Dusting off the cobwebs – 1988 Iroc-z Camaro Content

camaroz1985 said:

You can street drive tubular suspension without too much discomfort.  My IROC had rod ends at every suspension joint (all rear arms, front lower a-arms and camber plates), stiff lowering springs, and it was ok for 3 hour trips, but I was in college at the time, so I was probably more tolerant.

I wasn’t worried about comfort so much as durability.  I am not sure the tubular pieces handle unexpected shock loading from potholes, road debris, etc. as well as the stock pieces do.  I’d love to see some data indicating otherwise though!

sorry about the chica -luckily you are in a target rich environment being in the  NJ/DE/PA/NJ area. Plenty of  young single professional wimmins around here. (Not that I would know/care, being, old, not single and rather unprofessional at times.)

It's handy to have a IR gun for checking brake caliper temp, even braking contribution, performance etc...don't get the HF one the LCD display bleeds  so every temp reading is "8888" . the Home depot Ryobi one works better. Good progress, (but sad to see a Silver 4th Gen  biting the dust.) But hey you didn't wreck it someone else did.

AngryCorvair said:

like i said to Zordak, the world needs more 3rd gen.

Agreed

Flynlow said:

camaroz1985 said:

You can street drive tubular suspension without too much discomfort.  My IROC had rod ends at every suspension joint (all rear arms, front lower a-arms and camber plates), stiff lowering springs, and it was ok for 3 hour trips, but I was in college at the time, so I was probably more tolerant.

I wasn’t worried about comfort so much as durability.  I am not sure the tubular pieces handle unexpected shock loading from potholes, road debris, etc. as well as the stock pieces do.  I’d love to see some data indicating otherwise though!

You are right to be concerned. A lot of the tubular items for the front become wear items whereas the stock control arms and K-member are 4 lyfe. The stock bushings do eventually need replaced though and replacing them is a tough job.

So, not dead!  Sorry for the lack of progress, been a busy time at work.  Lots of stress, not a lot of progress on the cars. 

Finally got a couple days to work on the car.  Finished stripping the donor, the rear end had two stuck bolts, but finally got it loose:

Which then makes fuel tank access much easier (as does an empty tank for weight when you go to drop it):

A bit of simple green and some scrubbing and it's looking half-decent:

And finally, I cleaned the garage and moved the parts shelf and tool boxes to get an extra 3' of space in front of the car.  Lined up most everything that's going in to the car:

It'll be good!  Time to start yanking the stock drivetrain.

No images.

In reply to pres589 :

Maybe fixed?  Google images isn't playing nice with shared albums.

Glad you're back! 

Looking forward to seeing your progress- good luck!

damen

I almost said the 4th gen hydraulics play pretty nice with the 3rd gen pedals until I remembered my friends t56 swapped '92 RS is still SBC powered and as such used an LT1 trans which is different from the LS1 setup. 

I'll be following this one too since I still haven't been able to touch my '87 GTA since I bought it over a year ago.

Beautiful car 

my friend that the WS6 that he bought new. But I like your boxy body design more 

is that a 2.5RS in the background ? 

Daylan C said:

I almost said the 4th gen hydraulics play pretty nice with the 3rd gen pedals until I remembered my friends t56 swapped '92 RS is still SBC powered and as such used an LT1 trans which is different from the LS1 setup. 

I'll be following this one too since I still haven't been able to touch my '87 GTA since I bought it over a year ago.

The pedals will be fine; there was no change in the pedal assembly from LT1 to LS1. The switches may have changed but that won't matter here without ABS.

In reply to GCrites80s :

Ok, he's using 3rd gen pedals with an lt1 clutch master cylinder. Only concern he had is the 3rd gen pedal has slightly more travel than the 4th gen master wanted so he was considering building a pedal stop of some sort for it. I've pretty much already decided to copy his setup for my car with a couple minor changes.

There is a little bit of a dead zone with my all-LT1 clutch, pedals and master setup but I don't find it offensive. 3rd gen manual pedals are tough to get these days so I didn't use those. There's always adjustable master cylinders.

mr2s2000elise said:

is that a 2.5RS in the background ? 

Yep, that's my daily driver.  '99 2.5RS with 256K miles.  She just keeps ticking, changed the engine & trans fluid this weekend.  Still looks pretty good all shined up:

Got a little bit done on the camaro too, pulled the wiring harness and tried to label most of it as it came out:

Then tried lining up the hoist, and realized I didn't have enough reach to get good leverage over the engine without pulling the nose off, so that's next.  Unfortunately, the top bolts on both sides are frozen, and spun out of the headlight bar:

Dammit.  Tried vicegrips, tried Kroil, no luck yet, and I lost way more time on this than I would have liked. 

Oh well, work on it later.  Finished disconnecting and draining fuel, ps fluid, coolant, etc (plus cleaned out 10lbs of cobwebs):

One funny thing, I have a C5 Z06 (it's in the background of the first pic), and while pulling the wiring harness, I noticed this stamped on the driver's side of the engine bay:

No idea what it signifies, but it's pretty neat.

I had a 2.5RS and third gen at the same time for a while too.  I guess great minds think alike...

Your RS looks good, and makes me miss mine.  Definitely the car I most regret selling.

**Bestial roar!!!!!!**  FINALLY!!!

I cannot overstate how much of a pain in the ass those last two bolts were.  They took hours to eventually file flat, grab with vice grips and break it loose (everything else for the nose took less than an hour). 

With that out of the way, I was able to get the hoist positioned, re-check all my wires, disconnect the driveshaft and torque arm, and get the engine bay cleared.  It was a good weekend:

On the personal front, life is still a bit bland.  Too much work, too little sleep.  I'm now traveling about 3 out of 4 weeks a month, and likely to stay that way through next summer.  A couple of first dates that didn't go anywhere (been single almost 6 months now).  If anyone knows an under-40 car girl looking for a slightly cold/logical but basically good-hearted engineer, send them my way.  Bonus points for motorcycle riders, gamers, or STEM majors :P .

Won't be any progress this weekend, I am doing a fly and drive to Atlanta to pick up the ZHP from the Open Classifieds, kind of excited...been looking for a good E46 330i for 2-3 years.  I will try to update the thread with some pictures of the new wheels.

camaroz1985 said:

I had a 2.5RS and third gen at the same time for a while too.  I guess great minds think alike...

Your RS looks good, and makes me miss mine.  Definitely the car I most regret selling.

Thanks!  It's a great car.  What did you replace yours with?

Flynlow said:

camaroz1985 said:

I had a 2.5RS and third gen at the same time for a while too.  I guess great minds think alike...

Your RS looks good, and makes me miss mine.  Definitely the car I most regret selling.

Thanks!  It's a great car.  What did you replace yours with?

Nothing, that's partly why I miss it haha.  Going to be a few more years before I can realistically spend time/money on fun cars, but I think it will be for fun then when I can get my sons involved in projects too.

In reply to camaroz1985 :

Well, it's a modest consolation, but as a couple board members will tell you, I'm pretty good about trading test drives for beer.  If you want to re-visit your GC8 days, swing by northern delaware and we'll hit up Stewarts brewery.