Hello all, Welcome To My Build.

I'll start you out with the story of the car.

I bought the car at a storage auction for 1500$. The car was originally Iroc Blue but from all the boxes packed on it and the roof to the storage unit had a leak the paint job was thrashed so we hauled it down to the body shop i worked for. The great thing was the car had excellent interior and all it really need was some fresh paint, i took the tank down flushed all the lines and changed all the fluids and got it running great then stripped it down and began working. I shaved the front fender running lights, built a custom billet grille for it, modified the turn signals to LED, changed from the stock rims to chrome, Tint, Hurst *ratchet shift kit and a Grant steering wheel. The body shop i worked for was mainly a hot rod shop that did insurance work from time to time so thats where the flat black came into play. At first we planned on making it FLAT but then i decided a base/clear would last alot longer then just flat single stage, because its base/clear it came out with a shine that ive got alot of complements on, I love the way the paint came out. I drove the car for a few years and ended up leaving the bodyshop and moved into the oilfield and plan to turn the car from a daily driver to a street/strip beast.

If you notice i didnt tag the car as a ( RS, Iroc, ect.) *Because im not sure... When i bought the car it was Iroc Blue ( factory paint because i sanded it off myself ) and it had the Iroc sticker set BUT... it didnt have a louvered hood, It was a 305 TBI and not a 350 TPI and it was debadged when i bought it. But the title says Iroc, im not up on 80s camaro history to say what it is and honestly it doesnt bother me what it is i just thought it was interesting lol.

Now for some pictures... and some more on the story.

 

Heres a link to my photo bucket, im not the best at adding pictures so bare with me lol.

http://s1132.photobucket.com/albums/...latBlackCamaro

 

The link to the photos dosen't work. It just takes me to the photobucket homepage

 

I wanna say you could get the IROC package with a tbi engine....

and if you want that flat black finish you actually need to paint it satin black. the flat black will look like supercrap and the satin black will look pretty sharp for awhile.

 

Yep Undercover thats exactly what i did, more like a semi gloss. i ripped the stock TBI out and ive got a 350HO fully roller that im building. My plan is to smooth up the firewall and gloss black it, the engine block is bright red and ive got polished aluminum everywhere. The engine build is slow coming cause i plan to send all the aliminum off and have it clear powdercoated so i dont have to polish it agin. The intake took me awhile, i got a Weiand X-clerator and the only way they come is natural finish so ive had to debur the whole thing and buff it as good as i could, the only guy that ive found that will finish polishing it wants 20$ a hr... so im getting it as close as i can lol.

 

K Here are some pictures before i ripped it apart.

 

'bucket link works, nice car man!

 

This is the engine im building


This is the interior gutted, i also took down the firewall padding before welding and no more seatbelts


This is the engine bay still somewhat blue as i couldnt paint it all with the engine still in.

 

Ty Monster, Its been a money pit but i truely love the car.
Much Appreciated

 

I hate when people say "350HO"... that could mean anything. It's not an official, unique designation. What are you building exactly?


Also, the IROCs WERE available with the TBI. Do you have a wonderbar? It's a brace that mounts underneath the front sway bar bushings. It's a brace that runs parallel to the sway bar in the center of the car. Only the IROC's got it. Now be aware that they are easy to add... but it might help sway it one way or another.

 

Oh ok so the body shop did it? The paint i mean. Im planing on painting mine flat black. So you put down clear?How many coats?

 

Now im gonna walk you through my current progress..

I started welding up all the screw holes that were no longer needed.


I cleaned up arround the area im going to patch to give me a good area to weld to


This is my patch, i first made it out of thin cardboard like a 12 pack of soda comes in. i cut my metal out and then trimmed it with shears on where it needed then punched spot welding holes.

