Former SSGT/American Sedan 1985 Camaro revival after 14 years of storage...

Before we dive into the technical stuff, I figured I'd provide some background. Many of you had a hand in this (knowingly or not), so it's only fair to provide the rest of the story.

I spend too much time browsing through Craiglist and various motorsports forum classifieds just to see who's selling what and for how much. This can be dangerous when you're just looking for something “interesting” versus something specific. One night back in late April I was scrolling through the GRM $2016 classifieds section when I saw the subject line “85 Camaro AS Race Car -$1000 - NMNA - Columbus”. Quite frankly, I skipped over it initially because:

1. I have limited (if any) space to work on it.
2. This is the busy season at work, and free time is nearly non-existent.
3. If asked, I would probably identify myself more as a “Ford guy” than a “Chevy guy”.

All perfectly good reasons not to add another non-running doorstop to the stable, especially one that will occupy 16' of prime real estate for an undetermined amount of time.

After the third or fourth time passing the ad by, I decided to take a look, because racecar. Hmmm – sure is yellow. Craigslist ad is still active, and the mechanical bits mentioned in the ad sound interesting, especially at the asking price. It does look like it's been sitting for awhile and will require a fair bit of time and money to get back in shape. Besides, see the points 1-3 above.

Naturally, the more I tried to talk myself out of it, the more interested I became. The replies in the thread saying that it looked like an amazing deal weren't helping. I realized I needed an intervention to stop this idea before it took hold. I reached out to my buddy Sarisongroup who I've known since pre-school to see if he could head this thing off. Ironically, I reminded him a week earlier that I get vehicular ADHD, and to stop me if I started veering off-course from the Civic rallycross/TSD build we were working on. Asking your best friend who's also a big-time gearhead to stop you from buying another project car is probably like an alcoholic walking into a pub and asking the bartender for help. To paraphrase the Stones, you'll get what you want, but it may not be what you need. Sarisongroup agreed that it was a killer deal, and offered up his Cummins Ram 3500 and a borrowed flatbed trailer if needed, as well as willingness to sign on for an 18+ hour roundtrip road trip to retrieve it.

So, figuring conversation wouldn't cost me anything, I texted the number in the ad. Jay was selling it on behalf of the owner, and we traded notes back and forth across the day. He said it had been in storage for awhile and that the engine turned over but wouldn't start. He sent me a picture of the engine build sheet and confirmed it did have logbooks, but had someone coming to look at it that night (EvanB?). I was getting more interested, but was hoping (praying?) it would be sold locally and become someone else's project. I asked for scanned copies of the logbooks to be sent over if it didn't sell, and waited. Email came through later that evening. The car was still available, and scans of both of the logbooks were attached. E36 M3. Specs for the cage look overbuilt, if anything, and having the original logbooks may allow it to be grandfathered by SCCA and NASA.

Ahhh, but there's one last opportunity to nip this in the bud. My beautiful, intelligent, sainted wife. Surely she will take one look at this and put the kibosh on this craziness. To frame this correctly, I have a F-350 Super Duty for work/DD, the aforementioned Civic just purchased in January, and three motorcycles. I have a two-car garage that looks like a bomb went off in it, and in 18 awesome years of marriage, I can count on less than one hand the number of times Mrs. Rotaryracer has parked in said garage. Oh, and it's the week before Mother's Day, when all good racecar projects are purchased. The spousal veto HAS to work, right? Nope. “Sure, if you want it and it's a good deal, go for it.”. Berkeley.

Time to put up or shut up. I've somehow passed every usual checkpoint, have a “grassroots-sized” motorsports slush fund at my disposal, and an old racecar in need of help. I wasn't really looking for a new project, but apparently a new project was looking for me.

Cool. I was waiting for this thread.

Btw, just type the actual words and the filter fixed them.

E36 M3. berkeley.

YES, surely more to come.
I was eyeing this as a Class A lemons mobile. My team just couldn't see the vision.

