Steve's Camaro - Restorer keeps from going overboard on his own 1968 Camaro Z/28

Feature Article from Hemmings Muscle Machines
March, 2006 - Daniel Strohl

Restoration begets temptation.

The closest aftermarket catalog, left flipped open, inspires thoughts aplenty of stuffing in a hotter camshaft, of swapping in a new wood-rimmed steering wheel, of a thumpin' stereo able to shame the local baggy-pants crowd.
Resto catalogs, judging guidelines in the club newsletter, coverage of the latest big concours event infect the brain with visions of repro parts stamped on the exact same press in the exact same factory under the exact same alignment of the planets as factory.
Your heavy right foot, $3 per gallon gas and the wife's harping over the checkbook conspire to pressure thoughts of yanking the numbers-matching big-block under the hood in favor of an EFI small-block. Or, conversely, the siren call of the 1320 begs for a tunnel-ram intake, traction bars and big slicks.
Thomas Kazanji, then, must know some sort of temptation-negating voodoo.
Aside from the paint it wears, a handful of service parts and a pair of headers (though justified; more momentarily), Kazanji's 1968 Camaro Z/28 differs in no way from when it left the dealer floor. And what a dealer it was.
Berger Chevrolet in Grand Rapids, Michigan, had one of the busiest high-performance parts departments in the nation and, like Baldwin-Motion, Yenko, Gibb, Dana and Nickey, it sold many high-performance cars.
Dale Berger, 67, became general manager of his father's dealership in 1964. His high-performance parts department was doing about $60,000 a month in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
"That was just our parts department," Berger said. "Back then, we were selling bare V-8 blocks for $113, a cylinder head wasn't any more than $50, and we sold headers for $100.
"In 1965, we built a new building down near all the shopping malls and business took off like a rocket. We had a high-performance-oriented salesman named Mike Wawee, who lived these cars and was out and about at night, went to the drag strips on weekends, and was promoting our business. We sold a lot of Camaros, and I was close with Pete Estes at the time and we were allocated more Camaros than other dealers. At any one time we had 10 to 15 Camaros on our lot."
And those Camaros rarely left Berger as Chevrolet intended. While Berger never offered packages that grouped certain high-performance items as his contemporary supertuners did, the dealership made it awfully easy to take your new Camaro over to the parts counter and fit it, a la carte, with all the performance goodies your wallet could handle.
The car's original owner, Kenneth Spyke, ordered the Z/28 with a Hurst shifter, Sun tachometer and Ansen scattershield, as he stated in a letter to Kazanji years later. Berger himself said he remembers the day Spyke picked up the car at the dealership because Spyke immediately set his first child's baby seat in the back, putting a small rip in the blue vinyl.
"I was king of the road," Spyke wrote. "There was none quicker."
But after Spyke's second child arrived a couple years later, he sold his beloved Camaro for $2,100 to Jim Polisky in Filer City, Michigan. Polisky's brother Tom, who built hot rods and other fast cars at the time, fostered Jim's interest in hot cars, which turned to Z/28s the moment he saw one light its tires. But Uncle Sam asked Tom to serve his country in Vietnam, where Tom died in August 1968.
Jim Polisky thus decided not to go away to college and instead stayed with his family in Michigan. His parents, using the money that probably would have gone to his college fund, decided to help finance Polisky's first car. Polisky chose Spyke's Z/28.
Polisky raced it on the streets over the next few years, turning the odometer up above 43,000 miles, before he had his own kids and decided to retire it. Rather than sell it, as Spyke did, he put it in storage and figured he'd get around to it sometime in the future.
Meanwhile, Kazanji, who owns and runs Redz Auto Collision and Restoration in White Plains, New York, had seen many high-quality muscle car restorations go through his shop over the years, when he decided it was time he had a supercar of his own in 2002. Though he thought of looking for a Yenko, Gibb or Nickey, he decided to narrow his focus to Berger products and came across Polisky's classified ad.
Polisky, tired of storing the car and anticipating a costly restoration, decided it was time to let it go. Kazanji, after a couple of calls, booked a flight to Michigan the day after Polisky said it was still available.
"It was September 11, 2002," Kazanji said. "I was the only idiot in the airport that day, but tickets were cheap, so whaddayado?"
He bought it and had the car trucked back to White Plains, where he had to decide what he wanted to do with the car. The Le Mans blue paint with white rally stripes remained original ("I think the previous owners maintained it by waxing so much that they waxed through the paint," Kazanji said), as did the bucket seat interior. The engine ran, the car drove just fine, the carburetor leaked a bit, but all the Z/28 and Berger items remained on the car.
"It was a hard decision to make," Kazanji said. "I thought about leaving it original and untouched, but being that I own a resto shop, it was hard to leave it when all the cars that leave the shop are supposed to be mint."
So Kazanji decided to split the difference and go for a partial restoration, using as many existing and original parts as possible.
He started by disassembling the car--not by ripping and slashing, but by careful prying, knowing he'd use a lot of the same parts later, such as the weatherstripping. He then hand-stripped the car using Captain Lee's spray strip to look for any significant markings and to record the color of the primers and sealers.
The body went out to American Dry Stripping in Bridgeport, Connecticut, which blasted the shell and subframe using olivine, a fine soft gem mined in the Carolinas.
Upon its return to the shop, Kazanji sealed all the seams with Duramix and 3M seam sealer before he had his friend and employee, Tommy Anunziato, pound out a few dents on the roof, trunklid and a couple of other "typical areas" then lay about half a gallon of Evercoat Rage and Evercoat Polyester filler to make everything smooth. Kazanji said he would have preferred to do it himself, but "if I would've done it, I'd still be doing it. Tommy has the speed over me."
Throughout the bodywork phase, Kazanji primed with Spies Hecker red brown 3255 etching primer and gray 8590 surfacer, the latter a GM-approved refinish material. The 3255 base seals the base metal, Kazanji said, and the 8590 allows you to do bodywork on top of it rather than on the bare metal. Kazanji finished the bodywork with four coats of gray 5310 high-build primer.
Kazanji then block-sanded the primer with 220-, 320-, 400- and 600-grade wet sandpaper before he primed it again and sanded with 400-, 600- and 800-grade wet sandpaper. He sprayed four coats of Sherwin-Williams Le Mans Blue lacquer, using a Sata Jet 90 spray gun backed with a Curtiss air compressor in his shop's Devilbiss Expert 2000 full downdraft heated paint booth. He then baked the paint for 30 minutes at 140 degrees Fahrenheit and let the car sit for a couple of days.
"I started block sanding with 3M 600 then 800 wet sandpaper," Kazanji said. "After cleaning the car with DuPont Final Wash, I painted the car with another four coats of lacquer and then baked it for 15 minutes at 120 degrees.
"I painted the car with the doors on and the trunklid installed, like the factory. All the other parts I painted off the car with four more coats of Le Mans Blue."
He then taped and painted the two rally stripes using a stencil kit and Sherwin-Williams White lacquer.
He then block-sanded again with 1500-grade wet sandpaper followed by 2000-grade and polished the car with a Makita variable speed polisher, 3M white foam pad and 3M compound. Finally, he hand-glazed the entire car with Kar Kraft glaze.
Not done yet, he decided to depart from the factory paint procedure by blacking out the undercarriage after he painted the rest of the car rather than before, as GM did.
"If I painted the black first, there would be too much buildup, so I did it reverse for a cleaner look," Kazanji said. "I taped up the body and painted the floorboards and wheelwells with DuPont Chroma Premier Single Stage with a flattening agent added. The firewall I painted a slight bit glossier. After all the blackout was complete, I mixed up some Le Mans Blue and sprayed some on the rear wheelwells and floorboards with overspray duplicated from pictures I took at the beginning."
Kazanji said he stuck with the lacquer because he wanted to finish the car the way Chevrolet did in 1968.
"My car has areas that are not glowing with shine, but that's the way they were," he said.
Inside the car, he found that--aside from the Spyke-installed rip in the rear seat, which hadn't grown much over the decades--it remained in excellent condition, so he simply scrubbed and reinstalled the original carpet, headliner, door panels, dash, column, console, seats and weatherstripping.
While the Z/28 came with front and rear bumperettes, Spyke removed them shortly after he bought the car, boxed them and left them in the trunk, where condensation eventually pitted them. Kazanji sent the bumperettes, along with the potmetal taillamp housings and acorn nuts for the rear spoiler to Paul's Chrome Plating in Evans City, Pennsylvania--one of two chrome platers he often uses in his regular restoration work.
Kazanji made sure not to send out the Berger dealer plate that came with the car, thus its current pitted condition.
"I was afraid to send it out," Kazanji said. "I've seen those plates go for $1,500, so without it, I would have probably been money ahead to have just parted the car out."
Kazanji sent the Z/28's Muncie M-21 four-speed transmission to D&L Transmission in Huntington, New York, to have it cleaned and rebuilt. A new Hayes clutch went between it and the 302-cu.in. V-8--complete with a GM aluminum intake and Holley 800cfm four-barrel carburetor--that Gary Sharkey at the Performance Engine Shop in West Babylon, New York, rebuilt with new bearings and gaskets.
One facet of the car stymied Kazanji, though. A set of rotted GM headers, claimed as authentic Berger installations, hung off the 302.
Knowing that Dale Berger remained in business throughout the years, Kazanji brought the car to Berger's attention. Through Berger, he got Spyke's contact information as well as confirmation that the car did indeed come from his dealership with the scattershield, tachometer and Hurst shifter. But the headers confused Berger as well.
"One thing that seems to be in question is the headers," Berger wrote Kazanji. "(Spyke) doesn't remember headers being on the car when he took delivery.
"There is one thing I know for certain. If the car has the headers, that didn't provide for the air injector reactor (a.k.a. the smog pump). We did not install them. We were not allowed to modify or change the emissions on any vehicle that was to be driven on the street. If, however, the car has the smog pump-type headers with the air lines going to the outlet manifolds on the headers, there is a good chance that we installed them."
Kazanji said he figures the car came with regular exhaust manifolds, but that Spyke bought the headers over the counter and installed them himself.
The headers had rusted far too much to be of any use, so Kazanji ditched them in favor of a pair of Jet-Hot-coated Hooker 15/8-inch-diameter headers backed by a full reproduction exhaust system from Gardner Exhaust in Rhinebeck, New York. NOS spark plugs, new plug wires and new battery cables joined the engine underhood, as did the original air cleaner that Kazanji had Dale Berger sign.
Kazanji then shod the original 15-inch Chevrolet Rallye wheels--painted with Sherwin-Williams silver lacquer on the front and a minor bit of silver-green overspray on the back--with the original trim rings and center caps and a set of Goodyear E70-15 bias-ply tires sourced through Kelsey Tire.
Kazanji's meticulousness during the restoration comes through clearly on the underside of the Z/28. He left all the natural-finish components--steering box, knuckles, tie rods, pitman arm, center link, driveshaft and leaf springs--in their unfinished state and managed to use all the original coil spring tags by first removing the springs, then spinning them around the springs to the end, where he could take them off without ripping them.
"I have no idea how they stayed in good condition after 40,000 miles," Kazanji said.
Kazanji wrapped up the restoration by September 2003, even using the original front brake rotors and pads, and has since hammered the show scene, taking Best American Car honors at the 2004 Greenwich Concours Show, as well as People's Choice at the 2004 National Muscle Car Association nationals and Best Chevrolet at our own Musclepalooza II.
Because of all the showing at various events, Kazanji has put about 50 miles on the car since he finished it. Not a lot, no, but he did say the smell of rubber in the air at Lebanon Valley Dragway this past Memorial Day has tempted him into thinking of stuffing some big tires under the rear flanks and giving the 1320 a try at Musclepalooza III.