 

No i personaly painted the car when i worked there. The paint code is "KH3" its Nissan " Jet Black " one of the purest blacks out and thats how i got the depth on the color. Before anyone downs me on using a foriegn color let me explain, GM black uses alot more other color additives to their black that die the color down and the nissan color is 100% Jet Black. The flatner calls for 50/50 on clear/flatner i actually cut the flatner % inhalf because i didnt want it primer flat. So if you find a shop OR are using a digital scale to weigh your paint you can copy this, if your mixing it in a can or cup i Highly recommend you mix it all at once to keep from striping or off color.

Another thing on this paticular paint is this is base/clear not single stage.

If youre not familiar with paint let me explain...
Single Stage, the name says it all.. its what cars were painted with before they made clearcoat. its basicly paint with a hardner and the hardner is what gives it the shine. its cheap and easy and less hastle especialy when dealing with a flatning agent because you mix it in and dont have to worry about striping as much because its all blended together. Single Stage will stay in a can for a long time if not mixed with a hardner.

Base Coat Clear Coat is a stepped paint process, you spray your base on which is your color and it semi drys, which is nice because if there are paint flaws you have time to wet sand them out and spray annother coat of Base. Then you add a Clear Coat, Clear is nice in so many ways... you can tint it you can pearl it you can darken it and flaten it... you can really toy with a color as you please, you may add as many coats of clear as youd like i prefer to keep the paint under 8 mills because close to or after you take a high chance of paint cracking.

So since you spray your base then flaten your clear you can now see why its tricky... one extra layer of flat clear here or there makes thos areas more flat then the others and you end up with a real spotty or stripey mess. Just Keep That In Mind.

 

On my particular paint job i body worked the whole car, primed it and drove it in primer for about a month to let the primer shrink back if it was going to. Be sure that when you have a car in primer that the primer doesnt get sanded or stays out and can get wet because primer is known to soak up moisture and will cause rust under your paint, its best to have a indoor garage to keep it in if you can and only take it out on sunny days. I blocked all my body work out and preped it for paint... Now i personaly add " Sealer " which is a "wet on wet " meaning you have to beready to paint to put it on. Sealer makes like a shield from your primer to your base so that any " ring " from body work cant be seen and it also helps prevent moisture from getting in aswell. The KH3 Jet Black covers woundeful i could have gotten away with using two coats of base but i added three just to be sure, I used three coats of clear to stay within my mills. When clearing i start off with a light coat and let it tack really good, touch the paper that you have something taped off with to test it... if its really sticky like a glue then its time for your next coat. More coats of clear arnt always better remember this especially on flat clears, tinted clears or pear clears. because in these clears your not just adding more clear you adding more agent... so flat gets flater, tinted will turn darker and your pearls will lighten or turn milky.

i did a test panel before painting the car, take a piece of paper and paint it the color and tape it down well. take a piece of tape and place it loosely at the bottom then button up annother piece of tape to that and continue till you have about 5 streight pieces of tape and a open area about the same size and the layers of tape below. now spray the panel, let it tack... take off the layer of tape below the open area you left... now spray annother coat, wait till that tacks then take off the next piece and continue till all the layers are pulled. DONT spray annother coat over the whole thing... you will have lines its expected. Now once the panel dries take it out in the sun and look at it youll notice the top area you left open will be the flatest ( if you used flatner ) this is because it got the most layers of paint. We used 5 in this example so 5 ( the area you left open ) is the flatest and that gives you 5 coats, look at which you prefer then count down and that will give you the amount of coats to use.

 

I held up my patch to see where it needed trimmed, trimmed as needed then tacked it up


I started in the middle and worked my way outward, skipping every other hole when i could to keep warpage down.


I then went into the inside of the car and tacked arround the edges of the holes i filled to give added support and to keep it from rattling later.

 

@InfernalVortex

I said 350HO because thats what they call the block i have its a " High Output " 4 bolt main 350, i belive the diffrence is really just the heads stamped " HO " on them. i belive most police interceptor versions are HO. When i told the machine shop i wanted to extrude the ports he told me that he could but the way the heads flow tested the only real way to get more power for the buck would be aluminum because they were high output or high energy heads. So i just had them completely rebuilt... new valves,springs,ect. because i didnt want to spend the cash on aftermarket heads. I did end up doing a minor port n polish, really just trimming up the areas that could cause turbulance and a little smoothing.

