I picked up this 88 RS vert with an LT-1 swap back in March (2011) for $1800 and drove it over 100 miles back home.





Since then I haven't had much time to work on it steady until now.

I ditched the 2.73 drum rear in favor of a 3.23 4th gen disc rear. Then the front brakes, spindles, etc.. were swapped out with 1LE gear. I found a really good deal on a set of OEM Y2K vette wheels with brand new tires that I just couldn't turn down. ALL the steering linkage, ball joints, etc. were replaced with new pieces. The tiny RS sway bars were swapped out with the 36mm/24mm combo with new Energy Suspension bushings and end links. A wonder bar was added. I had an extra set of WS6 springs left over from my 91 bird so I cut a full coil off of each one and put them under the car.

The car came with a replacement fender, nose, and chin spoiler. They're on now but need to be adjusted and lined up properly. I picked up another hood at the junk yard because the original was drilled out for hood pins. For some reason it has the 91-92 side skirts on it. I'm still trying to find the 85-90 pieces before I paint it. (If anybody wants to trade, I'm game.)


After getting the car home and starting to really work on it I started to find out more about it. The LT-1 is not from an F-body. From what I've gathered it's from a Caprice or Impala SS since it has iron heads. It is a 5.7 though, now with 3" exhaust.

As of today, this is how it sits:

 

Looking good, and for $1800 it was a steal

 

Subscribing to follow your body work. I've got a small start on mine...

 

This evening I stripped the interior. I should mention that the interior was 100% complete with ALL vert specific pieces. It's so complete that it even still has the stock cigarette lighter.

This is how it looked the day I got it:





With the seats pulled. At one time there was a rat under the driver side back seat.



From under the car I saw a couple of spots in the floor that looked a little questionable so when I pulled the carpet I hit what I thought was surface rust with the wire wheel. There ended up being a few small holes in the driver side rear floor but nothing terrible...especially for a nearly 24 year old convertible that wasn't pampered.

Passenger:



Driver:

 

Since the rust holes were so small I ended up wire wheeling the rust off and filling the holes in with my MIG welder.

Before:



Holes filled:



Tomorrow I'll grind down the welds and seal the bare metal.

 

looks great

 

Hey FYRCHKN,
sweet buy for $1800. Anyway I was hoping you still had the energy suspension part number on the 36mm sway bar frame bushings. I've been to napa,autozone,jegs and a couple other places with no luck. Any help would be appreciated

 

I threw the packages away months ago. I got them on ebay. I believe Jegs and Summit both have them though. I remember seeing them there.

 

Just go to their web site, that is where I got mine, they have them size specific

After you wire wheeled the rust did you treat it? if you did'nt it will come back on you. You should spary it with Ospho or Por 15, hate to see it creep back in on ya, keep posting pics I love to watch a car being built. You can check mine out in the restoration thread, good luck

 

Yeah, I used some rust killer that we use at work.

 

thanks droptop. i went to the energy suspension website and the only thing i could find was 36.5mm bushings part#9.5175 is this correct? Ive never actually measured the sway bar.

 

This where I got mine http://www.energysuspensionparts.com...et+Camaro+1991

 

Coming along nice...nothing like a lil TLC! The rims look good too.

 

Thanks! I didn't get much done today due to unexpected visits from family. But, I did manage to get the driver fender lined up properly. Now I just have to adjust the driver door. I didn't get it positioned far enough forward after I replaced the hinges.

 

My 91 t-top bird had the wedges in the door jambs that are supposed to keep the door from rattling. I grabbed all four pieces off of another 91 t-top car in the junk yard a while back to put on the vert because I never noticed them or even looked for them on this car. I had read somewhere that they didn't start putting them on until around 90 or so. I could be wrong. Well, I was going to put them on to see how much it would tighten up the door rattles and I came across something very odd.

The wedges are screwed into the ends of the doors.

BUT, the driver side door opening of the car looks like it never even had the "receiving" piece installed.




The passenger side looks like it was installed before but has been removed.





Could this be a screw up by ASC? Or is it more likely that a previous owner never finished what they started?

 

i was just lookin at the threadyou posted on ATGO. well ill follow this one since it seems to be more updated.

