Hey Everyone!
I am a new owner of a 1989 Camaro RS 5.0L 305 TBI
I've wanted a 3rd generation Camaro as long as I can remember and excited to start doing some work to it. Although, I am not experienced in doing performance mods or knowing what to do first.
ANY AND ALL TIPS ARE VERY APPRECIATED!! I'm not trying to make this car a rocket or pour thousands of dollars into it but would like to put it around 250hp and with a lot of torque! Only upgrade I know of is Flowmasters were put on. It's a weekend car for me, I'm not planning on drag racing it but something fun/Reliable to drive.... And of course, Burn up the tires a bit from light to light lol
Thanks,
-Brett

 

I know the first thing I have to fix is an exhaust leak near the headers. Makes a "Ticking" sound when I gas it. Is it a hard fix to do? Anyone know?
Thanks!

 

first go to the general info board there are a ton of people that can help you.
full tune up
full fluid change
tranny filter change
rear end lube change
check/change brakes
easy to get to sensors
check for leaks
weatherstripping
check for rust
exhaust is the first upgrade and no matter what you do make sure that all upgrades will fit a 350cu.in. then consider intake,heads,cam,double roller timing chain.

 

i would also run the vin number and find out what gears you have in your rear axle. i'm sure you may have 2.73's. if so i would really think about going up to 3.23-3.73 gears. sure it may use alittle more gas on the highway but you will be happy with the difference this makes.

 

Welcome to the site. Looks like a pretty cool Camaro.There are allot of great guys on here that are pretty knowledgeable about these cars.

Tony

 

Thanks guys! Yea, The only really upgrade I know of was Flowmasters. I looked up the VIN and didn't see anything about the gears. Which digit in the VIN describes the gears?

 

Yea, I looked into the gears. As far as I know it's stock so the gears are a 2.73. How do you change gears to a more high performance setting?

 

the best thing to do is try and find a stock used rear end with higher gears and change the whole thing out. try hawksthirdgenparts.com last i checked they have some for around $300.00. they should bolt right up. just about all 3rd gen fbodys had 7.5 chevy rear ends along with a lot of other gm made cars so they are still easy to find.

 

by the looks of it you don't have headers for them to be leaking. it looks to me like it's the stock exh manifolds. You need to be sure that it's an exhaust leak that you have and not something else

Anyway, you mentioned 250 HP. Would that be to the wheels which would be around 300 crank HP. That's a tall order for swirl port heads.

Honestly, have a shop put some 3.23:1 or 3.55:1 gears in the rear, slap on some shorty headers and y pipe and put on an open element air cleaner.

Both the exhaust and open element air cleaner topics have been beaten to death on this forum so use the search function and you'll find about 1,000 hits on the topic.

It's a good looking ride, enjoy it.

 

Yea I meant to say the manifold, I want to put headers on in the future. Yea it's definitely an exhaust leak. So would it be wise to just go ahead and put headers on to replace the manifold since it will be coming off anyway for the fix?