Like i said i dont know anything about the diffrent options, I just figured the Irocs all had the 350 TPI because from what i gather that was the thing to have at that point in time lol. Im not going to re badge it any how so it doesnt bother me much, i may end up buying the 10' style " Camaro " emblems for the fenders i think that would look pretty sick on there.

 

The motors a 4BM 350, High Output 2.02 Heads with larger springs, Stock crank, 270H Comp Magnum Roller Cam, Procomp Black Label 1.6 Roller Rockers, 10.7:1 Kieth Black Pistons, Milidon Gear Drive, 8qt Champ style oil pan w/ high pressure oil pump, Weiand X-clerator intake, Weiand Action Plus Team-G water pump, custom aluminum valve covers, billet timeing cover and a Procomp Gilmer Belt Drive set up.

Im also going to keep running the Dual 4" Cold Air intake by Spectre, i had a noticable diffrence in the low end even on the 305 so im going to stay running it.

 

Just got these today Rears are 18x10 and Fronts are 17x8.5 they are 10' C6 wheels that are Black Chrome. Been looking for a new set of wider wheels to give me a little more grab and i ran across these beautys for 800$.

 

No such things as "HO block". 4 bolt blocks are just 4-bolt blocks. The heads are not stamped "HO" either. There were, over the years, different engines sold by GM in various cars as "HO" models, but that was just due to combinations of cylinder heads and camshaft per the RPO code for that model. For instance the extremely rare official 305 HO from 82-86 was officially designated the "L69". It used the same block as the other 305's, and it used the same heads as the other 305 too, so neither the block nor heads are any different. The main difference was it had a carb on it, a little bigger cam (I think), and a higher compression ratio. In some cases the heads are different, but not necessarily.

The only reason I harp on it is just because people LOVE to tack on "HO" to various chevy parts, like they like to tack on the "It came out of a corvette" thing, and they use it to rip people off and I dont like people getting ripped off because other people are taking advantage. I dont get the impression that happened to you here, but just keep that in mind in the future. I see a lot of people selling Camaros with "305 HO's" in them, when it's just any normal crappy 305 block. Generally they apply that to the non TPI cars for some reason, and the vast majority of them are awful LG4's and L03's.

Can you get the casting number off the heads?

A chevy block is a chevy block. Some are 1 pc RMS, some are 2pc RMS, and some are 2 bolt, some are 4 bolt. Current concensus is that 2-bolt mains are arguably better than 4-bolts because they're less likely to crack at the block webbing and you can splay the main caps on a 2-bolt block for a significant improvement over any factory 2 or 4 bolt design.

4-bolts are a little stronger than 2 bolts, but factory blocks arent really rated for the kind of power that would start causing issues with 2-bolt blocks in the first place.


Either way, a good 4-bolt block is cool

 

moroso valve covers?! i think i have those same ones, i love the way they look

 

I just checked your picture here...



The pattern on the front of hte heads indicates that they're 193 heads, which you can cross-reference here as "P" in the picture here.

http://www.v8volvo.se/mekartips/iden...tifiering.html

First, verify that they are 193 heads. 193 are 87ish->95 350 Throttle body injected truck heads. They are centerbolt like yours, so that checks out. You can read up about them in the following links since I did a search for you. If you ever heard of people talking about "swirl ports", that is what these are.

https://www.thirdgen.org/forums/tbi/...heads-why.html


http://www.hotrodders.com/forum/193-...od-147485.html

https://www.thirdgen.org/forums/tech...swap-them.html

And theres a plethora of information here:
https://www.thirdgen.org/forums/tbi/...-headflow.html



And THAT is why I rail against people calling things "HO" this and that. Usually it's not, and there's not much of a way to tell, and even if it was it doesnt matter that much when you go rebuild it because even a mild aftermarket flat tappet cam and Vortec or L98 heads will outpower any factory "HO" anything that isnt a big block.

