Dennis Linson is a friend of ours from Hunter Engineering. He has pretty much done away with everything Chevy II about this car and has built everything from scratch.  The frame and suspension are of his own design.  All the design work on this car was completed using Pro-Engineer Cad Software.  A complete model of the full tube chassis and suspension, along with a model of the 427 Big Block Chevy and 6-Speed T-56 Borg Warner transmission.  The car is very near completion thanks to the generous donations from the sponsors listed below.

The firewall was inset 8" to accommodate for the engine being pushed back 8". This will result in a better overall weight distribution for the hefty 427 big block Chevy engine.

The next big body change was to flush mount the front and rear windshield. Here you can see the sheet metal that was used to build of the gap that would normally be covered by chrome trim. When finished the windshields will seal just like the current cars on the road.

The Detroit Speed optima battery mount and Optima battery are now Frenched into the trunk right behind the fuel cell in the trunk.

The door skins have been removed and the door frames have been cleaned up primed and ready for the new door skin to be crimped on.

The engine and transmission combo for the Menace is a 427 Chevy big block coupled to a Borg Warner T-56 6-speed.

The Rat Motor will be topped off with a set of GM Performance Parts Aluminum Oval Port heads with 2.25" intake valves and 1.88" exhaust valves with a 110cc combustion chamber yielding a 10:1 compression ratio. Accel will be covering the lifter valley with their SuperRam Fuel Injection manifold and will be controlled by the Accel DFI fuel injection computer. Comp Cams will be providing the roller bump stick, lifters, and roller rockers. To light everything off MSD is supplying a complete ignition system. Griffen Radiators will cool everything down while all the hot gasses exit through a custom set of headers designed by Dennis. AutoMeter will monitor everything in the custom dash and make sure everything stays in one piece.

To make sure the Rat doesn't escape from the frame Dennis has machined some custom front motor plates and has integrated a rear engine support into the fire wall which will attach to the upper two bell housing bolts.

The T-56 is out of a '96 Z-28 with a few break in miles on it. Centerforce is suppling the needed clutch parts to couple the new trans to the old Rat Motor. Along with a stock '96 Z-28 bell housing and a Hurst Shiftier, everything should shift smoothly. The transmission is backed up by a Currie Ford 9" with 3.73 gears.

Some picures of the Accel Superam Fuel Injection system. Along with the MSD ingnition system to light off the fuel, and the Griffen Radiator to cool everything down.

The headers were designed in Pro/Engineer to be equal length with 2" x 36" primary tubes with 3.5" collectors (Drivers side model is shown here). A special tool was made to create a smooth trasition from the "D" shaped exhuast ports to the 2" primarys. The rest of the exhaust will be made out of 3.5" tube with a set of 40 series Flowmaster Mufflers.

Knowing that the original Chevy II frame wasn't going to work well for this application, he started from scratch. The old frame was measured and sent to the junkyard. Then like any good engineer, Dennis started this project first by creating a Pro/Engineer computer model of the frame, suspension and pretty much anything else that was to be fabricated for this project.

Once he had the frame in the computer he ploted the frame rails to scale on a plotter and layed everything out on a flat table to weld it all together. All the tubes were professionally machined to the correct lengths and angles and then tig welded together. Special gussests were used on the inside and outside of each joint to insure a very rigid frame.

The fuel cell was designed in Pro/Engineer also. Its constructed from Aluminum and has several internal baffels to help control fuel slosh. There is also a large rear sump to help direct the fuel to the fuel pump and prevent fuel starvation under hard acceleration and cornering.

The interior like most everything else that was original to this car was sent away. The future for the interior of this Nova is a custom built dashboard housing a complete set of Autometer Gages. The front seats are from a late eighties/early nineties Cavalier and the entire floorboard was custom built. To keep the car practical Dennis is even going to install a small rear seat between the rear wheel wells.

The dash is being trimed out with two custom gage clusters with aluminum trim. The radio will be incorperated into a center counsel just below the dash. The dash is also being moved 6" to 7" towards the driver. The Autometer gages are from the Phantom Series and consist of a 5" speedo and tach, along with 2 5/8" fuel level, oil pressure, water temp, and volt meter, and a 2" 100 psi electric fuel pressure gage.