 

nice save. looks like you got a pretty solid starting point. and having seen your work before i know this is gonna turn out killer. you going to keep it original looking or got something special planned?

 

can you get better pics of the wedges? i haven't heard or noticed them before, were they only on t-top/verts and not coupes?

by the way nice job and what a steal, 1800 for a vert.....so jealous. i want a vert so bad.

 

This will be the in depth build thread. The one on ATGO is just going to touch on bigger steps. I don't really feel like typing it all out twice.


Thanks! It's a really solid car even though it has some wiring issues from the swap.

This car won't be like any other when I'm finished with it. Especially the color. I'm going to try to keep that secret for the final unveiling.


I'll try to get some pics of the wedges this evening. As far as I know they were only on t-tops and verts.

My wife actually found the car for me. She scours the cars for sale section on Craigslist every day.

 

hard top vert perhaps?

 

It's a real ASC vert. It still has the sticker on the bottom of the driver door. All of them were made out of T-top cars.

 

actually i was implying that "wont be like any other" was something crazy like going from a rag top to a hard top convertible. now that would be something

 

The piece circled is one half of it. The pieces on the car are metal. The peices on the car are a hard plastic.

 

Ohhhh.... That idea has been churning around in my head for a few years. I think I have a design figured out that will work and look good but I haven't decided if I really want to take the time to actually do it. My version would be full power if I ever do do it. It might be something to do later on in the future though. But, for right now my main focus is just getting the car done the way it is.

 

i cant wait to see what you have in store.

 

keep up the good work!!

 

Today was spent trying to clean up the wiring of the LT1 swap by the previous owner. I thought it was going to be fairly straight forward...boy was I wrong. There were numerous unused wires that were just wrapped up in tape throughout the harness. The wires that weren't being use were all removed and I ended up with quite a pile of left overs. The "twist & tape" splices that I found all over the harness were soldered and wrapped with heat shrink. I re-routed several of the wires to try to give it a cleaner look. It's all sitting back in place and bundled for now.

This is what it looked like before I started:





I couldn't stand that giant wad of wires going over the top of the intake.

This is how it looks at the moment. I'm going to try to find some split loom tomorrow to put the wires in since everything was closed today.



It's tucks nicely back behind the intake even though it doesn't look like it in the pic.

 

i love the look of the lt1 intake. thats why im gonna fab one onto my gen1 383.

 

Today I got the harness all tidied up and tucked away to where it's not really visible.

Now I can't get the car to start. It turns over and I have power to the coil and injectors. I'm ready to pull my hair out after jacking with all these wires and now it not starting.

Help?

 

it start and ran before right?

 

those wedges came in the convertible weatherstrip kit I got from A1, only I think they are attached to the door seal. I will try and take a pic when I get home.

 

are you telling me you got the car with an LT1 already installed for $1800?!! Was it stolen?!! lol! great buy and looks like a solid shell.

 

Yeah, I drove it over 100 miles back home the day I bought it. It should run much better when I finish rebuilding the harness. The right O2 wasn't hooked up and was missing two wires. There were several things that weren't wired right and not plugged in. I'm in the process of fixing and cleaning up the mess.



Yeah. It was a Bubba + Junior X (?)Cases of beer engine swap. Wires were ripped out, twisted together, wire nutted, and wrapped with duct tape.

 

im sure once you finish with the harness itll run 10 times better.

 

Those things are nearly impossible to find in good condition. My 91 has a softer rubber design while my donor 87 has a hard plastic. And all the ones ive found in junkyards (the ones that even had them originally) are metal. The rubber ones on my car are by far the best, doors close so nicely with them!

I even uninstalled my passenger side one while trying to realign my A and B pillar and Door just so I wouldn't accidentally gouge the rubber

 

I just about have the re-wiring of the LT-1 finished. I got the car started today and it's running the best that it has since I bought it. It's amazing the difference plugging in the O2 sensors makes. The wiring was a mess. There were random wires twisted and taped together that went to nothing, no relay for the fuel pump, the cooling fan wasn't hooked up, alternator hooked to the A/C connection on the PCM....you name it, it was screwed up. I really don't know how they even got the car to start and run. The passenger O2 sensor was actually cut off of the harness and taped back to it on the driver side O2 pigtail.

