Quote:
Originally Posted by Pro Stock John
Tarheel posted a couple days ago he bought the green one and was reuniting it with its original engine, very cool. Was the engine known about for a while?
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Long story short, I have know about this engine for over 25 years, it was advertised for sale as a COPO engine at the time. The owner of the engine was from Phillipsburg, PA & bought a 70 Corvette & this engine was in it. When I went to look at it, several people had contacted him wanting to buy it only if he could provide the VIN. In his attempt to clean the rough area, he used a wire wheel & he told me he ruined it & could not read the whole VIN. I passed on the COPO engine & the CE L88 short block he also had for sale. Fast forward to early 2024, I was fortunate enough to buy a real 69 X44 D80 10-10 COPO minus its original engine. After all these years, I tracked down the owner of the COPO engine & I was able to buy it. After getting it home, I cleaned the rough area not expecting to find a VIN, but I was able to see enough of the VIN to verify that it was listed in the registry & was a RG Yenko sold out of PA. After some help from my friend Bryan Shook from Vintage Car Law, I was able to find that the car was registered & in a trust & was part of the Cliff Ernst collection. With some help from Jerry M, I was able to talk with J.R. Ernst & the family already had the cars consigned to Mecum & they were not interested in the engine.