- 1971 MONTE CARLO “The Original One” -
Having grown up in Downers Grove, and specifically by
North High School, I was exposed to all the muscle cars of the time and narrowed down what I liked; long hoods and short trunks. That pretty much narrowed it down to the Chevelle, Monte Carlo and the pony cars from all the manufacturers. After graduating from high school I attended college in Greenville, SC. Working through college was enhanced by working in town, so after bothering friends to drive me for as long as I could, in 1979 I started looking for a Chevrolet, either a Chevelle, Monte or Camaro. After looking at a couple, my girlfriend (now my wife Sandi) told me that her hairdresser had a 1971 Monte Carlo for sale. I called and made arrangements to go see it. I was young and dumb, which meant I saw it under the parking lights at night under the lights of Greenville Mall. I wouldn’t look at a car like that again, but it worked out. It had a 350 engine with 245hp. Cottonwood green with Jade cloth interior.
The only thing that
bothered me was that the interior cloth seats were all stained with Coke.
Apparently they let the baby drink Cola from the bottle and it got everywhere.
$1,200 was the price and it was mine. The first
two
things I did was to replace the recapped tires and had the seats recovered. I
had $125 for the front and rear seat recovering and went to a local upholstery
shop. For the $125 they gave me light green “Southern Crushed Velvet”
originally from an Oldsmobile. That was fine with me. I spent the rest of the
college career reading about rebuilding the small block Chevy and hot rodding
them. The Monte served us well through Jr & Sr year and made the trip back to
Chicago. I couldn’t wait to start improving. This is the Monte used for our
June, 1980 wedding. It still has glitter in the rear window from the “Just
married” sign and the special wedding color ribbon on the rearview mirror.
After moving back to Chicago to begin my career, I attended the original NICC organizational meeting at Jim and Mary Holbach’s in Palatine. There I met Ray Neubauer and he said he rebuilt engines on the side using his brother-in-laws machine shop in Chicago. I asked if he would do this engine and within 2 weeks I called up
and said the engine was ready. He gave me better Chevrolet heads, a 4-barrel carb and bored the block .040 over. Ray rebuilt the shortblock using a General Kinetics cam that had the same specs as the L-79 camshaft. I put them together and got it running. Also had the trans rebuilt and put a 2,000 stall in it, with 2.73 rear gears. Ouch. My uncle repainted it and I started showing it. Won Super Chevy Martin, MI. in 1984, although compared to the quality work being done now, it shouldn’t have won but it did. I had dual exhausts put on it at Meinke in Downers in 1984 and we found the buildsheet in the right rear coil spring!!! Only in the south would a piece of paper survive for 13 years, eh?
This car was driven only
in good weather. In August, 2004 after completing the 1971 Monte SS, my two
boys and I, Josh and Joel, decided that we should redo the engine and detail it
prior attending the First Generation Monte Carlo Eastern Meet at the Woodward
Dream Cruise. So with 1.5 weeks prior to leaving for the Convention, we pulled
the engine in order to completely redetail the engine compartment and update the
mechanicals with parts I had been collecting for about 8 years (with 4 kids I
had to work up slowly in collecting
parts
& was ready to do it. We successfully pulled , installed new gaskets, oil pan,
Comp Cams Xtreme Energy cam, headers, Dart aftermarket iron heads, Edelbrock
aluminum Performer intake, roller-tip rockers, HEI distributor, etc. Joel
sanded and repainted the engine compartment (he is a detail freak) and the
engine was back into the engine bay. Andy Marchiando and another friend, George
Phillips helped a lot to get this done. I would stay up to 1am working on it
but the stayed up to 3am most mornings to get it done. They earned the right to
drive the car, We had the exhaust welded just 1 hour before the maiden trip to
Detroit and the car performed flawlessly.
In June, 2005 we put on an Edelbrock carb for the 2005 Hot Rod Power Tour and with the carb being tuned by carb expert Dan of Dan’s Carbs in Oswego, IL, it got 21 mpg with a TH350. I can’t wait to see how it does with an O/D trans. We also added a tilt steering wheel, aftermarket stereo and the A-pillar Autometer pod for the 2 1/16 gauges replacing the idiot lights. The pod was painted to match the green A-pillar. A Caprice altenator was substituted for the low amp original so now it has 108 amps at idle; the lights don’t dim anymore. Wanting the new altenator to match the rest of the underhood detail, I spent hours sanding with various grits of sandpaper before polishing the altenator so it matched the chrome valve covers.
This Monte is the one that started it all. I have owned this car for 27 years now. I fully expect that this car will be back in SC soon as son #1, Josh, would like to take it back down for his Jr. & Sr. years at college. It is an original Southern car, sold originally at City Chevrolet in Charlotte, NC, moving to SC after that. Is the work finished? Nope. There is a 12-bolt with a new Eaton (sorry John Sonnefeldt) posi unit with 3.36 gears ready to go in, along with the aftermarket tubular upper and lower control arms. While it is close to being done, the main item left is an O/D trans and then continued details for this driver.
Finally, everytime I get in the Monte I think of the NICC. You see when Wes Frisch was elected President of the NICC in 2000 I was given a gift certificate from Year One which I used to order the original Jade Green interior. It looks great. This Monte is tied closely to the NICC as it was the first meeting in February, 1984 that prompted me to begin the “improvement process”.