My wife and I started to look for a replacment to our 2005 Mini S (my daily driver) because of its cost. It seems like every year on top of our monthly payment the car cost us an additional $1000-$2000 dollars of unexpected repairs a year. (normally in one breakdown) The "new to us" car needed to be plentiful (cheap and easy to find parts) I wanted it to be rear wheel drive, and to have a decent fun factor since all work and no play makes us testy... :-) Also, we needed to be able to either trade my EX-500 for it or buy it with the money from the sale of the bike. While driving around one day, my wife pointed out a 3rd gen Z28 and remarked that she almost had one and always liked them. I have loved that generation Camaro since it came out, so we decided to look around for one. We happend to find one close to home that needed work. I contacted the owner and he was very interested in trading. We met, and the deal was struck.
It is a 1985 Z28 with 91/92 skirting. The paint is REALLY bad, and it needs the driver rear quarter fixed as well as some holes in the floor patched. Its not horrible, but far from perfect. It was a 305 TPI automatic from the factory and at some point in its life an 87/89 Iroc motor was swapped in along with a TH350. Whe we got the car we were told it had run up until a week or so before and then just wouldnt start. Also, a couple weeks before that it lost all gears in the tranny. As we have a spare motor and trans in storage this did not bother us.
After getting it home, we began by removing all un-needed and P.O. added wiring along with a little cleaning. We then focused on the no start issue. We were lead to believe that it was an electrical issue and after seeing some of the wiring that fit. After searching however, it was found to be a bad distributor drive gear. This was a result I think of the use of the 85's distributor with the Iroc roller cam motor. We replaced the drive gear and she fired right up.
As for the transmission, that seems to be toast... reverse works, but there are NO forward gears. When you cycle through them, you get no change in RPM and no attempt to move. Luckily, we got a nearly complete t-5 swap from Andy Nelson. I know that the t-5 is not the strongest trans ever, but hope to be able to baby it until we can source/afford a better part.
The boys and I (Ryan, Johnathan, and Dalton) should get started on the swap this weekend... Details to follow!!
Oh.. so far we only have about $500 in it.
