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The Toni! Tony! Bertone!/Bertone Loc/Too $hort 79' 262c racecar story

pat244ti

Moderator
Joined
Dec 23, 2002
Location
Santa Cruz CA
I figured this car is starting to deserve a project thread, so here it is.

[Also, sorry if it's a lot of reading, I like writing]

Back last February, I was on Facebook and got a message from a friend named Matt Kile I used to race stock cars with. He was working at a machine shop in San Jose at the time, and the tenant next to the machine shop passed away.

Apparently, the tenant that passed was a Volvo enthusiast. He left behind a stack of parts and a complete car at the shop for his brother to dispose of. The brother wanted no business trying to sell everything, so he told the other businesses and tenants around the building to come pick up what they would like.

Matt was curious as to the value of a few gauge clusters he grabbed, and he also let me know that the guy also was giving away the complete car - a 1979 262C. He decided to take the car himself, and his boss let him park it in front of the machine shop for a month or two until he found a good home for it. He was really pushing it on me but I was hesitant.

I decided to help him out with finding a home for it. I went on the different Lemons racing groups I am a part of. I had numerous interested parties, but due to the fact that the car had the PRV6 yanked out at some point in it's life in favor of a KJET B21F/bw55 combo, it somehow made it LESS desirable to the Lemons crowd. It had a BAR sticker for the engine conversion, but due to the lack of a title, along with rust potential, it was more than what most people who wanted a street car wanted to bite off.

Matt had enough with storing the car and told me he was going to send it off the the crusher. I decided to step in and use one of my AAA tows to get it from San Jose to Santa Cruz. After some convincing to the tow truck driver that in fact I had driven the car to Matt's shop, where it broke down [lies] he dragged it over Highway 17 for me.

I got it back to where I store my cars. It was grungy, so I hit it with the pressure washer. The violent stream of water ripped the vinyl right off the roof, exposing many fist sized holes where rust had eaten its way though.

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It sat in the lot for a month. Although I had locked it, someone kept breaking in to the car and sleeping in it, as evidenced by the now reclined seats ; as well as possibly doing drugs in it as evidenced by the dirty napkins with an unknown substance and blood left in the car. Santa Cruz has a skyrocketing homeless and mental illness problem. The squatter also stole the crown emblems I had removed from the C pillar and placed on the center console.

Months before, in a separate incident, a different squatter had literally built a "tarp fort" between my 244 and 245 Lemons race cars. He even had a campfire about a foot in front of the 244. I actually caught that guy in action, which resulted in an immediate eviction.

So I decided it would be best to start stripping it it's reasonably valued parts off of the car [including the seats and glass to deter more squatting] to take to the Davis meet, where I was met with much disappointment when the only part that sold was the beltline trim.

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Sometime during the summer, I caught this post

https://forums.tbforums.com/showthread.php?t=334470

So now, I had a B6304S & trans I had no idea what I was going to do with. Part of me wanted to put it in my truck. Part of me was wondering what the hell I was doing cluttering up my life with free Volvo crap.

Around this time, I met Moses. I know he hangs out on here, I just don't know his screen name. Moses was looking for a good gas tank for his 242 on the Facebook TB group. I had a spare, and told him not just to come down and pick it up, but that we could change it out that night on one of the lifts at my work.

He came down in his 242, which had just survived a cross country trip requiring changing out the fuel filter constantly due to the rusty junk gas tank strapped to the back of it. We put the tank in. He gave me more money than I had asked, and on top of it he brought me down 2 giant hunks of corned beef he smoked himself. It was delicious. What a dude.

I continued to hold on to the Bertone for months, threatening to crush it. I had more people claiming interest in it but no takers. One day, I had to relinquish it's spot in the yard for a G60 Corrado my boss gave me as payment for work, which I was going to fix and sell to a VW friend. So I loaded the Bertone on the trailer to bring back to work in Campbell to put in place of the Corrado, where I was either going to cut the poor Italian/Swede into pieces, or skip that altogether and simply leave it in one of my bosses parking spots as some sort of practical joke since I was planning on leaving the job soon, but that seemed almost hard to do since I make active efforts to not be an *******.

Earlier in the year, Al [Megulon_7] and I had spent a ton of time together building the roll cage as well as other chassis prep on my rally car. At this time [November] I linked him up with another tech at the shop I was working at because that tech was given the task of finishing up an E36 convertible him and some friends were going to race in 24 Hours of Lemons races. Al built them a nice cage, and as I found out later my coworker upsold the cage to the tune of $1k to the rest of his teammates which honestly I thought was a dick move.