I posted all the info and problems that I encountered with the wiring harness on my local thirdgen site. Luckily we have THE thirdgen electrical guru himself who helped me figure out all of it. Wiring is not my strong point at all. All of my wiring questions that were answered and figured out are located in the thread here: http://www.austinthirdgen.org/forum/...showtopic=5160

I have the link to this thread posted in that thread also. I thought I'd just combine the two so that ALL of the documentation of this build is together.

 

lou is the 3rd gen wiring guru. ive used the diagrams on austin third gen MANY times to help explain wiring issues to people on here.

 

The engine wiring is complete, done, and working properly. I ended up tearing it down completely and building a new harness the right way.

Now I just have to figure out why the oil and volt gauges decided to die 30 seconds after I started it. I know the driver for my tach is dead and I'm thinking that my whole cluster is junk.

On to interior wiring now......

 

with the way the lt1 swap was done, it wouldnt surprise me if the gauges just gave up the ghost.

 

I can't seem to figure out any rhyme or reason to what got the wedges and what didn't. My '83 had them, and i'm sure that the previous owner didn't add them, my '87 Formula didn't have them, and no signs of them, and my '87 TA has one side but doesn't have the matching mating piece on the other and no signs of any holes to mount them (and there are no signs that the doors have been replaced.

I've never seen them stock on a camaro, all the camaro doors that I have seen aren't drilled for them.

 

I have a full set of them that I got from a bird in the junk yard. I test fitted them Sunday but they're not thick enough to make contact with each other when the door is closed. On my previous car I ended up making some hard plastic spacers to go behind them so that the doors would close tighter. I'm going to have to do that with these too.


Update:

I'm waiting on delivery of an engine hoist at work so that I can pull the motor to prep and paint the engine bay. I've been tossing around 3 different colors and themes for the car. One has been chosen. I was looking for a certain uncommon color combo Corvette a couple of years ago and couldn't find one for sale so I decided to build my Camaro as close to it as I can. Yes, there will be a certain "vette" theme with the car that will be noticed immediately by real car guys but not to the average person. It won't be a blatant rip off. IMO it's the sexiest color combo ever offered on any car.

 

Are you planning on any fabrication on this car, or are you going to keep it stockish looking on the outside? $1800 for that car was a steal, nice buy. Can't wait to see it finished.

 

I'm planning on several appearance mods with this car. Some are common, some have been done a couple of times, and I have a few up my sleeve that are going to be completely one off. I've also been tossing around ideas on how to do a few things that have been talked about extensively but never actually brought to reality. It's going to be a very interesting car. I'm going to try to raise the bar a bit with this one. It probably wont come together as fast as my 91 bird did but it's going to be a MUCH nicer car, and that one was extremely nice when I sold it.

 

I remember you posting about this car when you just got it a while back. Looks good and I still think you got a great deal on a convertible... especially with an LT1! Best of luck and keep us posted.

 

Very nice, can't wait to see the build

 

Not much of an update, but the trunk pull down motor is now installed and working!

I'm extremely **** about ALL of the electrical things working on my cars. Now let's see why the gauges died on me. FUN FUN!

 

my hatch motor quit working years ago. i gotta get it fixed one of these days. but atleast i know for sure that the motor just burnt out.

 

Update with pics.

Engine clean up and leak fix phase.

What I started with:




It was NASTY





The power steering pump grenaded and blew fluid all over the motor. I have a new one to replace it. I'm going to have to get a new compressor too since it got beat to hell when the motor was originally installed and the housing is cracked.

 

FYI, the intake is a major PITA to try to clean. It was caked with all kinds of grime. I used acid, simple green, brake cleaner, degreaser, acetone, and several brass brushes.

Before:






After:





You can see one of the EGR block off plates that I fabbed. I fabbed the other one too, it's just not installed yet.

 

The accessory bracket is even harder to clean, and it was nastier.

Before:



After:




The motor has been scrubbed clean and is ready to be painted:





The Headman headers I picked up cheap. The AIR tubes have been cut off and welded in and the O2 bung has been plugged. They need to be hit with the grinder, cleaned up, and painted. The O2 sensors will be in the Y-pipe.