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I'd like to introduce everyone here to my 1989 Camaro RS, I've had the car since I was 15 years old, I'm now 23. Recently the car has been in storage at my parents house while I was going through college. I've had a few other projects that I've built in between while the Camaro sat in the barn, only being driven on occasion. After selling a few other projects I'm finally starting to get excited about working on the Camaro again. I'm hoping making this thread will help. This car has been through many changes so I'm going to start off from the beginning.
Looks like a solid place to start. The paint looks nice and shiny in that side shot.
The paint is not too bad, it definitely looks much better in the pictures. It's shiny but there are some touch ups and scratches here and there.
On to more Updates After a few months of searching we ended up purchasing an 85 305 TPI motor on eBay to install into the car.
I stripped the motor down to the bare essentials for a new coat of paint, fresh gaskets, and timing chain.
The motor was lowered into the car with a new clutch awaiting the T5 that was already installed.
I made a deal with a friend for a set of 3:73 gears, he wanted my 3:42s and he gave me a posi unit too. After the motor was buttoned up it was time to address some of the paint on the nose of the car. The front bumper had huge chips of paint coming off daily so it was sanded down, along with the front fenders for a new coat of black. At this time I also picked up a 4in fiberglass cowl induction hood since I couldn’t exactly drive around with the hood I received with the car. These are some of the first pictures I have of the running car outside, I was beyond excited that day.
I was very happy with the car at this point, I was battling idle issues with the TPI but I didn’t care. The car looked good and was fast to me at that point, I drove the car my senior year of High School as you see it.
I drove the car around like that for a while, making minor changes here and there. Painting random things, installed a stereo, etc. Throughout this time it was constant battle to get the TPI motor to idle correctly. After driving for almost 2 years with erratic idle problems I had enough with the Tuned Port and decided to swap a carburetor onto the motor. I placed an order with Jegs and the day after it came in the car was torn down.
I had a spare Comp Cam and lifters laying around so while I had the motor torn down we installed that as well.
A weiand stealth manifold, return style fuel pressure regulator, and an edelbrock carburetor finished the top of the motor off. I also took this time to get rid of the a/c as it never worked from the beginning. The heater box will be cleaned up in the future as well as the wiring.
I got the car running late one night and took it out for a test drive. It must have been running pretty good because I ended up destroying the posi unit in my 10-bolt during a burn-out.
I managed to find a replacement posi unit at a local truck yard, and had the car back on the road in a couple of days. The motor ran pretty well with the new cam and carburetor upgrade so I left the alone for a while. In the mean time I stayed busy with the camaro. I upgraded to power windows as this car was originally manual, I obtained a 91-92 high rise spoiler that I installed with a new deck lid, I refinished my Iroc wheels and made small tweaks to get the car running optimal.
Before:
After:
However, given the way I drove this car day to day, it was only a matter of time until I broke something. During a trip to work one day I managed to over-rev my 305, floating the valves, which resulted with a bent exhaust valve. I tore the motor down once again to find out I bent a valve in the number 2 cylinder.
I ordered up a new valve, valve guide seals, and valve springs to match the comp cam I had.
Everything was buttoned back up and the car was running good again, but it was only a matter of time.
I drove the car after repairing the valve for probably another year. I think it was 2011 when the 305 finally had taken enough beatings and spun a bearing. We had a freshly rebuilt 383 sitting around that I was going to use but we ran into problems with the cam that I bought. I ended up using a 406 that we had sitting in an old motor home that was rebuilt years ago. It only had 6,000 miles since the rebuild but it sat for years. I ripped the motor out of the motor home and tore it down to the short block for new gaskets, double hump heads, and a big cam.
I ended up getting the new motor together just in time for the GM nationals at Carlisle.
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