After almost exactly 15 years of ownership, this thread is a long time coming. You may know me better as the builder of the Rice Rod, the '31 Ford with a 2JZ, and Datsaniti, last year's $2000 Challenge winning station wagon. This car is much more important to me.
This El Camino was my first car, my first project, and the catalyst that ignited my passion for cars and engineering. Throughout all the changes and growth in my life, it has been the one constant. It always fires right up. And it ALWAYS needs something fixed. I've never owned a real truck, so it gets used as a truck. It was my daily driver for 5 years through high school and into college. I've made a lot of memories in and around it, and hope to hold onto it forever. I don't have many plans for it, I don't treat it as nicely as I probably should, but I love fixing the small things that crop up and just having a "cool car" that I can drive around while I wrench on my insane projects.
The day dad and I brought it home, August of 2005, the summer before I started high school. I was 14, and now only the 2nd owner of this car. This was shortly before the rise of craigslist, so I found it in the Sunday newspaper classifieds. Scouring the car classifieds was my sunday morning breakfast ritual throughout middle school. The original owner, then in his 80's, claimed the odometer had turned over twice, making it 215,000 miles. It was a 2-bbl 350 L65 with a TH350 3 speed. He had the engine replaced by in the 90's by the dealership. The Mexico stampings on the heads confirm this. The L65 is one of the tamest 350's ever made, with only 8.5:1 compression and a low lift cam, it made maybe 200 hp. I didn't care, I was a teenage boy that wanted to drive. We were able to get it running and driving, despite the homemade hand controls the owner had fashioned to the steering column. He had developed a leg disability later in life. Old tires, blown out rear air shocks, and a wheezy engine that died at every stop light. Somehow we made it home!
Truth be told, my dad wanted this project at least as much as I did. He grew up in the 70's and adores the classic muscle car era. But it had been many years since he had a project of his own, probably due to life and kids and all that. We quickly tossed the stock exhaust and intake, and fitted an Edelbrock 4-bbl, manifold, long-tube headers, dual exhaust, and HEI distributor. Got it painted "Elkhart green", a Corvette exclusive color in the early 70's. Looking back, it wasn't exactly fast, but it sure felt and sounded that way, and tingled my teenage hormones. I was a pretty good kid in general, but I got into a lot of petty automotive trouble with this truck. No regrets.
My younger sister saw how cool this car was, and wanted a muscle car of her own. Her first car was this '73 Nova. She wasn't comfortable working on it and driving it, so that didn't last long. But for a short while we had the coolest and oldest cars in high school by far!
In college I finally got a reasonable commuter car, so the El Camino became my "fun" car. It was always fun, but now that was its only purpose. Over the years I kept it in good condition, upgrading things here and there, and making hardware store runs with it. One of my first major purchases after starting my career after college was upgrading to front discs and rebuilding the tired old suspension.
I'm just going to post a bunch of pictures from over the years.
Right now it does the same thing it's been doing for 10 years. Taking up garage space, getting driven to work once a week, going to car shows and the hardware store, and periodically crying for new parts to keep it on the road.
Plans? Well, I don't consider this a project car. It's just my awesome truck. But one day I would like to do a frame-off resto-mod it. It's not very pretty underneath, but it's a relatively rust-free Georgia car. I would like better gears, posi-traction, and more power. In the near-ish term, maybe Vortec heads and a mild cam, nothing crazy. Right now I'm happy with what it has always done, which is keep on keepin' on. So don't expect a build thread, more of an ownership log I can post random El Camino pictures to. Thanks for reading, hope you enjoy.
Great history & pics! Thanks for sharing.
Love the El Camino colour. The wagon is pure sex.
I start at "latest topics" so I didn't know which forum this was in. Not gonna lie, I was hoping it was in Cars For Sale. But I'm (kinda) glad it isn't.
Nothing will ever convince me that this isn't the ideal form of the car. @GM bring back the elco
You bought your elky when i was building the customer 65 that led me to buying mine years later.
I still love elky.
In reply to Dusterbd13-michael (Forum Supporter) :
I hope mine never meets the fate of yours 
You should get another
Next one will be a 71-72 big block triple black....
In reply to maschinenbau (I live here) :
Thank you for starting this build thread.
About a month ago, I was looking at 1972 Chevelle / El Camino color charts, trying to figure out exactly what color your car is. It's perfect.
