"Cone Slayer" Owner:   86_z28kid Year: 1986 Make: Chevrolet Model: Camaro Est.Horsepower: 400 Page Views: 226 Comments: 1 Comments Ratings: 0 votes   Overall: Rating : Exterior: Rating : Interior: Rating : Performance: Rating :

Well my story I'm sure starts off like most others. My name is Curtis and this is my 1986 Chevy Camaro Z28. Back in 2003 the car was purchased from the original owner. The old couple love the sports car but as times went by the car sat untouched. They wanted to see the car get a good home and made sure it would see the streets again. I looked the car over and saw it had 1 or 2 dents, no rust.. cant have rust when we dont get rain.. lol. I popped the hood and noticed that we already had one engine upgrade taken care of. They had a nice pair of Edelbrock headers with the ERG valve for emissions. I brought the car home by driving it at a speeding 25mph as that was the fastest it would go because the transmission had an issue with shifting out of first gear. I finally made it home after an hour drive and then quickly took my friends around the block in it before I started the project. The first thing to be done to the car was pulling out the engine. We ripped out the stock 305 and placed an old 4 bolt main block that had never been in a car. We stepped up our game and bored it out so it was 30 over. We put a mild 262 comp cam extreme energy in with some forged steel internals to take some serious load. Our intention was to build this car to be a DD/Track car/Show car. With the Engine being short blocked for us and all of our calculations coming to the 100000th we knew we were getting the most power out of what we had to work with. We had a few parts laying around from a previous engine build that never saw the light of day. So we tossed in the crank, pistons and thats where the block came from also. We got a call a few days later telling us the engine was ready and asked what color we would like to have it painted. Orange so we could see any leaks if any would arise. we drive down to Brooks Racing here in Arizona and picked up the Short block. It never looked so good and the feeling that I got knowing the car was almost done. I was young I had no idea what was in order. We still had to get our heads, Basko Racing in mesa was our second stop. We spoke with a well known man named Ray. He was very kind and knew exactly what to do with the heads and how we wanted the car to perform. We had the Ported and cleaned and I thought ok, now were almost done... I was wrong yet again. We dropped the engine in with the help of my two friends. I couldn't do it on my own as I was getting hung up on the headers. Not to mention the whole time the engine was out we were getting work done on the 700R4 Transmission. We had it rebuilt by what we thought was a good company at the time..turns out they lied and cheated us on some parts. Anyways the Transmission went under the table and had a new clutch put in. Kevlar bands, we had a chevy servo put in. B&M shift kit and a nice 2000 stall torque converter. We bolted the trans to the engine and put it back in the car and put our heads on to top it all off. Cast iron heads are so heavy.. We kept the A/C changed the thermostat to a 190, then 180 then 160 and I think thats where it stayed. Aluminum Water pump from Edelbrock. 3 core Be Cool Aluminum Radiator with 2 13' electric spal fans.
The car was rockin. Changed out the stock suspension for some Koni Coils along with Sphoon racing front and rear sway bars and a heavy duty wonder bar. Also had a local race shop B&R Racing weld up our 4pt roll cage, sub frame connectors and make a custom front strut tower bar. Along with that we added a nice Big Brake Upgrade with some heavy duty C5 Corvette front calipers 13' brakes cross drilled and vented rotors and hawk HP+ pads. We took out the rear end and got rid of the one tire fire and replaced it with a Gen 4 posi traction 373. After the engine was done we then started working on the exterior of the car. We cleared out the carport of any tools and busted out the orbital and 250,225 and 80 grit sandpaper. After many countless hours of sanding we had to apply some bondo to the 2 dents upon doing that I removed the rub strips on the car. It just brakes up the car too much and we also removed the front emblem on the nose. Best thing ever as it looks so clean now. With the car being white and us being lazy and partly cuz the engine was in the car we were unable to paint the engine bay so we went with a white. We decided on a Diamond White Pearl from Lexus and we wanted a two tone paint job so we also picked up a nice Metallic blue from the Escalade. With these two very nice colors we went home and prepped the car for paint. We set up our paint booth.. who am I kidding. We put tarps up covering the carport off so no dust or anything would get in. This was not the first car we had done this to. With that being sad we have to play the waiting game with mother nature.. too hot cant paint too cold cant paint, Windy day stops everything. Finally one week there was going to be perfect shooting weather, so we got everything out and started at it. We shot the blue first after masking everything off. After that we remasked and shot the 3 stage pearl white. Once  it was ready we shot the clear coat. Still not done I was told... We had to wetsand the car down to remove the "Orange Peel" We wanted a glass like finish. Once all of the wet sanding was done and all of the blue and white boogers were blown out of my nose it was about time to show the car to the streets. We topped her off with our Holly 660 double pumper which was later upgraded to a Holly 770 street avenger and drove her to B&R for a tune and some dyno times. The car was already broken in previously to this so dont you worry. It made a nice 300ft/tq and 200Hp. Man those numbers killed me. Keep in mind mild cam emissions and all the other things holding us back. We had plenty of torque for what we had plans for. Auto crossing. We soon got into auto crossing the car holding its own and sometimes beating the Matia's on the track. After a few years roughly 2 or 3 of racing with SCCA we found out about a local club out here called Pro Auto Sports. We checked it out and found a new home. I fell in love with everyone and the "family" feeling I get when I attend the events. My car and myself are loved.. when I attend these events people always come up to me and look at my car. Tell me how clean it looks.. and shake my hand and tell me that I sure can drive. I guess some people dont mind being out driven by some young punk "kid". To this day we are still adding more and more things to the car. We have gotten it ready for a super charger or turbo system by adding a better fuel pump and adding a few other bells and whistles. We are also looking into a fuel injection system from F.A.S.T and a nice rear mount turbo setup that will allow us to run without a front mount intercooler not to mention i don't have any room under my hood currently with the ram air hood that we have. Plus too much heat. Now with these upgrades and some internal upgrades were going to be pushing a nice 600hp on this still pump gas street legal track car. You wouldn't even know that my car hit a few tire barriers and some hay walls in its track life. We had to repaint the front end replaced both front fenders added some cooling ducts and NASCAR 3' fans to suck in the air! Man do those things really work!!!