Evolution of Jamie's 1979 Camaro Z28 This is the story or evolution of my 1979 Camaro which is also known as Christine named by my girlfriend after the Steven King book. She says I spend more time with the car than I do with her which is bullshit *lol*. Enough about that let's get to the details of the car. The writing of this story is in no particular order but my goal is to tell the story in chronological order from modification to modification. Saying what makes power and what doesn't make power.

The car is a pig and weighs 4000 lbs give or take a little depending on the amount of gas in the tank. The lightest the is 3956 lbs and the heaviest is 4020 lbs as measured by the scale at Indy500 Dragway.

The car was originally brown with a tan interior.
The first thing I did was to pull the motor and rebuild it. The rebuilding consisted of the block being bored 0.030" over and forged pistons installed, the heads had a general valve job done on the stock heads. Those heads had stock 1.94" intake and 1.5" exhaust valves. A Competition Cam 268H, the cam has 218 degrees of duration @ 0.05" and .454" valve lift on both intake & exhaust with a 110 degree lobe separation. The intake was an edelbrock performer RPM dual plane intake manifold, shitty manifold I hate edelbrock stuff personally most everything I have bought from them sucks but that's another story. A new style Holley 600 mechanical secondary carb. After the rebuild I though the car would be bullet fast but I was sadly disappointed. I never took the car to the track like this but I new it wasn't very fast. This was mainly due to the exhaust manifolds feeding the stock exhaust system.

Then I put on Hooker competition headers with 1 5/8" primary tubes and 3" collectors which fed a into a JC Whitney dual exhaust kit, true 2 1/4" dual exhaust. After this installation I thought the car was the fastest thing on the planet. That is until I went to the track and got spanked by some 5.0 Mustangs. The car in this configuration was approximately a low 15 second car.

Then the NEED FOR SPEED hit and after reading an article in Hot Rod Magazine I decided to put on a set of Competition Cams 1.6" roller tip rockers. This was a noticeable improvement in seat of the pants feel. But this lead to a rocker stud loosening up and a lobe on the camshaft / lifter fail, both the cam and the lifter got chewed up. My recommendation is install a set of screw in studs with guide plates when running anything over stock ratio, 1.5", on a small block chevy.

Now I had to put a camshaft in the motor so I decided this would be a good time to put on a set of Dart II sportsman heads with 72 cc combustion chamber giving me 9.5:1 compression ratio. These heads were relatively new on the market at the time. The car ran low 14's in that configuration.


A funny story about that time to the track: I was staged ready to race this Mustang 5.0 LX and right before we ran an oil down on the track occurred so they backed us up and told us to shut down the motor while they cleaned up the track. I lifted the hood so the motor would cool and the guy in the 5.0 came over and we started talking. He asked me what the car ran and I told him that I had no idea, this was the first time running it with the new heads. He went on to say that his 5.0 LX with slicks on it, open headers, cold air, computer chip, and underdrive pulleys blew cars like mine off all the time, I had to bite my tongue not to say anything, man was he an asshole!! By this time the track was cleaned up so I got in the car and raced him, wouldn't you know I beat him, not by much but I won that's all that counts. He was pretty quiet when I saw him chillin on da side of the strip after da race. STupid ass muthafucka should have knew i was gonna smokehis fucking ass *lol* After driving the car like that for a while the motor started to hesitate and give me problems. I trying different things I finally decided to pull the intake off and just look and wouldn't you know that I cracked the block. A line of white milky stuff, coolant leaking through the block from the water jackets, was on the inside of the block valley, shit!!! While looking I noticed the edelbrock intake manifold did not line up with the heads. The manifold was allowing oil to enter the intake ports in from the valley. So now I pulled the motor out again and I got a 4 bolt main from a local machine shop that was already done. I went to Nat's racing engines in N. Swansea, MA - (508) 336-4142 and he ported the cylinder heads, balanced the rotating assembly, and was going to machine the intake manifold to fit the heads. Before he did this he recommended that I change the manifold and recommended a Weiand 7530 single plane manifold, similar to the Victor Jr. intake. I took his advice and ordered the manifold. When I got the manifold I expected it would need to be machined also. Well it didn't, it fit perfectly to the heads, that's one of the reason's I do not recommend edelbrock parts. I put the motor together with new pushrods, Crane 1.5" aluminum roller rockers, Crower 00210 hydraulic camshaft, and Total Seal zero gap piston rings.



After that I decided to paint the car. The car was completely disassembled down to the shell and all of the paint was removed and then repainted black. When I had to pay him it really hurt but looking back I must say that it was worth it.

The next thing was a posi rear end. After looking around for a while I found a 3.73 10 bolt posi out of camaro, I forgot how much I paid for it but it wasn't too bad. I had to put new axles, wheel bearings, and brakes. I had it sandblasted and I painted it. After that I put in a higher stall torque converter, an 11" Hurst converter that stalled to about 2500 rpm. In this configuration I took it to the wheer we drag race and kicked fucking ass. About this time I found a set of Recaro seats in the used car magazine and bought them for about $300. The seat have a grey cloth center and leather exterior and they really make the interior. The seats came out of a Volkswagen Wolfsburg edition Jetta.



