The CAM-Z: autocrossing a Z28

I spent another half hour twiddling screwdrivers this afternoon. I got it running OK, until I blipped the throttle, then it just fell flat on it's face.

Eff this.

I grabbed my hose pinch pliers, squashed the fuel line and fired up the car. after about a minute it died. the fuel bowls were now empty. Then I yanked the edelbroke off and brought it upstairs.

I stuck some tape on the manifold to keep critters out of it while I rebuild the carb. I looked at getting a fancy carb building stand but noped out after seeing the $30 price tag. $3 at the hardware store got me this:

Works for me.

I've disassebled the carb and cleaned most of the internals. I need to get all the old gasket material off before I can put it back together. Probably go the Pete Gosset route and grab some guitar picks. Also going to stop by a goodwill and pick up a stock pot that's big enough to fit the carb body in...

Hope to have it put back together tomorrow night and on the car Thursday afternoon.

once I get the trans sorted I'll revisit the fueling and put a grown up carb on it. I think will do everything I need it to do. this one

Stay tuned, This will surly go badly.

Holley has an ebay store (The Holley Store) that sells rebuilt carbs from their factory is decent prices. I bought one a few years ago with success.

In reply to AClockworkGarage:

Does it have TH350 or 700R4? There's an extra TV cable bracket required for the 700R4 if that's what you have.

Don't get discouraged, it is a cool car and you seem to have the skills to handle the little stuff it keeps throwing at you.

I have the same carb in my '81 Trans Am, it may not be the best carb ever built, but it is very modular and there are lots of instructions on tuning and adjusting it out there. The kit with all the jets is pretty cheap too. I think 90% or more of those carbs just get bolted to the manifold as they come out of the box and then people say they are no good.

SEADave wrote: Don't get discouraged, it is a cool car and you seem to have the skills to handle the little stuff it keeps throwing at you. I have the same carb in my '81 Trans Am, it may not be the best carb ever built, but it is very modular and there are lots of instructions on tuning and adjusting it out there. The kit with all the jets is pretty cheap too. I think 90% or more of those carbs just get bolted to the manifold as they come out of the box and then people say they are no good.

+1000 this, for some reason people think they don't have to tune anything these days. Just slap it on and go. A kid once brought a V8 swapped S-10 that he put a new Edelbrock manifold and carb on that wasn't running right for me to "fix", he thought the timing was off. After verifying the timing was ok I asked him if he adjusted the carburetor properly, he said "The store said it's ready to go out of the box". Took me an hour of my life that I will never get back to explain it to him that carburetors needed to be adjusted and jetted properly for the engine to run correctly, and the store had no idea what was under his hood to accomplish this. I bet once you get it cleaned and jetted properly it will work just fine, or at least good enough for your purposes..

Greetings from Dirtbuttistan!

(It's hard out here for a pimp)

Man, I wish I would have known about the potential carb issues. I gave away a gallon bucket of carb cleaner about a week before y'all came over to the house (I see you found some, but still...)

carb tune guide

try this...

And it looks like stepping up the accelerator pump to squirt more may help that bog problem. And maybe look for the air valve to be adjusted correctly....

Also don't rule out basics. Incorrect ignition timing, vaccuum leaks. Advance in the distributor not operating correctly. And does that distributor have a vacuum advance?

SEADave wrote: it is a cool car and you seem to have the skills to handle the little stuff it keeps throwing at you.

See, this is what is great about this country. You're allowed to say anything you want. You're wrong, but you can say it.

I tried to oak the carb in the cleaner but the can wasn't big enough. So i got myself a turkey tray.

Bam.

I pieced the carb back together and threw it on the car. it fired right up and after a few trips around the block I got it into a pretty decent tune. Bumping the accelerator pump up one hole fixed the stumble and she runs like a monster again.

she still has a low idle when in gear though,and i'm not sure what the problem is. I've got a few hours tomorrow afternoon to play around with it.

AClockworkGarage wrote: Stay tuned...

You should be telling this to the carb, not us!

The lower idle in gear could be a vacuum leak. Or if not running a PCV valve will sometimes cause this.

Any idea of the cam specs?

Congrats on getting the carb back in shape. I've had a couple Edelbrocks, and had good luck. They tended to need adjustments in spring and fall with the large temp changes on the idle mixture

The cam is stock, but I don't know what that is.

Today was race day and I made the long haul over to Packwood with just my two gears.

And a U-haul trailer.

Do to my club actively trying to kill classes they grouped all the CAM classes together, which basically meant I was doing nothing except making sure a car far superior to mine in almost every way would be getting a trophy. Berk your PAX, I haven't a snowballs chance even with the handicap.

I guess I had fun though... maybe. People seemed to like the Camaro as an oddity so I guess that's something.

At the end of the day I finished First in class, second in group and who the hell knows where overall.

I now have two weeks to prepare for the next even in Bremmerton. I'm pretty sure I'm going to be paying a shop to rebuild my transmission, meaning that I'll likely be owning this beast for a long time...

