1966 Chevelle Malibu - Family Matters

Once back home, the Chevelle was completely disassembled and the restoration process began. The original plan was to build a small-block–powered cruiser, but Tom got greedy and dropped in a 454 instead. Tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan meant that the build would ultimately span eight years, so Tom bought a ’64 Chevelle wagon that the family could enjoy in the meantime. As fate would have it, a trip to the Chevellebration event in Nashville changed the direction of the project entirely. “While I was there, the guys at Detroit Speed and Engineering convinced me to run the wagon through the autocross, and I just fell in love with the experience. Back in the ’80s, my first Chevelle had big sway bars and torched springs, so I’ve always enjoyed muscle cars that handle even before it was called Pro Touring,” he says. Afterward, Tom and Debbie decided to set the car up for autocross and road racing duty, and the stock suspension just wouldn’t cut it. Since time wasn’t on their side, the Farringtons opted for stiffer springs and cobbled together the balance of the suspension components. To stick it all to the pavement, the Chevelle got a set of 18-inch Vintage Wheel Works rollers wrapped in BFGoodrich rubber, and to bring things to a halt, Baer 13-inch disc brakes were bolted up at each corner. With lots of help from Debbie and the kids, the Chevelle was finally finished just in time for the Midwest Muscle Car Challenge in 2010.

Although the Chevelle forged through the road course and autocross portions of the MMC just fine, the big-block started knocking during the brake test portion of the competition. The big Rat motor had smoked a rod bearing, and the Farringtons had to hit the road for the Chevellebration event in Tennessee in just nine days. “Despite a three-day National Guard training drill that was thrown in-between, my family and I were able to get the motor pulled, rebuilt, and reinstalled in time to make the show. Just in case, I had Debbie follow behind me with a truck and trailer that was hauling the wagon as a backup car if needed, but the ’66 Chevelle made the round-trip drive without any major problems,” Tom says. “That was just the beginning of last year’s road-trips. Despite getting rear-ended the night before the Motor State Challenge, we ran the car hard during the entire event. Later in the year, we attended the Goodguys PPG Nationals in Ohio, the Run Thru the Hills in Tennessee, and the Optima Ultimate Street Car Invitational in Las Vegas. One of the biggest challenges was getting the cooling system sorted out, and we went through three different radiators and several electric fans before getting it right.”

With the winter months approaching, Tom started scheming up new ways to get some more power out of the old big-block. He contemplated installing a bigger cam and swapping out the heads, but decided on an LS swap instead. “The 454 was a lot of fun, and it ran great the first year, but it was just too heavy. With the big-block, the car understeered so badly on the autocross that I had to jam the brakes to transfer the weight forward and keep it pointed in the right direction,” Tom says. After doing the math—which ended up being wrong—Tom figured he could swap in an LS motor for less than the cost of upgrading the big-block.