FEATURES – Past – GOING GREEN – Glen Bolz 1966 Chevy II
Phoenix resident and auto dealership Corporate Director Glen Bolz had had enough. A veteran of the sometimes stuffy and most of the time sleepy street rod crowd, Bolz was tired of the show-only scene. He was ready for some action.
“I got really bored of the ‘Lawn Chair Nationals’ thing—just sitting around and polishing and showing your car all day,” Bolz said with a chuckle. “I’ve loved fabrication for a while, so I finally decided it was time
to put those skills to use on something that would move fast,” he added. The plan was pretty simple: build a tube chassis car, stick a built big block in it, and work toward a seven-second street/strip rocket. With that formula in mind, he acquired a rust-free Arizona-native 1966 Chevy Nova post and got to work.
“The car was originally purchased at a dealership here in Phoenix,” he said. After the original owner had handed it down to his son, the son eventually put the car up for sale. Bolz purchased it in 2010 with a grand vision in mind.
“When we finally got to work on it, the plan was to build a car that would meet the 7.50 NHRA cert specs; however, after I met Steve Morris and we started putting together an engine that would produce in excess of 2,000 hp, we upgraded to suit.” Bolz then constructed a 25.2/25.4 double NHRA cert chromoly TIG welded chassis.
Up front, the car relies on a pair of Strange struts tuned by Chris Bell at Kinetic Engineering. Out back, a custom-fabricated 4-link relies on JRI rear shocks to smooth the bumps for the chromoly fabricated 9-inch differential that was equipped with a Strange Ultra center section, a 3.40:1 Big Stem Pro Gear and yoke, and Strange gun-drilled and lightened 40-spline axles. A Rick Jones chromoly wishbone helps minimize unwanted movement, and a full quartet of Strange disc brakes provide all the stopping power the Chevy might need on the street, yes we said street!
Elsewhere, custom fabrication tricks abound on the chassis that features a funny car-style cage among other custom touches. The ain chassis has been painted with PPG basecoat/clearcoat paint, while all the removable components have been powder coated to match.
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Category: FEATURES, FEATURES - PAST
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