WC3D Found one in almost perfect condition

Hello , have just joined your site. I know that this is going to be hard to believe but if you hang with me a bit I will explain why I joined and how I have been trying to do the right thing with what I found. I will give you’re extremely short version and then for those that want to read it, i will give you the long story (a condensed 60 year story).

The short version is I have known this gentleman for almost 40 years and knew that when I was a kid all the way through to my mid twenties he owned a very cool 1969 Camaro.. I tried to buy it a few times but they sold to someone else. That was around 1995. Fast forward to two years ago and I finally got the first generation Camaro I have always wanted. That in turn started us speaking again and my the gentleman that owned the Camaro is now 76 and he decided that he wanted to give me all of the old stuff that he had still stored from back in the day. Found WC3D with a bunch of GM parts.

The long story is going to have more detail to the human story and details of the find as well as what has happened since finding the WC3D. I am going to also ask you all a couple of important questions at the end.

long version:
When I was a toddler until I was in my twenties a gentleman who lived down the street from my mom and I had a pretty cool 1969 Camaro. I used to stop and watch every time he drove by.. it was pretty nasty sounding. When I was in my twenties he still had it but didn’t drive it much. I would remind him once in a while that I would love to buy it. He just was never interested in selling.. then a couple years later I was driving by and noticed that the car wasn’t there.. his wife was out front so I stopped to ask her about it. She said that they had just sold it a couple days before that. I was gutted. I have told that story for years about the one that got away.. fast forward to about two years ago. I finally got my first generation Camaro, a 1967. One day I was out in that neighborhood visiting a friend and his wife walked up saying how my Camaro brought back memories for her and that her husband used to own one. I told her I knew who her and her husband were and explained who I was (it had been 25 or 30 years since we had spoken). She then related their side of the story to me.. a man had come over and given them some huge sob story that pulled at their heart strings and since it had just been sitting they sold it to him cheap. Unfortunately they received a call from what was now the 3rd owner of their Camaro asking about its history. The guy with the sob story had sold it for more than twice what he had paid for it. The neighbor had bought the Camaro new and it was his car for all of those years. He had hot rodded it (including trading two hemi engines to pay for the 500 plus hp engine he had in the Camaro. That’s where the WC3D comes in the story. In the 60’s they lived in Colorado and he had a couple hemi motors just sitting around. He bought the 1969 Camaro and wanted to make it faster so to that end he traded the hemis to a engine builder to build him a nasty engine for the Camaro. The one thing he kept was the intake and carbs off one of the engines. In 1970 they moved to Arizona and he put the intake and carbs on a shelf and there they sat for going on 60 years. Back to our merging story lines. My neighbor is 76 years old with health issues. I’m in my late 50’s with health issues. I buy a car to spend quality time with my surprise 5 year old twin boys. I can’t do near as much as I used to but I can’t still tinker and drive so its something for me and my boys to bond over. My neighbor trying to help wanted to give all of his old parts. So about two weeks ago we started going through his things. While we were doing that he says i have this…. It’s mopar but you can have it too. I look at it and instantly said I can’t take that to keep, that is probably really worth something. I knew instantly that it was something special (how special it would be I didn’t know at the time) I told him I would take it to some shops and do research online. We everyone started show how special it was even if they were not saying it out loud. I knew then that I needed to really digital because of people’s reaction to it. I knew it wasn’t something you find every day but I didn’t know it was one of 75 that survived the fire!

I had been shopping it around for my neighbor to that point but once I found out what it was I informed the local shops that the sale was on hold until I spoke with holly about it. I was finally able to get through to someone who was up the chain at holly (no names will be given). I was excited to speak with them about it (I don’t own the parts and I am not in anyway going to get anything for them).. I was just a guy callling a huge company to tell them the exciting news of what I found. I felt like the wind was knocked out of my sails. I felt skepticism,then they brought up money by saying holly doesn’t pay for things like this and a lot of times people donate this kind of thing. I sent them pictures of it and then they responded with we would like it to come home to holly. When I told my neighbor about it being one of the 75 he wants money… so here I am the middleman and my happy story ruined. What would you do at this point. Call and talk to someone else at holly or put it on bring a trailer and watch it go through the roof?

btw it’s a Weiand WC3D for a early hemi with 3 strombergs. 48 strombergs. All original and were put on a shelf haven’t been touched since the 60’s until two weeks ago.

 

Welcome to the HAMB from Illinois.

Sorry, I can't get excited about a 331 hemi 3 deuce intake.

But I'm sure someone will.

Here's some old posts:
https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum...c3d-3x2-intake-manifold-just-sold-for.592394/

I see one on ebay for $3,500 asking.

 

Not that an old 3x2 set-up isn't neat; but a hemi requires an inline 4x2 to be right.