Growing up on Lawn Guyland, New York, my first car was an $800, rust-free, white, 6-cyl / powerglide ‘68 Camaro with black vinyl top and interior. I say “rust free” because extensive rust problems came with the car, at no extra charge. I bought it from one of my high school teachers, as she was going through a nasty divorce. My late father (Who passed away in February 2006) owned a Marina at the time, and had a customer who had re-powered his boat with a pair of new engines, so, Dad gave me one of the old engines (yes - the one with the needed clockwise crankshaft rotation!). So, the car only remained a six for about 3 weeks or so. The “new” engine was a Crusader Marine 454.

We rebuilt the engine and made the needed mods, and put it in the Camaro, where it proceeded to destroy three transmissions (two powerglides, and one TH350). The cam that was in the engine was of unknown specs, but it made quite a bit of power. It had a monster of a holley DP on it, too.

My brother in law and I converted the car to a Muncie 4-speed in early 1986. On the “maiden voyage”, during a hard 1-2 shift, the seatback bolts of the bench seat snapped and sent both of us into the back seat, where suddenly we found ourselves admiring the headliner, with the car probably doing 50 or so MPH. We managed to climb forward and get the car safely off to the side of the road and, when we stopped hyperventilating, we managed to have a pretty good laugh.

I continued to drive the car as regular transportation to school and work until a 1986 Monte Carlo SS became my daily transportation, relegating the camaro to “fun car only” status. I sold the 68 in 1993, in order to raise cash to buy my first house.

So…Fast Forward to a new life in CA starting in 1997. Career and Family issues prevented another Camaro acquisition, but, having had the 68, I was still hooked, and I was always on the lookout for another first gen Camaro.

In 2002, I found out about a “rust-free” 69 Plain-Jane 350 Camaro in the Newport Beach area in 2002 from a friend of a friend, so I bought a one way plane ticket down to Orange County and I decided that, If the car was what I wanted, and it looked like it would make the 360 mile trip home, I was going to buy it. As it turned out, the car was indeed as it was represented to be, and, it was gloriously free of rust by any kind of standard that I had ever been familiar with on the East Coast. Aside from a tendency of the car doors to magically lock themselves at the most inopportune times, and the “lived-in, old-man-with-an-apparent-thing-for-chili-and-a-love-of-dogs” smell of the interior, we (the car and I) made the trip back home together without any drama. We bonded well.

The 69 is (well, it was) an original LM1 car, 255HP 350 with a powerglide and the original open 12-bolt rear end. The aforementioned gentleman who I purchased it from had owned it for over 20 years and was using it for all of that time as his daily driver. It had received one (Earl Scheib?) repaint sometime around 1980, in the original Olympic Gold. It still has its CA black/yellow plates issued in 1968.

I removed the original 350 and set it aside, and built a roller-cammed 383 stroker for it, with a stout bottom end and a set of TFS Aluminum heads, with a pretty tame carbureted induction setup with a 150HP N2O plate. It probably makes somewhere around 450HP (sans N2O). I converted the car to MT and installed an LT1 style T56, with guidance from Marlan Davis' CC article, farming out only the driveshaft cut and re-balance. The clutch is a Centerforce dual friction setup with a McLeod actuator cylinder. I built the trans crossmember from a TH400 unit, and it looks quite a bit like it probably would if GM had made it, I think.

The brake system is C5 corvette front disc, LS1 rear disc, with Hydroboost assist. Suspension mods are simple, Hotchkis 2" drop springs up front, upper arms relocated via the Guldstrand mod, Energy Suspension bushings, 1.125" Hotchkis sway bar. Out back are DSE 3" drop leafs. Shocks are Edelbrock up front and KYB out back (for now). Speedtech supplied the solid body mounts, and the front spindle brackets for the C5 calipers. I rebuilt the 12-Bolt and added a powertrax unit and 3.89 R+P.

Wheels are Boyds, variation on "Dictator", FRONT: 18"x8" with 4.75" BS, REAR: 18"x9" with 5.5" BS. Tires are 245/40R18 Front, 275/40R18 rear.

The idea (note…I said “idea”) on this project was to keep it at very least semi-driveable, all of the way through the project mechanically, and then when basically satisfied with the mechanical modifications for the most part, blow it apart for paint. Well, I kept it drivable for about a year.

With the car now fully apart, Fast Forward again, to July of 2006, and all of the usual “might-as-wells”, the influence of spending too much time on lateral-g.net, and the overwhelming desire for MORE POWER have completely taken over.


To date, the changes to the above have been:
 

• The car now has an RS front end with an original Endura bumper (Hey, why not complicate things?!)

• Rotisserie/media blasted (Hey, you might as WELL, right???)

• DSE SFCs

• DSE Quadralink / Minitubs / 335s

• DSE 9” rearend housing / 3.73 / Detroit TruTrac

• S&W racecars cage

• Banks Twin Turbo, 406 Motown with Brodix 11X CNC’d heads / BS3 EFI

• Front subframe is… still undecided!

• New (New) Wheels are… still undecided!

Anyway, that about sums things up….for the moment at least. Or until such time as my wife shoots me dead, or the car gets finished, whichever comes first.