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History / OriginalityGot a question about 1982-1992 Camaro or Firebird history? Have a question about original parts, options, RPO codes, when something was available, or how to document your car? Those questions, answers, and much more!
If you're from the same generation as me, it was a much different time. No seatbelt laws or child seats. Playgrounds had slides made of stainless steel that were blazing hot in the summer sun, no cushy padding around swing sets. No one needed to be told on the cup that coffee was hot. You didn't need a disclaimer that you shouldn't drive off a cliff with your Fiat because you saw it in a commercial. People relied on common sense, not everyone had it though. I think it just made us tougher.
Got a fresh state inspection on her. That took some finagling.
Had to replace the third brake light assembly. Lens was OK on the old one but the innards of it was crumbling when the inspector got it out. Might have been able to solder and JB-Weld it back together, but I found one N.I.B. for a bend-over price from a seller in Canada on eBay. Paid my money, and got her up-enough to snuff to pass for another year.
Still have issues (three of them) water leak at the firewall.
upper left, up high
somewhere central behind the dash
right side around the heater box
Starting to look like I'm going to have to live with the leaks unless I want to really tear that dash apart again. Bare metal floorboards aren't the end of the world. Easy to clean for sure.
The "stutter" issue still crops up at slight-throttle during most drives.
BUT TODAY... she behaved like a sweetheart. NOT ONE STUTTER.
I ran around running WOT all over the place on this unseasonably warm day with the windows open. To reward her, I ran some McGuires wax product all around the metal that surrounds the rear window. There was a good amount of rust forming in that area. Now I've got "waxed rust." Yeah. I'm bad.
Buddy of mine called me while I was at lunch, and was jabbering about something when he injected a remark about the Camaro - which I just happened to have with me at that very moment.
So Mike, for you, here's that "awesome" V6 motor WOT through first and second gears from the light.
I think I might have got all the way to like 35 mph!
I have been wondering if you got that leak fixed. I can't remember, but did you have the windshield removed and resealed? And did you check the TPS sensor with a multimeter to make sure there are no erratic changes during acceleration?
Put in a new windshield as part of the first attempt at the water leak.
I can't beef the guys that did the work much.
There were lots of holes, and they found most of them.
But not all of them.
The heater core cutout appears to traverse the cowl bowl. As part of the "big" repair, I asked the shop to go ahead and install a new heater core while they had the dash all pulled out. Reinstallation of the housing for the heater core seems to have resulted in an imperfect seal.
I haven't dug into the drivability issues too deeply yet.
A full tank of gas still results in the back end of the car absolutely REEKING of gasoline. I figure some sort of leak around the fuel pump seals, or evap lines at the top of the tank. So, next big job is drop the tank and try to get that sorted before I have a fire.
A lot of this is beyond my reasonable capacity to do by myself in the driveway with my limited tools.
So, money is becoming an issue.
I was (and may still be) on the verge of just letting it go.
But then days like today make me realize that just going out and buying something new would not even remotely be the same as this.
Should probably also mention I've got a minor exhaust leak at least at the passenger side exhaust manifold. I can see where somebody tried to remove the manifold and broke-off the stud at the top rear of the manifold nearest the firewall. There is also a chunk of one of the "ears" missing at the same location.
This gets me the tick-tick-tick sound when the engine is cold. It mostly goes away when hot.
There is a missing manifold stud on the driver's side too, up at the front.
I'd like to deal with the manifolds, except that I know that any attempt at wrenching on those rusty studs is just going to result in them all breaking. Nobody is going to want to play with EZ-outs and such with the heads still on the car. That gets me into it so deep, I kind of hate to even think about the money end of it.
And whatever else I might break/ruin in the process of getting the manifolds off.
Then, the manifolds are probably crap anyway, and need to be replaced altogether. The driver-side manifold seems to be an abundantly available part. Not the case though with the passenger side manifold. A new manifold for the passenger side is virtual unobtainium as near as I can tell.
This place http://emwexhaustmanifold.com/ looked like it might have some promise as a source for the unobtainium passenger-side manifold.
lists
1274R
173 (2.8)
1988-89 Camaro, Firebird 2.8L
Which in the pic does NOT look like the manifold on my car, as the mount for the EGR (or whatever that smog-control is) is completely different.
I called the company, and they asked me to give them the "casting number" from the present manifold. I can see one or two characters remaining on that rusty manifold that look like they could possibly be part of the casting number. The rest of whatever number may have once been there is long gone.
