Part XII

1989 RS Camaro

It has been a couple of weeks since the last update; we had family in from the west coast for a nice long visit and certainly wanted to spend our time with them. We had a lot of fun and it was interesting having all five of the grandchildren together for the first time.

Other than a bit of customizing by welding up the holes for the door locks, front marker lights and antenna hole plus wiping a bit of putty on the car, we didn't accomplish very much before heading off to the beach with the rest of the family.

We will finish up each area as we prep the car for paint, right now it was just a matter of getting something over the bare metal to keep it from rusting.

The front brakes are finished with the installation of the new roll control from Jegs (actually a relabeled B&M unit for less $$). The original one that we had put in was a left over part from my previous racecar and I guess just tossing it in a box was not the proper storage method. The solenoid seemed to be okay, but it was a bit flakey so we just decided not to bother with it and install a fresh part. Everything in the front is now hooked up and plumbed with brake tubing. The next step is to run a single line back to the rear of the car and split that to the rear calipers. We had a heck of a time getting the correct banjo bolts for the rear units, but my youngest son Douglas is now a NAPA guy in Williamsburg, Va. and hooked us up with the right parts. If you live in that area and need something, look him up.

Also completed previously, but something we never provided a picture of is the ignition coil installation up in the cowl area of the car. The high voltage lead will feed down through the large hole just beneath the coil where the oil pressure gauge line is sitting.

Our main goal for this update was to get the short block together. After our little setback with the piston problem previously, we decided to move forward and get ourselves a little bit better piston for the engine. We think it's the right choice for this engine and the bracket type racing that it will be doing. Here we have the parts laid out just prior to installation.

Ring gaps were set according to instructions from Speed Pro and for this engine we went with .016 for the top ring and .020 for the secondary ring. We are going to use a normal header type vacumn system on this engine, so it will be interesting to see the results with this much ring gap on the secondary ring. I have always run the secondary ring at a tighter gap than the top, but according to Speed Pro, they have proven that the provided gap numbers provide better sealing for the top ring.

The rods are pretty nice H-Beam units that use rod caps rather than the stock type bolt and nut configuration. They should hold up well to the RPM that we plan to run with this engine. And for what it normally cost to rebuild a decent set of stock rods today, you can now buy these for just a few dollars more. Clevite 77 bearings all measured out at .003 clearance on the crank and the connecting rod pins are full floating.

This is a bad close-up of one of the SRP pistons. We had to go through the entire procedure again of mocking the engine up and checking clearances. One area that we have a little bit of concern with is the clearance on our sparkplug's. We plan on indexing our plugs anyway (that means we make sure that the open portion of the electrode on the plug is pointing in the direction that we want), but in this case it is a definite have to do type thing. If the plug has it's side electrode pointed at the top of the piston, it is going to hit. With the plug indexed correctly, we're okay. When you start putting an engine together with a lot of non-stock parts, checking to make sure everything is going to clear correctly becomes essential or you end up with a nice pile of junk parts.

Of course, before we could put the new parts in place, we had to remove everything that we had put together just a few weeks ago. Didn't we mention before that this entire project has been one of those one step forward and two backward deals? - well it hasn't gotten any better yet!

Another item that we had a minor setback with was the timing chain. Seems that Chevrolet changed the location of the bolt holes on the camshaft for late model cars, so now instead of having one timing chain that could fit every small block back to 1955, you now have two. Of course, we managed to get the wrong part the first time out. Along with the timing chain installation is the roller button and retainer plate. Some people don't like the roller button preferring to use the nylon style. I have used both with success and chose a roller unit for this engine. I also don't care for bending the tabs over on the cam bolts. For one, if you get into moving the timing around in the engine to tune it a bit, you have to deal with the nuisance. I prefer to just put a drop of blue Loctite on the bolts.

The camshaft is a mild roller that was intended for a much smaller cubic inch engine, but should have good power and live a long life in this bracket motor. The cam was degreed in and we ended up one degree off from the numbers on the timing card. Given that you can have that much error in just viewing the timing wheel at my age, I would call it good enough.

The timing chain set is a Cloyes TrueRoller setup, supposedly almost as good as a belt drive deal, but for some reason the difference in cost makes me doubt that one. A tip on the installation of the crank gear which is a press fit on the crankshaft- put it on your stove for about 10 minutes to heat it up. It will slip right in place on the crankshaft without having to beat it in place.

Well, after a day of sizing a new set of rings, checking clearances, cleaning parts, etc. we now have a new short block completed. Looks good and it should make some nice power. Expected compression ratio with this set of pistons and the 64cc Iron Eagle heads is 12.3:1. Our next steps will be to finish up the bottom end with the installation of the windage tray, oil pump and oil pan. Then our attention will turn to the installation of the heads and intake manifold.

That's it for this time around, but the mutts wanted to say hello. The Chow is named Hunter and the Cocker Spaniel is Arthur. Keepers of the castle- owners of all. It's a dog's life....

check out the next installment - Part XIII