RAIV and RAV more continuation....

[Steve_Hoog]

Tom

Seeing this gets my blood boiling!!! The car ran low 10's, said he got to be good friends with Howards in CA.



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[tjs44]

303 heads are very simular to the 400s,smaller unmachined chambers,takes a long reach plug and usually have smog ports in the exhaust.The block is way diff on the short deck,has a filled in lifter area like a SBC,has the oil filter diff.The 400 exhaust wont fit on a short deck 303 setup as the pass side will hit the filter.Im sure the 303 version will fit on a 400 setup.Remember there were 2 diff 303 setup,std deck with a long rod and the short deck.The short deck has 2 1/2 mains and was WAY more competetive but because they only made 25 of them,they were not allowed to compete.The std. deck 303 was a dog.Tom

[Steve_Hoog]

Tom

You ever see this GM drawing?

[Steve_Hoog]

Tom I can see that, sounds logical.

I just got off the phone with Ramair Restoration, they scan the donor manifold digitally now so there is no harm to the original what so ever. He said normal tooling starting type price is $12,000 but that is for several thousand casting type molds. Since RAV would be only a few dozen at best, the mold material may be less expensive. Again this is just rough guesstimate on Paul's part, but he will do it. He also said he has a set of the 303 manifolds and acted surprised when I told him what they where. HAHA Everyone should read Yenko forum, then they would be up on this stuff.

[StealthBird]

Speaking of the Ram Air Restorations manifolds, has anyone ever seen (or tried) the 3" round port RAIV versions for the 67-69 Firebird? If so, do they actually fit?

[Steve_Hoog]

I just got off the phone with another GM Engineer who still works there, in Powertrain. Which sits on top of the old Engineering building, the tunnel is still there apparently.

Engineering was connected by an underground tunnel to the administration building which is about a 5 to 10 minute walk. The production plant was about 500 yards from the engineering building, so they were like a tripod of buildings. He said most of the production buildings are gone and that you can still see some of the foundations.

I asked him to give a general perception of why cars went to engineering and he said basically to make mules. He said there were several other reasons why cars went there, and that there were actually enough parts there to build a car. He said they would grab cars off the assembly line like we might grab a bolt from the bin and there was never any paperwork. So PHS would be of little use for any car that ended up in engineering, I hated to hear that but that's the way it is I guess. He said any car built without dum dum would be skipped on the production by a walk through with an engineer, which is the exact same thing the guy that gave me the build sheet said.

He also told me about the black 70 RAV that ran around the facilities, just as the other engineer I talked to some time ago. So I would suspect that car to be as told, probably no PHS on it either. I asked about his opinion on Marty Schorr's accounting of Milford, he said it was possible but he wasn't involved with Milford and could not collaberate that.

He said the facilities as he descibed were basically laid out in the late 60's, so the guy from Tulsa that went there and saw the SD room apparently saw the older layout. He had never heard of "The Hobby Shop", so I now suspect that to be term used with the older SD room.

I dig this kinda stuff!!!! I asked if he would try to find some old pics of the engineering building, he will try. I love pics and that would be some sweet stuff to see.

So that's it for now.

[Steve_Hoog]

Why debate locations of building when you have the over head?

[StealthBird]

Steve, I swear, you could be the star of CSI.

Thanks for the photos!

[Steve_Hoog]

Most are from other people, so I can't take credit. I just like solving puzzles.

[DaJudge]

That's a cool overhead you can see it was about 2 blocks away from the assembly line.