I have a RS 1969 camaro with the factory big block heater, has the big block frame mounts, tach. Multileaf springs. But it dies not have disc brakes or power brake booster. I need to know could it be an SS or could you get a big block in an RS car and it not be an SS? I have always thought that all big blocks were SS and had to have disc brakes? So what is the case? Thanks

 

if it was a factory big block car then it was a ss car. the only exception was that the car is a copo car. but im pretty sure all copos were non rs cars. theres only 1 zl1 rs car. so you have a rs/ss car. i know on a 69 there is a x code on the trim tag that led to either ss or z28 but i dont know what code is what.

 

On later 69's, an SS 350 had the X11 code, bb 396 did not. But X11 doesn't automatically mean SS. Disc brakes were an automatic requirement with the 69 SS model, in 67 & 68 was optional. SS also got a 12 bolt rearend. The tach was not an automatic SS option, that too was an available option.

 

Thanks for your response. The reason I am confused is because my car is a 1969 but without the x code. All indications point to it being an SS/RS car but it does not have the power disc brakes on it, and I find it hard to believe that someone would have gone through al the trouble to convert it to a drum brake car! Although I have seen some people pull all the disc brakes and power steering off to make a drag strip car out of it, but mine looks like it came with drum brakes. I could be wrong. Any way to tell if it originally had disc brakes?

 

People do weird things. Another thought is possibly the original front clip and/or subframe was damaged, and replaced with one the owner could get his hands on, which happened to have drum brakes. I don't see anybody going out of their way to purposely convert from disc to drum.

 

Everything looks to be original and never wrecked. I had a guy years ago Pay me to change the factory 4 piston disc brakes from his 1967 camaro to drum brakes so it would be lighter on the track. I still have the original brakes! From that car. He was going to trash them.

 

There you go, you can put disc brakes back on your car, and you'd be creating balance in the universe!

 

Well I am sure my car came with a big block. But! I am just wanting to know if all factory big block camaros were an SS? Or did GM make a big block camaro that was not an SS?

 

all 396 camaros were all ss cars. the only way a camaro came with a big block without being a ss car was the copo camaros. which i dont think yours was. the copos were factory 427 camaros that were built in the backdoor of chevy. but the are very rare and are hard to verify without original documents.

 

You've got to remember that there were well over a 100,000 69 camaro's built. Parts used to be plentiful and cheap. It would have been easy to convert a small block to a big block in the early seventies. It would all look original 30+ years later.