Shoehorning the V8-swap Legacy of Mike Knell into a Revised Site

Posted by Kevin Strehlo on

I've just spent the last few weeks updating the jagsthatrun.com website. 

It was a hand-coded site of 500+ pages that each referenced at least three to five other pages. Search was broken. All modern UI conventions were also broken. No one could make changes. 

Since you're reading this, I'm going to presume we met the challenge and that the new site is continuing to get lots of traffic. A primary goal was to preserve the thousands of existing links to jagsthatrun.com content about performing V8 engine swaps. And I hope the parts--each engineered precisely and road-tested to make the resulting high-powered vehicles safe and durable--are easier to find than ever. 

That will mean the legacy of JTR's founder Mike Knell's lives on, although he passed away last year.

There are sufficient book samples on the site to understand why HotRod.com called Mike's Chevrolet S-10 Truck V-8 Conversion Manual and Chevrolet TPI & TBI Engine Swapping "the V-8 swap bibles."

Full of clear illustrations and prose on the painstaking work and parts and hammer swings needed to shoehorn small-block V-8's into yet smaller engine bays, the books pass along Mike's concise, sometimes wry advice about the best vehicles and engines for V8 swaps by the DIY installer. Other manuals cover Datsuns and Volvos and his original inspiration, Jaguars.

Mike's brother Greg has run customer service for JTR-Stealth for more than a decade and will continue to. He has lots of stock and the electronic files and plans to make more parts. He knows as much or more than his brother did about what people go through in a 100-hour engine swap because he has taken all their calls. And he's happy to help if he can.

Read this great tribute to Mike Knell, with plenty of its own good advice about S-10 V8 engine swaps, written for Hot Rod by Drew Hardin.

Mike Knell Has Written Two Extensive Books On Swapping V 8 Engines: One Specifically For S Trucks, The Other About Fuel Injected Engine Swaps In General. Both Should Be Required Reading For Anyone Contemplating Such A Conversion.

"Mike Knell Has Written Two Extensive Books On Swapping V 8 Engines: One Specifically For S Trucks, The Other About Fuel Injected Engine Swaps In General. Both Should Be Required Reading For Anyone Contemplating Such A Conversion." -- Hot Rod 


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