The Crusher Impala Finally Runs 10s! | Roadkill Garage

this is the 1969 Chevy Impala known as The Crusher Impala and Blasting it around just now reminded me of exactly how much I love this car which is kind of surprising considering I used to hate it I bought this thing for I can't remember 1500 or 1,800 bucks way back when we were doing a Roadkill episode with the guys from Mighty Car Mods and what I wanted to do was impress these Australian guys with the most ridiculous engine in the largest barge I can find over over the years on both roadkill and roadkill garage we've just slowly progressed this thing and it's gotten better and better it does the most awesome [Music] burnouts it blasts the highway no problem you can drive it 75 mph all day and you can take it to the drag strip and therein lies the problem the big block Chevy has been rebuilt me and Steve did it on an episode of road kill garage it's 498 cubic in it has a tiny cam shaft tiny brotic cylinder heads midlength headers it is not built for giant power what I'm planning on doing here is primarily fix the transmission that won't shift you just saw that and the worst thing about this car is that the power steering has been dead forever but number one priority is make it shift and get it back to the drag strip we're going to jack it up and look at the little pressure modulator do hickey on the side of the transmission and maybe even go so far as to drop the pan and get ATF all over the floor and then we're going to discover that we don't know how to deal with the automatic transmission test drive it it'll still fail and then we're going to change the transmission ready for it to come down yep now here's a little Tech tip for you guys you may think that jacking only the front is going to make it intrusively low in the back but because of controlled jack stand placement you'll notice that the car will actually teeter totter and it'll lift the back end as the front end comes down pay attention and don't miss it here goes whoa what was that that was a teeter totter action wow something made a loud cracking sound well that might be the jack stand failing neither Steve nor I have any idea how to actually fix a turbo 400 automatic transmission but we're going to give it a shot anyway by throwing Parts at it what I'm working on here is the vacuum modulator and the job of this thing is to regulate line pressure in proportion to engine vacuum so at part throttle at higher vacuum it would have lower line pressure and that would act on the governor to make it shift sooner this is not shifting at wide open throttle at all and what I don't know is if perhaps Boost from the blower has blown out the diaphragm in this and if it did do that I have no idea what it would affect on the transmission here's my old vacuum modulator right there and here's the new one you can see that they are identical except for that the new one has an adjustable doohickey inside the vacuum Port so you can make it shift sooner or later I'm going to leave it at the factory setting for [Music] now I got the new modulator in and now we're just going to drain the fluid and see if it's more burned than I think it is or if there's any chunks in it or anything like that this is where I'm going to get ATF all over my hand right no oh the filter's just about to fall off really yep wow that's super bad it can't be okay this is weird that bolt is fully Ram rotted and it's still loose there's no way that's supposed to be loose is [Music] there what I want to do here is cut open the transmission filter so I can pull out the filter media and inspect it for debris kind of giv us an idea of how much wear and tear there is on a transmission or if there's any component failure I caution you to use extreme care because the edges are very sharp not a damaging amount of debris this filter element has been doing its job but then the corations of metal in the filter body had a massive amount of that would have circulated through the transmission before it ended up in the pan and sucked back in whether or not that's problematic we're going to see when we test drive the car man I just Googled turbo 400 filters and it turns out that looseness that I was seeing is normal I should know that but I didn't turns out everybody asks that question you can bolt it up solid but I just lost my spacer for the that it's weird because the bolt that comes with it has a stop on it that leaves it kind of loose really strange to me obviously this is my first turbo 400 and next I'm going to see if I can get the governor out here it might hit the floor there we go that is the governor it's got weights and as it spins those fly out from centrifugal force and adjust shift RPM at wide openen throttle there's also a valve inside it that needs to move freely and I'm going to go get a tiny screwdriver so I can check that out there is a valve inside this that needs to freely move up and down and you can see right there sort of that valve now watch I hold the weights in and tap it now you can see that that valve is move this Gap is up here at the top but watch what happens when I let go of the weights it moves up so that thing's moving all freely and perfectly I guess I'm just going to reinstall it cross my fingers I haven't found anything wrong with the transmission so far I'm going to button this up we'll put fluid in it and we're going to go test drive it again to see if maybe new fluid different filter different modulator see if one of those things fixes the problem not a speck of metal out of the engine great well you know who built it did US yeah all right how are we going to find out if this works we have to roll into wide open throttle and first gear manual and then shift it yeah it's kind of scary or leave it in drive yeah I just want to roll in as easy as I can you know [Music] yeah fix F boom that's a shake boom boom once again here we are at historic foso drag strip Steve yes we're going to go through the motions here but really it's a foregone conclusion very anticlimactic what's about to happen really oh yeah we're just going to roll out there and run like you know 1084 on the first pass and pack it up and go home well you're minimalizing this but to me it's the accumulation of my dreams for this car even though it's not mine I feel feel like a certain sense of pride of ownership is that possible no I like it when you get attached to my garbage I know the crusher Impala has never been better than it is at this particular moment now you just go out there and get it done broke how many times has this not happened every time this is it I hope this is a oneand done if the car hooks up then uh I think it runs what we needed to run [Music] the burnout could have been a little hotter I think it's all going to come down to traction off the line and whether that transmission shifting right I think we have enough horsepower to get this done I've got fingers [Music] [Music] crossed ship ship what happened there I lifted because I thought it wasn't shifting and then it shift shifted it takes longer to shift than I anticipated ah so that wasn't going to do it we'll have to go right back 11:25 so couple of TS off I don't know what happened on that one two shift I'm just going to have to talk to David I really can't identify what it was but I heard a stutter I think the governor weights in this thing don't want to shift to like 7 Grand I think is the deal I hope he knows what he's doing he's got a lot of experience with these things let's see if it pulls a tire off the starting [Music] line all right that shifted a lot better no stutter he shifting at a lower [Music] RPM 1096 yeah that's our 10-second time slip read them and we well it's the tires pretty hard off the line that time uh but it went through the gears I short shifted first second cuz I thought it was just going to keep going but the transmission's working it's weird the car is geared so high with that 350 rear gear that it doesn't go third gear till almost in the [Music] lights uh-oh Steve's got a good look on his face what did you say I said you have a good look on your face check it out bro done yes 1090 six but finally it's a 10-second car it is I always said that if it just did it we were going to pack it up and go home it's good enough no it's you're going to go again Happ yeah Okay so we've already had the money round we have our 10-second time slip now it's just all for ego [Music] gratification that was a nice launch I think he's winding it out a little higher too I think that was going to be better and the number is 1095 1095 okay we shaved uh 100th it left smooth didn't spin the tire higher shift point I think that was going to be good that time it didn't feel like it left as hard as violently was smoother but we'll find out if that's quicker woo nly what yeah you picked up a 100th a 100th yeah it slowed down though too ran a 12194 and it was a 1095 with the one so either it really doesn't like the higher shift point or it got hot and slowed down either way that's a big win Steve that's a goal we've had for this car since day one and now it can go back to a gentle life of Relentless burnout yeah that's what it's for pressure and P for the win

Channel: MotorTrend Channel

Views: 248,910

Keywords: motortrend, motor trend, motor trend channel, automotive, auto, Roadkill Garage, Crusher Impala, Impala, 1969 Chevy Impala, Chevy Impala, '69 Chevy, 1969 Chevy, '69 Chevy Impala, '69 Impala, 498ci big-block V8, V8, Big Block V8

Id: c9WnNUbJLwE

Length: 12min 49sec (769 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 28 2023