 

Apparently someones screwed you over in the past, but going to peoples threads and making tacky posts wont help you. In fact it just makes you look bad, i wouldnt go to your build thread ( if you have one ) and post negative comments on your car because in fact i dont really care to see what your building now.

The Casting Number is 10125377
By all means... go google it and find all the information you want, but make a thread and post how much you dis like it there... not in my build thread.

For the HO part mabe you should contact customer service at Car Craft Mag and explain to them that the build project " Humble Pie " is all cr@p because HO motors arnt really arround because apparently you know more then they do... heres a link to that site.

http://www.carcraft.com/techarticles...e/viewall.html

If you feel the need to post more negativity, do it somewhere else.

 

@the buffalo

The valve covers arnt moroso i dont belive, i got them from skipwhite on Ebay. When they arrived they were just in a unlabled box and theres no stamping on them. I hope when i put a crank case evac system in that it doesnt make them look too bad i love the smooth look they have now lol.

 

Mine looked just like that with no holes drilled and they were moroso

 

10125377 just references a part number that cross references with 083 heads.

It's not about making your car look good or bad, I love your car. I've been torn on doing mine flat black for a while, and Im a huge fan.

I just hate when people over pay for "HO" engines that aren't, or for "202" heads that are 70s crap. If you've got garbage heads it's a lot better for you to change em out now than find out later. It happens all the time. If that's not what you have then rock on, should be a stout motor.

By te way... you have any pics of how you did your snorkel setup? I'm thinking about doing it myself... do you use the low profile version or the regular one? Or is the kind with the big central filter? Ood clearance is an issue with me though so my options are limited.

 

I see your point and you probibly didnt mean for it to come off like that but it did to me, i dont have any idea what 083 heads are but after the work i payed for the guy said they flowed great so im gonna runnem till i decide to go aluminum. the only reason i havnt yet is because that money could be used else where in the build right now, i can always go back a change them.

i got the motor and a trans for 300$ running, but it smoked bad. turned out to be the seals on the valves were bad. the trans i traded streight across for a TH350 and i ended up selling the motor and trans from this to my dad for 200$ he plans to use the ECU, wiring harness and all in a 66' Short Wide Pick-up. machine work and all i may have arround 3k rough guess into everything i have now so not bad id say... it definately beats what was in there for sure...

 

083 heads are factory on the 350 tpi cars. They're good heads.... not great. But they are pretty much the best regular factory Gen I heads GM made. If your guy put bigger valves in them and opened up the port throat for them, and he sounds like he knows what he's doing by using those heads as a base and working them a little, they really should flow great. A good streetable roller cam should get you 300-400hp with those heads. Any reason you didn't go bigger on the cam? The one you have is fine... but I'm just curious. Do you know what compression ratio you're at? If it's really 10.7:1 you can run a pretty huge cam and get away with it.

 

Yes the valves are now 2.02s he only worked on them enough to get the bigger valves and i smoothed the runners i didnt enlarge them, im going to gasket match everything once my intake gets polished and powder coated. The reason i went with the 270H is because its the biggest cam i could go with and not have vaccume problems or need a larger stall and make it less streetable. i wanted to still be able to drive it arround or to a race track a couple hours away and still be able to be competitive in the saturday night runs. Im not 100% but from what i was told these heads are open chambered and since the compression ratio was 10.7 for close chambered heads then it should drop a bit, im guessing arround 9.8 or 9.9 which is nice cause i can still run pump gas and not have a bad ping but i plan on running 50/50 race fuel anyway.

 

that's good. Just smoothing out the transition from the new valve seat cut marks is most of what you need. You need to enlarge the mouth of the port to something like... 85 percent the size of the valve or something... There's some guideline for that. But just trying to smooth out that transition point will get you mostly there and is most of what you need. There's a LOT of power to be had in smoothing out that area. and it's way better to not go far enough than to open it up too far. So it sounds like you're in good shape.