I'm half-tempted to just go with headers, and leave the smog-pump in place in such a way that it at least looks like its still there and doing something. By being over 25 years old in Virginia, it doesn't have to PASS emissions, but it does still have to pass "visual inspection." I doubt that most shops would bother to look at it that hard during a simple annual safety inspection.. Even if they did fail me on a standard inspection, I could switch to ANTIQUE tags until I could get it sorted out, or until I could find a way to walk away from the project without a broken heart.
...and of course there's the whole issue I already mentioned - which is that yanking off the existing manifolds will probably break every single one of the rusted studs, and then I'm trailering it somewhere to probably just replace the whole engine, since I'm probably NOT going to try to dissect that 27-year-old motor in my driveway - let alone get it put back together in any sort of running condition all by myself - all for the sake of getting the engine heads on a bench where the busted studs can be EZ-outed.
I am a "certified auto mechanic."
Certified in 1979.
I worked in the trade for about a year, and then went on to do other things. I've got a fair understanding of what's in-play here, and I'm not so broke that I can't pay for a lot of it. Problem is, most mechanics run away with their hair on fire when this car shows up at the door of their shop.
Problem is, most mechanics run away with their hair on fire when this car shows up at the door of their shop.
ugh....I feel your pain. I remember from earlier in the thread you have been through a lot with the beast and the leaks. Sorry if it has escaped me and you have already tried it, but wondering maybe if a liquid dye that shows up under UV light would help close-in on the water leak? Works great in HVAC systems. Spoke to a guy the other day and he said he finally fixed his thirdgen leak. How so, I asked? He bought a garage.
Propane torches have always served me well removing bolts. Warm engine and caution sure helps when messing with exhaust bolts. They always seem to come out for me here in the Midwest. Back-up vehicle?
If you can continue to be patient with her, maybe she will pan out and then get some good use out of her.
There was a recall on the filler necks leaking, but I do not know if the recall would include your car. Calling a dealer with VIN in hand would answer that question I guess.
If you could find a guy on here from the south, maybe they would have a nice set of manifolds.
I ran her around yesterday, and didn't stutter once.
I've been trying to figure if there is some rhyme or reason to what "triggers" the stutter. Can't seem to find any. At one point, I thought just letting her warm up to open-thermostat before hitting the road seemed to reduce the chances of it happening. I'm starting to think that's not the case. I was running out of time to get to my favorite lunch place before the crowds yesterday. So, just jumped in, and took off.
No stutter on the way out there or anywhere along the windy-way back. Did a bunch of lug-load, and light-throttle, and WIDE OPEN throttle, and hard downshift tests. Even ran the fuel gage down to the red. Not even a burp.
Weather yesterday was "cool-ish" compared to the day before. I once had the notion that the stutter was less likely on "warm-ish" days.
Could it be that I finally ran all the condensate water out of the tank???
Kinda sucks that I can't fully fill the tank for the coming winter to minimize the fuel odor. It will smell like a hazmat spill next to the front door if I fill the tank and let it sit in the driveway for the winter. Maybe I need to make a point of running it to purge existing fuel more often over the winter. There is a place not too far north of me that does gas tank restorations. I should check with them to see if they will undertake a full-on tank replacement. I can't drop the rear axle and exhaust by myself on a creeper in the driveway. Too many broken body-parts already. Any more, and I might not make it up the stairs.
Unfortunately a garage is not in my foreseeable future. I can't bear to cover it with a car cover, because I just like looking at it - and I think it kind of pisses-off some of the snooty neighbors. Which suits me just fine.
I need to get some of the interior re-installed. Shame that the brand-new dash pad has been just sitting in my basement for so long. Work (such that it is) is called off for today because of the evil weather that has arrived. Otherwise I'd think about getting out there and getting started on something on the insides. I really need to work on the floorboards a bit (remove shredded-funky sound-deadening stuff, and caulk some seams) before I put the kick-panels and the console back. Looking now like Monday might be decent weather for such things.
I want to thank you for a fantastic read. I usually spend an hour or two reading before bed. Last night I found this thread. Today I get to reply. I hope you stick with it but I certainly can understand the frustrating points. Still, you have really handled your journey in an admirable way.
If your exhaust manifolds aren't cracked, you should be able to have them resurfaced at a machine shop. Of course you expect to break the rest of the studs, but you could try to shoot some PB Blaster on them, or better yet...