This should be good! I remember thinking it was a good thing that car was far away or it would have been in my driveway after reading this in the old thread.

"It has no title, it was built as a race car from new by a GM employee and never on the road. It does have the log books. It was last raced in 2000 before the owner stopped racing due to health problems. The condition is pretty much as the pictures show.

The engine is a 305 bored to 310. Wheels are momo, spare wheels are stock camaro. All tires are old and rock hard."

Nice, can't wait to see what you do with it!

I was one of the enablers who said this was a good deal. Glad I could help. You and your situation sound a lot like me. Sarisongroup sounds like a good friend, keep him around.

wvumtnbkr wrote: Cool. I was waiting for this thread. Btw, just type the actual words and the filter fixed them. E36 M3. berkeley.

Thanks wvumtnbkr - good to know! I didn't see it change in the preview, but will make it easier for next time.

akylekoz wrote: YES, surely more to come. I was eyeing this as a Class A lemons mobile. My team just couldn't see the vision.

Definitely! I really want to get this back on a track, whether it's with SCCA, NASA, AER, LeMons, Chump, or something else.

NOT A TA wrote: This should be good! I remember thinking it was a good thing that car was far away or it would have been in my driveway after reading this in the old thread. "It has no title, it was built as a race car from new by a GM employee and never on the road. It does have the log books. It was last raced in 2000 before the owner stopped racing due to health problems. The condition is pretty much as the pictures show. The engine is a 305 bored to 310. Wheels are momo, spare wheels are stock camaro. All tires are old and rock hard."

No title, but I did get a notarized bill of sale. The lack of title didn't really concern me too much, as there's little to no chance it will ever go back on the street. I did get the logbooks, although it was first 'booked in 1991, so it may have started out as a street car versus body-in-white. It does have a VIN, so I may see if I can get an original build sheet for it. I got all three pages of the engine build sheet (pics and price tag to follow) - it's still a 305 ci (legal for A-Sedan class at the time), but allegedly dyno'd at 310hp. I don't have a dyno sheet to back that up, so we'll have to remedy that when it's running.

SilverFleet said: Nice, can't wait to see what you do with it!

hobiercr wrote: I was one of the enablers who said this was a good deal. Glad I could help. You and your situation sound a lot like me. Sarisongroup sounds like a good friend, keep him around.

Thanks guys! Yeah, all the color commentary about what a screaming deal it was didn't help at all. It's going to need some money (probably more than Challenge money) and a decent amount of sweat equity to get it back into competition-ready condition, but I think it's going to be a barrel of laughs when it's done. Sarisongroup is a good friend, and tends to enable my hasty, ill-conceived plans far too readily.

I'll post up some more history on the car, but will move quickly to the more technical stuff as I get a chance to tear into it.

It's always nice to see an old race car put back on track. Congrats.

Wow, where did the summer go?

As a refresher, here are some of the pictures from the original ad...how could anyone possibly resist all that sexiness?

And moar pitchers....

Picking up where we last left off....my sainted wife was kissed, the deal was struck, funds were transferred via PayPal, and I was the proud new owner of a yellow Bitchin' Camaro. After harnessing the power of junior high math, I came to the realization that driving to Ohio in Sarisongroup's Cummins 3500 (which gets better MPG than my F-350 gasser), renting a U-Haul trailer one way, and dragging the Camaro back would basically end up costing as much as subcontracting it out to a uShip pro. A bit less drama and suspense, but an 18 hour round trip (assuming everything went flawlessly) the day before Mother's Day sounded like something that could end poorly. Discretion ruled the day, and I ordered up delivery of the Camaro as easy as ordering a Domino's pizza.

In hindsight, it would've been better if it was more difficult, or more expensive, or both - this knowledge could prove to be dangerous in future project searches, enabling a larger sweep radius.

Anyway, after a bit of coordination, the Camaro was loaded into an enclosed 16' trailer and dragged northward. Here's my first look at what I've done....

And out of her trailer, seeing her new home in New York for the first time...

