1969 copo camaro

[jeff-san]

WOW...one BAD ASS ride! how cool to get in touch with the original owner and get his memories laid out from day 1. I could feel the passion and emotion take me right back to high school again...sometimes reading these stories, it feels like I havent matured passed my high school days.

I know I'm not the only one that started thinking back to High School and our very first car or cars that we'd owned. what a great story on a very special car. someone is gonna get a very special ride. I would gladly see my heard of turds just to get a chance of buying this car. I know it would leave me alot more room in my garage too. :

again, thanks for sharing your car and it's passed lives with us. good luck on the sale!

[deuce-less]

prior owner cary van nuis tell's of his time with the copo and some of it's race history

My Story of the Copo Camaro
And Her Racing History


Cary Van Nuis
October 2008


My story starts out like some of the others. I guess all 17 year olds have some of the same dreams. Dan Palchanes had sold the car to Brian Wilbur and a few months later he had spun a bearing in the engine. In 1975, the fall of my senior year, I bought the car from Brian; when I saw the car I fell in love and had to have it. I towed the car to our school auto shop, pulled out the engine and rebuilt it. I spent all winter working on it and in the spring of 1976 the engine went back in and we fired it up. It had a great sound. I was not a street racer, I just had fun driving the car.

In the summer of 1976 I started working at Corbo’s Sunoco. He has had a lot of race cars and was interested in racing my Camaro. He showed me how to set up the engine to make the car run faster. One night I was racing down Route 287, pedal to the metal and all of a sudden the oil pressure dropped and the engine started knocking. I towed the car back to Corbos, pulled out the engine and had Tony Feil rebuild it. The car never ran better. It would easily run up to 8000 RPM. Joe wanted to build another race car and I wanted a new car so in the summer of 1977 I sold him the car. Joe and I disassembled the car completely. The chassis went to Dauernheim Race Cars where the roll cage and rear were installed. The engine was sent to Tony Feil Competition Engines. The engine was the original 427. I don’t believe it was bored out. It had reworked aluminum heads from Chevrolet. We wanted to keep the car as light as possible and the rules for racing stated that the more cubic inches there were the heavier the car had to be. It had a Tunnel Ram with 2 Holley 1200 CFM carburetors. I am not sure of what the exact size of the carbs had been. We used the MSD Crank Trigger Ignition and a cable driven tachometer mounted on the dash. The transmission was a Doug Nash 5 Speed with a Long Shifter but we only used 1st through 4th gears at first. The rear was a Dana, and I think with 5.13 gears. The interior was mostly left in tact. I think the seats were out of a Maverick, because they were lighter. Eventually the deluxe door panels were removed and the standard panels were installed. The back seat was removed for the narrowed rear. The body work was done by K&L Auto body in Somerville. We finished reassembly of the car in the spring of 1978.

Joe named the car “Blue Mule” because he thought it was a real kick in the ass. So, with the name on the back of the car it was ready to run in B-Modified Production. In that class you did not have to slam on the brakes at the end of the run so as not to run faster than your index. Our index was 9.75 seconds. You have to picture this 18 year old kid who never drove a car at a drag strip or even watched a race before. I had no idea how the tree worked or what to do. Our first time out was at night at Island Dragway in North Jersey. I pulled up to the line in this new race car with around 700 HP under the hood. I launch the car just like I was leaving a stop light. I ran through all the gears and ran about 130 MPH. When I got back to the pits I was so scared I was shaking. Well, in the first run the fan belt flipped and overheated the engine. That happened two more times before something happened to the engine and it melted a piston. The car went back on the trailer and we went home.

Joe had another engine to use while the 427 was being repaired. This one was not as fast as the 427 but we were able to set up the car and get things right with the chassis. When the 427 went back in the car it ran near its index but not much faster. You had to run at least 2 tenths of a second under your index to be competitive and cut a good light. I was never good at cutting a good light but I new how to run the car.

