Here’s how the Crusher looked when it came to our shop after 14 years at Hot Rod magazine. It had a rollbar and Billet Specialties 17s from its most recent rehashing, and the House of Kolors yellow was still in place even though it was a quickie paint job that was supposed to have been redone after the first Power Tour in 1994.

Here’s the engine compartment after it had been ravished of its old 632ci big-block. All the wiring was left over from the installation of an early F.A.S.T. fuel-injection setup.

The interior still wore layers of bodywork dirt from when the Overhaulin’ TV show had overrun the Hot Rod shop a couple years earlier. Staffer (now editor) Rob Kinnan had the ’68 houndstooth seat covers installed when the car was restified the first time.

The main problem with just dropping in a new engine and driving away was that decades of magazine-guy hacking on the wiring had left this mess. We took every scrap of wiring out of the car and started over with reproduction harnesses from Classic Industries.

Another problem was that the rear leaf springs were so wasted that 100 percent of the load was being carried by the snubbers on the slapper bars. We solved that by bolting in some used leafs out of a ’72 Nova we had sitting around. Note the Baer brakes, QA1 shocks, and Strange 9-inch rear.

The power we picked for our first revamp of the Crusher is a GM Performance Parts HT383 crate engine with a swapped-in Comp Cams hydraulic roller (23/236 at 0.050) and a Weiand Air Strike intake manifold. By bench-race guessing, it makes about 425 hp at around 5,800 rpm.

Here’s the HT383 after we fogged it orange for a more ’60s look. We also found an old set of cheapie headers and painted them white, retro-style. The pan is from Milodon and that TH400 is a Mike’s Transmissions unit.

Here it is in the car with MSD’s E-Curve distributor and a Holley 750 double-pumper. The valve covers are some cheap Chinese castings that we got at the Long Beach Swap Meet. The finned aluminum look is cool, even on the center-bolt Vortec heads.

Our first successful drag day with the HT383 was at Fontana Dragway. With 4.57 gears, a B&M Holeshot converter, and 30x9.50-15 Hoosier radial slicks, we went 12.18 at 108 mph. The car weighed 3,350 pounds with 200-pound Chad in it.

There’s just a wink of light under those front tires. The 60-foot times were 1.65 to 1.72, and could have been better with a looser converter. The Holeshot unit was stalling around 2,700 rpm. Note our video camera on the quarter-panel.

Here’s another launch shot from Fontana. This junk looks like every small-block Camaro build from the ’60s to the ’90s, but we like it better than we did when it had 17s on it. Up next should be a better hoodscoop, Grump style. And a tunnel ram under it!