Ok, after having this car sit for like 5 years, I have finally gotten around to doing somthing with it. I got her from a friend of mine, who is currently walking me through my first engine build. It was originally an 88 V6 sport coupe, hard top, power nothing, 5spd. The car was given a fun ride from my buddy Doward who decided to turbo the V6. Long story short, he had his fun in the car until he ran too much boost and out came the v6, for a rebuild that never went back in. He ended up selling the car to me and I promptly found an L98 TPI 5.7 in the boneyard from a donor T/A. I could never make up my mind as to what i wanted to do with the car, so it ended up sitting, and i found interest in other things. Well now the time has come when I have no choice but to finish it, and the build plan so far goes as follows:

* L98 block
* Hedman shorty headers and y-pipe
* ZZ4 pistons
* ZZ4 crank
* LT4 hotcam
* 1.6 Roller Rockers
* L98 Iron heads to be port and polished with ARP screw in rocker arm studs and LS6 valve springs (for now)
* carbed (not sure which yet)
* 700R4 slushbox (until i find a manual that can handle the motor)
* stock 10 bolt with 3.42 rear gears and zexel torsen posi

Thats just a basic rundown of what i have so far, and intend to build. Of course this is all subject to change if i find better stuff. Funny thing is the idea was for basically a bone stock carbed 350 budget build, but I ended up finding good enough deals on most everything there and couldnt resist.
So far the Crank, pistons, and oil pump have been installed. Will have pics soon.

 

That y-pipe is going to be restrictive above like 4000 rpm.

 

really? well i wasnt sure if we were even gonna use it. Car already has a 3" mandrel bent Edlebrock exhaust with dual 2 1/2" outs, but i was thinking of running true duals anyway and getting rid of the y-pipe altogether. Thanks though man, appreciate the heads up.

 

ok, here are some pics how she has been sitting for a few years and the engine the day i brought it home before tearing it down.

 

ended up selling that TPI setup, since i decided i wanted no computers in this thing.

 

ok, lemme try again, same pictures.

 

here are some pics of the powdercoating i finished last night and the double roller timing chain i did today. The powder color is called "black chrome" looks more like a gunmetal to me though, but i like it.

 

Looks good so far.

 

some pictures of the pistons installed

 

82 factory fiberglass hood i picked up locally for 10 bucks. Its kinda hard to see, but there is a good decent crack along the passenger side "scoop", I'm new to fiberglass work, its messy but not all that hard. depending on how it turns out i may put the hood on the car. The cabinet holds the minty Iroc taillights i found, and my headers that need to be sandblasted down and powdercoated yet. The wheel is not an image of my own, but what basically plan on doing to my wheels. This guy painted his, i am going to completely strip the wheels then polish them and coat black with ultra durable wet black powdercoat, and clearcoat the polished surfaces.

 

ok, probably last thing i am gonna do tonight, but i just finished powdercoating the valve covers. hot and fresh right out of the oven!

 

ok......wow, went to the junkyard today just to see if there was anything i might be able to use, I make it a habit to go every once in awhile, never know what your gonna find. So anyways i stumble across this red firebird formula, looked to be in decent shape, a lil picked through. I got abit stumbled that it had rear disk brakes, so i did a little research and found out this was a factory WS6 Formula 350. Long story short i just got a borg warner 9 bolt with upgraded swaybar and full rear disk brakes, front sway bar (way beefier than stock), and aluminum driveshaft for 150 bucks. I'm going back tomorrow for the steering box and maybe some other stuff! Hope to have pics soon as I get some of this stuff cleaned up.

 

Wow, great job so far. This is basically what I want to do to my car. I think it will look great when it is done. Keep up the good work.

 

went back to the boneyard and grabbed the rest of the ws6 package, the steering box (12.7:1 ratio) and front brakes with steering knuckle. I now have the complete ws6 package.......for around 250 bucks.

 

Gah, nothing done in the past few days, i been sick as a dog. I just picked up the walnut shell media today to blast down the heads. I've got the A.R.P. rocker arm studs, among other parts on the way from summit, and hopefully thats the last order i need to place with them. Also Doward picked up an old Q-jet that needs some work, but we are gonna soak it in cleaner for awhile while we do the heads, so when done I can just start rebuilding it.

 

Wow......its been over two years since I have done much yet again. Long story short, I got into motorcycles and the poor 'maro took another dusty backshelf.

WELL NO MORE!! My brother and my dad are coming up this weekend to pick her up.

Money, and time have been unreasonably scarce which is why i stopped my build in the first place. This is my first build, and I'm definetly not mechanically inclined enough to do it on my own, I have basically had Doward coaching me throughout the entire process, but he has had far less availability than I, so she ended up sitting again.

Well my brother is no stranger to building project cars, and owes me a bit of money so he offered to finish the car for me, probably have it back to me running in a few weeks.

Dad used to do bodywork as well, so he is gonna fix some blemishes, and paint her up for me.

At this point I almost dont deserve the car as much as I have neglected this build, but I feel like a kid at christmas eve, now that its finally gonna be done.

Will have pics and video soon!!

 

Oh, I forgot. I'm thinking of doing a two tone based off of Jeckyll and Hyde's design (the BEAUTIFUL orange and black car on the 88 camaro pics page). However, I want to to do a bright silver instead of orange, so it would be silver and black.

Its either that, or all gloss black (I LOVE BLACK CARS) with possibly a set of heritige stipes ghosted on in flat black.

Gimme some feedback on which you guys think would look better.