1967 CHEVROLET Chevelle SS 396/ L88 427- Gary Gerstner

Story and engine photograph copyright D. S. Brown/ Photography courtesy of and copyright Gary Gerstner.

Gary Gerstner’s 1967 Chevelle SS has covered most of the bases found in the life of a typical musclecar: cruising, racing, tinkering, aftermarket parts, engine swaps and an eventual restoration. All the various stages found in the life of a typical musclecar appear in this story, except two.

Gary managed to avoid the part where the owner sells it and then regrets selling. Below is a photo of Gary in front of the same house with the same car 40 years later.

 The second deviation from the typical musclecar experience is the nature of the engine swap. Gary went all the way up to an L88 427. That put the car into rarified air in terms of performance and financial commitment.

The 1967 Chevelle was Gary's first “Lucky Seven” car. Gary’s attachment to Sevens traces back to the fact that he was born in 1947. This was the same year Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier, which is as good as any rationalization for why Gary has spent a lot of his life racing cars. The number seven has been considered lucky since antiquity. In modern times, the winning roll in dice as well as songs like “Seventh Son” and “Hootchie Cootchie Man” have kept this mystical concept alive in the general consciousness. Lyrics like “Born on the seventh hour of the seventh day of the seventh month…born for luck” were floating in the air when Gary was growing up.

When Gary turned 20, he thought it fitting that he bought cars from the years with the same trailing digit as his birth year. He has aimed to buy a new car in the seventh year of each decade. The stories of the later cars will appear on this website soon.

For now we’ll backtrack to March of 1967. Gary had just turned 20 in February and was excited about ordering his first new car, a Chevelle SS.  His parents restricted him to the base big block engine option stating that “325 HP is enough.” Of course it wasn’t, but Gary had to defer to them when ordering the car.

Gary ordered from Jack O’Donnell Chevrolet in Midlothian, Illinois. This dealership was located in a suburb of Chicago on 147th and Cicero. In case you were wondering, Gary didn’t choose this dealer based on numbers. Slipping a 9 into the second spot of the street name duplicates the numbers in Gary's birth year. That was unintentional!

Jack O’Donnell Chevrolet changed hands a few times after Jack sold the dealership. To see Gary's excellent photos of the last days of this dealer and read more about the history of this dealer, check out the story in the DEALERSHIPS section of this website. Below is Gary's shot of his car back at the original dealership 40 years later. The dealer was renamed Sunrise Chevrolet at the time this photo was taken.

Gary’s Chevelle SS was built on May 22, 1967 in the Kansas City, Missouri plant and delivered to Jack O’Donnell Chevrolet in mid June, 1967. Gary rushed down to immediate disappointment. The dealer chose to install the optional stripe kit which should have been black to match the black interior in Gary’s car. The parts department only had the white version of the kit in stock. They plastered the white stripes on that morning. The white stripes were only for use on Chevelles with red, blue or white interior colors. Gary immediately peeled off the stripes. They came off easily since the adhesive hadn’t set yet.

The biggest disappointment arrived when Gary sat behind the wheel and turned the key. He was accustomed to the businesslike idle of the top engine option L78 375 HP Chevelles that several of his friends owned. The base SS engine L35 325 HP Chevelle had a smooth idle that promised him the car was going to be too slow.

That night Gary went down to see his friends at their hang out Dog n’ Suds at 148th and Polaski. This chain originated in Champaign, Illinois (100 miles outside Chicago) specializing in root beer and hot dogs. The food was often incidental to action in the parking lots which served as a meet up spot for cruising and racing. Gary’s 325 HP Chevelle was fast enough even with a new tight engine to easily beat his friend’s 390 Mustang. This was the first race Gary ran with the Chevelle which he had owned for all of several hours.

This initial win didn’t erase the knowledge that every shift he made in his 325 HP car felt much slower than he was familiar with in a pal’s 375 HP 1966 Chevelle SS. The 325 HP limited Gary to racing and beating cars like the 383 Mopars and 390 Fords. If Gary pulled up alongside a 428 Cobra-Jet Mustang or a 440 6 pack Mopar he had to avoid the race he was certain to lose.

Although the performance of the base engine SS didn’t satisfy Gary, the car itself was quite nice. The 1967 Chevelle is visually similar to the 1966 but is packed with upgrades. It has safety features like dual master cylinder, collapsing steering column, stronger door latches etc. The new 4 barrel carburetor was much improved. The 72,272 sales of the SS 396 in 1966 traced directly to the standard 396 engine. The momentum was still racing forwards for the 1967 model year with 62,785 copies of the SS 396 sold.

Gary’s “Day Two” tweaks wrung out some very respectable performance from his SS, but he wasn’t satisfied. To quote The Driver in TWO LANE BLACKTOP “You can never go fast enough.” Discontent drove Gary to implement every aftermarket fix of the day possible. Gary’s Chevelle performed on par with the masses of modified Chevelle SS cars loose in the nights leading to the end of the sixties. He had upgraded it to the hilt but was still stuck in the same playing field with everyone else who had also availed themselves of the aftermarket scene.

Gary was serious about bettering his performance. He weighed 286 pounds Christmas 1968. By August, 1969 he had lost 100 pounds. This diet was motivated by a quest for speed. The 100 pound weight loss translated to 1/10th of a second off his quarter mile time! The best time slip Gary managed with the 325 HP Chevelle was a 13.9 at 100.1 MPH. This was with properly set up shocks and open headers. By now Gary had exhausted his patience with the 325 HP engine.

