ive spent about 40 hours so far working on the body work this summer... fender was rotted out pretty good so i cut out all the swiss cheese and got metal and hand shaped it to mach and welded it in, bondo'd, sanded, bondo'd, sanded etc then got it primed.... pic shows the outcome... pretty good id say for never doing body work before...



the other pic is the exhaust that i fabbed up... ive got hooker headers into 3" pipe to 4" by 24" cherrybombs with 24" long tips to finish it off... still gotta grind the welds smooth and wrap them cause they heat up the floor boards a bit

 

running a y-pipe? i kept the angles in mine to follow the floor pan, then just ovaled some pipe to exit at the right rear tire. i need the ground clearance its still been eyed by cops. that quarter looks good

 

no y-pipe... theres one run on each side... yeah in town i run it pretty low rpm and when i see a cop in goes the clutch so it just idles... open up the 4 barrel and she roars pretty loud!

 

well... its been quite some time since i have posted an update... i spent september october and november out of state for work, and during my 6 days off total during those months i got engaged and worked on the camaro

going back a bit these are the two fenders i got done before the weather turned cold



and i also got the hood done

pics of the engine install after rebuilding it





Then i started having troubles with the engine not wanting to run right and losing power so i installed a new distributer cap from Jegs, new MSD street fire plug wires and new plugs... that helped for about an hour of driving and then it was back to crap... so i decided it was getting close enough to winter to pull the engine and replace piston rings that we neglected when we initially built the engine... (we were trying to get the car back running so i could make it to work)... well after pulling the engine and getting it into my workshop (small shed) i pulled the heads off to find what i didn't expect... cylinders 2, 4, and 6 had small cracks in the cylinder walls... 4 was the worst... so i found a guy who had an engine out of an 89 iroc and picked it up 2 days later... i have stripped the block down to nothing and found a VERY clean engine... The heads have the 2.02 valves with 64cc combustion chambers and i have ported the intake runners (gotta get a couple attachments to finish but here's a before and after shot of the work


Im hoping this will help with some low end torque, my main goal is to maximize the amount of air the heads can flow from the intake, so i'm only tapering the edges to match the opening in the gasket, and i will do the same with the intake... thinking that this may change the manner in which the air fuel mix enters the combustion chamber and adversely affect the ability for the mix to completely burn fully across the chamber i'm going to step up to some E3 plugs after the initial 500 miles or so of the new engine running...

anybody got any advice on porting the exhaust as well or is that not quite as effective... im thinking that by porting the exhaust i may create a condition in which i need to be concerned with overscavenging

 

Also... i got some steel rims for my dads s-10 cause he hated these...

so i took them and the tires that were on them originally and gave him 4 steel rims and 2- 31x10.50x15 mud tires... since they wont fit the camaro...

gonna have these blasted and either coated or just paint them... hoping they look good on the camaro once i get her finished

 

keep the updates coming

Cami is an interesting name for a girl............I'm just assuming the fiance is the Camaro and Cami is the girl's name (all the money we dump into them you'd think we marry our cars)

nah

congrats on the engagement

 

TWO cracked engine blocks? TWO? You officially have worse luck than me. Good job staying positive and motivated....I would have used every curse word (probably would have invented a few) and have been *****ing the whole time. Hell, My girlfriend would have to leave me Id have been so miserable.

Anyways, keep moving forward man. Good job.

 

My fiance is actually the one who keeps me motivated... she tells me she'd love for me to take the car to shows and she wants to be the girl that goes along with the car... she loves seeing me happy and likes watching my progress unfold...

today i went out and did a little more work cleaning up the heads with a wire brush on the grinder... gotta get everything prepped for paint... anybody got any easy (relative) ways to get gunk and oil off the block in the tight crevices? i used a toothbrush and 2 cans of brakleen to do about 1/8 of the block and tired of scrubbing... and i dont really have a way to take it to have it dipped...

 

Nice. My girlfriend likes driving in my Camaro, but doesnt like being the pilot. She says the car is too long and she cant see past the hood.....but she LOVES my 72 Vette with the big block and 4 speed. That almost scares me....

 

Please don't sell the #8 rod, it is probably bent.