One Sunday we were at Englishtown and working on setting up the car. I would launch the car at about 9000 RPM and it would normally pull the front wheels off the ground about 6 to 8 inches then drop back down. But it never really felt like it launched well. I suggested that we raise the wheelie bars, so we did. The next time I took the Blue Mule for a run it felt different when doing the burn outs. Unfortunately when the front end came down it smashed the bottom of the headers. I made my run anyway. When I launched the car, it left like a Pro Stock. The front end came up and held the wheels off the ground the whole time in first gear. I hit second and up they came again. I left so hard that the engine ran out of fuel at the top of the RPM range in both gears and the time was not that good because of it. We never did that again, but I always felt that if we kept experimenting with the bars we may have been able to have better run times. That was the only time I actually felt like I was being pushed back in the seat. Looking back now, the Mule was an easy car to drive and always went straight the whole trip down the track.

We raced mostly in New Jersey at Englishtown, at Island Dragway and sometimes in Pennsylvania. We raced in the Summer Nationals in 1978 and won our class. We were just running our index. The reason we one the class was because the competition broke at the line. At that same event we were running at night and on one of the runs the car ran a 9.53 at 137 MPH. That would have been a new class record for B-Modified, but you had to make a second run at the same event at that ET and we could not do it. The time was great because we never had an ET that fast but the MPH was a little slow. The car usually ran 140 MPH. As far as I know it never ran that fast again.

Joe had been talking with Bill “Grumpy” Jenkins about the car and Bill gave him the plans to build a small cubic inch Big Block. It was a 454, 2 bolt main engine with a crankshaft from an early Big Block Truck engine. I think it was a 353 cubic inch engine. Not sure of the original truck Cubic Inch. When the engine was completed it was a 373 with the heads moved on the block so the spark plugs were towards the center of the cylinder. The car still ran about the same ET. By now the rear gears were only lasting about 3 runs down the track. A Ford rear was installed with a higher gear ratio and now we were using all 5 gears in the Doug Nash transmission. By now the car was breaking a lot of parts, I was loosing interest and my driving was not good enough to be able to cut a good light, so I stopped driving in the summer of 1980.

Tom Martino took over the driving. He had his own race car but also drove the Blue Mule. He could cut a good light and won a few races with the car, but the car was still breaking parts. At the end of 1985 I moved from north Jersey. I don’t know how much racing was done. I think Joe had to run the gas station and could not race as much. I heard another driver took a few runs with the car but never did well. Dan told me the car was sold in 1990.

I have a lot of great memories of the car, mostly as a street car. I would like to thank Dan Palchanes for keeping me informed and finding the car before it was junked. To Alan Forman, a man that I have never met has given me the opportunity to see my old car restored to the way I remember it. Thank you. It is once again on the road and in good hands.

[deuce-less]

the mule has been busily recieving a few finishing touches before consignment....

my good friend chuck the 427 king sent along a special going away present, see pic's....

ken and his crew are finishing up details like the M-22 and real BE rear....

the mule will probably leave for wagners within a couple of weeks, i will entertain any resonable offers before she heads to consignment in bonner springs kansas.

[deuce-less]

ds2

[deuce-less]

ds3

[mockingbird812]

Cool deal Alan and good luck. My neighbor down the street is a transplant form NJ and was a wrench at Malcolm Konner. Maybe he worked/prepped your car?!

[deuce-less]

when you get a chance to visit with your neighbor ask him if he remembers any special cars from back in the day at the dealership

thx, alan

[mockingbird812]

define "special"


Will do!!

[deuce-less]

perhaps he will remember one or two "high performance unit's"

[njsteve]

If that is a foil type sticker you can get it reproduced rather easily. I had mine done by Dave at ECS Automotive. Dave is always looking for new "old style" dealer stickers and other interesting stuff to reproduce. He is a stickler for exact detail.

I had him do the Suburban Dodge sticker we found on the underside of a ladder. I just sent him a close up photo with a ruler next to the sticker and he was able to recreate it. He ended up just charging me for the regular rate for the sticker and no other R&D costs since he could use the pattern for other dealerships.



http://www.ecsautomotive.com/