I’m sad to say that we sold the camaro tonight…. We just did not see the need to have a broken camaro sitting around, so we sold it to some people who came from Austin and picked it up today. Sad to see it go but glad to have most of the money back out of it. It was a very handy car when putting the red one back together because we would use the camaro as if it was a manual to tell us where stuff went and the the melted blob a plastic was that was in your hand that we found on the firebird. It was better then using our factory service manuals! hehe. And while were talking about the camaro for the last time, we did get a chance to take off the oil pan today and found out that one of the rods were completely destroyed and we found parts of the rod in the bottom of the pan.. Yea buddy I’m sure it was a small knock you heard when you broke it. *rolls eyes*

Oh and I updated the blog to http://www.formula.oldpizza.net/
And changed the layout! the new layout is best view in the firefox web browser.
Get Firefox!

Well yesterday and friend and I cleaned the entire car.
We washed the car about twice with soap and then rubbed a claybar all over the car, then we waxed the whole thing with cleaning wax and it’s very shiny now.
The pics i’m about to post don’t show it’s real shine.
And the before pics looks too shiny when really they are super dirty.

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If you would like to view some more pics of the clean car go here:
http://www.oldpizza.net/images4/

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Well we worked most of the day today and got the firebird running!!

We replaced the throttle cable, cruise control cable/box, hood release cable, throttle body cover + elbow + k&n box, finished replacing the wiring harness put another battery and starter in a lot of rubber hoses under the hood and a lot of other stuff.

When we first started it the battery was dead so we stole the green van’s(turbo astro) battery and put it in and it started and then died and started and idled for about 5-6 mins really nicely but then died again… We tried to start it again but no luck… The started just clicked and the battery voltage went down to like zero, so we thought it was the battery so we went and bought a new battery and some break pads. We got home put the new battery in and the same thing happened… *click click click* went the starter… We then thought it might be the starter so we took the starter off the white camaro and put it on the firebird, and tried to start it again! Still no luck!! So then I kept trying to crank it till we saw some smoke *yikes!!* and so we quickly pulled the battery cables and put it up on the lift. Thankfully it looked like nothing was melted, but then we noticed the main ground was disconnected from the under the car! That was our problem, not the battery or the starter!

So then we reconnected it and it started up like a champ. But then it started idling really badly and it kept dying then we noticed there was like no gas in the car so we put a few gallons of race gas we had sitting around and it started and idled perfectly after that.

We then took it for a drive to the near by gas station, the shocks seem stiff and the engine runs strong so I’m very happy on my investment. Now we have to fix some minor things and it should be in great shape!

I’ll post pictures later after I wash it and put some trim pieces on and change the wheels.

Well we have changed our mind.
Since we like the look of the firebird more then the camaro we went ahead and bought a 1995 firebird formula that had a small fire under the hood. So now we will be using the camaro as a parts car and then sell it as a roller once we are done with it.
Here are some pics of the firebird before i cleaned it up.
We bought this beauty for only $1800!
We hope to have it running soon.

We’re looking into juts buying a new engine and maybe selling the extra parts off or building up the old engine and putting it into something else.
But we’re looking at a 388 Stroker LT1 that is inside a 96 camaro right now, the guy wants to get rid of it because he’s putting a LS1 into his camaro. We will probably go look at it on sat, it has lot’s of mods i.e. headers, stoker kit and some others. He wants $2500 for the engine+tranny and 2 sets of wiring and 2 ecms, also come with most of the under hood parts. So we will probably get it if all checks out okay, it’s still in the car it will come from so we can hear it run/test drive it.

That’s it fer now. Will update when I get stuff to update on.

Well I told you guys we were gonna get a new block/heads for free…
Well it turned out to be like $400 but still that’s a great deal.
We got:
A good seems to be low miles LT1 block from a 96-97 F-body.
Two complete LT1 Heads.
Intake manifold w/ fuel rails and throttle body.
Oil Pan.
10-15 gallons of race gas.
And a OEM LT4 camshaft(might not use it).

The heads have been sand blasted and seem pretty clean,
the block needs a little cleaning but still look really good.