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Owner's View
"All my friends thought I was crazy to do this car," said Thomas Kazanji, 45, of Mamaroneck, New York. "They said, 'Why take such a nice, original car and go through it?'
"But I like things mint. If you come to my house, you gotta take your shoes off before you come in--that explains a lot. Besides, this satisfies me and it attracts a lot of attention.
"At many points, though, I hated working on that car because when I own the car, I want everything to be perfect, and I'll take the time to do it that way. I'd come home from working on it and tell my wife, Patti-Lee, that I just wish it'd fall off the lift. But she gave me great support throughout this whole thing, and I probably wouldn't have finished it if it weren't for her."

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Steve's Camaro Parts - A mid-year push in 1968 got Z/28 sales rolling and created a Chevrolet legend

 

 

Feature Article from Hemmings Muscle Machines
November, 2011 - Mike McNessor - Photography by Jeff Koch

To enthusiasts, Chevrolet's on-again-off-again relationship with the Z/28 is annoying--nearly as frustrating as the bow-tie brand's on-again-off-again relationship with the Camaro a few years ago.
Fortunately, the Camaro is back and, by many accounts, better than ever. A proper Z/28, however, has yet to emerge to do battle with the incredible 2012 Mustang Boss 302 (as seen in HMM#96, September 2011).
Notice the word "proper" in the previous sentence. It's one of the worst-kept secrets in the industry that the 2012 Camaro ZL-1 was going to be badged Z/28. But at the last minute, the name was inexplicably and quietly changed. We can only speculate that someone came to the conclusion that putting the grunty supercharged 6.2-liter LSA engine from the Cadillac CTS-V in a heavy Camaro and trotting it out to square off against the 5-liter Laguna Seca-conquering Boss would be like pitting one of the Budweiser Clydesdales against Secretariat.
Of course, this isn't the first time Chevrolet has sidelined the mighty Z. There was the Z/28 crisis of 1975, the IROC invasion of 1988 and then, as we've seen, the latest Z/28 deficit. Sigh. Such an iconic model designation, and so little respect from its maker. Rodney Dangerfield could relate.
Though first-generation Z/28s are highly respected among collectors today, the earliest Zs got off to a rocky start. An internal GM memo, circulated to GM district managers in January of 1968, shows that the rarity of the 1967 and 1968 cars might have had more to do with bungled production and a complete lack of sales support than anything else:
"Mr. E.M. Estes (AKA Elliot Marantette "Pete" Estes, then president of Chevrolet; he later became president of General Motors) has challenged the Sales Department to sell Z-28's (sic)," wrote Chevrolet Zone Merchandising Manager M.J. Streit. "This option was introduced a little over a year ago, and to date, the sales have not established any records, due primarily to the fact that there has never been satisfactory availability of this option. This option has been plagued from its very inception with stop orders, shortages and general confusion. Mr. Estes, last December, asked the sales department to sell 1,000 Z-28's (sic) per month, beginning in January. This objective has been broken down by regions and zones on the basis of their contribution to total Camaro sales. Mr. Estes has personally promised availability of this option beginning the latter part of December in sufficient volume to handle any orders the Sales Department is able to generate. The Distribution Department is scheduling 1,000 of these Camaros per month beginning in January and has advised they are flexible to accept upward revisions in the schedule."
And once 1,000 customers per month started flocking into Chevrolet dealers demanding Z/28s, Streit even offered some advice to salespeople about how best to order the car.
"This option is available on the Model 12437 Camaro and also requires that the M-21 four-speed, close-ratio transmission, together with powered disc brakes be ordered. The positraction rear axle is strongly recommended. For the street, the plenum air intake and the exhaust headers are not required or even desirable."
Curiously, the Z/28 isn't even mentioned in the 1968 Chevrolet Camaro brochure. The RS and SS are well represented, but there's nothing about Chevrolet's racy homologation special. By the same token, there's no mention of the 302 in the early brochure's powertrain lineup. Still, by the end of the model year, 7,199 copies of the unheralded factory-built road racer made it into the hands of aspiring Mark Donohues.
For those who were aware of the car, the 1968 Z/28 was indeed a winner. Car and Driver put Trans-Am challenger and all-around nice guy Sam Posey behind the wheel of a '68 Z and a '68 Mustang tunnel-port for a heads-up comparison. Though it was neck and neck, the Camaro squeaked out a win on the pre-Boss Mustang.
For the test, the Camaro was loaded with a cross-ram intake and cowl plenum air cleaner, plus "dealer installed" headers. It also was said to have been equipped with heavy-duty valve springs, breakerless ignition and a stouter-than-stock clutch.
The Mustang also had a dual-four-barrel intake, headers, an 8-quart oil capacity and dual-point distributor. When the smoke cleared, the Camaro edged out the Mustang in the quarter with a 13.77 at 107.39 MPH to the Mustang's 13.96 at 106.13 MPH. At Lime Rock, the Mustang got the nod as Posey covered the course in 1:08.8 vs. 1:09.2 with the Z.
"Both are easily the most exciting machines we've ever driven with price tags less than $10,000 and by far the best performing street cars ever," C/D's editors concluded. "But... the Camaro gets the nod. In acceleration, both cars were nearly equal with the Camaro slightly, but consistently faster. It wasn't much of a contest in the braking test with the Camaro stopping at a rate greater than one G. At Lime Rock, the Mustang was a marginal winner, but we suspect that with equal tires the Camaro would have been pretty strong because of its better brakes."
The Z/28's 302 engine was developed out of necessity--it had to conform to the SCCA's 5-liter displacement limit. Chevrolet's solution was to cross a 283 with a 327: The 283's 3-inch-stroke crankshaft was used with the 4-inch bore of a 327, yielding 302.4 cubic inches. As it was built with off-the-shelf parts, the 302 was economical to manufacture and, being a Chevrolet small-block, it would accept the full gamut of proven factory speed parts. There was the lumpy "Duntov 30-30" mechanical cam with .485 lift and 254 duration, 11:1 forged aluminum pistons, 2.02 heads with screw-in studs and guide plates, and an aluminum high-rise intake topped with a Holley four-barrel. The 302's factory rating was 290hp, but these engines typically produce more than 350hp at 6,000 RPM and 333-lbs.ft. of torque at 4,000 RPM. Where the engine really sings is in the upper RPM range and, when kept buzzing by a seasoned driver, the lightweight small-block can produce ample power to make a 3,100-pound Camaro a 1960s-vintage road course threat.
Our immaculate feature car belongs to Ed Montini of Gilbert, Arizona. Built in April of 1968, it has virtually no options except the Z/28 package, an AM radio and a 4.10:1 gear ratio. Just the basics here: no bright exterior trim, no accessory gauges or tachometer, the standard upholstery package and no factory spoilers.
Ed purchased the car completely restored in August of 2005 while scanning for prospects on Camaros.net.
"I have a pair of 1969 Zs and I thought a '68 Z would be a nice addition to the collection," he said. The unusual color, Corvette Bronze, happens to match a 1968 Camaro SS 396 that Ed owns--one of a handful that were ordered by Yenko Chevrolet but never converted into Yenko Super Cars.
"It was the color that sold it as much as anything," he said.
In 2000, with approximately 65,000 miles on the odometer, the Z/28 received an extensive five-year restoration. At the outset, there was rust in the quarters and on the tail pan, while the doors, front fenders, inner fenders, trunklid and hood were all in good shape. The trunk pan and floor pans were very solid, but the interior needed an overhaul. The car was a perfect candidate for a no-holds barred restoration, however. All of the major components were intact, though it was missing the correct heads, alternator brackets, alternator, fuel pump, original tires, trim rings and small items like correct nuts and bolts. The smog system was also missing.
Its documentation and ownership history were impressive, however, as over the years, the car retained its original Oklahoma title, original warranty book, original Protect-O-Plate, original broadcast sheet, and the original sales contract from McDonald Chevrolet in Sallisaw, Oklahoma.
During the restoration, the factory quarters were removed from the car, along with the tail pan and rear wheelhouses. Any sheetmetal that needed to be chemically stripped was removed, including the doors, fenders, hood, trunklid, and inner fenders. The quarter panels, tail pan, header panel, lower valance and a cowl pan were all replaced using NOS GM sheetmetal and spot-welded in place, replicating the factory process.
Inside, the carpet, front and rear seat covers, headliner and rear seat panels were replaced; Ssnake Oil Products reworked a set of standard seatbelts for the car.
The engine block was bored .030-inch and fitted with 11:1 pistons. A set of correct heads were treated to a valve job before the engine was balanced and assembled. The transmission and rear axle were also rebuilt and the driveshaft tube was replaced and balanced. The correct 10.5-inch clutch, pressure plate and throwout bearing were used when the drivetrain was reassembled. Finally, the carburetor and distributor were rebuilt before being reinstalled.
The Z's subframe was totally rebuilt, as was the steering box. Reproduction brake lines and hoses, as well as drive belts and battery cables were eventually installed. A set of correct rebuilt front brake calipers and rotors were used and the correct three-core Harrison radiator was re-cored and repainted.
Reusing and rebuilding the Z's original parts was a priority throughout this restoration. For instance, the windshield wiper motor and transmission that the car rolled out of the factory with were rebuilt and reinstalled, as was the original brake master cylinder.
As a result of all of this attention to detail, don't expect to see this Z screaming around Watkins Glen anytime soon. Ed drives the car sparingly, choosing instead to put miles on his 1969 Z. What we wanted to know, however, is how he thinks it stacks up against his big-block-powered Camaros.
"Both have the same body feel and steering control, but the Z feels surprisingly fast once the 302 is past 3,000 RPM--that's where it really wants to live. The 4.10 gears help, and it's like a rocket once you get it wound up."
His only complaint precisely echoes one that Sam Posey lodged against the Z back in 1968.
"The Muncie shifter is the sloppiest you've ever felt," he said. "You never know if you're in first, reverse or third."