The irony here is that if his parents hadn’t insisted on a 325 HP engine, Gary may have been satisfied tinkering with a 375 HP SS. The 325 HP engine pushed Gary to take a giant leap beyond even the potent 375 HP setup to the monster 427. In the photo below you can see the engine hoist, and significantly, Gary's father who not only relented on the 325 HP cap, but also participated in the work to build up the SS.

Gary invoked his lucky sevens when he chose to transplant a brand new Corvette 'replacement' 427 into his Chevelle. The displacement ending in a seven made it seem just right. Of course, an UNDER-rated 430 HP made it right, too! Gross HP was over 500. Gary bought a brand new Corvette ‘replacement L88/427. Gary steered clear of the aluminum heads because porous castings and rough machine work at GM rendered them too expensive for regular guys on a budget to massage into good shape. The cast iron heads gave him great performance despite adding some weight up front. 

Before installing the 427 in his SS summer of 1969, a local speed shop blueprinted the engine. Gary added headers, aftermarket gauges and a fiberglass hood with a bulge to clear the top of the air cleaners. Essentially what Gary had done was to take his car through the same process that the famous East Coast Yenko dealership, Berger Chevrolet in Grand Rapids and NIckey Chevrolet in Chicago were doing. These dealers went through a process to bypass GM’s 400 cubic inch limit on intermediates. Gary’s car traveled the same road and was the equal of these famed cars.  

Gary never lost a race when he ran his L88. He routinely blew off cars that he previously avoided racing, like the Cobra Jet Mustangs, 440 six packs etc. The new 427 engine exceeded all expectations for power but also came with baggage. He lost belts everytime he exceeded 5,000 RPM. Deep groove pulleys and V belts solved that one. The solid lifters caused a lot of downtime setting valves. After a year of perpetual tuning, Gary switched to an Eagle hydraulic cam in summer of 1970. The profile was similar to the previous L88 cam and made life a lot easier. He was still living with 12.5:1 compression, constantly changing spark plugs and chasing down gas, so it was still not an easy engine to live with.

Gary took the Chevelle with him to college in Northern Alabama. While racing a Shelby Mustang down there, Gary lost traction hitting second gear. The Chevelle didn't have a rev control device. The Chevelle overrevved causing an intake valve to hang open. The intake valve put a hole in number 3 piston and bent the connecting rod. The engine was pulled and fixed at Billy Holt's speed shop just outside Athens, Alabama. Holt was a drag racer who campaigned the Alabamiam Corvette funny car.

The blown engine wasn't an isolated event. The Chevelle saw a lot of action during the college years. A separate incident resulted in a blown transmission. It was sent out to B&M in California for a rebuild that included upgrades to strengthen it. The R & R of the trans was accomplished right in the parking lot of Gary's dorm! The car won trophies in drag racing and was regularly cruised and raced right into the mid seventies.

Gary's car met with the same fate so many hot street cars encountered by the late seventies. The daily reality of living with a performance machine became tougher and tougher. No longer able to find high octane pump gas, Gary shelved it in 1978. The original plan was to simply pull the engine and lower the compression.

As is so often the case, years piled up as the project took on more complexity. Since the engine was out anyways, why not restore the body? Gary's cousin in the Dells did a frame off restoration on the car as fill in work between his primary projects. The job lasted 14 years between 1982 and 1996. Now it was time to pay attention to the engine. Then came exhaust, brakes, fuel system and custom wiring. The last day of July, 2008 found the car back on the road in a brand new world.

In this new world of unleaded low test fuel, the engine was reconfigured. Instead of 12.5:1 high compression, the engine now runs on any pump gas with 9.2:1 compression. Despite this, the engine pulled 518 HP on a dynometer. A hydraulic roller cam, full roller rockers and Second Strike Petronix ignition give tons of power without finicky tuning and constant adjustment that was the rule prior to this with the original solid lifter cam and ignition system.

The new world also presented a new wrinkle to the concept of competition. The Chevelle was reborn in a world of static competition. Instead of winning drag racing trophies, the car now competed for car show trophies, winning a "Top 25" award by spectator vote at Summer Daze, Warrenville Aug 1, 2008 right after re assembly.

Entering the first “MuscleCar & Corvette Nationals” at The Stevens Convention Center in Rosemont was rewarding for Gary. He entered the new class called “Day 2” which allows modified cars to compete. Instead of losing points for the changes made back in the day to the car (the 427 swap, headers, aftermarket gauges, a fiberglass hood) Gary was not deducted as would happen in typical Concourse Level judging. The catagory was expressly created for typical owner upgrades back in the day as well as to acknowledge the dealer engine swaps such as Nickey, Dana, Motion and Yenko. Gary only lost 21 points in this new catagory. He was one of only three cars that won gold out of 67 cars competing in "Day 2". 

The HEMMINGS MUSCLE MACHINES Feb 2009 issue featured Gary's car with a twist. All of the photography was done by Gary himself. Gary launched his career as a magazine photographer with those photographs. He now contributes to VETTE and HEMMINGS MUSCLE MACHINES. His latest adventures with the Chevelle have brought him back full circle. Gary has been drag racing the Chevelle again. The Chuck Yeager effect lingers on in those lucky sevens...