General Custom

Hi everybody!

I'm Bart, I live in the Netherlands, and this is my 1983 Chevrolet Camaro Z28 with T-top, 305ci V8, and 3-speed automatic.











I bought the car last year, in springtime. The pictures above show you how it looked back then.

About the camaro
It is a nice car, but not perfect. It's not a rusty, so that's great. The engine is nice and original, and had just driven just 72.000 kilometres. It also is the original factory-engine and gearbox.

The exterior of the car is nice, but has a few issues in the painting. I will wrap it in the summer of 2015. Beside that, the car needs some other doors, because they have some minor non-visible rust-damage. I'm lucky that's the only place where the car has any rust.
A very nice thing is the roof, it's a T-top. I love that! I like to drive the car in the summer: sunny weather, T-top off, sunglasses on, and just tour around town.

My Camaro has a nice white interior, towel-fabric, in a great shape. The picture above is how I bought it, that's almost a year ago. Meanwhile, I changed this very cheap and ugly steering wheel. Now it has an original Z28 wheel, in very nice shape. I will take some pictures after wintertime, when the car is on the road again. I also gave the car some wood-grain; very wrong but cool! And, because it's foil, easy to remove again with no damaging.

The electrics of the car are stock, but changed to European requirements. If you import a car in Europe, there are a lot of changes with lights. Some accessory I installed are a dukes-horn, central lock system with remote, custom ac-deletebox, mirror with readinglights from a 4th gen, and an original Delco radio.
My plans are to change the headlights to 4 low-beam lights, to install an even nicer Delco radio from a Firebird, and to make 2 separate buttons for the dukes-horn and regular horn (now I also connected the dukes-horn).

Last but not least, what's under that gigantic hood?
It's just a normal 305ci V8 with 3-speed automatic, the original one. Nothing more, nothing less. Some say I have to make it faster, some say it's a gas-guzler. I think it's just fine. It has lots of torque for the european roads, even in there days it's a fast car, and that with a fuel economy of just 10 litres on 100 kilometres.
What I did to the engine is just regular maintenance and some cosmetic surgery, LOL. Some new oil, sparkplugs, oilfilter, gasfilter, sparkplugwires, HEI-distributor, coolant fluid, etc. I changed the ugly cheap and small airfilter for an oversized 14 inch Edelbrock filter, and also bought some matching Edelbrock breathers.

Last, I have found some clue where the car came from; a parkingticket from Leamington, Canada. I found it behinde the centerconsole, so that was a nice surprice!


I hope my English is not to bad, but sometimes it's hard for me.
The car is parked in a dry lock-up right now (it's to protect the car and to pay less taxes). When I release the beast I will take more pictures for you, how the car looks now.

Bob88GTA

iTrader: (2)

Welcome Bart!

Good look'n Z28! You will enjoy it. Take care of it.

General Custom

Thank you!

I will enjoy it very much
It's my mission to let this car survive the future, and make it even more original. And ofcourse to drive it!

On my facebook , there are more photo's from The Camaro (and my Volvo's 340), for who likes to see them.

This is one, I just found. It's a photo I took a couple of weeks ago. The Camaro with a Blazer-steeringwheel. It's was before I had the original.
(in the background you can also see one of my Volvo's, a 340 GL)

SarahUK

That is one very nice looking Camaro! Looks in fantastic condition, and it's great to see that it's getting driven!

Enjoy!!

General Custom

It's basically a nice car indeed. Of course there are some minor things that need some love and care.
After almost 32 years, the paintwork has been redone. First the car was standard blue, now it's black. Unfortunately, they didn't do this very well. For example; on the hood they used a very soft kind of paint so almost every wax I put on will react with the paint so I have to re-polish it (now for 3 times).
In combination with all the marks that the car has from it's 32 years of life, I will wrap it in foil.
Now I doubt; foil it black, of the blue again which the car got out of factory.

UKPROCHARGEDGTA

looks good


your English is better than my Dutch

dmccain

iTrader: (2)

Nice car Bart! Bet it turns a lot of heads when they hear it coming down the road over there.

General Custom

Thanks mates!

And yes, it really is a head-turner here in Holland!
People just don't recognize it because it's so rare and unknown over here, so when they hear the car, they have to look. When they look, they have to look twice.
(Over here also any car with more than 4 cylinders and more than 2 litres of displacement is rare)

UKPROCHARGEDGTA

head turner anywhere dude

RMK

Nice looking car and welcome to the forums.

SolarGoldRaptor

Looks like your car has a very rare UU6 Firebird/Fiero radio !

General Custom

A few more pictures with my Camaro, taken on 5-2-2015.
Because it is a dream to drive and always will be a beautiful car











Of course, the car still has it's imperfections (mostly in paintwork). As owner of the car I see all of them. It will be nice to put on new hood and doors and do a complete respray, but thats for in about a few years or so.

UKPROCHARGEDGTA

great looking car dude

gorin002

that is one nice looking Z

General Custom

Thanks!

In the mean time I changed it a bit. The most obvious thing is the frond-bumper from an 1985 Z28, just because I like it better.

When I got my motorbike last month:


The most recent picture is from yesterday. I drove it to the Belgian Ardennes to drive it in the hills (Holland is just really plane). By coincidence we drove near the circuit of Spa-Francorchamps where we took this photo.


It's still a really nice car to drive, also very reliable and even effordable for an American built car from the 80's (sorry guys, it's just an expensive hobby over here). Beside that I think I will sell it next year. With 2 Volvo's, 2 motorbikes and the Camaro it's just a lot to keep them all rolling.