The Supercar Registry - Don Yenko and the Golden Goose 1965 396

was looking at some Corvette racing history and found this story.
This 396 had to be one of the first Yenko sold Big Blocks to hit the track and maybe the street

This story is from Ken Hablow about his race car 1963 Corvette that was raced as a FI 327 then rebuilt in 1965 as the "Golden Goose" with modifications similar to the 1963 Grand Sport Corvettes

They could not buy a 1965 396 L78 crate engine so bought a new 396 L78 Corvette from Yenko Chevrolet just to use the engine in the 1963 "Golden Goose"
It was run with four 2bb carburetors and an early M22 trans

quote from Ken Hablow ...
"We were getting bored with the 327 fuelie and wanted to build a Corvette "super car". Chevrolet would not sell the engine alone at that time so Don sold me a car at his cost with the understanding he could drive it at Daytona and Sebring. I flew to Cannonsburg to pick up the car, a factory white coupe. The car would not go over 50 mph all the way home without overheating. This was a problem with the very first cars shipped with the 396. We put the engine and radiator into the blue coupe. We discovered what the overheating problem was and immediately corrected it. This caught the attention of the GM engineers. Since the engine had to race in modified class, we had free reign to do whatever we wanted. Ken Duclos did all the mechanical work. He found a custom intake manifold that used 4 Rochester 2 barrel carbs so that there was a direct flow to each intake valve. This proved much more efficient than the standard high rise manifold with a single big Holly.

Through Yenko, I had an inside track to Chevy R&D and since we were the only ones on the east coast racing and experimenting with the big block, Chevy kept sending us all kinds of engine parts to try. This included everything from camshafts to exhaust systems. We decide to make the car look more like a Grand Sport and modified the body. We took the split out of the rear and had a custom plexiglass window made with air vents. The venting on the body was designed for brake cooling and to let some of the air out of the lower rear chamber. The engine had so much power we could not keep transmissions or rear ends together.

I had already purchased what Chevrolet called the "Rock Crusher" gear box for my 63 roadster so this trans was put in the coupe 396 car. To solve the rear end problem Ken Duclos welded the spiders so we had a locked rear end. Mark Donohue always called this car a moving road block. We still had problems with the transmission and rear end overheating so we installed Borg Warner pumps on each with manual switches and temperature gauges. When the temperature got to a certain point the pumps had to be turned on. This kept the gears from turning blue.

This car ran like a Swiss watch. Every nut and bolt was safety wired including all the internal engine parts. When Ken and I decided to take the car to Nassau Speed Weeks in Dec. 4, 1966 we got greedy and built a 427. This engine never ran well. At Nassau we had so many problems with it we did a swap with the original 396 short block which we had in the truck. We only finished 17th OA and 7th in class. After Nassau we decided to sell the car the following spring of 1967."