After dreaming about going on the Hot Rod Power Tour for over 30 years, I finally signed up to do the long haul. I always wanted to take my 87 IROC on my first one. But I'm not getting any younger and the restoration of that one is moving very slowly. So I am going to take my 92 B4C on it this year. I have had the B4C for about 5 years now. It is an ex Indiana state police car and has about 200,000 miles on it now. It had the engine, trans and rear end rebuild at some point in its life. But they have many miles on them since that was done. I have been doing some small upgrades and repairs along the way since I got it. But it has needed a lot of bigger maintenance and repairs since Ive owned it. So now is the time to tear into it and prepare it for 3000 miles of driving. I also have some cosmetic work I will be doing in between the major mechanical stuff.

It needed a lot of maintenance to start. The transmission is leaking heavily and the converter is way too tight. The rear end is leaking and has a bad whine from a poorly installed 3.73 gear. The fuel pump is weak and whining pretty bad. The front sway bar end links are shot. The upper strut mounts are bad. Shocks and struts are blown out. Tires are mismatched and the wrong size on the front. The car has Edelbrock headers that are leaking where the tubes weld into the header flanges. I welded them back up to stop the leaks but I could only weld so many of the tubes in the car. The exhaust was terrible as well. It had muffler shop exhaust with a Magnaflow muffler with some really ugly 3" straight cut tail pipes.

Here are a few pictures of it before tear down.

 

Sounds perfect for power tour! You will enjoy yourself. I've been going for roughly 10 or more years now. Hopefully you have your rooms booked. Each stop becomes a mini car show in its own right.

 

Glad you are getting this bucket list item checked off.

 

I have a lot of friends who have gone and they love it. Im really looking forward to it. I'll be going with 2 of my best friends. One will taking his 95 Corvette and the other will be taking his 92 B4C or possibly his 86 Monte Carlo SS. It just depends if he can get the B4C straightened in time. It all of a sudden started running rough and dieing. All fuel delivery and ignition components have been address (even an NOS GM distributor and module) and still no luck. We are looking into ground issues now. I booked all my hotels the day registration was announced thankfully.

Thanks! I cant wait.

 

The first project was a simple one. I did the head lights about a month ago. I rarely drive this car at night. But my stepdaughter and I took it on a little road trip one night that took longer than expected and we ended up driving at night and I realized very quickly how bad the headlights were. 2 of the stock headlights were cracked and corroded inside. Unfortunately the worst part about this car so far is all the mismatched and Chinese hardware. So I replaced the headlight trim screws with factory pieces and installed a set of Octane glass housing H4 conversion headlights. The difference was substantial over the terrible, damaged stock lights.

The turn signal housings were absolutely terrible too. Being an Ex State Police car they had cut holes in the factory housings for the police lights. When they decommissioned the car they just left those holes open to the elements. It did a number on them. I installed a set of GM licensed reproduction housings I have had stashed away for about 20 years. They were surprisingly nice. I compared them to an NOS set I have for my 87 IROC and they were very similar. The reproductions did have some debris trapped inside the light tho. You can see it in the picture of the new driverside light.

 

The first thing I needed to do was get the terrible muffler shop Magnaflow muffler and tips hacked off and get the rear end pulled so it can be rebuilt. I am real fortunate to have a local guy who has been building rear ends for over 50 years. I am having him install a new set of Motive 3.23 gears to replace the 3.73s. I feel like the 3.73 is just too much at interstate speeds. It just feels like its struggling to maintain 75-80mph. Im also installing a new Eaton LSD and Moser axles. With 200,000 miles I didnt want to take any chances with the axle bearing surfaces on the stock axles being worn. So we are just going to cover all the bases and replace everything.

While the rear end was out I went ahead and pulled the tank down and replaced the fuel pump. Unfortunately I didnt get any pictures of that because I was covered in fuel and fighting the tank in and out was less than fun. The car already had an old Walbro 255 in it. But whoever installed it didn't put the insulator sleeve around the pump so it was rattling against the bracket on the sending unit. I installed a new Ti brand (they bought Walbro years ago) 255lph pump and installed the insulation and pump isolator to keep it quiet. Along with a new filter sock. Fortunately the inside of the tank was clean and all the baffles were still in place and in good shape. I am going to install a hot wire kit to boost the voltage to the pump. You could hear the old pump whining intermittently when the turn signal was flashing. Unfortunately I hate aftermarket wiring hanging around. So I am going to have to get creative with the routing on the hot wire kit.

