This is my project car, a 1986 Camaro RS. I consider this to be it's second reincarnation and refer to it as Phase 2. Phase 1 was when it was V6 powered and those pages are on this other link. Previous build's Cardomain Site . This link is still valid to see some of the suspension and chassis stuff I've done. This page will be dedicated to my current build/status. The motor is a 1978 rebuilt 454 from a Chevy heavy 3/4T pickup. It is mated to a TH400 transmission that will spin a 9-bolt chevy rear end with 3.42 gears eventually.
Page 1 will be current modifications and project stuff, Page 2 will be how it sits at the moment.
ENGINE NUMBERS
Heads: 353049
Oval port, open 122cc chamber, 255/119cc ports, 2.08/1.72 Valves
Block: 361959
2 bolt main
Crank: 3530392
454, cast
Rebuilt by:
Ten Eng Corp
40123
Tacoma WA 98411
Events/Clubs Participating in:
Evergreen Speedway
Chuckanut Sports Car Club
Video Links
DailyMotion Video's
Here's the old motor. Lots of room in the front for something useful. Like two more cylinders?
Potential power plant.
You will need one of these too. It's an oil pan for a chevelle. I think it's a 4 quart pan? The truck pan is too deep and too big to fit around the camaro cross member. You can see the differences. Since the camaro will never see the wide open hill climbs (not yet at least) as a heavily loaded truck, I'm sure it will be fine with the small capacity pan.
Always take the distributor cap off, just in case! I also had to remove the window wiper motor. When you move the motor back and up on the motor mounts the valve cover hits the motor. It fits in there other than that.
The truck header on the driver side actually fit! I had to notch the driver side crossmember a little but it fit for the most part. The only problem is how far down it goes. So I cut it to make it shallower and also moved the collector forward a little bit to allow the wye pipe to cross over at the inspection cover on the transmission.
The passenger side header was a different matter. I had to custom fab that one almost all the way. I ended up cutting the header up and turning the collector around from down and back to over and down. The end result was a near stock header collector location.
Another thing to fab up was the transmission crossmember. The TH400 is a bit longer than the 700R4. You can buy one already made from www.spohn.net but I enjoy building things, so here we go. I started by cutting two lengths of angle iron and drilling mounting holes. From there I used a length of channel to pick up the transmission mount starting from the passenger side. Reason being is that the driver side has a funky location and is lower than the tranny mount. So after that I tacked in the down bend to meet the other angle iron.
Here is the preliminary piece. Reason I say preliminary is because this does not have the provisions for the torque arm.
Holds the transmission up there pretty good and high. Almost stock with the tranny pan sitting fairly level. I used the stock rubber torque arm mount for the new mount. Just cut it up and welded it deep onto my new crossmember. Not ideal but it's better than stock since it's crossmember mounted.
Here you can see how close the water pump pulley is to the electric fan motor. They overlap by an inch but have about 1/2" between them! Amazing it all fits but it does. Now it just needs to run!
Got the wye pipe made today and put in. Quieted it way down from open headers. Also maintained 3" while only loosing 1" below the crossmember. This does make it the lowest thing on a car under 5" to the ground effects.
Summit scoop http://store.summitracing.com/partdetail.asp?autofilter=1&part=SUM%2DG3019%2D1&N=700+115&autoview=sku Overall this scoop is 6" lower than the Mr. Gasket one which is important since this is on a passenger car. These pictures are with it on the stock intake.
My new intake. Edelbrock Performer RPM Air-Gap.
The height difference between the stock intake with spread/square adapter and the Air-gap are about an inch.