I don't know how far you really want to go with the car but a nice upgrade would be to drop a 3.4 in there. That's probably what I'll do after I blow up my 3.1 but who knows, these engines are actually very build-able if you wanted to. Check out these guys..
As somebody stated in an earlier post, guys are making up to 350HP on the motor with a turbo. That's the direction I will be heading with my 91 v6 after I finish the Trans Am.
I'll have to take a close look at the existing manifolds and compare them to the ones shown on the sites at the links.
Today was no day for the Camaro.
34 degrees and raining.
So, I mostly stayed inside and played with an old Beretta.
Its even older than the Camaro!
Believed that these models were 1978-1982 -- dovetails with the first year of the third-gens at least.
Well, as for "how much I got in it," I'm not really sure how to go about answering that.
Maybe the sober way to think about it is how much could I get out of it if I sold it in the current condition. We already know that by all accounts, ten-large buys a pretty nice one on the open market. Compared to the dollars-spent I've got in this one, those sober numbers make want to not be sober.
Here's the better way of looking at it to keep smiling, and keep riding.
I am sorry to have brought it up. I always wonder when I see stories like this. I bought my baby for 10 large but the smiles per mile are = to yours I think. You do have some more interesting memories of the car than I do of mine and know your car more intimately than I know mine. It is a great read and story. I did consider getting a car that I would have to work on more but heard it is better to pay the cost up front and I am not so handy so I would spend a lot of time at a dealer for everything. the most I did myself was to fix my headlight motors. thats it. I may redo the power antenna since the cable snapped.
but to drive it on those perfect days and lay two posi-stripes down some road is amazing. no power breaking here One day I will take it to mid-ohio track and have some fun.
I've now driven the Camaro on four different days, and it hasn't "stuttered" even once!
For so long, I had wondered "what could it possibly be???" that was causing the intermittent and unpredictable stuttering.
I'm beginning to think that it was quite simply: water in the gas.
I must have finally run the last of the water out of her. That's the only explanation I can come up with for a problem of that sort that "just goes away."
Today I drove her just about as hard as I could. Even managed to chirp one of the tires when I floored it in second gear coming around a corner.
A few snowflakes in the air, so just as it gets good, probably going to have to park her at least for a few days. Snow in the forecast for tomorrow and the next.
Here's a priceless "Camaro story:"
You gotta remember that I've got the little V-6 with stock intake and exhaust.
Today I was stopped first-in-line at the light on Reston Parkway as I was headed to a top-secret lunch mission. This is the intersection where the road "opens up" to four lanes, and if you have the inclination, you can really do a "launch" from that light. Problem is, so many times when I've tried to launch from that light, just about the time I would hit the "powerband" in second gear, the stutter would jump up and thrash me like a stray dog trying to sneak a pie from a picnic.
Well, today I braced myself for the thrashing. Light turned green, and I dropped the hammer.
First gear... BWAAAHHHHHHH!.....
Second gear.... BWAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!.... (AND NO STUTTER THRASHING)
Just then, I notice a car passing me on the left.
Shift fast to third gear.
Glance quickly at the "competition" on my left.
Its a Prius, and its pulling away from me.
Let the clutch out fast, and FLOOR IT!
Catching up to the Prius now.
BWAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!
Glance at speedo.
46 mph.
Thank God for small pleasures.
...and thank y'all for sticking with me through this.
I guess the update is that last spring - how time flies! - I angle-grindered the four gooey patches that looked like a real horror from around the four "portholes" in the floorboard.
I chipped away the petrified seam-sealer too in the cabin.
I had grand plans to get the seams re-sealed and the floor painted before fall, but that didn't happen. Been driving it to lunch now and then. Otherwise, life has been in the way of other progress.
I plan to go after the seams, paint the floor, and re-install the consoles and lower dash sometime around April 1.
The '88 is completely dug-out, and has a clear shot at the street.
Problem is, the street still has ten-foot snow piles, and black ice all night and every morning.
The Camaro will stay safe on her perch.
I'll drive the FWD car in the mess on the roads.
The FWD is so anonymous-looking, that after owning it SIX YEARS, I can still walk right past it in a parking lot, and wonder, "Where the heck did I park?"
Spring was wet. All the time. By the time the world dried out, it was rifle-competition season, and I actually let the poor ol' Camaro sit in the driveway, without attention until the battery died! I had to push it into the street, and jumpstart it with the DD. Oh the indignity.
