[RKDinOKC]

Home from college for the summer I swapped out the 305 for a 400 in my full size 81 GMC Jimmy. Picked up a 78 Monte Carlo with a busted heater core for $200 for the donor 400. The plan was to pull the 400, rebuild it, then pull the 305 and install the 400.

After pulling the 400 and putting it on a stand to work on I found there was barely enough room to roll the engine stand into the garage let alone tear it down and rebuild it. While they weren't hoarders, they did live through the depression and had a tendency to keep everything. There was basically path just wide enough to walk from the house to the overhead door in the one car garage. So, I set about cleaning out the garage.

On a beautiful Saturday Morning I started the job. Put all the keeper stuff in the yard to organize and pack back into the garage and piled the "trash" in the driveway. The trash pile was big enough to fill the bed of a pickup truck.

Well, just so happened garage clean out weekend, two of my parents neighbors had garage sales. People were constantly stopping and asking what the price was for this or that laying in the yard. I would explain I wasn't having a garage sale, I was just cleaning out my garage and while the stuff in the yard was for keeps, they could have anything they wanted from the pile in the driveway for free as I was just going to haul it off anyway. Every one of them went through the pile.

Guess what. By the end of the day the pile was small enough to fit in a trash can, AND there wasn't anything in the trash pile that wasn't broken beyond repair or scraps off things. Some people didn't feel right about it and gave me money anyway. I remember making almost $20 off the trash pile. One guy paid me for an old electric drill that not only had a sheared off armature shaft, but it would shock the pee out of you any time you pulled the trigger.

A couple of guys pulled up in a Monte Carlo the same year as the motor donor and were real interested in why I had the engine on a stand in the yard. They bought the Monte Carlo sans engine with busted heater core for $250. Said all they wanted was the straight body to do body wise to their Monte Carlo what i was doing with the motor on the Truck.