[Steve Drueck]

"I had often heard that structurally, the original ZL-1
blocks were not nearly all that they were cracked-up to be
( excuse the pun ). So how did so many ZL-1's retain their
original engines? They were all-out race cars and built
for pedal to the medal stuff !

Some day, we may learn how many ZL-1's actually retained
their original engines. That goes for COPO's, Yenko's, etc..

I can't be the only one that finds it odd that so many race cars
would retain the one component prone to failure - the engine.

Steve"




Steve you are totally correct. Most ZL-1 engines were not assembled to last. I was very fortunate to buy #64 in the late 80's from the original owner, Bill Turner. It is an orig engine car, (with 911 well documented miles) mainly because Bill had the foresight to have Bob Tucker blueprint the engine about a month after he bought it. (Have the receipt for the rebuild) Also he pulled it in favor of an iron motor after that. The motor was never seperated from the car, but most ZL-1 engines were blown up and were apart from the cars. Because of the aluminum block, I doubt anyone actually threw one out, and 37 years later, many are now "re-united" with the original car and restored with total abandon to the cost of repair, welding, machining, etc to bring it back. When I bought my ZL-1 only a couple were original motor cars, but now a lot more are thanks to internet and communication throughout the collector circles. As to ZL-1's being "race cars" this car had a set of Hooker Headers added and an MSD and some slicks, literally the day after it was driven (yes, driven) home from indian River Chevy to Ft. Myers . Thus it was a "race car". Not all of them were ripped to shreds like you might think. A lot of cars raced in the 60's had little more than bolt ons, and slicks. Steve Drueck