Ron Cherry’s four books, including the Morg Mahoney detective series, are available on Kindle and in print copy at Amazon. Perhaps if Chevrolet had built such an option for their El Caminos, they would still be made today. They have an ultra-rare ‘69 SS427 El Camino four-wheel-drive that survived the deep snows of Lake Tahoe and will have no problem around here.
One off-road trip could take it out.”Īlthough Grass Valley does not see a lot of snow, especially in the last few years, Richard and Jackie are ready. “I don’t want to mess up the paint job,” he said. Richard said that Jackie does drive it, but “not too much.” And both of them keep it on-road rather than off. It has often been seen at Cars and Coffee, which occurs every Saturday morning from 8 ‘til 10 in the K-Mart parking lot off McKnight Way in Grass Valley. Since the El Camino was finished, Richard and Jackie have mainly driven around town and to shows in NorCal.
After about a year of hard work and with a lot of help from friend Don Cubic, the El Camino was again roadworthy. After a lot of searching for wheels that would fit the 6-lug hubs, he located Flexx Offroad wheels that would and they looked great. To help getting in and out of the El Camino, he put on nerf bars, tubular bars that mount just below both doors. Since it had drum brakes all around and did not stop well, Richard installed discs in front. B & F Auto Air swapped out the factory A/C for a modern Vintage unit. Richard had the big-block Chevy engine gone through, basically keeping it stock except for a hotter cam, and Mel’s Transmission rebuilt the auto trans. Inside, he installed a completely new interior kit, adding an AM/FM/CD for modern sounds. All the chrome had suffered too much from the desert winds for repair and Richard replaced all of it as well as the pitted glass. After some serious body work, Richard had it repainted in PPG Black, which says something about the quality of the body work. “I had to replace them.”ĭarrell Lenox from Lenox Mufflers helped him weld in the quarter panels, as well as the mufflers. “Both the quarter panels and the front fenders as well as the tailgate were too rusted to fix,” Richard said. To say it was a project car would be an understatement. So he arranged to have it hauled up to Grass Valley. “When she told me about the 427 engine, I wanted it,” he said.
1968 EL CAMINO GROUND CLEARANCE WINDOWS
Desert winds had sandblasted the paint, all the windows were no longer transparent and the interior was completely shot. Time and weather had not been kind to it. Howard had blown the trans in 1993 and had simply parked it. There, baking in the hot sun, was the ‘69 El Camino. He passed away that year and Jackie went to help with the funeral. Howard had moved to Joshua Tree, in the Southern California desert. After he and Jackie divorced, Howard kept the El Camino.įast forward to 2013. He did the job right and the El Camino did well in the snow. The modified El Camino had enough ground clearance to handle Tahoe snow and the 390 HP 427 CID engine from a ‘69 Vette that he dropped in it gave it plenty of power. Although he kept the El Camino frame, he used the Blazer suspension, Turbo 400 auto transmission, transfer case, and front and rear differentials. He took the running gear out of a ‘70 Blazer he had in the yard and put it in the El Camino. So Howard decided to make the El Camino a four-wheeler. However, having a four-wheel-drive when living in Tahoe is not optional. With power steering and brakes, as well as air conditioning and a tilt steering wheel, it was a fun vehicle. In 1973, she bought a ‘69 El Camino SS396 in Sacramento. They owned a gas station in Tahoe that also had a mini wrecking yard of abandoned cars. The story begins with Jackie’s first husband, Howard. And Richard and Jackie Mayer’s ‘69 El Camino is sanitary. The key is whether it was done right, is a sanitary job, or not. Modification is a hot rodder’s middle name. Before any Chevrolet enthusiast says that there was never an El Camino four-wheel-drive, remember while Ford never put a 350 CID Chevy engine in their Deuce coupes, there are a lot of Deuces out there with those mills.
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