subroc

iTrader: (2)

Thats a sharp looking commuter! Nice job bringing it back so quickly. Are you planning on putting an iroc z badge back on the door. My opinion is these doors are so damn big that they almost need that decal to break them up a bit....and a gold decal on a black car would just look killer IMHO.

Also how is that intake on there? Ive often contemplated finding one instead of a stealth ram.

1MeanZ

iTrader: (9)

Thanks, it's a good car that just needs lots of small things, but all these cars do at this age unless they've been kept in a bubble. I need my dad to take a look at the paint. Right now the plan is to repaint the nose and chin spoiler, buff the rest of the car out and reinstall the factory graphics. I too am a big fan of the factory graphics, and black and gold are one of the best combos IMO.

This is my 3rd super ram, and my first one on a 350, my other two are on 383s. I like them for a few reasons. They clear a firebird hood (which is why I have one on my GTA) they are period correct for these cars but almost no one knows what they are. When I pop the hood on my GTA or my '86 IROC and people see the pizza box they don't know what to think. They make great midrange power. I've road raced my '86 IROC some and it has fantastic torque for coming off corners, it's just an easy engine to live with because there's almost never a time when it's not ready to lay the smack down. My GTA is the same way, also a 383 and also fantastic torque.

On this 350, it still builds good torque for a street engine and is fun to drive, but it certainly likes to rev much more than a long runner setup. Once I get the tune dialed, I think this engine will be able to make power easily to 6k.

I just think the super ram is a great midrange street intake with good hood clearance and period correctness.

As for another update on the car, I put a wideband O2 sensor on it and found I was a bit too lean in PE at lower rpms, so I fattened it up and put 31* of timing in at WOT. I ran an errand today and drove the car, it seemed to like it until I broke down on the way home. A good Samaritan flat towed me home. I haven't had time to trouble shoot it but I did take the distributor cap off and found the rotor loose and floppy on the distributor shaft and I suspect the module is bad, and possibly the pickup in the distributor. I suspect that because when I put the trans in I thought the engine was supporting itself on the mounts, and later found out that the back of the module was resting on the firewall. The car will start and idle, but has no power and under load it backfires and pops. It backfired so hard on the way home it blew my flowmaster muffler up like a balloon and ruined it. I have a nearly new distributor here that I'm going to drop in with a new cap and rotor. I also have new plug wires to install at the same time. The car progressively got worse as I drove it so I don't think it's something major like the cam jumping time, I think it lost control of ignition timing and hopefully a new dizzy will fix that.

bjpotter

As long as your in there, replace the ignition coil on the distributor if you haven't already. They don't fail all that often but an old one can get weak before it fails making tuning a nightmare.

1MeanZ

iTrader: (9)

Thanks for the suggestion.

Yes the plan is to put a whole new dizzy in it. It already has a reasonably new Accel coil so I'm going to let that ride for now.

1MeanZ

iTrader: (9)

Time for more updates!

So I was correct about the distributor being the cause of the break down a few weeks ago. The engine has a high pressure oil pump, which in my experience tends to be overly harsh on distributor gears. In this case I'm nearly certain the distributor jumped time with the cam and that's why it wouldn't run all of a sudden. Because it happened when I was in traffic, I was pretty rough on the car trying to get it out of the way. The result was a blown header gasket that I think may have cracked a header primary tube because after 2 gaskets, I still have a slight leak noise at the passenger side header. The flowmaster muffler the car had was blown up like a pillow as well, and now, all the guts are out of the cat, so the car is effectively catless at this point. I re-made the back of the intermediate pipe, installed a single in dual out Summit muffler that is a copy of a single chamber flowmaster (super 44?) and resinstalled the 2otl tail pipes I made for it a while back. It's pretty loud, but it sounds awesome now so I'm going to leave it as is for now.

Now the car runs better than ever, I've also continued to refine the tune and I'm pretty happy with where its at right now. It's a strong runner even with the 2.77 rear gear. You can see the pix of the dizzy and muffler below.

1MeanZ

iTrader: (9)

Yesterday Dad came up and helped me rub the car out and actually shine it up again. It turned out pretty darn good considering what we had to start with. I haven't taken a toothbrush to get all the wax and buffing compound out of the cracks yet, but I had to roll it outside to look for places we missed and just took a few shots of it.

Vinscully50

The exterior looks great man.

chazman

iTrader: (4)

Looking good, Jeremy!

1MeanZ

iTrader: (9)

...so yesterday while running an errand at dusk with the head lights on I noticed my gauges were stuck reading way off and the right turn signal indicator was constantly on. When I turned the headlights off gauges went back to normal. So worried I had a dead short and not wanting to cause more damage I drove home in the dark with no headlights. Through some searching on here and my own detective work I discovered a break in the printed circuit on the back of the dash cluster. When this happens and I turn the head lights on, without the normal circuit available, the power must go to ground through other means making crazy things happen. At any rate, it's fixed now, or at least seems to be...

phantomz28

Nice work on all the bugs in that car. Driving a black car home in the dark must have been fun. Did you use the foggs they are on a separate circuit. She has a brake light interrupt to so she could run stealth mode.

