You can’t read the sign, but it says “Waltham Performance”
The Story
I met Scott for the first time after school in Bristol, VT, in the spring of 1990. A lot of kids would meet at the park in the middle of town and hang out for an hour or so, then head home or work or whatever. I would usually have to go to work and Scott would ask for a ride home on my way.
When school was out for the summer, we would hang out and go swiming at Bartlett Falls or go on other similar trips. At the time, I had a 1980 Buick Regal that we put a 350 Olds motor in, and a 1978 Chevy half ton pickup.
That is when we started to work on cars together.
Scott bought a 1978 Pontiac Firebird Formula and we swaped a 350 SBC into it, but one night that car came to a tragic end. We pulled the motor and installed a 1980 Z28 with a 4 speed. It was a nice car: black with a red interior. Unfortunately, that car was wrecked by another friend, and again the motor went into another beater, a 1981 Camaro automatic. That car was funny; it had 2:73 gears and a open diff in it, and when you kicked the 4bbl while rolling along at about 20 mph it would just roast the passenger rear tire. Needless to say, that gave us a hardy laugh. Honestly, I don’t remember what happened to that car.
Around 1992, Scott decided to buy this nice 87 Mustang GT from Chris Cram who had bought the car about a year before. It was our first introduction to fuel injection, and boy did we liked the driveability of it (mainly because we had no idea on how to tune a carburetor). At the time, the car had maybe 50k miles on it. The funny thing about this was we were really only GM guys and I never cared for Mustangs, mainly due to the fact that they were the only real muscle around in our area since we lived in the rust belt. We lived in a small town and there were probably 6 to 8 of them running around. Despite my initial thoughts, I got over my Mustang prejudice and enjoyed many hours crusing around and blowing donuts at will!
As time went on, I moved off to Colorado and while I was gone Scott heavily modified the car. When I came home for a visit Scott showed me the car, the cylinder heads were off and he was putting a new cam in it. Later that year, I remember having a conversation on the phone about his driveability problem after all the work and converting the car to MAF and a 93 ECM. I was never able to ride in the car after the work had been done, because in the fall of 1997 Scott was killed in a tragic car accident.
Working on the SBC for the 1980 Z28, with Erica, she gets credit for taking the rest of the pictures.
Karl (me) installing the engine in the 1980 Z28. Carl Gile in the background.
The Garage. 1980 Z28 during engine install. My 73 Formula 400.
Here we are (I’m taking the picture) they’re sitting on the hood (Scott hated that). Scott is the 2nd from the left.
This is another friend’s Mustang. It’s an 82 GT that he went off the road with and hit a power pole on the passenger side just in front of the rear tire and ripped the car in 2 pieces; that’s rear sitting in front of the front end. Summer of 1989
Some Pictures from Back in 93′
Waltham Garage 