Yikes. Glad you were there for that one. They were great engines. My bud with a Duster bought a 65' 327 Vette with 4.11's and bought a full crate LT1 and that car went 12.40's at 110 with nothing more then side pipe headers and slicks.
This was a real dog. Chuck insisted on using the nylon tooth timing chain and had his uncle do a poor valve job on the angle plug heads I had equalized the chambers on. Then he ran a stock Quadra-Jet and intake with an OEM HEI distributor that quit firing about 4,500 rpm. What a shame. Had it in a 2nd gen Camaro 4 speed with highway gears. Just a bad combination. I heard it run a few years later, valve job was shot, so sad. My 273 Would have cleaned his clock. I heard he gave it to a nephew I think.