Thread: I'm a proud owner of a 82 Z28

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Well, here it is. I went to get it this morning and it went pretty good, it actually fired right up. I got it all cleaned up and your always hoping for that diamond under the dust, well this one is more like a ruby It's pretty good for its age but when you find a barn car, it gets pooped on a lot by birds and stains the paint. The paint is getting a bit thin on the hood and it has seen it's fair share of sun. But all in all I'm happy with it. It defiantly needs a bit more power and it would be a blast to drive, so I might play with the 305 a bit , just to wake it up. I don't know what gears it has but with the 3 speed trans it runs about 2700 at 55 mph, so I might be putting my 700r4 in when I swap out the exhaust sometime. But honestly, I love the car even though its a gen 3.

Good looking car. I would guess that it has a 3.42 rear gear with the 2700 rpm cruise. Strange that it has a gear like that with a 3 speed. I wonder if it was changed at some point? I would have guessed a 2.75 to 3.08 for a car built in that time frame with a TH350.

She looks to be in good shape. Nice to see you enjoying it too.

Good looking Camaro and gorgeous countryside.

My T/A has 3.23 gears it does seem like the Camaro's are shorter. That's a good thing,I thought they would be 3.08 or 2.73 also so now I won't have to change em. I tried checking if has posi and I'm still not sure, It usually leaves two strips but not always. I do live in a nice part of the area around here, we're on hill and all the trees in the far back ground of the first pic is a small river that runs by us. It's exceptionally green here for this time of the year. The rain shut off here around the end of June which was too early. Now it's been raining like crazy for the last 3 weeks. Too late to help the crops anymore but a nice reserve for next year and everything is so green.

The Camaro sure cleaned up nicely! At least there weren't tenants in it that ruined the interior and stunk it up. It sure is weird how all the grass is growing now like new grass and the leaves are about to fall due to so much lack of moisture.

Originally Posted by 40FordDeluxe

The Camaro sure cleaned up nicely! At least there weren't tenants in it that ruined the interior and stunk it up. It sure is weird how all the grass is growing now like new grass and the leaves are about to fall due to so much lack of moisture.

There must have been one or two tenants in there, what they left behind was moldy so I think Its been awhile. If I have time the interior will get pulled this winter to undo some teenage stereo wiring and clean up any mouse remains.

Good grief, I don't think the guys at GM knew anything, didn't try or didn't care. " high performance exhaust " with 90 deg angles, really how dumb are they. I need different exhaust for sure to help this thing breath. My evil plan is to put the 350 vortec in here with decent cam, put all the smog stuff back on for original looks and make a mild sleeper out of it. Does any of that air pump egr stuff really hurt performance or is it just the clutter people hate.

Originally Posted by 53 Chevy5

" high performance exhaust " with 90 deg angles, really how dumb are they.

Does any of that air pump egr stuff really hurt performance or is it just the clutter people hate.

Those 90* joints remind me of the "custom" exhaust that was under the Healey when I got it. It had a 3" single exhaust with one side ran at a 90 into the the other. Crazy.

As far as the EGR and air injection goes, it's hard to believe that diluting the intake charge with exhaust and blowing air back into the exhaust ports will not hurt power. Maybe it doesn't, but I would have to see dyno runs on the same engine with and without to believe it.

The exhaust manifolds I've looked at that are for air injection have nozzles that aim the air straight back into the exhaust port. Looks like it would form an eductor type of pump and force exhaust gases back into the port.

Most of the air injection engines had retarded timing at idle, too. The idea was to dump most of the fuel/air mix into the exhaust manifolds at idle and burn it off with the air injection. That's why these engines ran ported vacuum to the distrbutor. They weren't concerned with what this stuff did to power or under hood heat. Whether you think this was a good idea or not, it was all about passing the EPA tests.

Ok, I gotta rethink this whole it's a survivor thing, there seems to be lots of these cars with 40k miles on them for reasonable prices so maybe turning it from a survivor to a fun car isn't a sin. I probably should move this to the engine form but are shorty headers worth it or are manifolds almost just as good. I would like to get 325 -350 hp out of the 350 but I really don't want to screw around with leaky headers all the time. Long tubes under that car looks to be out of the question due to the routing of the exhaust and the floor pans.

The best headers I've used on a SBC were the Headman Elites. They use ball and socket arrangement on the collector and no collector gaskets. Use top lock all steel lock nuts and you should be good. They may need a little re tightening after a few miles, but should settle in pretty quick.

The flange gaskets I've had the best luck with are the multi-layered aluminum ones. Mr Gasket made the ones I've used, but there are others. These have a sort of honeycomb construction and can deform to seal very well, at least on the engines I used them on. They will need to be retightened a few times, but once they take a set, I rarely had them leak.

Considering how bad those 305 exhaust manifolds were, even shorty headers would be an improvement.

Wow, those do look good, I like the ball type seal a lot. A little spendy but worth it. Looks like exhaust will be about as expensive as the motor build for this thing. I'll probably start with the exhaust for now and do the motor swap sometime later. Now I gotta figure out how to hide a 1000 or more bucks in exhaust from my wife this winter

double post

Survivor? Keep all the parts on a shelf for that nut ball that will want it that way and do what you need to especially since we don't have emissions testing for the time being. I remember putting that 3" SS exhaust kit on Aaron's Cross fire car. What a joy that deal was.

As far as the collectors go, use V bands. That should reduce possibilities for those to leak.

Since I work in water and waste water plants, one of our favorite sayings is, "the solution to pollution is dilution".. And that's what I've always seen as the purpose of those air pumps. Want to clean up the tailpipe? Push some air into the system! Guaranteed to lower the tailpipe number.
It was claimed to create an "afterburner effect" and the high temps would burn off the "unburnt" fuel... Yeah, right!

At least the PCV system would give you visible results. And for the better too! I'm old enough to remember cars with the road draft tube and smelling the fumes from the motor while waiting at a light.. no thanks, I'll run a pcv and enjoy breathing.