1967 L 88 coming up at BJ Scottsdale

[Peter S.]

Re: 1967 L 88 coming up at BJ Scottsdale

Hi Peter, I understand. From what I know the car has a factory over the counter L88 engine with the original assembly stamp showing the IT code. It has no vin stamped as the owner at the time did not want to misrepresent the car so it is not the original motor but an L88 engine that was built by GM. If I win the lottery tonight, I will be buying that car!

If you care to pool some lottery tickets, powerball is at $113 million and the drawing is saturday.

[Michael J.]

Re: 1967 L 88 coming up at BJ Scottsdale

I looked through the Corvettes at BJ today. I didn't see the NCRS stamp of approval on this one like several of the others. But it does have the Duntov front plate.

[William F.]

Re: 1967 L 88 coming up at BJ Scottsdale

No, I'm talking about what you confirmed in post #41. A real GM L88 better than something else, but not the same as if it had original engine? Are there any out there with original L88 engines? Suppose would be hard to confirm nowadays with all the $$ and time/energy involved in creating one.
B the way, still having some trouble ith getting words correctly prcessed o delete etc. on this new web site; no trouble onyther has to bewb site, not my computer. Se what I'm talking abou???

[Tracy C.]

Re: 1967 L 88 coming up at BJ Scottsdale

I don't see how BJ/anyone can say there was only one red/red L88. Not all of the L88's have been found so it's possible there are more red/red ones.

I lifted this pic off the Corvette Forum a few weeks back. I tried to find that thread so I could credit the person who put it out there. BTW we had Cliff Gottlob as a guest Speaker at our January chapter meet last month. He was the original owner/driver of the Daytona Racer L88. (and also the first 65 396 Bill Mock has for sale in the classified section) He was very well connected to Vince Piggins and Chevy's back door and had some interesting stories on these cars.

67 L88s.jpg

[Steve B.]

Re: 1967 L 88 coming up at BJ Scottsdale

I lifted this pic off the Corvette Forum a few weeks back. I tried to find that thread so i could credit the person who put it out there. BTW we had Cliff Gottlob as a guest Speaker at our January chapter meet last month. He was the original owner of the Daytona Racer L88. (and also the first 65 396 Bill Mock has for sale in the classified section) He was very connected to Chevy's back door and had some interesting stories on these cars. [ATTACH=CONFIG]50302[/ATTACH]

Tracy, that Daytona racer is my personal favorite 67 L88. It has its original engine, full paperwork and great race history.

[Michael H.]

Re: 1967 L 88 coming up at BJ Scottsdale

Tracy, that Daytona racer is my personal favorite 67 L88. It has its original engine, full paperwork and great race history.

Next time you talk to Burroughs, ask him who talked him into restoring the car back to race condition instead of factory fresh. It took many hours of talking to do so.

This was way back before anyone was restoring old race Corvettes to race prep.

[Steve B.]

Re: 1967 L 88 coming up at BJ Scottsdale

Michael, that was a great call on your part!

[Michael H.]

Re: 1967 L 88 coming up at BJ Scottsdale

Michael, that was a great call on your part!

John Braun and I had a great time turning Daves almost completed L88 restoration back into a race car. I have a picture of John standing in the jack compartment with the deck lid open, jig saw in hand, crudely slicing the just restored deck lid for the roll bar that we were reinstalling. Dave is in the background just looking on, shaking his head as we did it just like Gottlob did in 1967. Crude and with the roll bar sitting crooked, just like it was originally. ("not the way we wished it was")

Removed the nicely restored/painted exhaust manifolds and installed the GM headers.

Braun, Dale Smith and I spent about three days tearing up Dave's beautiful restoration.

If I can find the pic's, I'll post some.

[Steve B.]

Re: 1967 L 88 coming up at BJ Scottsdale

John Braun and I had a great time turning Daves almost completed L88 restoration back into a race car. I have a picture of John standing in the jack compartment with the deck lid open, jig saw in hand, crudely slicing the just restored deck lid for the roll bar that we were reinstalling. Dave is in the background just looking on, shaking his head as we did it just like Gottlob did in 1967. Crude and with the roll bar sitting crooked, just like it was originally. ("not the way we wished it was")Removed the nicely restored/painted exhaust manifolds and installed the GM headers. Braun, Dale Smith and I spent about three days tearing up Dave's beautiful restoration. If I can find the pic's, I'll post some.

