Somebody mentioned all the trash I’d put in the last Road Rash about the purloined Biscayne, as in: “OK, you were talking about excited about the freakin’ car again. How many times can you do that and still sleep? So is it finished or what? I’m getting freakin’ real tired of your weak BS and lame-o excuses.”

OK, it’s done. Wound 850 miles through the Deep South to get it to my garage. It’s weeping smelly stuff. It’s not running steady. Sometimes it just quits. On the road. It’s got me concerned. I know the thing is working out its bugs, revealing its pin holes. As it should, I guess. Running it nine hours straight at highway speed is enough to make it spit stuff up.

Slippery stuff is oozing from the pumpkin and there’s a spot or two on the floor by the back of the motor. But it’s the engine’s erratic behavior that both alarms and vexes me. Sometimes it runs clean; sometimes it barely runs. It’s like there’s crud in the fuel line or intermittent spark or maybe too much fuel. I don’t know. I think we hit the nail, though. Everyone that surrounded me on the trip from Memphis hailed the Biscayne, telling me I should be proud to have re-birthed such a cherry (and under-appreciated) denizen of the 60s. And thank God it wasn’t a Nova, Camaro, or Chevelle. Amen.

Is the Biscayne to only full-size Chevy in the country with this kind of engine in it? It was my overwhelming desire to establish a thoroughly modern drivetrain in vintage metal, not to repeat what’s been done a million times. To wit: a C5R race bock bored and stroked to 451.8 cubic inches backed by a bulletproof Rockland Standard Gear T56 and literally the first Currie 9+ axle ever built.

That it uses a composite (LS6) intake manifold and retains the rocker cover-mounted ignition coils immediately lowers its eye-candy factor straight to the trash. It’s fugly to be sure. Certainly, I was castigated for not handing it a big-block. Granted, the Rat would fill more of the engine bay, but the LS engine is nothing if not exotic. Let ‘em wonder, I say. With a very mild camshaft, that nerdy lookin’ motor made 554hp at 5,617 and 577 lb-ft at 4,399 rpm at the flywheel.

With driver, the car weighs 3,930 pounds with a half tank of 93. Its overall gearing combines a 2.97 Low, a 0.62 Sixth, and a 3.89:1 ring-and-pinion for a lithe, long-legged 2.41 final drive. The Biscayne easily bettered 19mpg on the Memphis-to-New Port Richey run and never ran below 70 miles per hour. It liked ripping a hole in the air. Noise from the road and the A-pillars took serious precedent over the exhaust. The coefficient of drag on this hog must be X-Large barn door big. 

Young guns found me. Adrift. At a gas station in Tifton, GA. The battery was recalcitrant. Wouldn’t crank the engine fast enough to fire. Seconds away from calling the AAA hook, the good angels appeared, nonchalant, as if on cue. They dug the car, dug the LS engine swap even more. “Whoa. Dude. You from California?” said the lanky, goateed Will, eye fixed on the Biscayne’s plate. “You guys don’t do nuthin’ on 454s do ya?” he inquired politely, jumper cables dangling from his side. In a moment I was solvent again. Maybe I made a friend or two by the side of the road.

Though the engine ran, it wasn’t crisp. It farted once or twice when I tried to bring the revs up. Suffice that it maintained well enough to keep me on the highway. I refrained from putting a load on it and kept engine speed below 2,200 rpm.

By the time I’d reached my hometown exit, performance had decayed to the point of low-speed bucking. The engine was issuing groans enough for a haunting. I’m thinking that the thoroughly electronic system wasn’t getting enough juice to make things happen as they should. Battery or alternator, right? The alternator is a brand new GM piece, the kind that disengages and freewheels when the revs climb over a certain limit.

The Optima Yellow Top was new four or five years ago but in all the shuffling and waiting, it went completely dead for years. It seems to hold a charge but I’ve got no volt meter so I don’t know if it’s providing the amount of juice that the system needs. I put a new, freshly charged Red Top in the box. Engine didn’t start up any differently and took three tries at the key before it fired.

I called our own Bill Howell to dig some dirt on Mike Norris at Next Level Performance. Norris is known for his LS engine tuning skills and thoroughly setting the LQ9 6.0L engine in Bill’s GTO straight. Bill was on the floor at the SEMA show. He said he’d talk to Mike and have him call me. Clearly, I’ll have to become a lot friendlier with electronic fuel injection cyberspace. More about this, what Mike told me, and what we did about it next month.

RoadRash Archives:

• July 2006
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