This is my pride and joy. Its a 1983 camaro convertible fully dressed to look like a 1991 Z-28 convertible. I knew this was the car to build as a pro-street because of it's unique looks. A good buddy of mine, Chris, is a professional race car builder and if anybody is the guy to build a chassis for me, its Chris from (CJM CHASSIS) in Staten Island, NY (I'm gonna talk Ken the computer guy into building a web site for Chris). Chris builds a lot of pro-street (12.00 to 7.50 ET) race cars and they all HOOK!!!!
So for my Camaro, Chris built a 2x3 Art Morrison full length chassis with Art's s/s struts and a 4-link sheet metal rear end housing and is stuffed with 4.56 Richmond Pro Gears and 40 spline Strange parts. The automatic transmission is a turbo 400 with a dual sprage unit. Carl, the owner of Rossler transmission is also a racer. He's another great guy to deal with and the trans works extremely well. All of this turns Goodyear 16x33x15 racing slicks.
NOW we get to the good stuff! The engine is a 604 cu. in. bbc starts out with a 4.625 stroke, Callies crank, 6.735 Carrillo steel rods, bowtie block 4.560 bore, JE nitrous pistons, full ported Dart 360 heads with titanum 2.350 intake/1.900 exhaust flowing 430 cfm/315 cfm at 800 lift fully ported Dart intake with Carb Shop 1150 dominator. Bob, the owner of the Carb Shop is the best guy you will ever meet. He has done plenty of carbs for me from street to strip. Call him and you will see. I have Jesel rocker gear and belt drive. My machine work is done at various machine shops in NY and NJ and then I assemble the engine myself. The exhaust starts with 2-3/8" primary to a 4-1/2" outlet and 5 in., 2-chamber Flowmaster mufflers. The entire exhaust system is aluminum coated.
I also painted and assembled the entire car. I did all of the body work and painting (my fingers where sanded off). Now, this car is not light at 3400 pounds. Its all steel except for the hood and thats heavy because its made out of street fiberglass. It has all hinges, all lights, full interior, power windows and its a show car as much as a race car. After every 10 passes I put it up on all 4s and I wash and wax the bottom of this Camaro, (no kidding).
I run it on pure motor and best E-T to date is 8.94 153 mph. I tried nitrous for a short period so I installed a Big Shot plate. It ran 8.37 E-T on its 4th pass at 163 MPH, mmmmmmm smokinnn'. But I didn't want to keep running it that hard, so off with the NOS and back to pure, normally aspirated h-p and back to 9.00 E-T passes that are not so bad :-) I don't seem to run the car as much as I'd like to. I guess I hate to get it dirty, LOL!
Click to view a video of the Camaro launching (1.3mb)
Click to view the full video of the Camaro launching (6mb)
I sold this Camaro to Ray DeAngelis in Connecticut. We built a 598ci chevy engine with AFR Chevy style cylinder heads on pump gas and this car runs around on the street with 93 unleaded octane. This run also had a 400 shot of juice. Now that is smokin' for a street car.
Click below for a movie of the Camaro going 7.87@173mph (8mb) at the 2008 Shakedown at Englishtown run.
Stella doing some fine (Uh, I mean final) touches to the motor.
In the beginning at the CJM Chassis shop in Staten Island.
