Right, the VIN won't tell what engine he has, but it will tell whether the car really is a Z28 or an RS. If it shows an RS, that will at least solve the mystery of why the TBI engine setup.

 

Ok, good news and bad on the vin #

The 8th digit in my vin is a F this means that the original engine that came in this body was the 5.0 LB9 which was a TPI motor, but clearly this motor I have in it is a LO3 because that's the only motor they made that year with TBI.

So mystery solved! It's a Z28 with RS guts!

 

Mystery is not solved....The VIN did show you what engine was originally in the car, but it did not tell you it was a Z. You will need to look at the RPO codes to determine what model you have. I have a hunch you are going to find you have an RS. It would make very little sense to swap a TPI setup or full motor to a TBI setup....seems easier to swap some badging to me.

 

and then you get people like me who have swapped out center consoles so the stickers have been changed.

Unless you can prove it's a complete numbers matching car who knows what has gone on over the past 20-30 years? if you want to know about the engine, check the castng numbers. If you want to know which heads you have, check those casting numbers but you have no way to know if any work has been done to them etc.

What is it that Forrest said about life and a box of chocolates? Well, it's the same with old cars.

 

Correct, the F in your VIN tells the car came with the LB9 305, which was the Z28 option. If you had an E in the VIN, that would mean you had the L03 RS model. So you clearly do have a Z28 car, but someone changed either the intake or the whole engine from an RS, and the hood. Now you'll want to check the numbers on the engine to find out just what was changed: Camaro Decoding help on Chevy-Camaro.com

 

The lb9 only came in z's far as I can see, as far as the engine being swapped as well as the hood one can only guess what this car has been through. Some one down the line of owners might have screwed the engine up really bad and had no choice but to put a more readily available engine in it's place (lo3),I can't see anyone changing the intake for the hell of it, there is just no way to tell the history of what's been done to a used car. Anyhow, the 305 is gonna get the boot when I get to that stage of my build anyhow. I am happy that it is a z though. I once owned a firebird formula '91 and this engine, whatever it is, has defiantly got some more zip to it than that car had.