Hey Everybody,

its deff been a long time since ive really been on or have given any updates on the car. so here i go.

at the beginning of the summer, i worked on the camaro hardcore getting it ready so i could drive it for the summer, it needed the trans swapped out, which wasnt very fun to do, but after getting down and dirty for a weekend, got it swapped out, and i finally got to drive my camaro for the first time (without being hooked up to a tow strap).. and let me tell you, it was amazing, even tho it had a crappy q-jet that hardly ran on it.

so that was the first thing that needed to go, i pulled that crappy intake and carb off there, and put on a summit aluminum intake and holley 650 carb on it. it ran 100 times better, and so much better throttle response.. oh and sounded amazing, i have some shorty heddman hedders on it, with a y pipe and flowmaster 40 series.. it had a good rumble...

anyways, i drove the car to my job at the time, which was a local tire shop, so that they could check it out for me because the brakes werent keeping pressure, but i couldnt find a leak.. well they pissed me off cuz they wanted to replace pretty much all my brake parts cuz they couldnt figure it out.. was gonna cost me a ton, so i said screw it.. ill fix it later.

on my way home, the car was driving and running fine, but all the sudden started shaking like crazy and shut off, i drifted it into a parking lot, tried restarting it, but stupid me.. got to anxious to drive the car, i seized up the engine, i bought a mechanical oil pressure guage and tested the pressure at idle, and it was good, i unhooked the guage and drove it, when sitting in my driveway it didnt leak, but while driving it leaks somehow.. yeah... i didnt know.. and now that puppy is toast..

moral of the story i guess is.. don't drive your car without an oil pressure guage.. could be bad news..

anyways.. in the mean time, i got a new.. way better paying job, and now can start back on the camaro.. and doin it right.. on a budget.

my buddy has this 88 suburban that he did a lot of work to the engine, about a year ago, bigger tbi cam, beefed up some of the internals, had the block bored .030 over, flat top pistons, whatever else is super cool.. or whatever (not gonna lie.. don't know a ton about building an engine) anyways.. its an L05 tbi setup, it ran really good inside his truck.. never seen a suburban get up and go like his.. but anyways..

on of his heads has an issue with a rocker stud being crooked in there, because the machine shop didnt put it in right, now that head is pretty much garbage, i had another set of L05 heads that were just sitting around, so i had them taken in and rebuilt, they are ready to be bolted on, i know a lot of people are gonna say crap that these heads are junk or whatever, but its what i have for right now, and thats what im going to use, so lets not make too much of a deal out of them.

the cam he has in this engine is setup for a tbi truck application, i was hoping to get something relatively aggressive for a street / strip application, was wondering what anyones thoughts would be for this? what cam lifter combo should i get? do i have to get different springs? or something else for a larger cam? i don't really know a ton in this department.

the headers i have are kinda nasty looking being painted and all, they are being sent in here pretty soon to be jet hot coated.

the ignition is an accel style hei distributor, its pretty nice.. that shouldnt need to be upgraded, the intake and carb are new, the carb is a 650, so i was hoping to get a cam that would work good with this carb...

the old engine is coming out of the camaro here very soon, and the new one will be going right back in, i figured i would see if anyone had any good ideas, if i should do anything before i put the new engine in, there are certain things ive kinda learned along the way, like put the trans dipstick tube in before the engine, etc..

I'm deff gonna keep you guys updated with the progress on this, im hoping to drive this in the spring time.. gimme some input

 

lol... 40 views and no responses.. must not be important

 

Ok Time for an update.

So we've been working on the car.

We got the engine out of the suburban, looks clean and well maintained, I wouldn't have expected anything less of my buddy, he takes really good care of his stuff, runs full synthetic in it and such.

We got the engine pretty well torn down, and after we get it degreased and painted, we will be putting it back together.

We got a set of L05 heads that were sent to the machine shop that were rebuilt and cleaned up, we are reusing the rocker arms from the old heads, they are a set of crane gold series. we are replacing the timing chain with a gear drive, I know a lot of people don't like gear drives, we already purchased it and made up our minds on it, so please don't get on my case because of it.

I bought a set of hedman 68470 headers from jet-hot that we are gonna be bolting on, I had an old set of these headers, they covered up the hole for my wire looms on the block, I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions on a different set of wire looms I could buy that would look good? I have center bolt valve covers, so whatever works / looks the best.

the rest that has to be done to the engine is little things like, swap the fuel pump from my old engine, swap oil pan, intake, carb, etc... etc..

While the engine is out, I'm going to paint my engine bay semi-gloss black, and try to clean up my wiring a little.

Dual fan radiator setup is coming, and picking up my cowl hood saturday.. So its coming along pretty quickly..

