FireInMe17

Hey guys, I haven't been on much in the past few years, but I'm back! Pretty much life happened. The Camaro got parked and sat for a few years and I got myself caught up in some Silverados and a few K5 Blazers. But sooner or later something had to give, and the Camaro would have its day yet again.

So I bought my Camaro as my first car in November 2008. I was barely 16 and I only had my permit, but I started working the spring of that year and I saved up enough money that I thought I would buy my first car. I always knew that it had to be a Chevy, but how was I supposed to buy a Camaro?

I found my car and was turned away because it was a V6 and it sat for 5 years and needed paint. I started looking all over to try and find a good car with a V8, but after looking at a few and how rough they were for the money that I had, I decided that the first one I found was going to have to come home with me, and it did.

I fixed it up a and got it back on the road and drove it everywhere for about three years. Took it to Senior week and out of state and everywhere in between. And the point came that I was tired of the V6 in the car and knew it had to go.

So I started looking and started gathering up TPI parts to make the car an IROC clone. I was just about ready to start my swap and I thought I had parts enough to get it started so I started to tear the V6 out and had all my V8 TPI stuff ready to be put together. This was September 2011. Three days after I got the V6 out and sold, I was flooded. I just barely got the car out in time before I lost it, but in the flood I lost my parts for the car.

Back to square one.

Some more time went by and I started to gather up parts again. I came across a guy selling a 350 roller block complete for $100 and I went and got that. I had it completely rebuilt.

-New 906 Vortec heads
-New SDPC Vortec TPI intake
-New Comp 918 springs locks and retainers to match built for .625 lift
-New GMPP LT4 Hotcam
-New Proform 1.5 roller rockers
-New bearings
-New pistons
-New rings
- .030 cylinder bore to a 355

Once I got the engine built, I still needed a lot of parts so more time went by.

Pretty much the next 3 years after I got flooded was spent gathering all the parts that I lost and doing research. Until a good friend of mine finally had his dads 66 Chevy II sent away for paint and he told me to bring it over.

So we towed the car over to his house on December 9th and it all happened from there. I knew I still needed parts, but with no garage to work on it like I wanted to and needed to, I took the opportunity to get something moving on the car again finally.

My original goal was to redo the suspension and steering and get it set up to be a V8 car, but that kind of got blown out of the water.

We ended up doing everything....and its awesome.

Since the car has been in his garage, we've totally redone the front and rear suspension all brand new, all new steering and everything, chassis savered everything under the car, painted and cleared the engine bay, redone the factory undercoating. sand blasted and painted every nut and bolt that's come off the car or anything metal that we took off that we could blast, got the 355 in the car, got the 700R4 in the car, rebuilt the rear end, rewired it and have it all done except for the memcal that I'm still waiting to get from John Wayne at Custom Chips.

This has all happened in a months time, and the car has been sitting since September 2011. I almost feel ashamed that I let it sit that long, but in the end it has been worth every day of waiting, because now I know that everything has been done and everything is done right, and the car won't need any attention for a long time to come. The car is SOLID! And I love it!

Here are some pictures of the built to show you guys just how far it has come since we started.

FireInMe17

FireInMe17

FireInMe17

FireInMe17

FireInMe17

KCG

iTrader: (1)

I'm changing a black car to red. It looks like you used the exterior red under hood?
Is that the way GM did it or did you just want it that way?

FireInMe17

The engine bay was red from the factory but it had undercoat overspray everywhere in there, wasn't nice and neat like I put it back together.

KCG

iTrader: (1)

It looks good. I was just wondering if the same exterior red was used in the engine compartment too

FireInMe17

Back to life video!

Dartht33bagger

Nice! Did you retune the computer yourself or get someone else to do it? I'm looking to do something like this soon.

FireInMe17

I got Scott Hansen to make me a custom memcal. He can reburn you a factory style memcal for $200 or if you get the Moates G1 adapter from moates.net he can burn you a G1 chip for $50. Which is obviously the cheaper way to go, the adapter is like $42 after shipping. And when you use the G1, you can also get a cable to do data logging with it where with a factory style memcal you can't. From there you can send him the data and he can fine tune your car to efi perfection.

Here's his website www.scotthansen.net/index

He got me my custom memcal in two days and it's been working pretty dang good, highly recommend to go through him and get the G1 so you can do data logging.

Destro Camaro

Good work!

Viking-bird

Did you change the transmission? I'm looking to do the same swap with an L98, but I'm not sure about motor and tranny mounts. Haven't bought the donor car yet

FireInMe17

I bought another 700 for it and had it fully built. The trans mount is the same, but you need to change the engine mounts over to the other mounting holes on the cross member, easy to do.