A few days later, Moses and his cousin Kayla came by my shop to say hello. We started talking about Lemons racing since the E36 was outside. Moses seemed genuinely interested in running Lemons. I really could not say no to Moses because he's a good dude.

Even though it seems like having two Lemons race cars in the stable would make this a non issue, I had a slight dilemma - one of them [my 244] I realized I really only trust two other people other than myself to this point to pilot it due to it's sentimental value - one of them being Rob [Volvorules] and the other my best friend Terry. My dad had ran it a few times, but I could barely even trust him behind the wheel of it. I put together the other Lemons car [the 245] for my dad and others new to road racing, including my brother in law. My brother in law is technically the owner of that car now, and I had become aware the open seats for it would be filled with his friends wanting to give crapcan racing a crack.

So instead of crushing or leaving the Bertone for my boss to deal with, I talked with Al about caging it and making it into a Lemons car. Being in rough shape, it was an ideal Lemons car - on top of the fact the judges love seeing oddball/obscure/special edition cars "ruined" via crapcan racing.

The B6304S & AW30 I picked up in the summer would be the most fitting powertrain for it, seeing how the B21F was seized and installing a PRV6 [which the judges would love to see due to its unreliable notoriety] was honestly counterproductive. I can't afford to spend money or time on racing when I am certain we would be destined for failure.

Al was on board to do the fabricating bits, Moses was on board to feed us/get us baked/help out however he can and here I was plotting this out in my already busy head, coming up with ideas on how to build the first "true" Lemons car I've attempted.
 
One of the more important subjects of a Lemons race car is it's theme. With most racing series, obviously sponsorship is a major thing because that brings in additional funding. But the theme is important with Lemons because it earns you points with the judges, there is no sponsorship necessary due to the cheap nature of the series and honestly there is a feeling of satisfaction when you get people that laugh at your car.

My two other cars, both themed after SEGA arcade games usually go right over peoples heads. It takes someone who played a good amount of Daytona USA or Crazy Taxi to figure out exactly what is going on with them. But when they do figure it out, usually there is a happy commotion. It would be more obvious if I had installed stereos on both as originally planned playing the music from both games.

I was asked by Judge Phil to do something that is both Swedish and Italian themed for the Bertone. I literally cannot think of anything without it being completely irrelevant. While Lemons racing is pretty irrelevant in itself, I wanted to do something that was funny that some people either could understand and laugh at, or just look at it and go WTF.

The first clever idea that came into my head was doing a theme based off of the East Bay hip-hop/R&B group Toni! Tony! Tone! [except with the Tone! being Bertone!]

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We could dress up like the band for BS inspections and do and incorporate old 80's-90's KMEL jams [a famous bay area radio station that plays hip hop/r&b] sticker and flyers onto the car.

With the car now at Al's shop in Novato for the cage, something I have noticed he loves to do is write things on the car in paint pen, whether it is some deep message, an insult, or calculations on how the next bar for the cage needs to be bent. He wrote "Too $hort" on the hood. Too $hort is another Bay Area rapper who was prevalent in the 90's, but also it makes a wonderful moniker for a car with a chopped roof.

It also adds to the silliness of the theme.

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At some point further along the line, Al's wife thought that another good name would be "Bertone Loc", after Tone Loc, another rapper/actor from the early 90's. While hailing from Southern California as opposed to the bay, The Funky Cold Bertina would be another name for the car

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With Al starting work on the cage, and Moses having a friend in town who is an artist we decided to theme the car with the cage all but barely started and zero powertrain in the car.

We decided to lay down a skyline of Oakland and San Francisco on each side of the car. Moses' friend Sean started making stencils for the building, while Moses was helping with that. I figured we should throw a bunch of random crap on the car for kicks. So I messed around on my phone for a bit, found some images of album covers and other random bits that had to do with the theme, and went to FedEx to get them printed out. The first FedEx I went to denied printing them out based on copyright concerns.

So with some advice from Moses ["tell them it's for school! they cannot deny using copyrighted images if it is for educational purposes"] I drove 30 minutes up to Rohnert Park to the next FedEx office store. Upon telling them it was for school, they were gung ho about it and even offered me a sharp student discount. $8 later I had a stack of random album covers to slap on the car using spray adhesive and clearcoat.