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Owner's View
Ed Montini's first-gen Camaro collection is impressive, consisting of '68 and '69 Yenkos, a pair of 1969 Z/28s and this month's feature '68 Z/28. "I'm 56 years old and my first car was a '69 Camaro SS 350," he said. "It was always one of those things; Camaros have always been in my blood."
In the hunt for the elusive '68 Z/28, Ed looked at 10 cars before finding this one.
"I was looking for a nice, well-documented 1968 Z/28. There are lots of them out there, but at least 90 percent lack documentation, and they are difficult to document. This car had the most paperwork I'd seen on a '68 Z/28. It was everything I was looking for."

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Steve's Camaro Parts - 1968 Camaro Restorer keeps from going overboard on his own Berger Z/28

 

 

Feature Article from Hemmings Muscle Machines
March, 2006 - Daniel Strohl

Restoration begets temptation.
The closest aftermarket catalog, left flipped open, inspires thoughts aplenty of stuffing in a hotter camshaft, of swapping in a new wood-rimmed steering wheel, of a thumpin' stereo able to shame the local baggy-pants crowd.
Resto catalogs, judging guidelines in the club newsletter, coverage of the latest big concours event infect the brain with visions of repro parts stamped on the exact same press in the exact same factory under the exact same alignment of the planets as factory.
Your heavy right foot, $3 per gallon gas and the wife's harping over the checkbook conspire to pressure thoughts of yanking the numbers-matching big-block under the hood in favor of an EFI small-block. Or, conversely, the siren call of the 1320 begs for a tunnel-ram intake, traction bars and big slicks.
Thomas Kazanji, then, must know some sort of temptation-negating voodoo.
Aside from the paint it wears, a handful of service parts and a pair of headers (though justified; more momentarily), Kazanji's 1968 Camaro Z/28 differs in no way from when it left the dealer floor. And what a dealer it was.
Berger Chevrolet in Grand Rapids, Michigan, had one of the busiest high-performance parts departments in the nation and, like Baldwin-Motion, Yenko, Gibb, Dana and Nickey, it sold many high-performance cars.
Dale Berger, 67, became general manager of his father's dealership in 1964. His high-performance parts department was doing about $60,000 a month in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
"That was just our parts department," Berger said. "Back then, we were selling bare V-8 blocks for $113, a cylinder head wasn't any more than $50, and we sold headers for $100.
"In 1965, we built a new building down near all the shopping malls and business took off like a rocket. We had a high-performance-oriented salesman named Mike Wawee, who lived these cars and was out and about at night, went to the drag strips on weekends, and was promoting our business. We sold a lot of Camaros, and I was close with Pete Estes at the time and we were allocated more Camaros than other dealers. At any one time we had 10 to 15 Camaros on our lot."
And those Camaros rarely left Berger as Chevrolet intended. While Berger never offered packages that grouped certain high-performance items as his contemporary supertuners did, the dealership made it awfully easy to take your new Camaro over to the parts counter and fit it, a la carte, with all the performance goodies your wallet could handle.
The car's original owner, Kenneth Spyke, ordered the Z/28 with a Hurst shifter, Sun tachometer and Ansen scattershield, as he stated in a letter to Kazanji years later. Berger himself said he remembers the day Spyke picked up the car at the dealership because Spyke immediately set his first child's baby seat in the back, putting a small rip in the blue vinyl.
"I was king of the road," Spyke wrote. "There was none quicker."
But after Spyke's second child arrived a couple years later, he sold his beloved Camaro for $2,100 to Jim Polisky in Filer City, Michigan. Polisky's brother Tom, who built hot rods and other fast cars at the time, fostered Jim's interest in hot cars, which turned to Z/28s the moment he saw one light its tires. But Uncle Sam asked Tom to serve his country in Vietnam, where Tom died in August 1968.
Jim Polisky thus decided not to go away to college and instead stayed with his family in Michigan. His parents, using the money that probably would have gone to his college fund, decided to help finance Polisky's first car. Polisky chose Spyke's Z/28.
Polisky raced it on the streets over the next few years, turning the odometer up above 43,000 miles, before he had his own kids and decided to retire it. Rather than sell it, as Spyke did, he put it in storage and figured he'd get around to it sometime in the future.
Meanwhile, Kazanji, who owns and runs Redz Auto Collision and Restoration in White Plains, New York, had seen many high-quality muscle car restorations go through his shop over the years, when he decided it was time he had a supercar of his own in 2002. Though he thought of looking for a Yenko, Gibb or Nickey, he decided to narrow his focus to Berger products and came across Polisky's classified ad.
Polisky, tired of storing the car and anticipating a costly restoration, decided it was time to let it go. Kazanji, after a couple of calls, booked a flight to Michigan the day after Polisky said it was still available.
"It was September 11, 2002," Kazanji said. "I was the only idiot in the airport that day, but tickets were cheap, so whaddayado?"
He bought it and had the car trucked back to White Plains, where he had to decide what he wanted to do with the car. The Le Mans blue paint with white rally stripes remained original ("I think the previous owners maintained it by waxing so much that they waxed through the paint," Kazanji said), as did the bucket seat interior. The engine ran, the car drove just fine, the carburetor leaked a bit, but all the Z/28 and Berger items remained on the car.
"It was a hard decision to make," Kazanji said. "I thought about leaving it original and untouched, but being that I own a resto shop, it was hard to leave it when all the cars that leave the shop are supposed to be mint."
So Kazanji decided to split the difference and go for a partial restoration, using as many existing and original parts as possible.
He started by disassembling the car--not by ripping and slashing, but by careful prying, knowing he'd use a lot of the same parts later, such as the weatherstripping. He then hand-stripped the car using Captain Lee's spray strip to look for any significant markings and to record the color of the primers and sealers.
The body went out to American Dry Stripping in Bridgeport, Connecticut, which blasted the shell and subframe using olivine, a fine soft gem mined in the Carolinas.
Upon its return to the shop, Kazanji sealed all the seams with Duramix and 3M seam sealer before he had his friend and employee, Tommy Anunziato, pound out a few dents on the roof, trunklid and a couple of other "typical areas" then lay about half a gallon of Evercoat Rage and Evercoat Polyester filler to make everything smooth. Kazanji said he would have preferred to do it himself, but "if I would've done it, I'd still be doing it. Tommy has the speed over me."
Throughout the bodywork phase, Kazanji primed with Spies Hecker red brown 3255 etching primer and gray 8590 surfacer, the latter a GM-approved refinish material. The 3255 base seals the base metal, Kazanji said, and the 8590 allows you to do bodywork on top of it rather than on the bare metal. Kazanji finished the bodywork with four coats of gray 5310 high-build primer.
