On 14 July 2005 the remaining contents of Navarro Engineering's shop in Los Angeles (Glendale) was auctioned off, almost all of it reasonably ordinary machine shop equipment, plus his twin-turbo Rambler six, a bunch of Rambler engine parts, and a few scattered pieces of what may be the Indy car.
The indy motor went to a private collector for $15,000; pictures of it are here.
I haven't inventoried the lot yet, but I did get: one "R&D" numbered head, with obviously monstrous flow with matching cast stainless turbo/tuned-port injection manifold; three or four TE06 turbos (used, but taped up and clean); a new-sealed TE06 rotor assembly; many FI parts; a nice-looking block (used) with matching wet-sump pan (so it's not a spare Indy block); Navarro timing covers, balancers, oil pumps (wet and dry sump), plus a few hundred pounds of unsorted, dusty miscellany. All for the Rambler six.
Nearly none of it is junk; it looks like "keeper" stuff set aside. Most of it is boxed, bagged, oiled, labelled, sealed, marked, etc for reuse. A bunch of forged pistons, used, but nearly new, barely scuffed. A nice-looking crank that ran dry, journals all scored, but probably .005" or so, like rough sandpaper, all wrapped up oiled and stored.
There are two heads; one looks like a heavily ported stock part, it's got a Rambler part number. The other is very special, with monstrous ports. It's a very pretty casting, a lot of care went into making it. However, it is not identical to the Indy motor; that head has little decorative cast dots in the webbing between the ports on the top of the head; this one does not. Unfortunately the casting numbers are under the valve cover so I'll never know what's in the Indy motor.
Another buyer got the other lot, which had a lot of race-car goodies in it; he gave me a box of Rambler gaskets (thanks!). He has another "R&D"-numbered head, I forgot to photo it, but I'll get the numbers from him when I talk to him. Maybe he'll part with the con rods and pistons...
Yet another buyer got the Hallibrand rear, which was presumably from the Indy car; the motor still has the multi-plate clutch driven side (the grooved bucket), more on this below.
I paid $500 for my lot, with tax and fee just under $600 total; the other went for $500 also, I stopped bidding at $400, since I'm already basically spending next month's rent money or something. But in the lot of Rambler stuff were, it turns out, a lot of Hallibrand gears, half-shafts, etc. I sold them all to the buyer of the Hallibrand for $250 -- practically free. Eh. In theory I could eBay then or whatever but the value is really as a complete rear (both as "parts" and Rambler history), a bunch of Rambler Indy disk plates, gear sets, etc too obscure. I also sold him a box of used Aeroquip fittings for $20, so my total outlay for all my historic Rambler turbo six parts totalled $330 -- an unbelievable bargain.
In the next few weeks I'll have it at least partially sorted out. It looks like I'm going to be building a turbo motor in the near future...