I hope that you can find them, thanks!

[Tracy C.]

Re: 1967 L 88 coming up at BJ Scottsdale

Tracy, that Daytona racer is my personal favorite 67 L88. It has its original engine, full paperwork and great race history.

Agree, Cliff told us how he lost a intake valve guide in Columbia MO driving it home from St Louis (Factory Delivery) 138 miles on the engine at that point. Luckily no serious damage to the engine but he pulled it and stashed it away in his shop in Ark City Kansas. He raced the car with a 283 bored .060 over until he built up another 427 for the Daytona race. The car was never tagged for the street but he borrowed a dealer's tag and drove the car to Daytona, raced the car (got 2nd in his class) and then drove it all the way back to Ark City Kansas without a hitch. The original engine went with car when it was sold.

Incredible story...He had lots of pictures and magazine articles to show.

tc

[Ray G.]

Re: 1967 L 88 coming up at BJ Scottsdale

I helped disassemble the "12-mile L-88" back in the spring of '67 to the spring of '68 when I graduated and went back to Michigan to work for Pontiac. The original owner (car was purchased from Alan Green Chevrolet) who was a ME classmate of mine at the U. of Washington wanted to turn it into the "ultimate drag racer", but the project was stillborn due to the owner running out of money and other personal problems in the seventies.

I bought and installed the TI into my 340 HP SWC. It quit twice, but I was able to repair it both times at no cost. The second time, circa 1975, after successfully completing bench testing it went into a box as I had by then learned how to make the single point ignition work properly without high rev breakup. I sold the system to Burroughs circa 1988 to install back on the L-88.

IIRC the interior was black.

We bumped the rear into a tree one night moving the car from one garage bay to another. We got distracted by bunch of chicks from the sorority house across the alley who came out to see what was going on. One of them was my ex-ninth grade girlfriend.

I've made inquiries about repair evidence above the left taillights, but never got a response. I recall that the paint was damaged, but I think the fiberglass was okay.

Duke

Duke
Thank you for sharing your history with us. These real life experiences certainly fill in blanks for me.

How does your experience with the 12 mile L88 coincide with published reports you have read ?

We really Appreciate your experience and engineering advice.
Ray

[Kenneth B.]

Re: 1967 L 88 coming up at BJ Scottsdale

I looked through the Corvettes at BJ today. I didn't see the NCRS stamp of approval on this one like several of the others. But it does have the Duntov front plate.

Look at the clip. Roy said it has 3 top flights & a Duntov award so what part of stamp of approval are you looking for. As far as owners Roy told me that he signed the title over to BJ so that's good enough for me. One can get a Top Flight without the "original block" GOOD LUCK ROY I hope it hits a lick.

[Duke W.]

Re: 1967 L 88 coming up at BJ Scottsdale

Duke
Thank you for sharing your history with us. These real life experiences certainly fill in blanks for me.

How does your experience with the 12 mile L88 coincide with published reports you have read ?

We really Appreciate your experience and engineering advice.
Ray

The only thing I found out in the last few years is that the car no longer has the original block, and several have asked me why the original owner would sell it. I have no idea and could only guess that he needed the money because there was no better block at that time. He got laid off from Boeing in the big aerospace downturn in 1969, and then his marriage broke up. These events put the project on hold due to lack of funds and he sold the car circa 1975.

I'm not going to give the original owner's name, but I will refer to him as "Joe".

Joe sold off parts that he planned to replace with aftermarket parts. He wanted to run a Joe Hunt modified Vertex magneto that was common among drag racers. My advice was that the Vertex mag was 1920s technology that had breaker points while the TI was state-of-the-art, but he was unconvinced. Neither of us knew what a fair price would be, but I suggested the option price on the window sticker, which was about $75, and he accepted.

The evening we got the TI on my 340 HP SWC we went for a test drive. I needed to get up to about 80 MPH in first gear to acheive redline (3.08:1 axle), and there was a very long I-5 onramp a few miles north of the U-district in Seattle that we used. As the engine cleanly passed through 6000 on the way to 6500 he pulled his legs up from the toeboard. I shifted at 6500, backed off, and asked him what the hell he was doing. He said something like: You know flywheels can blow up. I laughed my ass off.

