Super Chevy Show Gainesville (Web Exclusive)

Need a wash? These lovely ladies were from Gator Gal Glimmer Wash. For asmall price, you can hire a group of beautiful University of Floridacoeds to come out and fully detail your ride. We checked out theirwebsite, www.gatorgalglimmerwash.com, and were suitably impressed.

One of the major events at the show was Roger Gustin, Super Chevy Showowner and manager, coming out of retirement for a pass down the dragstrip. Roger grabbed a helmet and took the '57 down the strip low elevensecond pass at 130 mph!

You don't see many of these today that haven't had a V-8 conversion.This Vega was bone stock, and still sported its original four cylinder.

When the Vega first came out, its four cylinder was an all aluminumdesign with no iron liners. While revolutionary, the special coatingused to protect the cylinder walls from scuffing by the rings didn'twork, and these engines suffered from horrible cylinder sealing. Thesolution was a factory recall where the blocks were bored out so ironcylinder liners could be installed. With iron liners, the cylindersstayed sealed, and the engines ran pretty good. These engines also hadan odd valve cover design because of the placement of the valves and camfollowers.

What's a Super Chevy show without a barbeque? While his friends wereglued to the TV watching the Florida vs. Tennessee game, this guy wasgrilling up some chicken to go with, some, uh "adult beverages" thateveryone was enjoying. While the chicken smelled good, we spied someonecooking ribs in another pit!

Rodger Ashworth brought out his work-in-progress '57 hardtop out to theshow. It's a long-haul veteran of the 2008 Power Tour hosted by sistermagazine Hot Rod.

Rodger's '57 is motivated by a fuel injected late model small-block.It's got modern A/C for comfortable cruising, and we were impressed byRodger's creative mounting of the air filter through the radiator coresupport.

At the strip, this C1 was laying down some wicked numbers, butunfortunately they were a little too wicked. After running a low11-second pass with no roll bar, the track officials black flagged theVette for safety reasons.

If you recognize this engine/trans combo, then you're really a hard corecar guy. For $200 you could have yourself a Morris Minor engine andtrans to put in...well, we're not sure what you'd put it in, but it'sstill interesting.

In the car corral, this really nice Chevelle 4-door was up for grabs.While only sporting a 283 and Powerglide, its almost total lack of rust and arrow straight panels make it a prime starting point for a project.

This veteran '55 has seen drag strip duty for the last 25-plus years.Owned by Bob Wold of Oxford, Florida, it was his first car and sawplenty of street duty in the Miami area, along with strip action atMiami-Hollywood Dragway until sometime after 1981, when the car became adedicated dragster. Bob raced the car at the last event atMiami-Hollywood before the track shut down due to encroachingsubdivisions and development.

Now here's a car that is screaming with potential. This '64 Chevelle 300spent most of its life in Oklahoma, and had only a little surface rustand fairly straight body to match. Powered by a well running 250inline-six with a Powerglide, for $8500 this car could be the beginningof a great build. Even though some of the trim was removed, it was stillwith the car along with some other odds and ends.

The interior of the Chevelle was in great shape. A little Por-15 on thefloor panels to neutralize the surface rust, and you could installcarpets in a weekend. Both seats were in great shape and just neededrecovering. Notice the radio delete panel?

From the back side you can see how great a shape this car was in. Wewere racking our brains trying to come up with some crazy way to getmoney to buy this car, but the penalty for armed robbery's a littlestiff in Florida, and we couldn't come up with enough pints of bloodbetween us to even buy a piece of trim off the car.

These things are always neat. Sunday a guy showed up demonstrating oneof those miracle oil additives that'll keep your motor from seizing ifyou run out of oil. His test subject was an old 235 inline-six (235'shad shaft mount rockers, 250-292 family inline sixes used stuff mountrockers like the V-8s). It's cool to get a chance to see the internalparts of an engine working, and can help give a better understanding ofeverything they do.

Here's another great wheelstand for you! Randy Harrison had his third-gen Camaro up on its rear wowing the crowd with a great pass down thedrag strip. Third Gen Camaros are so cheap and plentiful, and they makegreat project cars because of the aftermarket parts available you canmake them do almost anything.

After the radical styling change Chevrolet implemented for 1958, Chevydesigners went back to the drawing board in a big way for '59. The new'59 Chevy featured a totally different front and rear end. The firstyear for the famous massive batwing fins, the '59s had the "cat's eyes"taillight design.

Up front, the '59 Impala/BelAir/Biscayne had an all new look that pulledheavily form the '50s "jet fighter" styling all the automakers wereusing. Chevy continued using the quad-headlight design that firstappeared in '58 on everything, including the Corvette, but in a lowermounting position than '58.

Looking much like the deck of an aircraft carrier, the deck lid of the'59 belied its massive amount of trunk space. In '59, besides the 348tri-power engine, you could still get a fuel-injected 283 for power, thelast year the FI engine would be an option in the full size line.

Thank God for wheelie bars! After noticing how high the bars were set onthis '69 Camaro, we knew there'd be some good action when the car leftthe starting line. We weren't disappointed.

This is what we like to see, hardcore evidence of someone really drivingtheir classic Chevy. By the amount of splatter on the front of this'57's hood, it came from a pretty good distance to attend the show.