We also went to fixing the roof on the car. We removed all the old adhesive that held the vinyl top in place and painted the roof black [rolled on] giving it a "stock" appearance. This does remind me that we need to rivet or close up some of the holes in the roof still.....

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So for mounting the B6304S and AW30, I found a great deal of information on here.

While there are many ways to mount the engine, Al decided it was best to use the way Lankku did it on his 245, which was mounting the engine with custom brackets and the mount insert going directly into one of the three holes on each side for the factory lower engine mount brackets.

https://forums.tbforums.com/showthread.php?t=309746

DaButcher also has done a B6304S/AW30 swap. Luckily, his build is well documented and it gave us a solution for many things, from getting it set up to run but more importantly mounting the AW30. We used a M47 crossmember that was slightly modified for an early AW30 mount, which sits much higher than the later ones. Luckily there was a 92 960 at the junkyard I got the mount from, as well as a 95 960 which supplied me with the bits [ECU, TCU, wiring, fuseblocks, instrument cluster, MAF, misc etc] to eventually get the car to run.

Passenger side mount
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Drivers side mount
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For the driveshaft, we used the front half of a 940 automatic driveshaft. This was another idea we took from DaButcher. We are building our own adapter to use the 940 center support bearing, and the rear half is just a stock 240 shaft from a later car.

In order to get the driveshaft to fit a little better, we did some minor hammering to the engine crossmember to allow the engine to move forward about a half inch or so without contacting the crossmember.

Engine's final resting spot.
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Intake manifold clears fine
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Next episode - roll cage details, wiring and suspension/brakes.
 
Subscribed. I ended up buying a set of Homer's whiteblock mounts, but I'll be interested to see how you solve some of the electronic problems. I have a late 245, so it already has a 48-window tone ring on the rear diff, but the ECU still needs a 12-window signal for vehicle speed.

Also, as a child of the 90s, your theme is off the freaking chain.
 
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Subscribed. I ended up buying a set of Homer's whiteblock mounts, but I'll be interested to see how you solve some of the electronic problems. I have a late 245, so it already has a 48-window tone ring on the rear diff, but the ECU still needs a 12-window signal for vehicle speed.

Also, as a child of the 90s, your theme is off the freaking chain.

Per Stein Ove Vikeboe (who did DaButchers swap)

From what I have found, using a scope, the speedo contains a signal converter, giving out a 12 pulse signal for the ECU. I have ripped out the internals of a 960 speedo to give me a 12 pulse signal from a 48 pulse rear end to be able to use a 240 speedo alongside a B6304 and electronically controlled AW30-43 in a 242, as the TCM needs a 48 pulse square signal to work propperly.

We are using the whole 960 cluster in our car, so no ripping out of the speedo is necessary.

It's like Volvo wanted us to update our cars with this drivetrain...
 
I know right?

Thanks, I knew I'd read something somewhere that made me think the problem had been solved and the solution shared.
 
It's something I caught in the wiring diagram too. Based on looking at it, I assumed the cluster converted the signal for the ECU, much similar to the E36 racecar I just wired up.

However the sending unit for a 960 cluster reads a different ohm range than the factory 240 sending unit so I need to figure out how to go about converting the resistance there.
 
I found it shocking how much that engine wanted to go in there. This is certainly work in progress, but I can see putting together a kit with motor mounts, a transmission crossmember adapter, and drive shaft center section bearing support that all bolt into existing mounting points on the car. Is there interest out there?
 
I found it shocking how much that engine wanted to go in there. This is certainly work in progress, but I can see putting together a kit with motor mounts, a transmission crossmember adapter, and drive shaft center section bearing support that all bolt into existing mounting points on the car. Is there interest out there?

I wouldn't mind one... I can imagine one of these with an M90 would be fantastic, as well.
 
I love this...keep us updated on this beast. I commend you for building it even after Dirty Mike and the Boys may have made it a F shack at one point.
 
So just a little update on this.

Car has been sitting at Mose's house in San Pablo for the past year plus. I've been busy getting my rally car finished and I have now achieved that goal.

Big change of plans though. The car will be moving out to a fellow Lemons racer's shop about an hour east. I will also be moving my other Lemons car there

http://forums.turbobricks.com/showthread.php?t=298618&page=3

The Bertone will be getting basically everything from my 244 - wiring, dash, safety equipment, suspension, brakes running gear and fuel system. The 244 will be going under the knife for a long time to fix any weak points on the chassis, repair all the coachwork and become a street-legal track car with the whiteblock.

Stay tuned!
 
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