[arntztype4]

KZJim,

Steve Arntz started building replica cars in 1972 in South San Francisco. Steve is and always will be an R&D man. He'd build a car, drive it for an hour, then tear it apart again. This went on consistently. By the time I met him in about 1989, he had a shop at Sears Point. There he was working on, what became known as his "TYPE 4". This moniker came from years of development of previous models. Each model became more refined, and in Steve's opinion, better. I would have to agree, having seen some of his early models, not that they were not good examples. Steve's goal was to build the best and more importantly, the safest cars available.
Somewhere in those years of development, he brought Ron Butler on board for development purposes. Hence the Arntz/Butler forum. They later split, but they're individual cars are pretty identical. The Type3 cars were the last with Ron Butler being involved.
In his last few years of Cobra building at Sears Point, he built about 16 Type4 cars, only a hand full made it to the streets. He cut up many of the rest to test new ideas, such as cutting one car in half, to widen it for more comfort.
The one thing that everybody agrees on, is that Steve was light years ahead of any other replica builders. He never sacrificed quality for price. If you could see a Arntz car, next to pretty much any other manufacturer, you would see the difference in quality and safety features, many of which are incorporated in other cars today.
I bought one of his Type4 cars in the late 80's. I'm ashamed to say that I only finished it about 6 months ago! Truth be known, I only really worked on it for the last couple of years.
As far as changing to an FE motor, from the Chevy they were set up for, no big deal! I not only changed mine over, for the sake of originality, but I moved the motor back about three inches, for better weight distribution. I'm also running a top loader 4 speed. I do have to admit, I had to redo the foot boxes to accomodate the moving of the engine rearwards. Most things I did myself, and some I farmed out.

Hope that helps,
Dan