"Paging Mr. Hoffa. Mr. James Hoffa, please pick up the white courtesy phone." Has it really been a year since I updated this thread? Ouch. Progress has been made, albeit at a glacial pace. That old chestnut about projects taking twice as long and costing three times as much as originally planned is proving to be prophetic with the Bitchin' Camaro. I'll get some updates posted up later...it will help keep me accountable to get this thing finished and making noise again!

Sweet

So, after the Camaro was delivered, I started poking around to see what it was that I actually bought.

Three pages of work from the machine shop, with some decent parts in the SBC. It looks like someone put a few dollars into making this competitive for American Sedan back in the day. Of course, that day was 20 years ago....

The two SCCA logbooks were key, as they allow the car to be grandfathered with the existing cage (sound of foreshadowing here). The pictures in the logbook are a nice tribute to the early 90s.

Sweet following along....my chiropractor has mentioned a fondness for this very beast

Ha, I like that it was sponsored by the town of Grove City, Ohio at one point.

Rotaryracer, just saw my chiropractor this morning....do you want to sell this?

Had I known about this back then I sooo would have bought it. I live 10 miles away from its old location but I wasn't a user here and lived in an apartment at the time Also I was knee-deep in the garage-, er, house-buying process.

So, let's see if we can caught back up to near real-time, as lots has been happening in the background. 

I decided first things first was to see if that lump of SBC would run.  Vroom-vroom noises help inspire projects, maybe it would get things moving in a hurry!  I shot a bit of fogging oil into each of the plug holes to lube things up, checked that there was oil in the pan (old, but the dinosaurs were still liquefied), and borrowed a battery from my neighbor.  I had plans to run a marine tank as I wasn't sure what (if anything) was in the fuel cell...I did throw a new rubber line from the old metal factory fuel line to the carb with an inline filter as a nod to...filtration. 

Battery hooked up, key to ON (yep, there's a key), and...

Nothing.  E36 M3.

But wait...this is a RACE CAR.  Even back in the day, they thought about safety, which means cut-off switch.  Flick that on, and suddenly the sounds of an ancient Holley pump spinning up fill the shop.  Could it really be this easy?

Crank, crank, crank, crank, VROOOOM!

Roughly 10 pounds of mouse fillings and other crud spits out the side exit exhaust at speed, and the old girl is making noise for the first time in a long time. 

After the initial pumping of fists, we realize that there's maybe six or six and a half of the cylinders that are reporting for duty.  Not completely unexpected, and part of the plan was to rip her out and freshen it up anyway.  About this time my neighbor and I realize that the seals in the carb have decided to give up the fight, which means it's time to shut her down before things get too interesting.

TL;DR - I've got my work cut out for me, but lightly muffled SBCs sound glorious when fired up indoors.  

Glad to see this again ... ..the Doc spun out and ponied up big $$$$  for a NASA CMC .....which in itself needs work too...I'll be watchin' closely  

In reply to 759NRNG :

Smarter people than me have said "there's nothing more expensive than a cheap race car" (also works for Porsche, boat, airplane, etc).  This was never going to be a $201x Challenge project - I expected I'd have many multiples in the purchase price to get her track ready - I just wasn't expecting THAT many multiples.    The words "while we're in there, we might as well..." have led me down a very slippery slope!

Let's start with some of the easy stuff before we yank out the drivetrain.

This was a race seat, at some point in it's life:

And gone!  Floors seem to be okay, although the seat mounting was beyond sketchy.

I think I may need new belts:

you might be able to sell that out-of-date harness to someone who's really bent on a period-correct restoration of something...

SSGT was a great class to watch. You could always tell when the races were nearing the end when the Camaros would come through turn 3 at New Hampshire with their left front brakes on fire. Stock brake pads on SS cars in those days... Good luck with the build!

AngryCorvair said:

you might be able to sell that out-of-date harness to someone who's really bent on a period-correct restoration of something...

You're probably right...unfortunately, someone's going to have to go dumpster diving for them now...