Resurrection of a Camaro

Having been driven in salt and sludge plus being 16 years old, the car most definitely had some rust-fixed-with-bondo. The bad spots were the rear quarterpanels, lower edge of the passenger door and various other small spots such as under the vinyl top and the front fenders. In 1991 I decided it was time for a repaint and some new sheetmetal. I had a second job at the time servicing home TV-satellite receivers so I had some extra cash. At first I wanted a shop to do the welding but after they screwed up I decided I had to learn MIG welding sometime, so why not practice on the Camaro? $500 later I had my very own MIG and plenty of sheetmetal. Of course the heatwave of the decade hit us that summer and the usual 70F was more like 95F and I had to weld outdoors.

My first welds weren't all that great but I learned pretty fast and started enjoying resurrecting the car. After I welded the panels in, I took the vinyl top off. Then it went to a painter that did a real good job painting it.

About a year later I noticed the engine was starting to burn some oil. I decided to freshen it up some with rebuilt cylinder heads, a performance cam and headers. Well, this simple task turned into a nightmare. I still don't know what was wrong with the cam I bought but the car ran awful. It was a 350/350cam (222 duration, 0.449 lift). Should have run fine with this cam, but it did not. I believe the cam I got must have been ground wrong. The car would not idle. Anything below 3000rpm was terrible. No power, overheating, shaking. Over 3000 it ran ok, but didn't feel much different than stock.

A week later a rod bearing spun.

After a period of denial I pulled the motor. Took it apart and shipped it off to a machine shop. It was bored 030 over, the crank reground, and just basically a stock type rebuild.  

This was my very first engine rebuilt, and it's actually still running perfectly after 6 years. I bought  'How to rebuild your small block chevy' by David Wizard and it helped alot. After the shortblock was all fixed up it went back into the car.

I ran a stock cam for a short time before settling on a summit racing cam. 214/224 duration, 112 lobe sep and 0.442/0.462 lift. I performed a mild port job on the cylinder heads, and a performer intake manifold replaced the offenhauser after I found the intake flange had warped.

Now compare this to the engine compartment when I first got the car in '89:

I had the car dynoed at one time on a clayton chassis dyno. It made 235hp at the rear wheels. The dyno operator said to use a 29% loss to estimate flywheel hp. The high loss number is partly bacause of the automatic and partly because of the design of the clayton dyno. It has 2 rollers with the rear wheels of the car in between the rollers. Friction losses with this setup are very high. With a 29% loss flywheel numbers come to 330hp @5000 and 390ft-lbs @3500. This seems about right as I had no trouble beating L98 IROCs, 5.0 mustangs and even a BMW 850 (never thought I'd get a race out of that guy, but he went for it).

Here is the full spec on the engine:

The shortblock is a stock rebuild, with cast, 30 over,   TRW flattop pistons.

Camshaft is a Summit grind, PN SUM-K1103:

The cylinder heads are rebuilt '441' factory heads. They have 1.94/1.5 valves. Valvesprings are OEM replacement 'pink Z28' springs. These are the springs found on '71 LT1s. Rockers are stock stamped steel 1.5:1 ratio. Heads are pocket ported, with some minor port cleanup and port matching to the intake manifold. These heads have 69cc chambers compared to the stock heads 76cc. The stock 8.5:1 compression is now 9.0-9.5:1. Runs fine on mid-grade pump gas.

Intake manifold is a Edelbrock Performer.

Carburetor is a Holley 600, PN 1850. Jets are #62 primaries. Secondaries have the metering plate with passages drilled 0.003". Power valve is a 10.5" unit. Rest is out-of-the-box. The crappy fuel filter in the pictures has been replaced with a better one.

Exhaust system consists of Coyote 1 5/8" full-length headers into a 2 1/4 dual system with Thrush glasspacks (I thought I'd try glasspacks atleast once. I'm a turbo-style muffler guy now!). Right now there's a set of coated Hooker Competition headers waiting to be installed (the coyote headers are rusty), together with a flowmaster 2 1/2" exhaust system with a balance tube and a flowmaster transverse muffler.

Ignition is a HEI that has been recurved to have full advance at 2700rpm. Coil is a Accel supercoil. There's also a Crane HI-6 that was installed after the pictures above were taken.

In the "What I should have done different" section, I think I should have used an Edelbrock RPM manifold, Holley 650DP (maybe), and a one size larger cam (224/234 duration).

Some other modifications:

Rear axle: Rebuilt + 3.23 gears installed instead of the stock 2.73s.

Tranny: The TH350 got a B&M 2100rpm stall converter and a B&M shiftkit.

Suspension: Poly bushings, 1.25" front swaybar, 13/16" rear swaybar from 79 Trans Am WS6. Front springs were Z28 springs cut 3/4 coil (lowered the car 1.5"). Rear springs are stock 5 leaf springs with a 6th leaf to stiffen it up and lower 1.5". Stock rubber body mounts replaced with aluminum discs.

Interior: Recaro seats out of a mid-eightes Opel Manta. Leather steering wheel. B&M Ratchet shifter. Oil pressure and voltmeter in centerconsole.

If you are interested in more details in anything above, let me know and I'll update this page with more info.