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Great story ;-)

Jimmy Durante: "I gotta million of 'em", lol

I remember a guy I knew (and worked with) by the name of Tommy McKnight (and I wouldn't put his full name out here except for the fact that I've been trying to find him for years, and MAYBE someone might Google him up, see this reference and then drop me a note to tell me whatever happened to him, I'm hoping that he's enjoying his senior years), anyway Tommy had a '65 Chevelle with a razor sharp body on it, no dings, no ripples, it was perfect. He had a Grumpy Box scoop on the hood (*note: refers to Bill "Grumpy" Jenkins, one of the greatest pro stock racers of all time), and the car was primed with flat black.

Tommy went down to Jack Amatucci Chevrolet and picked himself up a brand new, in-the-crate, 350 LT1 Corvette motor, bolted it up to some variety of Muncie 4-speed, and dropped it into that Chevelle and it was fast-to-the-max, I took one ride in it and it scared the bejesus out of me, lol

Tragic ending: one day we saw Tommy pulling that LT1 engine apart piece by piece (we worked together) and we asked him what happened, and he said "engine f'd up" and that's when we learned that Tommy never bothered with a timing light to set the ignition timing, he just "moved the distributor around until the engine sounded good" (NOOOOO!!!!), and he had too much ignition advance (probably in excess of 40 degrees I'd guess) and nothing short of nitro would have saved that engine with that much timing.

He eventually got it all back together. And he used a timing light to set the ignition after that, LOL