 

My biggest struggle with this whole project has been the urge to clean and detail everything. Posting pictures of the car dirty and leaving it that way is embarrassing to me. But I am really bad about taking things apart and turning it into a perpetual project trying to make it perfect. I have to really keep reminding myself that this car will never be perfect and honestly I dont want it to be. The history and all the bumps and bruises are what make this car special to me. And the fact that is it already dirty means driving it wont ruin it. I just want to make it mechanically sound, run a little bit better than stock and continue to drive the wheels off of it.

 

Nice ride!! Our B4C is painted in about that color (along with decades of exposure on cheap paint). I keep flipping between 'restore it and detail it' and 'it's a survivor, so enjoy it for the awesome-to-drive car that it is'. So far a little of both have won out. We cleaned up the interior and have some better-condition spares to install, but I'm getting too old to do a complete restoration. It's probably worth more to my estate as-is, anyway. Ours IS a GAA car, though, so I do plan to get the paint restored to the original black-and-white scheme it rolled off the assembly line with at some point in time.

 

Good Luck! We are on our 5th HRPT and 4th with the 88 GTA.

 

This one is an original quasar blue car. Mostly original paint (which is why its rough as hell) except for the deck lid and spoiler. My buddy that is going on the power tour with me has a purple 92 B4C as well that was also Indiana state police used and his is in the same boat. Clean enough to drive around but rough around the edges. We are both in agreeance that they need to be preserved in used condition. They arent valuable enough to restore and restoring them would ruin their appeal.

I am not familiar with what a GAA car is. Can you fill me in on that?

 

I finally got around to doing Power Tour in 2024. I loved it. Did it again in 2025. Going in 2026 too. Most likely taking this '86 this time:


You are way more ambitious than me. That's a lot of work to get done in a month or so, lol.

 

I have been making more headway on the B4C. Just been slow to post updates. I started pulling the garbage Edelbrock headers and y-pipe off. Thankfully that went fairly smoothly other than the collector flanges were clocked in a way making it nearly impossible to get to the bolts. But after some cussing and gentle nudging with a hammer and punch I was able to get them turned enough to access the bolts. The header replacement was a 100% necessity. Because the welds connecting the primary tubes to the flange were cracking causing a leak through the flange around the tube. The intake replacement and accessory removal really wasn't. But the car has SLP siamesed runners but the plenum wasnt port matched at all. So I am going to port match it to the runners and the Lingenfelter 58mm billet throttle body I have for it as well. I decided to install an Edelbrock intake base while it was all apart for a little bump in power.

The y-pipe was a little tricky to get out without cutting it into pieces lol. I had to snake it out around the lift arm.

I hadn't planned to pull the front of the engine apart but I had to replace the alternator last year. The police department added the bracket to install the larger alternator onto the car for the experimental radar equipment they were using at the time. But at some point in time the support brace was removed from the back of the alternator and the bracket failed. I couldnt find a replacement bracket at a reasonable price. So I just put an original style alternator back on the car. Since the alternator was new it made the rest of the accessories looked really bad. At some time the air pump was deleted and they had the belt routed incorrectly. This was running the water pump in the incorrect direction. I got an air pump delete pulley for it and since I dont know if they switched to a clockwise rotation water pump I have decided to get a new aluminum water pump for it as well.

The last photo was a very pleasant surprise. The car still has its numbers matching engine in it after over 100,000 miles of police duty and then another 75,000+ miles in the civilian world.

 

I’ve been going since 2022. This will be my first in my camaro. My two sons will be with.

 

You know, if you go down rt 4 in Hellinois, at a certain spot, you aren't far from my place

 

Sounds like an invitation for us all to stop by your place and see all your cool stuff...

Lol

 

If I'm home, definitely welcome to swing by the junkyard

 

​​​​​​​I definitely plan on swinging by with a certain part we've been trying to get together on!