If you're rebuiling the trans, look and see what it would cost to back to a 700R4 or even a T5 conversion. O/D is a wonderful thing....

Hopelully all you need is a cheap repair on the current trans.

Why do people go from the 700 to the 350? Are thge weaker or something? I'd rather have the OD myself. With my knees a manual is simply no longer an option.

Here's some not great videos of today's runs:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/9dbSX_kjGio

https://www.youtube.com/embed/MJ6mjz3sUxs

In reply to AClockworkGarage:

There's a lot of misinformation about the 700r4 - performance "tips" that will actually destroy it, the fact you actually have to follow the TV cable adjustment procedure or you'll destroy it, etc. vs. the number of old-school Chevy guys who were comfortable with the TH350/400 and the ease of setting them up.

The 700r4 certainly isn't any worse than a TH350, and is arguably better, but it's not tolerant of improper setup & adjustment.

I found a low mileage rear ended 89 IROC-Z at a local yard. I can get the trans, cross-member and driveshaft for $350 and they'll pull it for me. Then I just have to find a garage to do the work in.

It'll be nice to be able to cruise again. Then I can go back to trying to figure pout my idle issue...

Damn, I ended up with last weekend off but didn't know about the event at Packwood until the day of, we could have formed the Washington chapter of the "GRMers who autocross non-competitive cars" club

I <3 T-tops

Fun fact, the red BMW in the background of the first video is local to me, was being driven by DK and my buddy Nick 'El Guapo' Johnson that day.

AClockworkGarage wrote: I found a low mileage rear ended 89 IROC-Z at a local yard. I can get the trans, cross-member and driveshaft for $350 and they'll pull it for me. Then I just have to find a garage to do the work in. It'll be nice to be able to cruise again. Then I can go back to trying to figure pout my idle issue...

The garage is open, and Mrs. Hungary is expecting your call

tacoma-double deuce 4 - 4536

Good luck with the swap man, I'm bummed I wont be there to lend a hand. Unfortunately the Alfa is still in there so it might be a little "tight"

I'm kind of waffling on this right now. I can replace the transmission and keep fixing this car up or I can cut my losses and start building the El Camino I should have bought in the first place.

AD in the $2017 Challenge Classifieds

AClockworkGarage wrote: Bam.

Who knew there'd come a day when urine would be accepted as a carb cleaner.

If your urine looks like that see a doctor and drink some water once in a while...

Update time.

I did not sell the Camaro. Instead I bought a 700R4 and conned someone into doing the swap for me. There are many thing I'll do in a parking lot, but a trans swap is not one of them.

One of my GP friends has a lift in his shop and offered to do the swap for me if I bought him a bottle of rum and a high lift transmission jack. I agreed before he could change his mind.

$460 got me a 70K mile 89 IROC-Z 700R4, trans crossmember and Torque arm. Another $200 for the rum and Jack, another $100 for fluid and a poly trans mount and we're off.

I had the Z towed to his place a few weeks back. We were having a W-Body mod day at his place and I spent the day helping other members mod their cars before pulling the Camaro into the bay and them hightailing it outta there.

The trans got picked up the next day. Dirty on the outside...

But pretty clean on the inside:

Not fantastic, but much better than I was expecting.

The 350 was quickly pulled and we found plenty of shiny crap in the pan. Sorry, didn't get any pics of that. That thing was scrap. I'm keeping the crossmember and tailshaft in case I ever want to swap back to a 350, the rest is going to the recyclers.

Now the fun begins. Turns out the Dipstick tubes are not the same between the 350 and the 700. Great, gotta hunt one of those down. Got one for $6 at a u-pull-it but that's another wasted day.

great, that's handled. Let's get this bastid up in there.

Oh my... your bits are showing...

Yup. Bought new fluid and a filter... didn't buy a trans pan gasket... Grrr... Another $6, another wasted day. My buddies shop is about 6 miles from East bumberk so a simple trip to the parts store is a big honking deal...

With all the metal E36 M3 in the old trans we opted to run new trans lines to a B&M trans cooler mounted to the front of the radiator, rather than reuse the integral one. This should prevent cross contamination and allow both units to run cooler.

That's pretty much where we sit right now. There's fluid in her and she's ready to go. We're waiting on new carb linkage to allow us to connect the 700's kickdown cable. That should arrive tomorrow, with luck she'll be back home by sunday.

The bad news is I'll now be missing my second consecutive race. My delusional hopes for a championship are now dashed as I'm trailing points 180 to 400. This repair effectively puts this car well over the challenge budget and being a 3rd gen, I'll never get that money back. Looks like this car will be sticking around for a long while.

On the bright side, the pressure to perform is now off and I can spent the rest of this season as pre-season development for next season.

In reply to AClockworkGarage:

Just as a PSA, this site from Art Carr has the best TV cable setup & adjustment instructions I've found.

once this is completed, you'll enjoy driving the car

In reply to AClockworkGarage:

Wait, your cat is at the Wild's???