I’ll update when I find out more about the parts/have more news.

Before I tell you about the engine pulling gotta tell you some good news.
We were looking for a new motor because we knew this one was pretty much toast…
And we were looking we found one for $4000 there and $2000 there, then we found one for like $1500
freshly rebuilt so we were really thinking about getting it, we really didn’t want to buy one though we
really wanted to rebuild ours but we knew ours was gonna be really rusty. So we were still looking and
we called one of my dad’s friends and he said he had a LT1 block/heads just sitting around he would give
us for free!! So we were really excited that we could maybe save some money and rebuild it our selfs, and
maybe while we are at it put a bigger cam and some other mods in the engine. So we are going to hopefully
going to go pick it up Monday night.

Anyways back to the Camaro. I got up today kinda late around 8:30-9ish, and then we got to work on the car.
We started un-hooking the accessories and un-hooked the crack shaft and the exhaust.
All was going well until we decided to drain the oil, there was probably more water in the
oil than in the radiator. Hmm, sounds like we might have a blown head gasket.
But hopefully we can clean that up. So we were draining the tranny fluid and the radiator,
but when we were draining the radiator we found out something very special.

We were like “Well that’s not water, or coolant…”. Maybe it’s some sort of new lubricating coolant.
Anyways, we drained that out and were really surprised how much oil was in there…

That right there is all the “coolant” from the radiator, yeah it doesn’t look or smelly very pretty..
After that everything went pretty smoothly un-hooking stuff from the engine the only real problem
would probably be that we had to buy a special tool to get the fuel lines off.

So we finally got everything un-hooked from the engine and were ready to drop it right out the bottom.
Thanks to mr. lift it made the job so much easier, we dropped the car down and had the engine sitting on a
little dolly type of thing, our plan was to just lift the body right off the engine.

The only thing we really had to worry about was when we dropped the engine
and the car was still on the lift was that when you let about 1000 pounds out the front
of the car and non of the wheels are on the ground it could possibly lose balance and fall
off the lift.. Thankfully that didn’t happen, so the only thing we really had to worry about
was getting the engine caught on wires/pipes when dropping it.

So then we started to lift the body off the engine, it was really quite easy
and straight forward, the lift made it so easy. We did have a few moments while
lifting the body that were kinda scary like one of the strut towers wouldn’t come loose
so the engine was getting a little lop-sided.

Well it’s out now on it’s little dolly all rolling around and happy.
Well it wasn’t really that happy the poor engine had a nice water/oil
mixture in it that was spilling all over while we would try and roll it around.

Then we pushed the engine out of the way, which was VERY hard because there was oil
on the ground and we were trying to push something with wheels that wouldn’t roll…
But we got it out of the way and let down the body onto to little dollys so we could push
the body around if we needed to. So that was about all we did today, took about 10-11 hours
but that’s not to bad for two people who didn’t really know what they were doing.

Now we have to take of the heads and try and get the engine and tranny apart,
that should be fun but that’s for tomorrow.

I’ll update more later.

Well while working on the car today we found out a few bad things.
First we found out the engine was seized up, so we pulled off the inspection
cover and tried to turn the flex plate but that didn’t work.
So we were going to remove the spark plugs and try and put some oil in there
to try and loosen some of it up, but while removing the spark plugs were a HUGE
pain we got the last one out and like a gallon of water came pouring out…
Looks like we might have to get a new engine, or pull the current one and rebuild it…
But I dunno if the water that was inside the engine did any damage though..
Something tells me this isn’t very good…

Will update when I have more news…

Well today we bought the Camaro for $1300.
It’s a White 95 Z28 with black top/mirrors.

The body is in really good shape except for the hood/back quarter panel
they have some hail damage, but hopefully I’ll get a SS hood and have some
paintless dent repair done to the back.

Not running right now, has some engine problems possibly a loose rod.

Well so far I have spent like $20 on it,
5 gallons of gas and a can of sea foam.
Stole a battery from the Turbo Astro, trying to charge it because it was dead too…

Well I’ll update more later.

Here’s some pictures. Careful the car is VERY dirty the white just doesn’t show it.