Those heads are 64cc's officially. Do you know if you have flat top pistons or dome top pistons? If flat tops you'll be right around 10:1 plus or minus .5 depending on gasket thickness, piston-deck clearance, etc.

You'll need to be REAL careful with your tune at that compression ratio range, but if you are careful that's pretty much the perfect ratio for a high performance iron-headed street sbc.

That's a good, conservative cam, great for the street, stock converters, gears etc. Still larger than most factory cams. It's a good cam. But you've got enough compression to make a much larger cam work. Maybe a Magnum 280HR or an XR276, or an LT4 hotcam even. Any of those will make a good bit more power, but as you know it just depends on what gears and converter you have etc.

But dont be afraid to go bigger, at that compression ratio you can afford to go more radical if you want to. If you look at the operating range of various cams, generally it seems like most cams that have an advertised range starting at 2000 RPM or lower can be streeted. The xr276 for example has an advertised 1900-5600 RPM range. A bunch of guys here run that in their street cars. The LT4 hotcam, while an old grind, is cheap and very well suited for factory heads. It makes nearly 400 fwhp in Vortec builds and is very streetable.

 

Yes they are 64s, And the pistons are pop ups they are so tall i checked the clearence with clay and screwed in a spark plug too see just how close i was. *Heres a picture of it before the heads were mounted...



*After he made them 2.02s i just took off the roughness i knew that too much was a bad thing and aslong as i smoothed things up and rounded the high points id be fine, for the gears i plan on running a 3.73 or something close to it... im not sure what the rear end is now *or even how much power the stock axles can hold but i do want to get as close to 3.73 as i can. i think its a nice in between the short 4.10 and *tall 2.73, i will lose a little on the highway but it will be good for the street.

I think im just going to run what i got so far and see how the set up goes, mabe some aluminum heads later who knows... i did try and match performance on the parts im running, the 270H recommends a 2000 stall and that goes perfect with my Weiand X-Celerator because the hp starts at 2000-5500 and with what im running i think i could probibly pull 6k no problems. i Almost went with the 4/6 swap cam and didnt because people said its more on opinion then proven fact its helped any, but it wasnt a gamble i wanted to take, True or False i couldnt risk it so i played it safe.

ive always been a all motor guy but on this build ive been thinking of getting a Zex Blackout kit 100 shot, never used nitrous before and never really dogged anyone that did... just wasnt my thing. But im still on the fence with it, i heard the regulations here on how its ran and plumed is a pain in the butt when they inspect.

 

Do you have a part number for the pistons?

305's can break 10-bolts. Good news is taht 10-bolt parts are cheap and everywhere. The later third gen (I think 89+) 10-bolts have 28 spline axles and everyone wants those, but truth be told it's the gears that tend to break. 3.73 is as high as I would go with a 350. Beyond that the teeth get kind of thin on the pinion gear.

Just view the gears as expendable. Used gears are $50-$100 a set... not a big deal really. And it should last a while, just not forever.

 

No i sure dont man, And it all came in a kit when i got it a couple years ago. I know they were stamped on the pistons somewhere but im not gonna disassemble the engine for just a P/N lol. Ill take a look in summit and see if the kits still in there and get you a order number then mabe we can break that down to find out what the number was that way.

This car is a 89' so mabe I'll get lucky for once LOL i havnt yet changed a set of gears, ive heard its difficult and time consuming but ill read up on it and watch a couple youtube videos and see how things are. Yep 3.73 was right arround where i want to be seems like a fair in between on high and low, i plan on putting in a limited slip or posi unit too. the car would boil a tire with the 305 and with all the new power i doubt id get anywhere with just a one wheel peel lol.

