The RX7 thread made me realize I don't really have any documentation of the camaro build out on the internet. I figure this is as good of a place as any to put it. It began with a cryptic ad in the Dallas Morning News classifieds. "92 camaro, green, v8, 972-XXX-XXXX" I call on it, and it turns out it's a green with tan leather convertible. After going and looking at it with St.John, I decided I needed it. The girl I bought it from and her father both thought it was a "mean" sounding car. St.John and I disagreed since we had driven over there in his Dad's 65 impala convertible equipped with a nasty big block chevy with dual 4" exhaust. A few days later, with the loan terms worked out with the Bank of Dad, I was the proud owner of a 92 RS Camaro convertible equipped with a whopping 175hp TBI 305 backed by a 700r4 auto hooked to an awesome 2.73 geared peg leg 10 bolt. Here she is on day one:
http://i186.photobucket.com/albums/x...aro/camtop.jpg
After the first day of driving it, I realized the EGR valve was jacked. Once that was replaced, the engine returned to it's 175hp of awesomeness. I figured an engine swap was in the future for this car but financially I didn't see this happening for quite a while so I did what I could to get the most out of the car. I did the normal tune up/maintenance to the car along with a k&n filter, a throttle body spacer, a set of headers that I got a sweet deal on, along with a high flow cat, 3" exhaust, and a flowmaster muffler. I swear, it was the toughest sounding 305 ever to fear a honda accord with a v6. Yes sir, my pimp hand was indeed strong.
http://i186.photobucket.com/albums/x.../camstreet.jpg
So I cruised the car this way for awhile, even attemping to run down the 1/8th mile, mustering a horribly slow 10.ish run or two. I didn't care, I had a convertible that sounded good. So one fateful saturday night, my friends and I decided to cruise out to Keller's Hamburgers in dallas for their cruise night. All was well until one of my best buddies, Denton, rearended my camaro with his TJ on 35's in his driveway when a cow from his pasture blocked his driveway and I had to slam on my brakes. Needless to say, I was not happy.
This however started a new chapter for the camaro after St.John got me hooked up with a grumpy New Yorker that ran a rod shop. A month or so lafter, the camaro was back on the road and I had a new job, building hot rods with a potentially bi-polar new yorker. So after this point, it became more of a priority to make my car cooler than it was. Luckily, about this time the torque converter of the mighty 700r4 decided to take a dirt nap. It might have had something to do with St.John and I screwing with manually locking the converter via a wire jumped in the ALDL port, but that wasn't something we felt like mentioning to my father at the time. I had always wanted the car to be a 5spd because of my hatred for all things automatic at the time, so my father entertained the idea of a 5spd conversion. After going to multiple car shows and seeing LT1s starting to make a big splash on the scene, we had decided that if we were going to go to the trouble of putting a 5spd in the car, we "might as well" do a couple of other upgrades while we were at it. Soon, I had somehow convinced my dad that an LT1/T56 6 speed swap was the way to go. I honestly think that it might have been like pouring gasoline on a fire when it came to convincing him, but none the less, with a generous loan once again from the Bank of Dad, I was on the way to finally not fearing a v6 accord.
After locating a donor drivetrain from a 97 Ram Air Trans Am, I was on my way. This is day one of the tear down:
http://i186.photobucket.com/albums/x...amaro/cam1.jpg
http://i186.photobucket.com/albums/x...amaro/cam5.jpg
http://i186.photobucket.com/albums/x...amaro/cam6.jpg