My next go fast part was the Flowmaster Force II exhaust kit for 70-81 camaro's. After putting it in the car it felt alot faster and the extra power caused the death of the Turbo 350 transmission. I never made it to the track with the Turbo 350 and Flowmaster exhaust and I really wish I did because I think it was faster with the Turbo 350 than the 700R4. The next project was to put in an overdrive transmission. I decided on a 700R4 transmission. I got a transmission from a junkyard out over a 91 Camaro with low miles on it. I had the transmission rebuilt with extra clutch discs, kevlar band, billet servo pump, and a TCI 2800 rpm lockup stall converter. The lockup is done by a manual switch and a GM brake switch. It basically works that the converter will lockup when I push the button and will unlock when I hit the brakes and/or turn the switch off. It works OK but sometimes I forget I have the switch in lockup at a stop light. As soon as I let off the brakes the car goes into lockup and bogs the motor. My next go fast part was the addition of a Nitrous Oxide system from NOS. The system is a plate, super power shot setup. At first I started with the 100 HP then to 125 HP to 150 HP and presently the system is jetted at 180 HP. The nitrous system is wired with a arming switch on the dash which feeds the go switch on the B&M Megashifter which triggers a relay which is connected to the solenoids. Check the Nitrous system page detailing the Nitrous install. Note the juice is a very, very, very fun toy. The car is pretty fast on the bottle. I have alot of fun when I'm racing someone and just stay right with him thinking he might beat then I mash the gas and hit the juice smoking the tires as I walk away from him. It's pretty cool but it's too tempting to hit the juice all the time and it is a pain in the ass to get the bottle refilled all the time.
The most recent mods I've done is to install an Accel 300+ spark box and timing computer. Installed electric fans which don't cool the motor even with the brand new Griffin aluminum radiator and an Edelbrock aluminum water pump which is only 3 months old and is leaking coolant already, Damn Edlebrock parts---I should have know better.

My next new toy was a G-Tech Pro g-meter. Check out the write up on how accurate the G-Tech Pro is compared to the lights at New England Dragway. It's hard to notice but the gauges are auto meter's which I put in the factory location. That took a long time to do, but it looks nice not having gauges all over the place. The only factory gauges that I have are the tachometer and the speedometer.

My next modification was a copy of Mr Big Blocks cold air induction the he did. I ordered a Harwood fiberglass hood from Jegs and made the cowl functional. A note about the Harwood hood it is a very nice hood, it's expensive but it is much nicer than the other cheaper Unlimited hoods. If your thinking about cheaping out and going for the Unlimited hood I recommend bite the bullet and cough up the extra dough for the Harwood it is a nice piece, so far anyway.

Now to the present I just recently blew up my 700R4 transmission. I bought a parts 89 Firebird Formula with a 305 TBI motor with a 700R4 that I raped and put in Christine. I'm thinking about how I want to address the transmission issue.

This brings me to my next projects which is stealing the serpentine drive from the Formula and I'm seriously thinking about putting the TBI computer and getting the Howell upgrade and converting to fuel injection.

Here is the car's present configuration:
The motor is a .030" over 350 w/ 9.5:1 compression, TRW forged flat top pistons, rotating assembly balanced, Total Seal zero gap rings, mildly ported Dart II sportsman heads, 2.02" intake - 1.6" exhaust stainless steel valves. The heads were ported by Nat's racing engines in Seekonk, RI. The porting consists of bowl blending, mild reshaping of the combustion chamber, and minor work to the exhaust short turn. Nat recommended this porting for a street car. It has a Crower 00210 hydraulic camshaft with 222 degrees duration @ 0.05 w/ 0.475" lift intake - 230 degrees duration @ 0.05 w/ 0.454 exhaust - and a 108 degree lobe separation. This cam pulls approximately 12" of vacuum @ 900 rpm. Crane aluminum roller rockers, Weiand 7530 single plane intake manifold, new style Holley 600 mechanical secondary. NOS cheater Nitrous system jetted to 180HP level, upgraded from a super power shot system.

Hooker competition 1 5/8" primary tube headers and a Flowmaster exhaust system.

700R4 Transmission with a 3000 rpm TCI lockup stall converter, stock GM 10 bolt posi & axles w/ 3.73 rear end gears, and 28" tall street tires.

With the motor in the configuration as above and the Nitrous jetted to 150HP level, super power shot solenoids, the car ran in the 11's easily

Ok I think I have said enough about the life of my camaro but now i have to say this, I still have the same camaro but its yellow now with a new motor, new interior, and a lot of changes that i don't even know where to begin. My camaro is fuckin tyght as hell so go peep the new improved

Click below

Christine.