Summary so far of my car.

Rebuilt the rear axle with richmond racing gears, eaton dual clutch differential kit, and I forget who it's from for the solid pinion spacer and bearing kit.

Proshaft steel thick wall driveshaft.

Performabuilt level 2 transmission, FTI street brawler 2800RPM converter.

JL C3 component drivers, and Alpine PDR-v75 amp. Some random eBay CD changer location mounted box and sub.
Random Pioneer head unit, metra wiring harness to replace my hack-job factory stuff.

Katech manual tensioner.

Full BMR suspension sans-sway bars.

'02 17" 10-spoke SS wheels and G-Comp 275mm tires.

eBay projector headlights and clear side lamp housings front and rear.

Poly engine mount + transmission, and all rear poly bushings.

Subframe connectors.
This thread's going to be some for me so I can keep track of everything, and a general poking ground for any questions I might have, that I can't find answers to, here in the vastly fulfilled forums you guys have already created here.

So, I picked up the 1998 after reading around about them, and decided that the Z28 I found was in pretty good shape, has low miles, and looked real purrdy. The extra set of factory Z28 wheels that came with the car, that had been re-finished with high gloss black weren't a bad deal either. A new set of tires on those, and barely used set on the chrome set that were on the car.

$6,500 and couple of weeks later, I'm driving back to Jacksonville from Valdosta.
Fast forward 2 hours, and some vibrations later, I hit a little bump in the road and all the lights go out inside, running tail lights are off, blinkers and nothing else were working anymore. High beams and windows were good, so I assumed fuses and nothing more.
After another week or so once we got back in port, I started it up (a rough start, barely had enough juice to roll the starter over!) and went to your standard Advance Autoparts store. A full fuse kit, and 20 minutes of cleaning terminals in the parking lot later, I thought it was all good. Now every time I tried turning the key, everything would die inside. Like... a dead battery. Fair enough, it fought to turn over pretty bad. Tried a jump, but it wasn't taking juice, I thought. Battery was ~5 years old, and was an old EverDumper 400a from WalMart.
GoldPlus 750a battery installed, no change. Would not roll over. Thought my starter now might have died.

Well, I remembered off of a few threads, that some guys were having issues with their ignition switches after having some water damage. Well, I just basically did what they did, and smacked it, then put the key back in. Roll over, engine running again. Ruh roh.

Fast forward again, a few days, get home to Tallahassee and start tearing the interior down with my father. Oh boy!! Rusty floor bits, rusty floor bolts, and seat guides, oh my!
The plug was corroded on the driver side seat, which explains why the motor stopped working. It was surprisingly corrosion and rust free on the guides and whatnot, so it must have been swapped out for a junkyard donor. Oh well. Passenger side got a treatment of PB blaster and some hammer tapping love, works okay now. Rear seats were taken out and re-mounted, as the bolts were missing.

Stereo was a mess, the previous owner to the old man I bought it from, was cheap, and just cut the GM wiring harness and hand-tied/soldered connections to the head unit to get the job done. That, and a jumper running the battery terminal in the in-dash fuse panel for power, and a jumper lead underneath the radio 15a fuse to get power to it. The passenger side door and sail panel were the only two functional speakers, everything else, including amp, was blown out. Those two were on their way as well.
Metra GM wiring harness, and a new single-din adapter with a pioneer bluetooth HU later, that's fixed. No more weird jumping connections and grounds. Ripped out all speakers, replaced the doors and sail panels with JL C3 component drivers, which have cone-mount tweeters to save on having to cut and mount stuff. Doesn't sound AS good as a $400 set of drivers, but it's infinitely better than anything a stock Monsoon system could bark out, so I'm happy with that.

They'll remain under-driven until after deployment, at which point the hatch panels will be getting custom mounts to fit more 6.5s component C3 drivers in there over the stock 4" co-axial speakers. This, coupled with a suitable amplifier, likely another JL competition series one, for the channels alone. I'll look into an 8" subwoofer with a 500w amp at a later date.


Drive train problems.

It currently has some pretty good (bad) vibrations around 80mph and up, and only under deceleration. When you give it some throttle again, it'll 'clunk' underneath, and the vibrations smooth out intermittently. Sounds like a text-book example of worn U-Joints to me. I'm going with some Moog non-greasable replacements for the front and rear of the drive shaft.
Shocks in the back, pretty froggy. They're stock, never been replaced. Sproing-dooing-aloiing! Going to get some decent new ones for back there.
Struts up front speak the same story. Pretty froggy. Sproing-aloing! Going to need some new ones up front there too.
Little bit more play in the steering than I would like, likely tie-rod ends. He included two new ones, though now they appear to be inner ends, not the outers. He said ball joints were new as well, but I don't know at this point. Probably going to just replace all of it. The control arms look fine up front, but if all that makes no difference, they'll get some new ones.

