"Big Block From Hell" - Hib Halverson
 |
Vette Magazine's "Big-Block from Hell" articles make up the longest running project car series ever published by any Corvette magazine. It is still an active project at this writing in August 1999. The most recent installment, Part 16, published in the magazine in February of '98 and is reprinted elsewhere on this web site. Vette Magazine plans to continue the series at the rate of about one installments per year for the foreseeable future. As this introduction is being written, Part 17 is in the planning stages right now. When I began writing the BBfH series (Part 1 published in the July 1990 issue of Vette), I only intended it to be a couple of articles on engine modifications. It was not until later that the series evolved into a project vehicle called the Big-Block from Hell. Even then, no one at Vette back then ever figured we'd still be writing the series in 1999. During the first few installments, we were a unsure of what to call the engine series. That indecisiveness explains why the series was titled "Project 454 From Hell" in the magazine's Table of Contents but the text of the article called it "Big-Block from Hell." Through a comedy of errors, this disparity continued until Part 5 was published in May of 1991, when we finally decided to make it a project car. In some cases, these old BBfH installments have been reprinted on the Unofficial Idaho Corvette site as they were published, however, since some of them go back almost a decade, I have often made small updates in cases where the what was written originally did not stand the test of time. Also, contact information for the manufacturers whose parts were used in building the car is updated to correct addresses and phone numbers. Lastly, there were several cases in the mid-’90s where Vette published articles about work done on the project car but not identify the car as the BBfH nor name them as installments of the series. The most recently published BBfH installment, Part 16, was numbered as if those couple of articles were originally part of the series. In those cases, I’ve also re-titled the stories posted on the web as part of the series. At this point all 16 published stories are on the Idaho Corvette site. I would like to thank Frank Smith, webmaster of the Idaho Corvette Site, for his efforts in making the reprint of these classic BBfH articles possible. Lastly, I would like to thank all the Corvette-happy websurfers who have visited the Idaho Corvette site. Your interest and requests were a part of making the reprint of these articles happen. --Hib Halverson, BBfH series writer
Hib's contributions to the
Idaho Corvette Page have certainly been a big part in making it the
success it has become. You can read more of Hib's articles by CLICKING
HERE . |