1991 Caprice Wagon (Shamu)

Hello everyone!

I recently purchased this 1991 Chevrolet Caprice Wagon for a car to take to car shows and cruise with my family and friends. I am very exited and working on it in all my spare time to get it back in the road for the first time in 15 years:

The story is is previous owner had vanity plates “SS Shamu” and drove it for years. He hit a deer and pulled the engine and just didn’t get around to installing a lt1 swap he had. It sat long enough they just wanted there garage back.

I happened have a had a freshly rebuilt TPI engine and 700r4 transmission from an 87 Formula 350 Firebird. It’s a 355, Hypereutectic pistons comp TPI specific roller cam, 2400 lockup stall converter, stainless swirl polished valves, MSD injectors. Fully rebuild trans with shift kit. It ran super strong in the Firebird with awesome low end torque. All done by me (except machine work) when I went to auto tech school after high school.

Im currently making up a merged caprice/firebird engine harness temporarily and using the TPI MAF computer. Once I see how it runs this year my future plans would be to get a self tuning engine management system (Holley terminator or similar)and clean harness with a more LS style electronics. Than eventually swap in an LS.

I will be posting it the wanted section for some parts I’m in desperate need of

Thanks for looking!

If you're from the Rochester NY area, many of us oldtimers remember it well. I remember it have the plate "Shammu".

Dave the previous owner did have it for years. It seldom ran, or ran correctly. After a lot of time and $$$, Dave threw in the towel. Can't blame him.

Hope you have better luck and get it back on it's feet.

Tom

silverfox103 wrote:

If you're from the Rochester NY area, many of us oldtimers remember it well.  I remember it have the plate "Shammu".

Dave the previous owner did have it for years.  It seldom ran, or ran correctly.  After a lot of time and $$$, Dave threw in the towel.  Can't blame him.  

Hope you have better luck and get it back on it's feet.

Tom

Thanks for the response!

That's awesome you recognize the car it gets a lot of attention as I'm working on it.

Do you have any other history you can share about the car?

Nice looking wagon. Welcome to the forum.

GeoffB wrote:

Nice looking wagon. Welcome to the forum.

Thanks!

If that is Shammu, it looks a lot better than I remember it. Maybe it got painted.

Did you buy it from Dave, Rochester NY area?

Oh yeah, welcome to the forum.

Tom

Nice I like it

Men, this is not the same car. lakeeffect never had an LT1 swap planned for it. And sadly, it [never] drove for years. There were actually three of those cars made as Kicker demo cars. Read more here.

silverfox103 wrote:

If that is Shammu, it looks a lot better than I remember it.  Maybe it got painted.

Did you buy it from Dave, Rochester NY area?

Oh yeah, welcome to the forum.

Tom

The car will live and be shown around the Rochester, NY area but It was purchased from a person named Kevin out of Warsaw NY.

It saw a lot of shows like Syracuse nationals, Good Guys in Columbus in its day.

sherlock9c1 wrote:

Men, this is not the same car. lakeeffect never had an LT1 swap planned for it. And sadly, it [never] drove for years. There were actually three of those cars made as Kicker demo cars. Read more here.

I have seen the Kicker car and it is very similar. I've also seen a few others make SS clone wagons from various years that look surprisingly similar.

I think what makes this car unique is the shaved rear door / hatch handles. The Kicker car still had rear door handles

Was this particular car on this site before? I’m not even close to NY, but it sure does ring a bell..

Funkwagon455 wrote:

Was this particular car on this site before?  I’m not even close to NY, but it sure does ring a bell..

I did post photos on FB recently so if your in any of those groups might have seen it already. This is my first time posting it here.

looks so different with out the side pipes

mtrhead79 wrote:

looks so different with out the side pipes

Wrong car. The one you are thinking of does have a new owner though and they post about it over at ISSF.


For those that missed Joels post, this is NOT lake effects old wagon. His started with a TPI engine and he was never planning an LT1 swap.

You all are thinking of this car ( Go to reply number 8 ) https://www.impalassforum.com/threads/weld-tomahawk-wheels.1321686/  and it is NOT the car that OP owns. Different bumper, has Kicker emblems on doors. New owner did remove the tacky side pipes though.

Car looks great, I like the wheels.