All of this is going to go in one order from Rock Auto, have it all shipped home where the car is now in Tallahassee. Throw it up on some jack stands, and have at it with dear old pops.


T-Tops have a very minor leak at the very front corner on the windshield on the driver side only, might just need some more adhesive holding the gasket down. They're all in good shape, still very flexible and in good shape. Not dried out and brittle at all, probably were replaced recently.


Engine is still good though, transmission is smooth shifting and noise free. Differential rolls nicely, doesn't have any oddities or bad noise from within. I'm going to just chalk it up to being an older car that didn't get enough love, and come on heavy with some new parts for now.

--edit--

I know I said I would get some pictures up to you guys, but it'll have to wait unfortunately. Didn't think about it when we were working on it this last weekend with our electrical and rust busting ventures.

 

yes how is it under the car ,if it .spent time at the beach can be like snow ,what is low miles ,you got alot going on there in the thread ,i made mistake of .not looking under the red one had rust like alot had to patch fall holes an permatex the whole underside ,but runs good still 3000.00 .miles in 2 months does not leak anything so far 91.000.$2800.been driveing it alot as time gets shorter up hear NE ? what it like under the car

 

When I had my head underneath there, everything looked skookum. No real rust, other than a few spots on the exhaust, which about every car is going to have at this age. The body is fine, and all the drive line looks okay, other than the U-Joints obviously. Sorry, failed to mention the mileage. When I bought it, it has 71,383 on the odometer. I figure that's pretty good with how old the vehicle is now.

 

Update here.

While I've been out here, and while we've had our limited internet access at sea, I've been looking more into the issue that I've had filling the gas tank.

When I bought the car, in Valdosta, I went to fill up, and everything was good. They had some pretty hootin' fast pumps out there too, only took about a minute to drop in somewhere around 20 gallons in my truck. Here in Mayport, the base pumps struggle to get me out of there in 5, lol.

Anyway.

I had the problem with the fuses giving up the ghost on me, then we went underway, etc. I filled up again after that was fixed up, and had a problem. The car was still warmed up, I had just stopped by the apartment to grab my gate key before they locked up for the night. Went to fill up, and it was just clicking off at the pump every time I went above half squeeze.
Really felt like the vent wasn't opening up all the way or something.


Reading more on it, it seems that from 1999-2002 the cars switched over to a plastic tank, and the 93-98 cars all use a steel tank, which appears to be smaller, and has the solenoid for the air vent incorporated into the tank itself.

There's a thread on ls1tech where a guy was saying that you should just dremmel out the filler hole a little bit more, which I would assume would help vent more, but that doesn't seem to be a proper fix to me.

Is this a sign that my solenoid isn't engaging the valve all the way, and that I'll need a new tank in the future? Or is this normal when the car is warmed up?if so, I guess I'll just need to watch how fast I'm filling it up when it's warmed up versus still cold.

 

have a look at 8 here https://camaroforums.com/forum/93-02...rt-here-38462/ also have you downloaded the factory service manual? https://www.mediafire.com/?40mfgeoe4ctti

 

Alright. Dad left me a message. He drove it to work, said it's really fighting to keep track over rough spots and bumps in the road. Feeling squirrelly, is the way he put it. Would that be a rack and pinion problem?

 

Could just need an alignment. You can use some fishing string or weed eater wire and some spring to make a at home alignment tool. This will get you close, but only effects the toe part of an alignment. It doesn't tell you camber/caster.

The way to do it is wrap the wire around the vehicle making sure it's as close to halfway up each tire/centerline of the wheel, without touching the body. Connect the ends together with the spring. You have the toe close when the string is touching both the front half and rear half of the tire with no gabs between the tire and string.

 

He said it's like it's trying to ****** the wheel around real bad when he hits some bad bumps and whatnot. That could be an alignment issue, but it kind of sounds like it could be more than that.

Again, can't really drive it myself to see what he's talking about, in Scotland right now. Lol

 

sounds like there may be excessive slop/play somewhere in the front. could be any one or all, tie rod ends, ball joints, bushings, steering box, wheel hub bearings worn.

 

Is it more like it tries to jerk the wheel out your hand when you go over a bump type situation or does it kind just shimmy the steering.

Jack up the car when you get a chance. Try rocking the tire left and right and then up and down. L/R would indicate bad tie rod, while up and down will point more towards the ball joints.