It’s day one for Project 899, we’re excited to begin the build, and things started great. The phrase, “If it were easy, everyone would do it,” came to mind very quickly. It didn’t take long to see that modifications were going to be necessary. Fortunately, most of the members of our team have years of experience with building customs and race cars. So we’re used to parts not always fitting as they should or needing modifications and fabrication to work properly. Getting our LME-built supercharged L8T stuffed into this ’69 Camaro with a modern power steering rack from Flaming River was one of the first things that needed our attention. Individually, both components fit as they should. However, they were too close to each other for our comfort when we had both components in the car.
While day one revealed several things that needed immediate attention to not slow down progress, we did have several successes as well. We unveiled several of the main components for the car, including the beautiful beast of an engine from LME, the transmission from ATI, the stout rearend from Strange Engineering, and the big bad blower from Whipple. It was like Christmas came early as we opened boxes and crates.
As you can see in the video, day one saw us get the engine and transmission mounted in the car so that we could begin checking the fit of other parts like the Hooker Blackheart headers, Wegner accessory drive, Flaming River power steering rack, and IDIDIT steering column. We were also able to get the new Strange Fabricated 9-inch rearend somewhat mounted in the car.
The wonderful thing about our team that I noticed right away was that we all had similar humor and mindsets. We jelled immediately so there was no lack of jokes and laughter in the Big 3 Racing shop, but when an issue popped up solutions were discussed, decided and acted upon quickly. This team dynamic helped things run smoothly right from the start. Stay tuned to see more of Project 899 as the build comes together.