I’ve MM’ed about a lot of cars over the decades, and this is very close to one of them: a Chevy II four warmed up some and backed by a T5 five speed. Just make mine a two-door, in olive green. And maybe a new Vortec 3.0. I know: bad vibrations. But with that much torque and this little weight (2400 lbs), you’d hardly ever have to rev past about 2500 rpm or so, unless you really meant it. And the exhaust bark of a big four is…unique; the closest thing to a streetable Offy 270.
Was this Chevy II engine available in the 1980/81 Xbody Citation?
Nope: that was the Pontiac-sourced 151 cubic inch “Iron Duke” engine.
Needs a factory clock. Otherwise, awesome! I would love to do something like this.. maybe a TBI setup would be real neat/clean/reliable also.
A tach would be better, although considering the dearth of any gauges other than for fuel (was this one of the first cars to have nothing but idiot lights?), somehow, I doubt whether Chevrolet offered a tachometer to fit in the clock space of the quite spartan instrument cluster.
OTOH, at least there are left/right turn signal indicators. While the Valiant had real gauges, there was only a solitary turn signal indicator in that car.
My ’66 Tempest had just a single indicator lamp for the turn signals, too.
I believe there were some gauges available, I know there is a vacuum gauge that fit in the middle of that cluster, I’ve seen one before, but it must be rare. Most Chevies had jack for gauges in the 60’s.
Here’s the dash from a ’63 Nova SS:
That sounds amazingly like the 305 Mercruiser in my 2006 Sea Ray when I have it on muffs in the driveway.
If all fours were to sound like this, I’d be a convert!
I’m not sure why anyone would worry about the vibes. Don’t have handlebars that get the size of baseball bats. I don’t think a good four is much different than a V6.
Both inline fours and V-6s shake, but it’s a different type of shake. Inline fours have a second-order vibration and shake up and down; V-6s have a first-order vibration and shake from end to end. A 60-degree V-6 (or a V-6 with a balance shaft) is smoother than an inline four of the same displacement, but not as smooth as an inline six.
Kudos to this guy for keeping the 2/3 scale stovebolt and not going SBC. I’ve never seen a 4 cyl. Chevy II or Nova in the metal.
All that Clifford goodness, and 5- speed to boot! Yummy!
This one has one nice throaty note to it when he started it up, and start up it did, barely turned the key and it started, nice.
I find that you can go TOO big for 4 cylinders and then begin to loose the advantages of having a 4 cylinder motor and at that point, why not go for the V6?
The reason is, you loose out on fuel mileage, and the larger 4’s tend to be less smooth idling, overall, and I get that to some extent in my 2.0L Mazda 4 in my Protege5. Mind you, it’s naturally aspirated and pumps out 130HP through 16 fixed timing valves.
Inline fours and V-6s both shake, just in different ways.
An inline four has a second-order shake (up and down, basically) which gets worse as displacement and particularly stroke increase. Under 2 liters is generally not too bad without balance shafts, but once you go over about 2,000 cc, the shake becomes more and more noticeable and by about 2.5 liters it gets rather uncouth. You can mitigate that somewhat by making the engine mounts soft, but that has its own problems. Alternatively, you can add twin counter-rotating balance shafts with damping weights that balance the engine’s second-order movement. This works pretty well, although it does impose cost and weight penalties and costs you a certain amount of power.
An inline six is inherently smoother than an inline four or a V-6 — the configuration is such that the motions of the piston and con rods cancel each other out.
The guy in the video claims 25-26 mpg in town with the 5-speed. That’s flippin’ incredible!
Years ago, Car Life‘s road test of four-cylinder Chevy II got 21 mpg in the city, so if you improved the breathing, reduced back pressure through a less-restrictive exhaust system, and added taller gearing with a five-speed, 25 mpg doesn’t seem TOO far out of the realm of probability, although I suppose it all depends on what your in-town driving consists of.
That engine just sounds great, full stop. I wish the fours in all the small cars I owned sounded so serious and authoritative.
Now that Chevy II is a stupendous curbside classic! Not only is it a 4-door, but it has the lil’ ol’ 153 instead of the ubiquitous small block mated to a Muncie. Sure is nice to see a little bit of creativity in terms of modding classics.
I must say, that is the best sounding 4 I’ve ever heard. Love it!
Want. With the Nova SS gauges…
Looks like lots of fun to drive!