Kazanji then block-sanded the primer with 220-, 320-, 400- and 600-grade wet sandpaper before he primed it again and sanded with 400-, 600- and 800-grade wet sandpaper. He sprayed four coats of Sherwin-Williams Le Mans Blue lacquer, using a Sata Jet 90 spray gun backed with a Curtiss air compressor in his shop's Devilbiss Expert 2000 full downdraft heated paint booth. He then baked the paint for 30 minutes at 140 degrees Fahrenheit and let the car sit for a couple of days.
"I started block sanding with 3M 600 then 800 wet sandpaper," Kazanji said. "After cleaning the car with DuPont Final Wash, I painted the car with another four coats of lacquer and then baked it for 15 minutes at 120 degrees.
"I painted the car with the doors on and the trunklid installed, like the factory. All the other parts I painted off the car with four more coats of Le Mans Blue."
He then taped and painted the two rally stripes using a stencil kit and Sherwin-Williams White lacquer.
He then block-sanded again with 1500-grade wet sandpaper followed by 2000-grade and polished the car with a Makita variable speed polisher, 3M white foam pad and 3M compound. Finally, he hand-glazed the entire car with Kar Kraft glaze.
Not done yet, he decided to depart from the factory paint procedure by blacking out the undercarriage after he painted the rest of the car rather than before, as GM did.
"If I painted the black first, there would be too much buildup, so I did it reverse for a cleaner look," Kazanji said. "I taped up the body and painted the floorboards and wheelwells with DuPont Chroma Premier Single Stage with a flattening agent added. The firewall I painted a slight bit glossier. After all the blackout was complete, I mixed up some Le Mans Blue and sprayed some on the rear wheelwells and floorboards with overspray duplicated from pictures I took at the beginning."
Kazanji said he stuck with the lacquer because he wanted to finish the car the way Chevrolet did in 1968.
"My car has areas that are not glowing with shine, but that's the way they were," he said.
Inside the car, he found that--aside from the Spyke-installed rip in the rear seat, which hadn't grown much over the decades--it remained in excellent condition, so he simply scrubbed and reinstalled the original carpet, headliner, door panels, dash, column, console, seats and weatherstripping.
While the Z/28 came with front and rear bumperettes, Spyke removed them shortly after he bought the car, boxed them and left them in the trunk, where condensation eventually pitted them. Kazanji sent the bumperettes, along with the potmetal taillamp housings and acorn nuts for the rear spoiler to Paul's Chrome Plating in Evans City, Pennsylvania--one of two chrome platers he often uses in his regular restoration work.
Kazanji made sure not to send out the Berger dealer plate that came with the car, thus its current pitted condition.
"I was afraid to send it out," Kazanji said. "I've seen those plates go for $1,500, so without it, I would have probably been money ahead to have just parted the car out."
Kazanji sent the Z/28's Muncie M-21 four-speed transmission to D&L Transmission in Huntington, New York, to have it cleaned and rebuilt. A new Hayes clutch went between it and the 302-cu.in. V-8--complete with a GM aluminum intake and Holley 800cfm four-barrel carburetor--that Gary Sharkey at the Performance Engine Shop in West Babylon, New York, rebuilt with new bearings and gaskets.
One facet of the car stymied Kazanji, though. A set of rotted GM headers, claimed as authentic Berger installations, hung off the 302.
Knowing that Dale Berger remained in business throughout the years, Kazanji brought the car to Berger's attention. Through Berger, he got Spyke's contact information as well as confirmation that the car did indeed come from his dealership with the scattershield, tachometer and Hurst shifter. But the headers confused Berger as well.
"One thing that seems to be in question is the headers," Berger wrote Kazanji. "(Spyke) doesn't remember headers being on the car when he took delivery.
"There is one thing I know for certain. If the car has the headers, that didn't provide for the air injector reactor (a.k.a. the smog pump). We did not install them. We were not allowed to modify or change the emissions on any vehicle that was to be driven on the street. If, however, the car has the smog pump-type headers with the air lines going to the outlet manifolds on the headers, there is a good chance that we installed them."
Kazanji said he figures the car came with regular exhaust manifolds, but that Spyke bought the headers over the counter and installed them himself.
The headers had rusted far too much to be of any use, so Kazanji ditched them in favor of a pair of Jet-Hot-coated Hooker 15/8-inch-diameter headers backed by a full reproduction exhaust system from Gardner Exhaust in Rhinebeck, New York. NOS spark plugs, new plug wires and new battery cables joined the engine underhood, as did the original air cleaner that Kazanji had Dale Berger sign.
Kazanji then shod the original 15-inch Chevrolet Rallye wheels--painted with Sherwin-Williams silver lacquer on the front and a minor bit of silver-green overspray on the back--with the original trim rings and center caps and a set of Goodyear E70-15 bias-ply tires sourced through Kelsey Tire.
Kazanji's meticulousness during the restoration comes through clearly on the underside of the Z/28. He left all the natural-finish components--steering box, knuckles, tie rods, pitman arm, center link, driveshaft and leaf springs--in their unfinished state and managed to use all the original coil spring tags by first removing the springs, then spinning them around the springs to the end, where he could take them off without ripping them.
"I have no idea how they stayed in good condition after 40,000 miles," Kazanji said.
Kazanji wrapped up the restoration by September 2003, even using the original front brake rotors and pads, and has since hammered the show scene, taking Best American Car honors at the 2004 Greenwich Concours Show, as well as People's Choice at the 2004 National Muscle Car Association nationals and Best Chevrolet at our own Musclepalooza II.
Because of all the showing at various events, Kazanji has put about 50 miles on the car since he finished it. Not a lot, no, but he did say the smell of rubber in the air at Lebanon Valley Dragway this past Memorial Day has tempted him into thinking of stuffing some big tires under the rear flanks and giving the 1320 a try at Musclepalooza III.

---

Owner's View
"All my friends thought I was crazy to do this car," said Thomas Kazanji, 45, of Mamaroneck, New York. "They said, 'Why take such a nice, original car and go through it?'
"But I like things mint. If you come to my house, you gotta take your shoes off before you come in--that explains a lot. Besides, this satisfies me and it attracts a lot of attention.
"At many points, though, I hated working on that car because when I own the car, I want everything to be perfect, and I'll take the time to do it that way. I'd come home from working on it and tell my wife, Patti-Lee, that I just wish it'd fall off the lift. But she gave me great support throughout this whole thing, and I probably wouldn't have finished it if it weren't for her."

Tags: camaro part, camaro parts, Camaro restoration parts, 69 camaro, 1969 camaro, aftermarket camero parts, chevrolet camaro, ss, z28, rs, chevrolet, restoration, 68 camaro, chevy, 67, 69, f-body, camaro, chevy camaro, chevrolet camaro, gm, z-28, 350, ls1, z/28, pace car, camaro ss, 69 camaro, first generation, copo, fbody, yenko, 67 camaro, 68 camaro, musclecar 

1967 Camaro, 1968 Camaro, 1969 camaro, 68 camaro, 69 camaro, aftermarket camero parts, camaro part, camaro parts, Camaro restoration parts, chevrolet camaro

Steve's Camaro Parts - 1967 Camaro Improved Touring

Can today's ''G-Machines'' achieve true synergy between past and present? We take a ride to find out.


