Me? I was tight with Steven Kamis!
Oh WTF....INVITE HIM HERE!!!!:bounce:
OK... Here I am! What's up everyone? Long time no see!! I've been out of commisson after the nice lady fell asleep at the wheel and hit me.
Hummer Wreck - had to re-learn everthing. How to sleep, how to walk, how to talk. It was bad. I lost everthing I owned and had to fight and claw all the way back. To this day the insurance companies are still fighting over it. I haven't received a dime of help to this day.
Moral of the story? Enjoy EVERY day of your lives like it is your last. It just might be.
So with all that mess out of the way, I'm back working again and back in my home state of Florida. I'm compiling a new site about the car:
Merlin. I lost most everything from the original site so if any of you have images or videos from the original build, I would be forever in your debt if you could share
I just saw an email cross my desk that the present owner has the car being voted into the Corvette Hall of Fame or something like that. At first I was skeptical given the warm reception over there in that "other forum" but now after getting my head crushed in and looking at the project as a complete outsider, I have a lot of pride about what we did and all the cool people I met along the way. The detractors don't bug me any more. I realize a lot of it was just jealously and petty crap. Any time you break the envelope people get upset. I actually had people tell me I was a jerk for putting big modern rims on a classic sports car. Ummm HELLO!! Can anyone say Chip Foose?!
I'm no Chip Foose by a LONG shot, but a lot of the ideas we came up with were way before he was getting popular. Ironically some of the original rims I looked at for the car were from him but before I realized what he would become. We look at Boyd's and a lot of others, but the HRE's were just too amazing.
Anyway, I'm going to do my best to compile all the info I can about the car. I'm now in contact with the owner - apparently he found my name on an old insurance card in the glove box and tracked me down. One day maybe Merlin will come home - and if not, I'm considering a Merlin II project once I get all my medical bills squared away.
I hope this post finds you all happy and healthy. Here's to the best car ever built - and the best version - the C3 Corvette!! Though many things have changed in my life, some things apparently will never change - and that includes my insatiable lust for street drivable horsepower and pushing the envelope. Any votes for a 4,000HP compound boost version of
this madness?
One of the big contentions about Merlin is that it never would live up to the billing. A lot of that was because we never really got it done - and most of the people I hired to help either ripped me off or just weren't the right people. Remember, back in the 90's getting a car to live on the street at that high power level was damn near impossible due to fuel pump issues, heat issues etc. Now, it's a walk in the park. They are getting over 1,000 RWP out of the puny aluminum block 4.6 modular Fords over at Hellion with compound boost. I find it laughable that nobody thought we could do that with a big block 522 and 2 superchargers. Again I say, computers and methanol. HELLO!!! LOL... Hey, I didn't call the first one Steve's Project Insane Asylum for nothing! :evil:
OK, enough out of me. Thanks for having me over here. Looks like a more civil and friendly crew on VetteMod. My best to all of you and your families. Hope you are having a great summer!
-Steve