85 Z28 Restore
 

Hey everyone, I have had this 85 since February 2010 and am just now starting a thread on it (I apologize for the delay)
I bought the car for $700, it was a running 305 that shifted fine and ran decent, drove reliably and did not have much in the way of issues that I could tell. After purchase I was actually able to drive it home (which I did, probably not the smartest thing but it took me the 10 miles back home) It did run noisy, but I narrowed it down to a blown out exhaust manifold gasket. After which I promptly went to wash it, mean black stains on the blue paint from sitting for years, but came off without a hitch. I then took it across the street to pick up a new set of tires, the old ones were hard from the years of not being readily driven lol

I then drove the car as was to Durham from Raleigh to a shop I trusted to give her a once over and get an overall tune up. The exhaust manifold gasket was also fixed at this point, so it was tremendously quieter with the aide of it now being a closed system to the Borla muffler at the rear! Surprisingly it had a Borla and 18" Crager s/s rims that came with the car, as well as an extra set of t-tops for the $700 price lol
After this, I began driving it readily back and forth to Wilson (an 1.5 hour drive) about 4 times a week. On these trips I calculated a mpg of about 19 miles to the gallon, which I thought was pretty good from a 25 year old quadrajet carbureted 305 with full emission equipment!

At this point I felt it a good time to analyze a smell that arose around December 2010 while I was at drill. I started the car and let it sit for a bit while it warmed up, to my surprise when I stuck my head in there was like a misty smoke and a rich smell of hot antifreeze... Tada, new issue! I looked over and found a drop or 2 on the passenger carpet and knew it was instantly the heater core (had a 93 s10 that went through 2 of those lol)
The next day I started taking things apart from under the dash and what I found was a pool of coolant in the air box under the heater core housing. It was a bit difficult to get to, but once I got the core out I could see the areas of issue.
My fabrication (jerry-rigging) skills shined through in my attempt to fix this issue with an aftermarket Heather core I purchased from advance auto! Turned out the new one was lighter, slightly different dimensions, and couldn't fit in the original bracket/housing, so I made my own (pictures soon to come once I figure out how to post them in the thread)