Here are a few pics from the pull, sorry they are so dark, it was in the garage at night time.. :\

 

a couple more pics.

 

I really don't know if anyone is even reading this, but here is another update.

We thought we caught a snag with our flexplate, because the engine we are putting in has 168 teeth, we knew the stock starter wouldnt work, so we were gonna switch flex plates with the old setup, and thought there would be a bunch of hassle with getting stuff balanced and such, turns out we can just buy a mini starter and not worry about clearance issues.

I got my B&M Megashifter installed, looks pretty good in there, one problem tho, I busted the bolt off the shifter rod when trying to get the arm linkage off the transmission, looks like I got something else to fix now.. I got a cool looking shifter, too bad I cant shift gears..

anyways, I also picked up a lift off cowl hood over the weekend to put on the car, because I had clearance issues with my air cleaner.. looks pretty neat.

my buddy is putting the engine back together, it should be coming together nicely, I bought some new headers, and a set of locking header bolts, the headers are the Hedman Hedders 68476 ceramic coated shorty headers, they look really nice, they are HTC coated.. so I hope they stay nice looking.

Still need to get the other engine out of my camaro, Its all unbolted and ready to come out.. but we are dreading having to pull the engine with the torque converter still attached (because i siezed it up, can't rotate the engine).. after that comes out.. I can start cleaning up my engine bay, and getting everything ready to drop in the new engine..

It's getting really exciting, I'll get new pics up soon.

 

A 153-tooth flexplate would be $35-$50. A lot cheaper than a mini starter.

 

I was asking around, correct me if im wrong, but my buddy was telling me that the engine that came out of his truck is internally balanced at the front, and externally balanced at the rear.. he said that's why we couldnt just swap the flexplate.. and why we would have to get it balanced..

could he be wrong about this?

 

He's wrong. There is a weight on the one-piece rear main seal flexplates, but the flexplate doesn't have to be modified to properly balance the engine. Any '86-later stock replacement 153-tooth flexplate will bolt right on.

Unless some fool allowed the flexplate to be modified to achieve balance on that engine sometime in the past.

 

hmmm.. ahh.. oh well.. i guess its too late now anyways.. good to know tho.. ill make him reimburse me for making me buy a starter.

good to know tho..

I'm pretty sure the flexplate is original and unmodified.

 

ok, time for another update,

Last night I went over and worked on the camaro, i took off my intake and valve covers, and unbolted my engine from the mounts, the torque converter didnt want to let go of the transmission, plus the clamshell mounts were getting in the way, so i unbolted them.. the engine came right out.. now that its out, I can get the engine bay cleaned up, and painted.

My buddy is still working on the engine, hes taking his time, but its all good, because I want it to look nice, and run good.. soo we'll see, all the parts showed up last night that we needed to get it all put back together.

The headers are sexy.. not gonna lie.. they look soo good.

anyways.. we arent doing a rebuild on the engine, more of a refresh, it wasn't very long ago that he did the rebuild on it. hes got it all apart.. and is starting to reassemble it.. its coming along, and I'm hoping by the weekend to have it all ready to drop the new engine in, if everything goes the way we want it to..

I'll snap some pics tonight when I go over and work on it.

 

So, which headers did you get, the Jet Hot coated or Hedman coated?

Did you ever decide on a cam? LO5 heads can't do much with any lift over about .450" or RPMs above 5000.

 

I went with the hedman coated headers, Jet-hot customer service was giving me too much trouble.

I don't have the specs on the cam, I know its pretty much at the limit tho.

 

Cool. Looks good, cant wait to see some more pictures of it all painted and everything. How long do you think it will be before you are all done with it? Looks like fun!

 

The engine is almost done, that won't be too long, it will probably be quite some time before the whole car is the way I want it.

The lift off cowl is only temporary, It was cheap and in good condition, thats why I get this one.

I'm going to keep the car non gfx, have a 4" cowl hood.

4th Gen leather seats, black and blue interior.

I want to do a two tone paint job, there is someone on this board who has this car im gonna post below, I'm sorry I stole this pic of your car whoevers it is.. the paint job is just too cool, and I'm sorry that I'm stealing your idea for paint also..

Instead of the orange, I'm going to paint it a sort of bermuda blue, that they do on the new chevy suburbans, my friend mixed up a mixture of the bermuda blue, but instead of blue metal flake, he put in teal, and it looks pretty awesome.. I hope it looks good.

Running single 3" exhaust back to a muffler with dual tips.

I wanna get some torque thrust II rims. get myself some grid tail lights, and tint the amber area red, and hookup my Sequential Turn Signal kit when it gets here.

some other little cosmetic things.

upgrade my stereo.. then I think I'll be happy.