 

since we got on the subject of heads here is a decent link. you prolly seen it before. go to the bottom of the page.
http://www.gmpartsdirect.com/perform...CATID=671.html

 

what are you pointing out? we know that they are 64cc, were 1.94 and alright hp heads. we've cleared all that up, ive had them worked and now have 2.02s. one thing that graph did tell me that i didnt know is that it says Iron heads and i always thought they were cast... not sure if thats a plus or minus lol. i belive the block is a 87' also id have to look but im almost 100% im not sure if they are the same heads that came with the motor or if they got swapped arround who knows, i just bought the motor and ran with what i had.

 

just some good info and that your heads are a good set.

 

Thats definately a great refrence for heads, Thanks for posting that.

 

Nice score on the wheels!

 

Cool build man... You should be okay with your 10-bolt. It's just morons that think they have a 9" in the back and drive it that way. Any dip-sh!+ can break any parts. Just drive it smart. My heads are from 1965 with 2.02/1.60 They are the special corvette HO double camel toe hump versions and they are bolted to a 4 bolt HO vette block with factory windage tray. I also got a steel 10-10 crank with pink rods. But I tossed the pink rods in the trash because all the pink came off of them and they must be no good anymore.

 

@ T Top Havoc

Ty =) Before i bought them i asked for a part number incase they sold before i could round up the cash and he sent the number to me and said " ive only got two sets left they are a custom set ", how true that is who knows... never trust a salesman LOL BUT i bought a set and theres still one left so if you or anyone else wants his Ebay tag just Message me.

@FlyHigh

Ty Man, Lotta Time,Money,Blood, Sweat and Tears LOL. I like the old school combo you got goin on.

 

LOL... Vortec Heads make you god...

 

It just proves for sure they're 083 heads. People probably wont recognize the actual part number ending in 377, but everyone knows what 083 heads are.

All heads are cast. Aluminum heads are cast aluminum and iron heads are cast iron.

 

next i cut out the battery trays, i plan on putting my dual cold air here and the battery trays were just a eye sore so i started by drilling out all the old tack welds and then pryed the tray out, i made a pattern out of cardboard and then traced it on to sheet metal. then i cut that out and put it in place to test the fit, i got a hole punch and marked where i needed the new welds to be, punched them out and then skipped about every 2 holes when welding and this is how it turned out.

 

When it comes time to mess with the 10 bolt put on one of these.=
http://www.jegs.com/i/L.P.W./619/301-7.5G/10002/-1
I was told buy the shop (called the Rear End Shop) that installed my Ultimate 10 Bolt that as long as your not hooking with hard launches the 10 can last. He was telling me this as he was installing that cover.

 

Yep. Horsepower (on most street car levels) doesn't kill 10-bolts. Traction does. Even on lower horsepower, drag launches with slicks can kill 10-bolts.

 

Of course he was talking about modified/upgraded/with support cover.

 

I Also picked these up, they are 27x10.0-15s... now i have a set of C6 wheels that are 17x9 fonts and 18x10 rears and plan on running Riken ZR Raptors for just street use but these Hoosiers 3035s i plan to slap on to go play. a buddy i know asphalt races and he can kick them down for free, they are used but as you can see have enough meat to go play. just woundering what you guys think of these... as i see it free tires are free tires LOL.

 

i was actually planning on running a simular alluminum cover not just for strength but to help keep fluid temps down. i know they can get hot behind steel and heats a problem for everything lol. appreciate the link man and i do plan on using a cover like that.

 

Heres a picture of the new rims and Hoosiers i got, i bought the Aero 15x10 w/ 6"BS thinking id have enough room, but im off about a 1/2-3/4 of a inch to clearing where the bump stop is. does anyone know of how i can modify the bump stop area or can i just get a LS1 rearend to fix this problem? ive got nuts behind the rims right now just to act as a spacer but the car doesnt have a engine in it so i dont have to worry about it running arround like that LOL.

 

Yes, you can cut out that bumpstop completely with no problem. I did & I am running a 11" wheel w/7" bs & several others have cut it out as well.

 

Do you have pictures of the modification? or know where some are? i kind of have a idea of what to do but id like to know for sure before i start chopping. im guessing you just follow the frame rail and cut out the patch piece that fills the gap that the bump is connected to.