Project Dis-traction comes to life!

First and foremost, I want to apologize- I know it has been a long time without any updates. We’ve done some Twitter and Instagram snippets, but no blog posts. The shop has been going through a lot of growing pains and Justin and I have struggled to keep up with the daily ins and outs of it. But I have had updates on the brain, so bear with me while I catch you up on everything I’ve had to say over the months.

One of our biggest projects (and one we’re the most proud of) is the 1970 Chevrolet Camaro we brought to life over the summer. The car has had a 23 year love affair in its restoration; it was purchased as a total and revived little by little. It spent 12 years at a body shop, and almost 9 more years in the garage before it ever even started.
It’s most aggressive transformation came after it finally was running and driving. The engine intended for it was a ZZ3 350 that was super healthy. It ran and drove fantastic, but it still had nuances that every carburetor has—the car didn’t like to start when it was too hot or too cold outside, didn’t get great mileage and always needed some tinkering. The owner finally had it when the carburetor had a flooding problem. The float had stuck in the rear bowl, but it was the last in a long chain of tinkering. The first morning we got it running, it needed a needle and seat and it always felt like the jets were too big down low in the rpm band. Afterward it was always something about the idle speed, or the floats were too high, or just something. After the rear float got stuck, we were finally ready to pull the plug on carburetors.

Introduce Cj’s Garage. We started on an LS conversion. We picked up the car in the trailer, and it came like this:

A 2004 GTO engine was selected for the swap, and since we’d already installed a built T56 six-speed to the small block Chevy that was previously in the car, all we had to do was convert the front plate and bellhousing from the T56. Viola! We have transmission! We painted it, and since we already installed an adjustable crossmember, we only had the driveshaft to cut down and we were finished.
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We put in an order for a set of headers that didn’t fit, and got a second set. I welded the new collectors to the old exhaust and we moved to the fuel system. The restoration had put a brand new fuel tank in the Camaro, so my heart broke a little to pull it out, but we tossed in an EFI ready tank and I made new fuel line from front to back and installed new billet fuel rails. We convinced the owner to sand down the casting marks and mounting pads on the intake manifold and we painted it. While we had it apart, I changed the oil pan for an F-Body oil pan and painted both the block and oil pan gloss black. The radiator was already an aftermarket thick core with an electric fan, so we kept it and set up the cooling hoses for the radiator, heater core, and steam hose. A new throttle cable got the important pedal to work, and we were nearly at startup. A new four inch diameter intake was ordered up and I installed an 85mm throttle body. I changed and relocated the coil packs. I made a new harness for the engine and deleted most of the factory engine harness, leaving only the essentials like the wipers, blower motor, headlights and horns. Adding to the clean-up, I made brackets and remote located the coil packs off the valve covers and onto the back of the cylinder head. I made spark plug wires to fit and ran them underneath the headers.

The car already came equipped to handle the power, as the owner had already thought the build out. The nine years it didn’t spend in a body shop were spent installing interior, installing glass, fitting panels, and assembling this pro-touring beast. The owner installed Hotchkis suspension all the way around to make turns feel straight, big brakes by Baer at all four corners to turn speed into heat, Billet specialties wheels with lower profile sidewalls to keep from rolling the tire beads, reupholstered Recaro seats and a 3.73 geared 12 bolt Chevrolet rear end with Positraction to lay pairs of rubber stripes on the asphalt.

The speed bumps in our full-throttle conversion came under cover. We had what seemed like traction control issues rising from the computer backing down timing, but after some careful tuning and lots of investigation it was discovered that the fuel pump in the EFI ready fuel tank we had installed was designed for an LT1 engine, not an LS1. Bugger. Out with the second brand new tank and in with the third. A Rick’s stainless steel tank with pump was sourced and installed and fuel lines modified again. (Not to mention, the alternator gave up with seemingly no reason, too. After those we were running into clutch engagement issues!) The exhaust H-pipe was also proving to choke power out. Fantastic customer service led us to an easy purchase. We ordered the exhaust that matched the headers from Dynatech. We then tucked it up into the body of the car and welded the pieces together. Everyone is pleased with them, power delivery is smoothed and the fit is right on. It’s like it was designed for the car. I complain that it’s quiet, but I’m sure that made all the difference in the world on the Camaro’s first big trip.

Texas Road Trip at Cadillac Ranch

The owner just drove the ’70 Chevy on a nearly 2100 mile cruise from Pleasanton, California to Dallas, Texas, where it got some much deserved grass time at the Good Guys Lone Star Nationals. Now he’s got all the power and reliability to make trips like that all the time. Here’s to many more!!

Check out the full gallery of photos here!

• ← I’ve heard people call it the LS10. I call it crazy.
• We’ve discovered a few anomalies in repairing cars. The later model Yaris is one of them →