Perhaps one of the primary reasons that muscle car restoration presents such a challenge--beyond coping with rust--is that these cars were often the subjects of ongoing alterations. It was a process that often began nearly immediately, as celebrated with the emerging ''Day Two'' trend, where freshly restored cars are presented with just those few period modifications that new owners tended to make as soon as they got home.
Some of those efforts to personalize a new car may have halted after the first few additions, while others never stopped, sometimes winding up with track-dedicated racers that differed radically from the specs laid down by the manufacturers. To this type of owner, the factory's configuration was merely a starting point, one that need never be revisited. It's a dictum that stands even today, in the midst of widespread efforts to return these 40-year-old machines to their original forms; there are still those who are more interested in pursuing ever-improved levels of performance than in returning everything to factory-spec. For them, the interest in yesterday is purely aesthetic.
But are these efforts actually improving their subjects? Do the ends justify the means, or is it all folly for the sake of putting on a good show, yielding an assemblage of parts and pieces that look cool while lacking any sort of mechanical harmony?
John Malouf wasn't around when the first muscle cars were being built--his first car was an '85 Mustang GT, and it was several years used when he picked it up as a teen. The timing was perfect to land John right at the cusp of the 5.0 movement, where modifications were the order of the day. Despite having a ''late-model'' subject, he found himself practicing a time-honored method of going faster: by picking choice bits from the junkyards around his southern California home.
''I built that car while I was in high school and college, and I did a lot of junkyard raiding,'' he told us, recounting that he eventually made it into the 11s using mostly salvaged parts--including a 351W--and lots of tweaking and tuning. ''It taught me a lot about working on cars, and really built my confidence,'' explained John, adding that he'd had another 5.0 later, this one with EFI and a centrifugal supercharger.
But the Fox Mustangs lacked one thing that John found himself drawn to: the aggressive lines of the muscle car era. ''I wanted something older,'' John said, adding that he'd always admired the lines of the first-generation F-body. So, as the Nineties were drawing to a close, he located a '68 Camaro coupe in nearby Van Nuys, just a few miles from the site where the car had originally been built. It was solid, and it even ran and drove...for a little while, anyway.
''I was driving the car home when the rear end seized up; when it did, it took out the transmission, too, which I believe was a Turbo 350. I was mad, but only because I thought I probably would have gotten the car cheaper if it had happened on the test drive. All I really wanted was a clean body,'' recounted John. Right from the outset, it had been his intention to use the Camaro as a blank canvas.
His goals, though, were actually aimed more at straight-line competition; he also intended to get there gradually, at least until the driveline grenaded.
''After it broke on the way home, I hastened my plans. First the engine came out, then the subframe, and then the suspension was falling apart in my hands, so I just decided this was going to be a ground-up restoration,'' said John, though his use of the term ''restoration'' really referred more to the car's body and interior--he still intended to go drag racing.
To that end, he set about straightening out the Camaro's flanks, replacing the rear quarter panels with NOS GM pieces to eliminate the accumulation of dents and the rust that was creeping along the lower edges--yes, even So-Cal cars can rust, given enough time. He was also fortifying the car's foundation by welding the subframe seams and adding gussets to the chassis along with subframe connectors.
At the same time, John was getting the new drivetrain together. The centerpiece was a 406-inch small-block, using parts sourced from Speed-O-Motive in Santa Fe Springs, California, topped with a conventional Holley carburetor and backed with a somewhat unconventional (at least at the time) Tremec five-speed.
''I'd been really happy with the Tremec in my '85 Mustang, so I wanted to see if it was possible to put one in the Camaro. There weren't kits for this the way there are now, but I talked to Mike Fortes of Fortes Parts Connection, where I used to get stuff for my Mustang, and he was working on a conversion kit to put the Tremec in a GM car,'' explained John, revealing that his efforts to enhance the Camaro's road manners had begun even before that was an established goal. ''It worked out really well, and was nearly a bolt-in.''
Once the car was moving under its own power, the stripped shell was taken to Studio Auto Body in Glendale, California, for final straightening and to lay down the Torch Red paint. When the car came back home, John handled the interior himself, including the painting and upholstery installation, leaving the Camaro with a restored factory Deluxe interior in black and using lots of factory trim pieces. By this point, the car was once again roadworthy and looking good. It seemed like everything was back on course to create a solid street/strip Camaro...until John went for a ride.
''I was still planning to go drag racing when I met a guy who lived about a quarter-mile from my house with a nearly identical-looking car. He'd just finished it and took me for a ride--I was really impressed with the handling. In fact, up to that point, I never thought an old car could handle like that.''
That one ride was all it took to change the course of John's Camaro project. ''I decided that's what I wanted to do with my car.''
John and the owner of the other Camaro became fast friends, and the two shared a desire to elevate all aspects of their respective Camaros' performance, though they didn't realize they were on the leading edge of an emerging trend. ''Nobody was using the term 'Pro-Touring' back then--we just wanted to make our cars handle and stop as well as, or better than, late-model performance cars.''
It turned out that John's new friend had worked as a machinist, and still had access to his former employer's shop, which allowed the two to create many of the parts they needed to achieve their goals. This included fabricating brackets and making other alterations to facilitate the mounting of C4 Corvette ZR1 brakes, using PBR aluminum calipers, to the Camaro's spindles; more fabricating and machining got the Corvette's rear brakes onto the Camaro's 12-bolt.
Actuating those brakes was yet another challenge, particularly since the Camaro's small-block was then running a lumpy cam that did away with most of the idle vacuum needed to power a brake booster. This conundrum prompted John to consult with a power brake specialist, though his suggestion was far less conventional than they'd anticipated. ''He asked if we knew what a hydro-boost system was, and then told us GM had used them with some trucks and on some of the diesel-powered cars to get around a lack of vacuum. I asked him if he could put one together for me; once we got it on the car, I couldn't believe how well it worked.''
In spite of the brake solution, the raucous small-block did become tiresome over time, and John felt there were a number of inefficiencies with the engine combination. The next step toward improving drivability was to add a programmable EFI system--Holley's Commander 950. ''I could hook it to my laptop, and then I'd have someone else drive while I worked on the programming,'' explained John, though he still felt there was room to make the Camaro better.
That feeling led to the development of a new engine package, which also provided the opportunity to get some weight off the Camaro's front end. A new small-block was built using a rotating assembly from SCAT in an aluminum Motown block from World Products. It still displaced 406 cubic inches, but this time, the cam was based on a 113-degree lobe separation, which smoothed out the idle considerably and brought back the vacuum--it would now sit at 800 RPM while pulling 16 to 17 inches of vacuum.
But making less power was definitely not the goal, so the new cherry on top became a centrifugal supercharger--a Paxton Novi unit. John had used a centrifugal blower on his second Mustang to great effect, and working in concert with the EFI, it seemed an excellent way to make big power numbers while maintaining streetability.
So this Camaro has experienced quite a metamorphosis since it first rolled from the Van Nuys plant over 40 years ago--and really, just since John took title. It makes for an impressive spec sheet, but the real question is simply, does it all work? Is it actually better than it was?
For a bit of impartial insight, our man out West, Jeff Koch, took the opportunity to drive the fruits of John's labor after handling the photo work. Though he's driven quite a few stock muscle cars over the years, Jeff has also been behind the wheel of numerous examples of the Pro-Touring approach to tweaking and tuning, providing a solid basis for commentary.
Before even twisting the key, Jeff experienced a genuine improvement: The stock seats had been lowered--an inch and a half, according to John--so that they looked stock but provided a noticeable gain in headroom, which, at 6-foot-2, Jeff could appreciate. ''Better headroom, okay legroom, but the wheel is still in your lap,'' was the first entry in his notes. ''Autometers are big and clear, but console gauges are not going to be useful when eyes are up, at speed,'' he continued. Then he turned the key.
''Idle settles at 700 to 900 RPM, with the blower whine drowning out much of the engine--an interesting blend.'' Easing the clutch out was eye-opening. ''Wow, this thing is not subtle. Clutch movement is short and heavy, engaging at the top of the travel; throttle is more of an on/off switch. Owner says he's considering swapping the 3.73s for 3.08s, and advises that he normally starts in second when cruising the neighborhood; when I try this, the power is still startling, but it's just right to avoid tire-spin.''
Even after getting more familiar, the Camaro kept Jeff on his toes, but he seemed to be enjoying himself. ''Shifter is quick and direct. Brake pedal is super-stiff; at low speeds the binders want to throw you out the window. There's blower whine up to 2,500 RPM, then the engine gets loud enough to take over, and by 4,000 RPM you're all in, with the engine making Super Stock noises.''
By the end of the trip, Jeff had minor criticisms, but even he was quick to dismiss them. ''The ride around town is rough-ish, but so what? Cornering is flat, and the steering is firm and quick--as close to perfect as I've felt, and there's no chassis flex at all, thanks to cage.''
The praise isn't all that surprising to John--he's spent years making changes and adjustments to get it just so, but is there anything lingering that he would have done differently? ''If I could do it again, I would have gone with the milder camshaft combination sooner; it makes the car so much more driveable.''
So is it done, then? ''I continue to make little adjustments--keeping a car like this finely tuned takes considerable time and effort.''
In the final analysis, it certainly seems that John's efforts have yielded quantifiable results, but his closing comments summed it up perhaps more aptly than could any black-and-white data: ''I've put approximately 5,000 miles on it this way, and every time I drive it, it puts a smile on my face.''
Sounds like a mission accomplished.