Well, its hot as ***** now. 96 today. At least its dry. And competition season is over. So, I've spent the last 3 days prepping and painting the disreputable floorboards.
I neglected to report last fall's effort on the floors. Each floor panel had the nasty, and tenacious remnants of those sticky "muff patches" over each porthole. The old carpet insulation had become one with the muff patches, and had fibers adhered in such a way to offend even the most indifferent rat-rodder. So, last fall, I bought an angle-grinder and the most aggressive steel-wheel brush attachment. I ground the muffs off each porhole. Slinging muff glue EVERYWHERE. At least the glue was dried out enough that it didn't stick to badly to everything that it hit. I doubt I'll EVER get every last muff-splat crumb out of the car, but oh well.
I dug-out all the loose seam-sealer too.
This week's mission was to prep-sand the floors, and paint with flat-black Rustoleum.
You may recall that the floors started out looking like this:
After three days work in 90+ degree weather, the floor now looks like this:
Needs one more coat, and then the seats can go back in.
The (one of) the most irksome issues of this car has been the leak from the cowl to the interior. This issue persists to this day. I took advantage of the dry (but hot as *****) weather to finally deal with the disreputable uncarpeted floor.
Obviously, I've been stumped at a solution to the leak from the cowl to the interior.
Here's what I'm thinking. Its hot and dry here for the next several days. If water can find its way from the outside of the car to the cowl, and then through some (hopefully pinhole) hole in the cowl, what would happen if I poured Rustoleum paint into the cowl, and let the paint find that same hole?
Assuming the hole is not huge or multitudinous, won't the paint eventually clog the hole?
I plan to use a flexible nylon drane snake from the hardware store to plunge the drains when I pour-in the paint. This should keep the paint from completely sealing-off the cowl drain. I know its kind of a crazy approach, but what if it works???
With the carpet out and the floors all cleaned, can you use a hose, without a spray nozzle, to just wet certain areas at a time to see where the leak is coming from? Someone outside the car can hold the hose at the bottom of the firewall and slowly work their way up as you lay under the dash looking for the water. If nothing comes in, move up to the cowl and slowly wet the area until you see where the water is coming from. You should be able to locate it this way.
The leak is probably from the seam sealer drying out and cracking as it gets old, and allowing water to flow through the joint between the spot welds. From looking at a few different thirdgens, it seems that the seam sealer has reached the end of it's useful life span in most cases. The fix is to remove the old seam sealer, clean the gaps, and apply new sealer.
I was able to find the offending leak on my latest project with a squirt bottle of water, sprayed on the area I suspected, and confirmed water on the inside. While the leaks I'm aware of are isolated to one spot on the firewall and a leak between the hatch glass and deck lid, I plan to reseal the entire car since every bit of seam sealer in the car is expired.
Rainfall or garden hose in the cowl opening, and water starts coming in from an unviewable point high on the firewall behind radio and a/c harness. Probably just slightly to the driver's side.
It's going to be dry and hot for the coming days.
One more coat of paint on the floor tomorrow, then I start pouring paint into the cowl. That's the plan for now.
The paint-pour through the cowl trick might be working.
So far I've made several applications.
The key to getting the paint to the afflicted areas has been my electric leaf blower. I pour paint into the central area of the cowl bowl, then I fire up the leaf blower, and blast the wet paint all over the inside of the cowl bowl with the leaf blower. Its a Toro brand blower, and purports to deliver 200+ mph wind force. I believe it.
On the first application, I could see a fairly strong trickle of paint entering the drivers compartment through a rusty area at the very top, and far left (drivers side) of the firewall. With repeated applications (and the help of the leaf blower) the trickle has become less each time. Just now I did an application, and for the first time, NO PAINT came though the firewall.
I'll let this application set-up just a bit, and I'll hit it one more time for good measure.
I don't want to jinx this, but I'm optimistic that this jerry-rigged effort might actually shut down this leak that has perplexed me now for years. It doesn't even have to be perfect. If there is still some tiny seepage after the paint hardens (and probably shrinks), I can live with that. AND I can hit it again next season, or next year, or whenever, and stop it again.
That is,... IF this actually works.
As the Brits would say, I'm pretty "chuffed" over how it looks so far.
After I finish-off the driver's side today, I'll spin the car around 180 degrees in the driveway (letting gravity be my friend), and get it ready to do the passenger side tomorrow. Looks like the weather is going to cooperate still!
The weather held for completing both sides of the cowl project. Honestly, I couldn't get any paint to leak through the firewall from the passenger side, but it sure wasn't for lack of trying.
