackets were available to do this with which helped with  fitting these things.  The intake is an air gap unit, of unknown manufacturer but stamped made in China.  But looks suspiciously like an Edelbrock. The carburetor is a Carter 800 cfm Thermoquad mounted on heat insulator material.  I gets hot here and if excess heat is removed from the carburetor it will not be upset by being caught in a traffic jam on a triple digit day and begin to lean out.  The side affect is though it becomes a cold blooded thing and it takes just a bit before the engine gets warm enough for proper fuel atomisation through the intake. The exhaust manifolds are OEM Corvette units and used because it fits like a glove and the pipes no longer interfere with the rest of the suspension or body parts. The Camshaft is from Iskenderian and is a flat tappet dual pattern 270/280 duration hydraulic cam topped off with an OEM 1969 points distributor from a 1969 Camero. The heads are World Heads and are specked out as DART II heads which at the time were made by World. The short block is a 350 cu in marine short block with about 8.5:1 compression but with the heads offer right around 9:1 which is perfect for the available 91 octane premium sold in the area. 

A lot of minor issues have been addressed, so the last two days were spent removing interior door panels and the rubber weather seal, vacuuming out 40 years of desert dust and dead window track material in preparation for installing new.  Typically the driver's side front door window crank had taken a beating, found my coffee can full of them and one better grade ready to go back on. Next wash, clean lubricate and install all new window track along with the fuzzies. Then "Jam" with new body color and re-install things.  The door panels and arm rests need to be cleaned thoroughly and probably will use "Spray Nine". Also located the pieces for the windshield frame.  The plastic has not fared well in the desert heat and is brittle. I have some spare pieces, I'll have to see how good they are, or repo them in fiberglass. 

Edited by uncljohn - Oct/03/2014 at 10:13pm

Lokar makes specialty parts to aid in modifying things. I have use Lokar kits for transmission linkage to carburetor and to adapt the column shift of my Hornet to the 700R4 transmission. Recently I used the dip stick kit to all fire wall mounting of the transmission fluid level and another to install on the engine to obtain oil level.  The oil pan on this motor is the Marine Oil pan as used by Mercury Marine for their version of the 4 bolt main block with an OEM windage tray.  The Oil Pan is a 7 quart pan (with filter) and the Lokar dip stick works well.  Having these things available makes a big difference in having things work correctly.

ramblin64sw wrote: Lokar makes a great product. They have an excellent fit and finish. I recently installed their universal throttle cable on my car. I needed a little extra length for the dual weber's. It mounted to the firewall and stock pedal without any complications. Just had to make a bracket for the other end. Do you have any recent pics? Or have you been to busy working on the car?

I have some recent pictures, but unfortunatly my computer crashed and it is being rebuilt and I am unable to post them at the present. This of course has enabled me to do some clean up work here and there on the car.  I want to be able to drive the car to the closest muffler shop and have a muffler system installed on the car.  This required changing the passenger side block hugger header which intially was installed as a pair, but on the drivers side it interferred with the steering column. I located a factory "Ram Horn" manifold as used on the Corvette which provided clearance and when the ugly was ground off actually looked pretty good.  So I located another for the passenger side and processed it and installed it with a temporary muffler hook up to enable the car be transported.