Perhaps one of the primary reasons that muscle car restoration presents such a challenge--beyond coping with rust--is that these cars were often the subjects of ongoing alterations. It was a process that often began nearly immediately, as celebrated with the emerging ''Day Two'' trend, where freshly restored cars are presented with just those few period modifications that new owners tended to make as soon as they got home.
Some of those efforts to personalize a new car may have halted after the first few additions, while others never stopped, sometimes winding up with track-dedicated racers that differed radically from the specs laid down by the manufacturers. To this type of owner, the factory's configuration was merely a starting point, one that need never be revisited. It's a dictum that stands even today, in the midst of widespread efforts to return these 40-year-old machines to their original forms; there are still those who are more interested in pursuing ever-improved levels of performance than in returning everything to factory-spec. For them, the interest in yesterday is purely aesthetic.
But are these efforts actually improving their subjects? Do the ends justify the means, or is it all folly for the sake of putting on a good show, yielding an assemblage of parts and pieces that look cool while lacking any sort of mechanical harmony?
John Malouf wasn't around when the first muscle cars were being built--his first car was an '85 Mustang GT, and it was several years used when he picked it up as a teen. The timing was perfect to land John right at the cusp of the 5.0 movement, where modifications were the order of the day. Despite having a ''late-model'' subject, he found himself practicing a time-honored method of going faster: by picking choice bits from the junkyards around his southern California home.
''I built that car while I was in high school and college, and I did a lot of junkyard raiding,'' he told us, recounting that he eventually made it into the 11s using mostly salvaged parts--including a 351W--and lots of tweaking and tuning. ''It taught me a lot about working on cars, and really built my confidence,'' explained John, adding that he'd had another 5.0 later, this one with EFI and a centrifugal supercharger.
But the Fox Mustangs lacked one thing that John found himself drawn to: the aggressive lines of the muscle car era. ''I wanted something older,'' John said, adding that he'd always admired the lines of the first-generation F-body. So, as the Nineties were drawing to a close, he located a '68 Camaro coupe in nearby Van Nuys, just a few miles from the site where the car had originally been built. It was solid, and it even ran and drove...for a little while, anyway.
''I was driving the car home when the rear end seized up; when it did, it took out the transmission, too, which I believe was a Turbo 350. I was mad, but only because I thought I probably would have gotten the car cheaper if it had happened on the test drive. All I really wanted was a clean body,'' recounted John. Right from the outset, it had been his intention to use the Camaro as a blank canvas.
His goals, though, were actually aimed more at straight-line competition; he also intended to get there gradually, at least until the driveline grenaded.
''After it broke on the way home, I hastened my plans. First the engine came out, then the subframe, and then the suspension was falling apart in my hands, so I just decided this was going to be a ground-up restoration,'' said John, though his use of the term ''restoration'' really referred more to the car's body and interior--he still intended to go drag racing.
To that end, he set about straightening out the Camaro's flanks, replacing the rear quarter panels with NOS GM pieces to eliminate the accumulation of dents and the rust that was creeping along the lower edges--yes, even So-Cal cars can rust, given enough time. He was also fortifying the car's foundation by welding the subframe seams and adding gussets to the chassis along with subframe connectors.
At the same time, John was getting the new drivetrain together. The centerpiece was a 406-inch small-block, using parts sourced from Speed-O-Motive in Santa Fe Springs, California, topped with a conventional Holley carburetor and backed with a somewhat unconventional (at least at the time) Tremec five-speed.
''I'd been really happy with the Tremec in my '85 Mustang, so I wanted to see if it was possible to put one in the Camaro. There weren't kits for this the way there are now, but I talked to Mike Fortes of Fortes Parts Connection, where I used to get stuff for my Mustang, and he was working on a conversion kit to put the Tremec in a GM car,'' explained John, revealing that his efforts to enhance the Camaro's road manners had begun even before that was an established goal. ''It worked out really well, and was nearly a bolt-in.''
Once the car was moving under its own power, the stripped shell was taken to Studio Auto Body in Glendale, California, for final straightening and to lay down the Torch Red paint. When the car came back home, John handled the interior himself, including the painting and upholstery installation, leaving the Camaro with a restored factory Deluxe interior in black and using lots of factory trim pieces. By this point, the car was once again roadworthy and looking good. It seemed like everything was back on course to create a solid street/strip Camaro...until John went for a ride.
''I was still planning to go drag racing when I met a guy who lived about a quarter-mile from my house with a nearly identical-looking car. He'd just finished it and took me for a ride--I was really impressed with the handling. In fact, up to that point, I never thought an old car could handle like that.''
That one ride was all it took to change the course of John's Camaro project. ''I decided that's what I wanted to do with my car.''
John and the owner of the other Camaro became fast friends, and the two shared a desire to elevate all aspects of their respective Camaros' performance, though they didn't realize they were on the leading edge of an emerging trend. ''Nobody was using the term 'Pro-Touring' back then--we just wanted to make our cars handle and stop as well as, or better than, late-model performance cars.''
It turned out that John's new friend had worked as a machinist, and still had access to his former employer's shop, which allowed the two to create many of the parts they needed to achieve their goals. This included fabricating brackets and making other alterations to facilitate the mounting of C4 Corvette ZR1 brakes, using PBR aluminum calipers, to the Camaro's spindles; more fabricating and machining got the Corvette's rear brakes onto the Camaro's 12-bolt.
Actuating those brakes was yet another challenge, particularly since the Camaro's small-block was then running a lumpy cam that did away with most of the idle vacuum needed to power a brake booster. This conundrum prompted John to consult with a power brake specialist, though his suggestion was far less conventional than they'd anticipated. ''He asked if we knew what a hydro-boost system was, and then told us GM had used them with some trucks and on some of the diesel-powered cars to get around a lack of vacuum. I asked him if he could put one together for me; once we got it on the car, I couldn't believe how well it worked.''
In spite of the brake solution, the raucous small-block did become tiresome over time, and John felt there were a number of inefficiencies with the engine combination. The next step toward improving drivability was to add a programmable EFI system--Holley's Commander 950. ''I could hook it to my laptop, and then I'd have someone else drive while I worked on the programming,'' explained John, though he still felt there was room to make the Camaro better.
That feeling led to the development of a new engine package, which also provided the opportunity to get some weight off the Camaro's front end. A new small-block was built using a rotating assembly from SCAT in an aluminum Motown block from World Products. It still displaced 406 cubic inches, but this time, the cam was based on a 113-degree lobe separation, which smoothed out the idle considerably and brought back the vacuum--it would now sit at 800 RPM while pulling 16 to 17 inches of vacuum.
But making less power was definitely not the goal, so the new cherry on top became a centrifugal supercharger--a Paxton Novi unit. John had used a centrifugal blower on his second Mustang to great effect, and working in concert with the EFI, it seemed an excellent way to make big power numbers while maintaining streetability.
So this Camaro has experienced quite a metamorphosis since it first rolled from the Van Nuys plant over 40 years ago--and really, just since John took title. It makes for an impressive spec sheet, but the real question is simply, does it all work? Is it actually better than it was?
For a bit of impartial insight, our man out West, Jeff Koch, took the opportunity to drive the fruits of John's labor after handling the photo work. Though he's driven quite a few stock muscle cars over the years, Jeff has also been behind the wheel of numerous examples of the Pro-Touring approach to tweaking and tuning, providing a solid basis for commentary.
Before even twisting the key, Jeff experienced a genuine improvement: The stock seats had been lowered--an inch and a half, according to John--so that they looked stock but provided a noticeable gain in headroom, which, at 6-foot-2, Jeff could appreciate. ''Better headroom, okay legroom, but the wheel is still in your lap,'' was the first entry in his notes. ''Autometers are big and clear, but console gauges are not going to be useful when eyes are up, at speed,'' he continued. Then he turned the key.
''Idle settles at 700 to 900 RPM, with the blower whine drowning out much of the engine--an interesting blend.'' Easing the clutch out was eye-opening. ''Wow, this thing is not subtle. Clutch movement is short and heavy, engaging at the top of the travel; throttle is more of an on/off switch. Owner says he's considering swapping the 3.73s for 3.08s, and advises that he normally starts in second when cruising the neighborhood; when I try this, the power is still startling, but it's just right to avoid tire-spin.''
Even after getting more familiar, the Camaro kept Jeff on his toes, but he seemed to be enjoying himself. ''Shifter is quick and direct. Brake pedal is super-stiff; at low speeds the binders want to throw you out the window. There's blower whine up to 2,500 RPM, then the engine gets loud enough to take over, and by 4,000 RPM you're all in, with the engine making Super Stock noises.''
By the end of the trip, Jeff had minor criticisms, but even he was quick to dismiss them. ''The ride around town is rough-ish, but so what? Cornering is flat, and the steering is firm and quick--as close to perfect as I've felt, and there's no chassis flex at all, thanks to cage.''
The praise isn't all that surprising to John--he's spent years making changes and adjustments to get it just so, but is there anything lingering that he would have done differently? ''If I could do it again, I would have gone with the milder camshaft combination sooner; it makes the car so much more driveable.''
So is it done, then? ''I continue to make little adjustments--keeping a car like this finely tuned takes considerable time and effort.''
In the final analysis, it certainly seems that John's efforts have yielded quantifiable results, but his closing comments summed it up perhaps more aptly than could any black-and-white data: ''I've put approximately 5,000 miles on it this way, and every time I drive it, it puts a smile on my face.''
Sounds like a mission accomplished.