1MeanZ

iTrader: (9)

The PIAAs aren't currently hooked up because one of the first things I did was remove EVERYTHING electrical related that wasn't originally part of the car. I didn't want to be troubleshooting around various electrical add-ons, so at this point the car has been returned back as close to stock as possible while still keeping the battery relocated.

1MeanZ

iTrader: (9)

Well this past Sunday the car broke down on me again LOL. I'm still troubleshooting a possible false spark knock issue, so I was out putting gas in the car and went a couple miles watching the lap top datalogging. I pulled over down a dirt lane and burned a new chip. It started to rain as I put the new chip in the ECM. Then when I went to restart the car, nothing. I had power, but the starter wouldn't do anything. So I got out in the rain and tried to jump the starter terminals with a screw driver and I just got a few light yellow sparks. I could jump to the main post and get the starter motor to run, but I couldn't get the solenoid to engage. So in the rain I pushed it back out into the desolate country road I was on and pushed it as fast as I could. Amazingly it started when I jumped in and popped the clutch so I drove it home to resume diagnosis.

It turned out the post on the solenoid broke off inside so it was just flopping around not making contact. I guess that's what I get for using a starter I found in the basement that I can't remember where it came from... I put a new starter on it tonight and all is well again.

1MeanZ

iTrader: (9)

It's been a while but the IROC has performed flawlessly. No other teething issues or growing pains and I've driven the wheels off it.

The latest upgrade was to ditch the 9 bolt with 2.77s, wasted posi and iron disc brakes. I found a recently rebuilt 10 bolt with drums, a new Eaton posi and 3.73 gears. I swapped a set of PBR discs on and slid the "new" axle back under the car. Then I swapped the master cylinder and swapped the guts in the proportioning valve.

Wow what a difference. 2.77 to 3.73 is a big jump and this thing really woke up. It's pretty serious now. All thirdgens should have came with a T5 and 3.73s. The 700R4 and anything numerically lower than a 3.23 shouldn't have ever been an option...

steves

I wish I had your skills.

scholtmj

iTrader: (3)

Excellent thread!

bjpotter

Glad to see you got some good driving with your car before winter. This weekend will probably be my last drive until spring. Weather looks nice for a week or so but we just missed the snow by a few miles last week.

Going to enjoy it while I can!

chazman

iTrader: (4)

Great job!!

subroc

iTrader: (2)

Just checked in to see this again. Awesome job and sweet car. Now for me to find a super ram......

881SA

She looks great, nice work!!

1MeanZ

iTrader: (9)

This black IROC is still providing me with reliable transportation. Knocking down 18.5mpg with 3.73 gears LOL! It gets more compliments and attention than either of the other cars. The GTA no one seems to notice, and the flame red IROC gets noticed by other hotrodders because it's very angry sounding, but this black one takes the cake LOL.

I've been tinkering with it's small cosmetic issues little by little. I re-touched the gold letters on the rear bumper emblem, and found a new gold Z28 insignia on ebay for a mere $15 so I jumped on it. I know an 88 is supposed to have IROC-Z insignia but I prefer the Z28 one honestly. I just ordered new 85-87 style center caps with gold IROC-Z lettering as well(I like those better than the later silver caps). I also removed the inlet screens and aftermarket fog lights and put in a set of original looking fog lights on custom brackets. I re-touched the gold CAMARO lettering on a nice grille insert, but I may paint the bowtie gold and leave the one in that the car already has. I also tinted the side windows and repainted the hood louvers.

I have a plan in the works to get the nose and front spoiler fixed of their paint chips and damage. Once that's done, I'm strongly considering putting the factory gold stripes and lettering on the car. Thoughts?

PurelyPMD

iTrader: (3)

I prefer them with the stripes and lettering - seem naked without to me.

B4C5.7

iTrader: (2)

The car looks great Jeremy, I think the gold would be a great addition.

1MeanZ

iTrader: (9)

The transformation continues. 2 weeks ago I bought a '91 Z28 that has been a victim of an engine bay fire. The car is black, and had a real nice nose, fog lights, turn signals and corner markers. So I stole them and put them on the '88. The original chin spoiler was in pretty bad shape though, and obviously the one from the '91 wouldn't look right. So I sanded, primed and spray bombed the original spoiler. I used Duplicolor perfect match universal black and clear. It turned out pretty decent for spray cans. The pix are crappy because we had a freak april snow storm and I had to stay in the garage. Also notice the awesome positive camber because I had just dropped of off the jack stands... Anyway, it looks decent, I'd de-rate the car from a 10 footer down to a 3-5 footer now.

Stripes and door decals coming soon.....

chazman

iTrader: (4)