We had four further days of dry weather for the cowl-paint to cure. Hot and dry. Perfect conditions.
Today, we finally got some rain. Internet says it was 0.25 inches. That sounds about right. The rain has been persistent, but it never came down in buckets. When the front finally passed, I checked the floorboards.
A few days ago we had an overnight rain that the baseball announcer described as a "Noah's Ark" rain. I'd have to agree.
I inspected the interior the next morning after the clouds parted. In the front area of the floor (the area that had been regularly soaked by the leaking cowl) there was about one teaspoon of water on the drivers' side front. This was the area that I previously identified as having the worst cancer. I think I can live with that. Even my much newer Toyota had that odor like water had gotten in during the biblical rain.
However,... the rear floor had a lot of water. Particularly, the area under the passenger-side rear seat. The rear seats have been on my basement floor since before Moses, according to my wife) was under water. The area under the rear seat makes a dandy collection bowl. I remember when I first removed the carpet - nearly three years ago now - that "bowl" area had deep standing water.
After last weeks biblical rain, the aforesaid rear seat area had about an inch-and-a-half of water. I tried some prayers to turn it into an adult beverage. No luck there.
It looks to me like the "feeder" area for that spot is actually at the roof line above the door. I scrutinized the spot where the rearmost area of the drip-rail joins the roof. I can see a very tiny crack at that point. I really cant tell whether there are other cracks or openings that might allow the drip rail to channel water into the cabin. The vast majority of the channel of the drip rail is already filled with some sort of hardened substance (paint and body filler?). I'm thinking about going ahead and forcing more filler (epoxy?) into the open area of the drip rail, to try to seal-off the area from further incursion by water. Kind of like "shaving" the roofline without actually shaving it.
I should probably pull the headliner, to see what I can see from the inside. Ideally, if I'm going to force filler into a crack, it would be best if I could force it from both sides. In the meantime, I'll have to hold off on re-installing the rear seats.
I drove the 88 to pick up wifey from the subway in the dark tonight. Ran with the heat full-on for the first time in about a year. No stumbling/stuttering on the way out there. But got just a bit of it on the return trip when I pulled away from a light. Ran it pretty brisk in first/second, and then shifted directly to fourth when I hit about 40 mph. That trick is usually fine so far as engine RPM, but it is famous for triggering the stutter when I put a light/moderate load on the engine. Should be plenty of RPM's that wouldn't "bog." There's still a gremlin in there. The search continues.
More good news - passed full state inspection yesterday, so good for another year as a DD if I were so-inclined.
Also, took it out today on the highway and FFX CO parkway interchange (where she was famous for just cutting off in the middle of the best sweeping turn). No stutters for the whole ride! Just smooth, albeit modest, predictable power. Would it bee too much jinx to say she ran like a proper sports car today? I'll have to make that run again with the heater on (drawing vacuum) and see if she acts any different.
Next project I think will be the headliner/leak/seatbelt issue. As I've mentioned, there some kinda hella-leak on the passenger side from the drip-rail area, or maybe the rear hatch seal. I plan to just remove the headliner (its perished), and hopefully have a good look at the area where the water may be coming in. While I'm at it, I'll try to sort whatever it is that is making the passenger upper seat-belt retractor freeze-up when the belt is fully extended. Would be nice to get a three-fer on a project. If that goes well, I might ask Santa to bring me some rear hatch struts for the merry ol' Christmas.
Lots of rust in the area of the window drip rails. More than I'm likely going to ever make the investment to fix "correctly." So, in the meantime trying to just plug the holes (in the rust) so the water won't come in quite so bad.
Temps got above 50 this afternoon, so took her for a spin ahead of the weather.
I'm not sure I'm ready to say that the new battery and alternator are the reason, but she sure ran good today. Had enough breathing room in a few spots to get the WOT action going. Some good hard downshifts and throttle-on in some corners.
Nary a hiccup.
Won't say she's "put to bed" for the winter for sure yet. But, at least she's napping happily after a good romp.
It took quite a bit of twisting and yanking and swearing to get that old distributor out.
$141 at Autozone later, the new one went in a whole lot easier than the old one came out.
Includes cap and ICM... AND the impetuts for getting into the distributor in the first place - a brand-spankin'-new O-ring - which did make a big difference in the oil puddles.
06-02-2014, 12:34 PM
One day I will take it to mid-ohio track and have some fun. 