Feature Article from Hemmings Muscle Machines
September, 2010 - Terry McGean - Photography by Jeff Koch


Tags: camaro part, camaro parts, Camaro restoration parts, 69 camaro, 1969 camaro, aftermarket camero parts, chevrolet camaro, ss, z28, rs, chevrolet, restoration, 68 camaro, chevy, 67, 69, f-body, camaro, chevy camaro, chevrolet camaro, gm, z-28, 350, ls1, z/28, pace car, camaro ss, 69 camaro, first generation, copo, fbody, yenko, 67 camaro, 68 camaro, musclecar 

Steve's Camaro Parts - 1968 Camaro - A Never-Was Z/28 RS Convertible

Just a Second

Everyone knows there's only one '68 Z/28 convertible. Don't they?

 

The story of the one and only 1968 Z/28 convertible is an oft-told one:
Vince Piggins built it for Chevy general manager Pete Estes, fortified it with more power and lots of trick options, from the cross-ram dual four-barrel intake to 4.88:1 gears and four-wheel disc brakes. The green machine recently changed hands to the tune of seven figures, though it's still known as the Estes Camaro, and is celebrated as a fantastical one-of-one creation that many may consider the ultimate first-gen Camaro.

Now, take a look at the '68 Camaro on these pages. This is clearly not Estes's car--for one thing, it's Marina Blue and sports an RS nose. And yet even the most intense scrutiny will bear out that it's full of correct date-coded parts and part numbers. Pop the hood and there's an aluminum cross-ram intake with twin 585cfm Holley four-barrels; even the Protect-O-Plate and window sticker shows that this was built in January of 1968 and delivered to a dealer in Utah. It's a clean restoration, for sure--no aluminum radiators or radial tires take away from the ultra-period vibe. But it's enough to shake the faith of even the most hardcore Camaro fan, making them reconsider what it is that they think they know.
We're here to tell you that the Estes Camaro's new owner has nothing to sweat; his Z/28 doesn't have a long-lost cousin that's been floating in the ether for four decades. As nice as this car is, and as much documentation as owner John Scholz III of Pleasanton, California, has to prove that it is what it is, it quite simply isn't real.

Cue a chorus of readers annoyed that this isn't a real car. We can debate about what a "real" car is all day long. But your author drove it, and spent a blustery March morning shivering on a dry lake bed to get shots as the sun came up over the mountain, so he well knows it exists. Is it a real Marina Blue small-block V-8 RS convertible? Yes, it is. And so the questions arise: If it isn't what it purports to be, beyond a blue Camaro ragtop, then what the heck is it?
It might be easier to get into what it isn't. This Camaro is not a clone; it's different enough from Maynard's that no one can possibly mistake the two. (Yes, we know that color-selection markers mean that a clone can be differently marked and colored than the donor. Hush.) Nor can it be considered a tribute car (the latest euphemism for "clone"), for many of the same reasons.

And it's not really a fraud, because the owner completely owns up to every aspect of what he did to the car. Frankly, he was positively gleeful about pointing out every aspect of his machine.
Besides, the most important number on the whole car--the VIN--has remained unaffected and untouched. It's still a Norwood, Ohio-built 1968 Camaro V-8 convertible, and this is reflected in the 124678N VIN sequence. Thus we parse the difference between what's legal and what's ethical: People swap engines and components all the time to no one's detriment, but changing out VINs is a no-no according to the state.

Beyond that, although we're not lawyers, we're pretty sure that fraud usually involves deception in a financial transaction between two parties, and--despite some very careful and thorough manipulation of the documents that could well be considered proof of this car's proper existence--that hasn't happened. Indeed, Scholz had to sell three of his other Camaros to help pay for the building of this particular beast...after that kind of sacrifice, he's not looking to part with it anytime soon.
So what is it?
The owner prefers the term "counterfeit." "Where there is big money involved," Scholz told us, "whether it's a painting, a rare coin or a muscle car, counterfeiters will always be around. What better way to show what's happening in our hobby than to create a perfect three-dollar bill?"

Indeed, while the concept and execution were Scholz's own, he made regular trips to Steve's Camaros for plenty of NOS, restored and reproduction parts. Everywhere you look, there are plenty of actual, correct, date-coded bits. The 327 block (with the correctly cast-in 3914678 part number and which, while not original, was cast within two weeks of this car's original mill) shared a part number with the 302 for part of 1968. Thus it is saved the ignominy of having its ID ground down and re-stamped, although the V0103MO (V for Flint-built engine, 0103 for month and week, and MO for the code indicating a 290hp 302) suffix has been added.

"I didn't want to resurface the block with a milling machine," he says. "That would have been too obvious." So instead, the block was surfaced with an antique broaching machine ("This doesn't give you the accurate tolerances of today's precision machining," Scholz explains, "but I was after correctness, not precision.") The deck surface was then aged for a year, using alternating coatings of a muriatic acid solution and a saline solution, which allowed it to corrode more quickly.
An original 302 crank (p/n 3941176) has been added, along with 11:1 pistons. On the top end, correct 3917291 heads were installed; they're correct for either a 302 or a 327 with 2.02-inch intake valves. The 1100814 alternator, 1108367 starter, 1111266 distributor, pulleys and brackets have all been date-coded.

And then, of course, there's the correct intake and carburetors: The original (not repro, Scholz swears) intake was a $6,800 flea market piece. We can't believe we just typed "$6,800" and "flea market" while describing an intake manifold, but such is the high demand for these pieces, in the days before the quality re-pops were on the market. The carburetors are correct reproduction 585cfm Holleys from Heartbeat City. ("There are some subtle differences," Scholz says, without telling us exactly what they are.)

A couple of friendly words from Bay Area cross-ram Z coupe owner Mark Schwartz at a show convinced Scholz to ditch the vacuum advance. "I learned that they use the L88/ZL1-type distributor with a dummy vacuum advance can," Scholz told us. "Those are $1,200 on eBay. So I made one. Now it's got pure centrifugal advance."

The same attention to detail is paid all around the car. You could tear the thing apart and, while it would be certainly considered a very fine restoration, there's nothing to give away that there's anything hinky going on. This completeness was something of a challenge: As if finding (and buying, yikes) the right parts alone wasn't enough, Scholz stuck with his car's original build date of the 3rd week of January for his machine. "Building a January car is difficult," he says. "Some of the parts are dated late '67 and are specific to the '68 model year." Yet they're all within the realm of possibility: The dates are randomly scattered throughout October, November and December of 1967.

So sticking your head under the hood will reveal nothing. Poke around elsewhere, and there's no indication either: This performer doesn't wait for the audience to stop gasping, but continues on with its po-faced show.
"I was at a show recently," Scholz says, "I walked away and came back, and there's some guy lying underneath my gas tank. So I kicked his foot to get his attention. He was telling me that you can tell a fake JL8 rear by how the emergency brake cables were set up, and he was wondering where I got mine? I told him that they came with the rear."
Some have questioned the dust shields on the front brakes, because the service package wouldn't have had them, "but the experts are 50/50 on it," Scholz says.