I lived in a three bedroom house a few blocks from campus, and one of my roomates also had a red SWC. He and Joe rebult the 340 HP engine with a Z-28 inlet manifold (the hood never shut after that) and I recall the rebuild included Joe's L-88 flywheel.

Joe was always broke from buying parts, so we let him live free of charge in the basement during our senior year.

Joe worked part time for the university and had a key to the ME lab. In the spring of '68 I wanted to do a preemptive clutch change on my SWC before heading off to grad school, and Joe suggested we do the job over the weekend in the ME lab. We got my car in there Friday night and completed the disassembly about midnight. On Saturday I cleaned up all the parts at the house, and we went back to the lab Sunday morning to reassemble the car. About the time we were finishing up one of my professors who had written a grad school recommendation for me wandered into the lab with a couple of guests. We exchanged pleasantries and Prof. Guidon asked what we were up to... "just finishing up a clutch job on the Corvette" I said.

I'll note parenthetically that Prof. Guidon had ridden some hot laps with me at Kent on a day that our class went out there to do vehicle testing as part of a senior "engineering test" course. He had also ridden in a Ford stock car.

Prof. Guidon then continued the tour for his guests, and Joe and I finished up a half hour later. We were both sweating buckets as it was clearly an unauthorized use of university facilities, but we never heard a word about it. Prof. Guidon was a cool guy!

Joe was about six feet tall and almost as wide. He lifted weights, and I recall seeing him move that L-88 block around like it was a piece of styrofoam. He was also a really nice guy with a dream we all supported, and he was always willing to help us out on our projects.

I lost track of what was going on in Seattle around the early seventies, and it was circa '75 when I got a new Corvette News that had an article about the car. As I read it I felt my face go flush. Joe's dream was stillborn.

When Burroughs contacted me about the TI (through the late L-88 owner Doug Dewar who I was acquainted with) he gave me Joe's phone number. He was still up in Seattle working in the engineering profession as an independent consultant and his life appeared to be going pretty well. He said the whole L-88 episode is something he wanted to forget, and I understood his feelings. He wasn't involved in the car hobby anymore, but knew his old L-88 had achieved some notoriety. It's something that he doesn't want to be reminded about by the curious, and that's why I won't reveal his true name.

Duke

[Michael H.]

Re: 1967 L 88 coming up at BJ Scottsdale

The only thing I found out in the last few years is that the car no longer has the original block, and several have asked me why the original owner would sell it.
Duke

Duke

The original L88 block went with the car when the car was sold to the Corvette dealer in Wa. state. (Lincoln's Corvettes, if I remember correctly) The original owner completely disassembled it for blueprinting.

Lincoln sold the car and block to a man in Minnesota or Wisconsin. (can't remember)

That owner decided to purchase a new GM L88 short block assy rather than reassemble the original. (remember, it's 1975 and original blocks meant almost nothing at that time)

The car then sold to Jerome Shinkay in Wisconsin. It still had most of the other original engine components including heads, intake manifold etc etc.

When Krughoff/Burroughs bought the car, Burroughs found an unstamped 351 block and installed it in the car. (with my correct NOS 67 L88 cam)
A decision was made to not stamp the VIN number in the pad but, if I remember correctly, the Tonawanda stamp was already there, or added later. Can't remember.

So the car is actually on it's third block. In 12 miles, that's an engine about every four miles.

I painted the complete engine assembly with a very correct orange enamel using a pressure feed paint system. David and I fabricated a mask for the intake manifold that resulted in a very correct looking amount of orange on the manifold.

I blasted the exhaust manifolds with paint, just exactly the way it would have been done at Tonawanda. I wonder what people are saying about that today?

And I know the original owners name too. You have to agree, with a name like that, he would be a difficult person to find.

[Duke W.]

Re: 1967 L 88 coming up at BJ Scottsdale

So the original owner did not sell the original block, and it was with the car (but not installed) when he sold it to Lincoln Auto Parts, a Seattle salvage yard that specialized in Corvettes. They immediately sold it to the guy in Minnesota as I recall from the CN article.

It's not clear to me from your narrative what happened to the original block. Can you clarify?

Duke