• There has been a recent cluster of spammers accessing BARFer accounts and posting spam. To safeguard your account, please consider changing your password. It would be even better to take the additional step of enabling 2 Factor Authentication (2FA) on your BARF account. Read more here.

anyone use an el camino to haul bikes?

My cartruck experience is Ranchero based, but I have repaired and dealt with several Elcos. If you take style out of the equation they just suck. It's a full sized car that only seats 2 comfortably, has limited cargo capacity, poor fuel economy, shitty tow capacity, and being an old piece of shit, high maintenance and low reliability. It's a toy. I have several customers who try the old car as a daily driver routine. It grows tiresome quickly. Ponder this:
You just finished your track day at T hill and it's been 100 plus degrees all day. You load your bike and gear in your vintage beauty. Fire it up. Enjoy the warm air permeating the cab from the poorly insulated firewall. Head to the gas station, drop $60 on fuel to get home. Grab some freeway and revel in the blast furnace that is I 5 for 2 hours. Let the dehydration and fatigue of the day really sink in.
You'll be writing the for sale ad all the way home.
The money you'll spend to make a vintage car into a reasonable modern piece of transportation buys several air conditioned mini trucks.
 
never used an El Camino, but I have used my "Rampage-a-mino" (tm)

google image, not my version


images
 
I believe that yer particular Chrysler beats Lou's BRAT

winner !!
 
Good Lord, I'd forgotten all about that Dodge car-truck thing ! Never did drive those - but we used to have VW Rabbit pick-up as a shop runner - diesel too, about the slowest road-legal vehicle ever made.

The Ranchero references bring me back to high school ( early '80s ) and a blonde I was dating whose parent didn't want her on the back of my motorcycle, so I'd ride waaaay out to their family's place and take her out in their 'farm truck' - a late '60s Ranchero with the 'Three on the tree' shifter. Oh man, the romping we did in that thing...
 
Was good enough for Heisenberg...

I loved the early review that said "Looks better with the camper-tent installed."
 
I used to use a '71. Before I set it up to haul ass, I had air shocks in the back and would just pump them up to handle the weight. You could always do that. But the air shocks suck for everything else.
 
Dan21774 said:
Sweet looking EC! :thumbup
Click to expand...

Thanks. I loved that car. It's gone now. It did almost kill me when a steering control arm snapped on the freeway in a turn going 70mph, missed the concrete by an inch as the turn smoothed out and I limped to the side of the road, with cars flying past, was like the game Frogger. No clue how I survived that. But was fun to knock boots with pretty girls on the bench seat. :D
 
Jalopyshoppe said:
My cartruck experience is Ranchero based, but I have repaired and dealt with several Elcos. If you take style out of the equation they just suck. It's a full sized car that only seats 2 comfortably, has limited cargo capacity, poor fuel economy, shitty tow capacity, and being an old piece of shit, high maintenance and low reliability. It's a toy. I have several customers who try the old car as a daily driver routine. It grows tiresome quickly. Ponder this:
You just finished your track day at T hill and it's been 100 plus degrees all day. You load your bike and gear in your vintage beauty. Fire it up. Enjoy the warm air permeating the cab from the poorly insulated firewall. Head to the gas station, drop $60 on fuel to get home. Grab some freeway and revel in the blast furnace that is I 5 for 2 hours. Let the dehydration and fatigue of the day really sink in.
You'll be writing the for sale ad all the way home.
The money you'll spend to make a vintage car into a reasonable modern piece of transportation buys several air conditioned mini trucks.
Click to expand...

Yup, you can just buy a used 5.3 Silverado and then if you want to have something to tinker with, buy something else too.
 
El Caminos.

MPG. My 66 with 283 and 3 on the tree, got over 20 mpg, regularly, even when the cam went flat, and was running on 6 cylinders. On the other hand, the 69 that i had, that someone put a 12:1, full race Pontiac 400, with tri power ( 3-2s), and turbo 400 with 3500 stall converter in, with a 4:88 in the back, got 7 mpg. At Baylands raceway, where i was absolutely sure it would run a low 12 or high 11, it ran, if i recall correctly, 15:98, or was it 14:98? I was very disappointed.

I had a 74 GMC Sprint, that got about 12 mpg with a 350. So MPG all depends on your engine/trans/gear combo. I bet if you put a late model LS in one, you could get pretty decent mileage.

