camaro71633

This is going to be long as I have had this car 5 years and have just now got around to making a build thread for it. I bought this 89 RS from a high school friend of mine the year I graduated (I am 24 now) He drove it jr and sr year in school but was tired of tearing up transmissions and rear ends with the high-hp 327 he had in the car at the time. He called me up one day and asked if I wanted his camaro without the motor and tranny for $100. Of course I did so I drove my pickup down and tow-chained it home. (my friend lived ~4 blocks away)

I did not have a job or very much money so it took a while for me to gather parts to get a motor in the car. My uncle had bought a older model chevy c30 flatbed that had a relatively new 350 crate motor in it. The trans had gone out and the truck was parked. A few weeks later he found a 1 ton dodge truck that ran for a good price so he was going to junk the chevy. I ended up buying it off him for junk price, pulling the motor, and junking it myself a few weeks later netting me a $50 350 crate motor.

I still did not have a trans that would work in the car so I hit up my local junkyard. The car was set up for a 350t trans. I ended up giving the yard a 93 Pontiac lemans that I was driving until the brakes and head gasket went. In exchange I got a turbo 350 trans, a set of camaro manifolds and cross over and a bunch of odds and ends I needed to put the motor in.

I got the car thrown together to test and make sure the motor and trans where solid and then I planed on pulling it back apart to do it "right". Well as it turns out I ran out of funds and motivation to work on the car so it ended up sitting in the garage for the better part of 4 years. As of now I have still not even transferred the title on the car it is still in my friends name.

So at the beginning of summer we needed to clean out the garage so I pulled the camaro out and decided it was time to do some work on it. The wiring was a mess the carb (qjet) flooded out and was a pos, the interior smelled like wet cat and was missing a few things. The first thing I did was to throw a summit racing stage1 intake and a holly 650 on it. Next I cleaned the interior the best i could. I had acquired some go-fast goodies in some trades I made while clearing out some junk from my garage. Included in this was a msd pro-billet distributor and a holley ignition box, another better working holey 650 and some other misc goodys.

This brings us to this past weekend. For whatever reason I was in the mood to work on the camaro so me and my friend Jim fixed up the under hood wiring the best we could with loom. Its still a mess being as this was a v6/fi car and is now carbed v8. I also did some more work inside replacing some broken or missing pieces. We had a minor catastrophe while testing out our wiring when the oil line on the mechanical gauge came off flinging oil everywhere inside the car.

Well for those of you still reading here are some pics of the car. I dont have any from when i first got it but it was in pretty nice shape. The only thing wrong outside besides the faded paint is a slightly mangles pass side fender. The only rust on the car is under the deck lid and a dime size spot on the drivers side fender. here is a short list of whats on the car

Motor/Trans:
GMPP 260 or 290 hp 350
Summit racing stage 1 intake
holey 650 sp
Flowtech shorties and y-pipe
Flow master cat back no cat
Stock 350 turbo trans using the B&M kit
Inside:
some kind of indiglow gauges
mechanical watter and oil gauges (will be coming out soon)
Sony mp3/cd player (forget modle #)
some kind of aftermarket speakers
custom box housing 2x12" waveform subs
outside is all stock


heres the car as it sat in the garage with the motor as it was when first put in

Here it is all dusty after being moved out of the garage.


Here is the engine after I put the carb and intake on

Here are some current pics of the engine and car.

Rich2279

iTrader: (7)

It is better late than never.... Looks like you have a good foundation to work with.

musclecar70sfan

iTrader: (1)

looks promising... keep it up!

camaronewbie

I still have so many things I want to do to my car, but for the most part it's done - fresh paint, motor runs good, interior fully restored - I can actually show up at a cruise-in or carshow with pride, and I've even entered a few and won a few minor awards.

The whole 5 years I spent on my car thus far drove me crazy - I always wanted more time, more money, faster shipping, more days off to get things done and get to where I am.

But - I must say, I'm also jealous of you - having a fresh build platform that's just begging to be worked on - just makes the gears start to grind in my head with all that can be done. I still work on mine alot, little things here and there, and like I said I still have alot to be done - high dollar things that my current employment (or lack thereof) won't pay for (doesn't that figure - all this time now and no cash!).

It's just weird that I spent 5 years biting my nails to get where I am, and that part of me wishes I was back where you are All I can say is have fun along the way, and enjoy it.

camaro71633

Well another year has gone by and it seems like I have had no time to work on my RS. The 350 started knocking so I pulled it out and replaced it with a 1970 307. This may seem stupid to some but I got the 307 for next to nothing (I might actually make money on the deal if i sell the powerglide it came with) and it has under 70k on it. It makes just as much hp (200hp/300tq) as the 305 that would have came in my car would have had and that is fine by me. I left the tiny 2gc 2bbl carb on it hoping it may get decent mileage allowing me to actually drive this thing some. I might have put 20mi on it in the 9+ years I have owned it.

The 350 I pulled out has a bad timing chain as it turns out. Stupid plastic gear and the chain has about 1/2" of slack in it. This thing will get fixed up and eventually thrown back into the car. Plans are to put a small cam and new timing set in it and maybe a decent set of heads if I can find some cheap. As for performance mods for the 307, I may swap to a performer carb and intake setup and a set of 305 heads with a small cam. I have everything here except the cam.

I have some more work to do under the hood, mainly just cleaning up and fixing some wiring. Inside needs vacuumed out after another incident with the stupid oil pressure line. To remedy that I bought a nice set of electric gauges from summit. I had hoped to get the factory ones working but something must be wrong with the cluster as the temp gauge stays maxed out and the oil one does nothing.


Just look at how tiny that inlet is on the air cleaner lol.

new gauges still need mounted and the wiring cleaned up.