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Hello Everyone. Hoping the site is active. I joined with intentions to both give helpful info and receive help while I refresh my 1998 Z28 Camaro.
A little background...In my early start of my career in 2016, I bought this 98 Camaro with the intentions to steal the LS and 6 speed for a 1968 Camaro basket case I still have. My daily driver died at the time so my only option was the Camaro. The car had 289K miles in the northeast winters. It had it's battle scars, but the car was mostly rust free other than some small holes in the floor boards, general surface rust and a bad passenger side rear frame rail due to mice packing it full of nesting material. To wrap it up the car never let me down once the entire time I drove it for 2 years. Fast forward after buying a house and working on my career I'm giving the Camaro a refresh to make it a fun driver as I feel it deserves it surviving the harsh northeast.
Gotta love an LS1, welcome to the site.
Lots of knowledgeable folks in here,be patient sometimes it takes a while for them to chime in but there's help to be had.
Just my opinion but keep the Ls in the camaro and get a 07 6.2. If you have deep pockets you can find a 6 speed for it The 6.2 is 430 HP at the crank. Steet-able 500HP is a CAM/headers and a tune away. If you really want to stick with an aluminum block for the lower weight just grab the 5.3 out of a trailblazer (LM7 I think). So many people car dismantling these LS1/6 speeds there value is going to go up. I keep seeing nice rolling chassis for under 2K. In some cases they are SS's, not that it matters much once the original motor is gone.
Nope, I have no plans to dismantle after it proved reliable and sentimental. I always wanted a late 4th gen. I fixed all of the rust, purchased all new body panels, I put a full Strano suspension package under it, 3 inch stainless exhaust and stainless Texas speed headers. I plan to repaint it irridium gray in the next few weeks and reassemble. This winter I want to pull the motor, redo the engine bay and add a cam, heads and intake. I wanna see how far this 289K motor will go!
Think real hard about what you are saying, You are going to add power to a 300k motor? Sure you do not have to rebuild it but at least inspect it, upgrade the oil pump, check bearing and wrist pins and some new rings. Remember the whole point of those go fast parts is to get more fuel and air in the cylinders which means more pressure, If the rings are worn they will leak even more under higher pressure. That means you will only get a percentage of the power of those go fast parts and the extra stress could cause the rings to degrade faster. At that point all the back pressure will start damaging seals.
If I have a stock high miles motor out the minimum I would do is replace the Oil pump, replace the rod bolts (Stock one tend to get stress crack in the threads over time) and a timing chain, clean the carbon from the rings check as much as I can, When a Aluminum block fails they tend to be non-salvageable. May also want to do some research on the 98 Ls1, I seem to remember an oiling issue on that years that requires the pan to be pulled to fix.
Imagine how mad you would be if the first time you floored it you blew out the front and rear main seals and ran out of oil in less then a minute. You may not even be able to salvage the new parts you just installed. I have seen that happen on a small block 350 with high miles. New heads and cam in one weekend, Scrapped by the next weekend. The only thing left was regret..
Hello