This is my single favorite El Camino ever.
I love me some el Camino. Glad to see it getting some build thread love
My first car was a 74 my dad and I fixed up.
I love "first car" threads
Cool story! There's a Brad Pitt movie called The Mexican that features this car--if you haven't seen it, it's definitely worth the watch.
Thanks everyone, I'm a big fan of this car too. I don't think I emphasized enough the father-son aspect of this project. Cars are probably 60% of how I communicate with dad and this El Camino project reinvigorated his own muscle car passion. It didn't take long after getting me my driver's license for him to get a project of his own. He picked up a basket-case '69 AMX and restored it over the next few years, including the Big Bad Green color. After that, he did another '69 AMX in the same color, this one a limited-edition "500 Special", 1 of 30-something supposedly. He is certainly more of a "purist" than me, going for the numbers-matching factory restoration. At this time, I was joining the Wreck Racing team in college, building $2000 Challenge cars. So, different strokes.
Here I am drag racing him in the AMX. I won't say our times out of shame, but I won 2 out of 3, though he had the fastest ET of the night. Neither car was running right, so a re-match is TBD.
Now he's doing a '69 Chevelle SS 396. Not sure I stand a chance against this one! Obligatory Christmas color photo.
You and i are the 72 A body club
In reply to Patrick (Forum Supporter) :
I'm gonna need you to post more about it
maschinenbau (I live here) said:In reply to Patrick (Forum Supporter) :
I'm gonna need you to post more about it
it's inching along now. If i felt like getting the oil pan on and bolting engine to transmission it could go in. Ended up with a th350 because i don't want to put the $ th400 behind a stock 5.3
I LOVE that color
Dude... Your El Camino RULES. Great story, and it looks like you've made some great memories with it. I look forward to seeing more!
El Co looks great! Not normally a fan of green but that color works on it and the Cragars are awesome. Cool story too and a killer first car. Love El Camino - I have a beater '72 for truck duties and a long term project '60.
After driving an El Camino for 15 years, I know one thing for certain. EVERYONE loves an El Camino. There is no group of people against El Caminos, from Prius-driving granola types to coal-rolling diesel bros. They simply rule.
Here's a fun story from last year. I was driving on the interstate from some family gathering and my sister and her husband happen to be behind me. It was night and I was cruising about 70. Suddenly I hear a BANG and the engine immediately runs like E36 M3. It's backfiring, bogging down on power, not sure what's going on. I merge over to the shoulder and try to figure it out. Before I can lift the hood, sis calls me asking if everything's okay. She heard the bang and saw flames from the exhaust. She was worried my car was on fire. I assure them I'm fine and have towing on my insurance, no need to stop. I'm able to restart the engine but it still runs real bad, like a vacuum hose is loose or something. I'm parked in a bad spot so I limp to a gas station with the prayer that bad gas caused it, and fill it up. It's still running pretty bad but seems to have fixed itself enough after revving a bit, so I figure no harm in getting as close to home as I can. Damn thing makes it the whole 30 miles with nothing but a slight "miss", as if the ignition timing is out of whack.
At home I immediately investigate with the engine running. While reaching around the distributor to try and "correct" the timing I get zapped! Goddamn car just shocked me. So I turn out the garage lights and see an electrical storm arcing behind the cap and onto the firewall. WTF. I pull the cap and rotor to find this mess.
The rotor was split in half! The rotor contactor was completely bent over 90 degrees. The advancer weights strewn about, along with many unidentifiable chunks of crap. The cap had two large windows and the coil discharge voltage was just going wherever it felt. This was RUNNING! And honestly, not running that bad once the distri-blender puree'd the parts into smaller, more digestable pieces. This was a Summit Racing brand HEI upgrade distributor from 14 years before. I still have no idea what went wrong. My guess is a circlip holding an advancer weight broke, allowing the weight to get thrown and "run over" by the rotor. But who knows. Now I'm running a Cardone re-man.
Running a Cardone, you better get a spare to carry for when it pukes, it won't be long.
While I got many years from the Summit one, I barely got 50k miles from it. I figure the reman should last at least that long!
I am a huge fan of el caminos, and that color is beautiful. I drove a 75 gmc sprint through my college years.
I love this! It's so nice to see some old car that hasn't had an ls swap.
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