El Caminos are cool. I want one, but the 70 SS that i want, has been priced out of my range.
 
Mine has a 350, powerglide (2-speed) automatic, 3.07 rear and a small 450CFM 4-barrel. It gets 10-20 MPG, depending on how it's driven. Manual drum brakes and manual steering. No AC, but you could add an aftermarket AC.

Instead of air shocks, people recommend using these 'airbags' that go inside of the rear coils to supplement extra load. You deflate them when the bed is empty and the ride is back to your normal ride (bilsteins are the recommended shocks)

People love them or hate them. They have problems with the rear window leaking (and rusting out), leaking windshields, rusted floor pans and lower fenders and quarters. I love mine for being the simple, basic, Christmas tree-hauler that it is.

I've had 2 mazdas, an '88 B2000 (can't remember if it was a 4-speed or 5-speed), no AC and a '92 B2600i cab plus 5-speed (with AC). Those were great for jetski hauling. The AC was a plus for coming home from the lake in the peak summer months (backing up Jalopyshop and others). The B2000 got about 28 MPG, but was so low on power, I was always cruising it. The B2600i had fuel injection and got about 22-24MPG with a shell and heavy plywood carpet kit. The cab plus on the Mazda is huge compared to Toyotas and Nissans.

El camino or mini-truck, both are great for second vehicles used for light hauling. Just depends what you want.
 
Use mine all of the time! Now mine is not normal as I've added some good tie downs on all 4 corners, rhino lined the bed. It has 275 40 18's on the back and unless I hit the gas hard going around a corner with the bike in the back, no tire rubbing. Super easy to load a bike, much better than anything but a motorcycle trailer.
Power buckets out of a newer GTO and new interior make it more comfortable than most anything else on the road, on thing I don't like is the wind noise from the A pillars. I use it to haul my drz and KTM 690, have only put one in the bed at a time. Put air shocks on and it would haul two bikes.
Gets 25+ mpg - LS6 powa. Didn't you have a 93rx7 too? I was going to pull mine to the track with the ElCamino but unfortunately sold it before getting the opportunity.
 

Attachments

  • IM001521.jpg
    IM001521.jpg
    38.8 KB · Views: 333
Last edited:
Tri750 said:
We used El Caminos back when they were new.
The rear suspension needs a boost to really work. Back in the day we used leaky non-dampened air shocks.
Most people don't know that the early ones have a hidden storage compartment in the bed.
.
Click to expand...

+1 as everyone else said, they'd need help in the back end for proper bike hauling.

to address the 2nd point, (iirc) the car was essentially a chevelle station wagon with the top of the back end cut off. so the reason there was a 'hidden storage' is because that's where the 2nd row seat was mounted in the station wagon. chevy just put a panel over it! take off the panel and you could still see the mounting brackets..which inspired a few to mount a seat backward-facing in the bed.

ahh I miss my '72.

that said, with a little work Hell Ya an elcam would work great as a hauler!
 
Last edited:
I had a '67 with 327, 4 sp, 650cfm with vacuum secondaries tall gears (think 60mph capable in first). But it got over 20mpg doing 70mph idling down the freeway in the lower 2k rpm range. It was good for my TZ's and YZ 2 strokes. Both my TZ's weighed about the same as one R6, then plus gear, tools, gas, etc. And on rare occassion, we pulled a trailer while others carpooled in another car, as I only had bucket seats. Also, that's if they didn't want to just sit in the back :laughing the good ol days! :party
 
TripleSeven said:
^^^^ Lol. Really man? Fail...... the car is bad ass, a real man's ride. Got me laid numerous times and was fucking fun as hell to drive.

Problem with the older one's is the chrome lip on the top of the tailgate, putting the ramp on the chrome might ruin it, or ramp might slip off. Which is why I didnt put my bike in my 71 SS bed after placing the ramps, seemed unsafe. Even though I had tie down locations in the bed. Probably some easy work arounds though, maybe a piece of rubber on the chrome, and use tiedowns to secure the ramp in place. Not sure about a safe load weight on the tailgate.
Click to expand...


So the car can't safely have a ramp on the tailgate. Sounds like a great candidate for hauling motos.
 
why not. you even get to pay lower dmv taxes, as they are cars, not trucks. :afm199


.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top