Creating a numbers-matching second of a car that everyone knows there's only one of, with correctly dated components, is one thing, he tells us. "Adding full documentation to this car really opens up a can of worms." Indeed, the paperwork, again happily coughed up by the owner, backs up everything as written on the car. Which some might find troubling.
Scholz started by recreating a window sticker, stirring in both the options the actual car came with and the ones he added on later. The sticker and invoice both came from a real dealership: Gordon Wilson Chevrolet (now Larry H. Miller Chevrolet) in Murray, Utah--the dealership where this particular car was originally delivered to the fictional Robert Tuller. A full complement of options (named and priced on our spec page) on the sticker and three dealer-installed goodies (the "cross/ram intake kit," the camshaft kit, and the four-wheel disc brake kit) adding $1,234.76 on the dealer invoice, made for a $6,210.84 Camaro.

An NOS owners' manual was sourced (copies are now available). The Protect-O-Plate, which reads V0103MO, has the fictitious Tuller's home address and reflects the engine suffix stamped into the block. The book reflects the original 3.73:1 rear, which would have been replaced with the disc-brake axle at the dealership.
The paperwork was sent out to be weathered. "I promised the bigwigs in the Camaro club that I wouldn't disclose who did it," he says in response to our query regarding just who, exactly, is able to age documents with such accuracy that nothing short of carbon-dating will reveal their true age.

So it's in character and can't be shaken. What's done is done, so we might as well enjoy the show. Slip inside, and at first blush it's like any other Camaro convertible you've been in. If you're too tall, the top of the windshield will bisect your vision. The steering wheel could stand to be a couple of degrees higher up, even with the added tilt column. Endless headroom, thanks to the down-folded top. You know the drill.

Turning the key is another matter. It cranks readily enough, but at cold idle, you really don't want to be near it. It twitches, it spits, it cackles. You can hear the valves defiantly slamming shut inside the heads with each revolution of the cam. It smells like the drag strip, the muffler sounds like there's a Maxwell House can with a pachinko ball let loose inside, and it seems very annoyed to have woken up and realized that it's alive to see another day--and doubly so to discover that you roused it from its slumber.

Even once it warms up, and is able to maintain a rolling 950-1,100 rpm idle, it's still muttering under its breath through gritted teeth at you. The Muncie shifter shivers in its moorings--whether it's from engine vibrations or sheer fear remains undetermined.

Getting it to warm up and calm down on a chilly morning is easier said than done out in the open desert. Surely the carb jetting isn't helping: With 61 jets in the primaries, 69s in the secondaries, and a #35 accelerator pump squirter, it's been tuned for sea level. "My friend Henry Olsen did his magic... when I mentioned my Z/28 cross-ram, he said 'Get that thing over here! It's been a while since I tuned one.' " Here at the El Mirage dry lakebed, we're more than half a mile up (2,800 feet); leaner jetting could help things. But it is what it is on this frigid March morning.

Blip the throttle, and you actually get some response, rather than the fat black hole that a small-cube, multi-carb V-8 could easily throw you into. Let up on the clutch--the takeup is nearly all the way up on the pedal's travel--and the pedal seems stiff, but not heavy. Getting aggressive with it off idle, even once it's warmed up, is a good way to stumble and stall. Rather, if you roll into it off idle and don't upset the carbs, you'll be on track to take advantage of all that power once it kicks you in the small of the back at around 2,500 rpm. Do it, and you're hurled clear through redline in less time than it takes to tell.

Once you're moving, though, the 302 demands a strong hand: Tentative shifts will be rewarded with revs caught well outside the power band, quickly scrubbing off your momentum. No, you need to get in there and rev the whee out of it, clear up to 7,000 rpm if you must, and shift hard and fast.

It's easy to do--the clutch and Muncie shifter are nicely weighted so that they work in concert, demanding a forceful approach without threatening to break any hard parts. In third and fourth gears, the Muncie shifter rattled something fierce in its gate--it actually drowned out the engine. They all do that, we know, but this is the kind of behavior that made Hurst a household name in the '60s.

As delightful as all that power was, the bias-ply rubber it rode on was an utter fright: Willing to sniff out and follow every crack in the ancient desert-baked pavement, letting the nose feel deceptively light under even moderate acceleration. Luckily, the power steering was perfectly tuned to be able to catch the chassis' antics while dancing around on its repro bias-ply tires. The slightest of fingertip movements from behind the wheel let you save yourself from what seemed like inevitable disaster; the lack of on-center slop made up for the relative lack of feel. The JL8 disc brakes were strong, progressive, fade-free and nicely dialed in, so anytime the rubber got to be too much (or, more correctly, not enough), you could count on them to bring you back down to earth.

But as much of an experience as it is to drive, this car, more than maybe any other muscle car ever built, doesn't need to count on its actual performance to make your head explode. No, the fact that it exists at all is what's supposed to blow your mind; it messes with your perceptions of what you think you know. If owner Scholz chooses not to show his documentation during a show--oh, who are we kidding, even if he does show off the paperwork--heads are scratched before they explode.

"I built it to prove a point," he says. Okay then, John. What's the point?
"These days, there are a lot of cars going through auctions, and trading hands, that are just fake. That's just unfortunate. So I created the ultimate fake--a car that everyone knows there's only one of. Yet here's a second, completely documented car. It's scary.

"When I first showed this car with the documentation, man, did I get an earful. I'm not trying to fool everyone. I'm just showing everyone that it's being done. It's something everyone knows is happening, but I'm one of the first to say 'Hey, look at what's going on.' These days, you can't really believe what you read anymore. You have to do your homework if you're going to shell out for a big-bucks car, even with documentation.

"People are wondering whether I'm trying to rip someone off, but at the same time I've received plenty of pats on the back for standing in front of a clone instead of hiding behind it."

---

Owner's View
The original Z/28 convertible has only been in the hands of a few... and I will never be one of those fortunate collectors. So I went out and did what any passionate car builder would do: I built my own, down to every correct detail.
At shows, people will tell me that Chevy never made one of these, but when they see the documentation, or the correctly broached and stamped engine suffix code, they completely believe Chevy made it. I just smile, shake their hand and tell them that they can't always believe what they hear, see or read.
It's simply a counterfeit convertible.

Source: Feature Article from Hemmings Muscle Machines
August, 2008 - Jeff Koch

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1969 Chevrolet Camaro

Mark Stielow's Latest Camaro Is The First Recipient Of An LS9 Engine Swap-And This One Makes More Than 700 HP

From the September, 2009 issue of Hot Rod Magazine

By Mike Yoksich

Photography by Mike Yoksich

You are looking at the first hot rod powered by the LS9 V-8 crate engine sold by GM Performance Parts, the same supercharged, 6.2L mill used in the latest ZR1 Corvette. But while the engine choice is really cool, don't be fooled; this '69 Camaro is about way more than just an engine. It came together under the guidance of well-known Pro Touring car builder Mark Stielow. Unlike the other 35 or so cars Mark has built, this one started in the mind of his friend Charley Lillard. As a direct descendent of the killer '69 Camaro that Mark unveiled back in 2003, which was called the Mule, Charley decided to simply call this ride Jackass.

The name is somewhat misleading. The Mule represented a huge step forward in the build and performance of a Pro Touring-style muscle car. It featured massive rubber, production-looking mini-tubbed rear wheelwells over a streetable four-link rear suspension, a 1,000hp twin turbo V-8, a late-model front suspension, 275/35R18 front tires, 335/30R18 rear tires, and was detailed in 22 consecutive months of magazine buildup stories. The Mule was chassis-dyno-tested in 0-to-200-mph runs, run in track events at facilities such as Laguna Seca, and driven cross-country on four HOT ROD Power Tours(r).

The 6.2L supercharged LS9...

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The 6.2L supercharged LS9 V-8 usually powers the insane ZR1 Corvette, but this LS9 is powering the first hot rod application on the road-a '69 Camaro named Jackass. And it made 700-plus horsepower out of the box.

Jackass takes all the lessons of the Mule and builds on them with a host of refinements and innovations. The stock LS9 V-8 engine is an obvious innovation, but don't forget to take in the carbon-ceramic Brembo ZR1 Corvette disc brakes, C6 Corvette front suspension on the Art Morrison front subframe, front spoiler relocator kit, trick Rick's stainless gas tank, and coolers for the transmission and rearend.

Is Jackass better than the Mule? Mark says, "We gave the Mule that name because it was a testbed for a lot of the ideas I had rumbling around in my head for years. That car was intended to really make a statement, which it did, but it is also more aggressive than most of the cars I have built. My pal Charley Lillard, who owns the Mule now, felt I could do a car with the same capabilities but with production car manners. Jackass is truly that car-insane power and speed capabilities, but the thing idles like a rumbly taxi cab sitting in traffic with the A/C blowing cold."

So is Jackass the best Pro Touring car Mark has built yet? That is tough to say because it won't get the snotty-cammed, high-compression fanboys fired up, as it quietly idles around town. We guess that won't matter to the true Pro Touring enthusiasts who will once again be awed by Mark's ability to reinvent and refine what performance terror looks like wrapped in the envelope of a '69 Camaro. And for that reason, many will consider Jackass his best yet.

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