84Camaro_L69

Ha ha, I remember starting a similar arguement last year with my car. I have been taking things slow with the mods and my car is running good and sounding good, but I haven't done too much in the performance department. You guys gave some good advice. I now have a Hypertech switch for my electric fan, on at 200 and off at 185. I have a cat-back exhaust kit and new catco converter. My next purchase is headers (emissions legal - like edelbrock ... hopefully not $450 new or used) and a chip to compliment my 180degree thermostat and new fan switch. So far so good on my L69. She hasn't blown up yet. I'm interested to see what all you do to your car, and what happens when you go to the track.

ws6transam

My '84 L69 used to do 15.40 @ 90 MPH bone stock. It started slowing down over time until by the summer of 1999, it was running 15.85 E/T's. It would lose power at anything over 4500 RPM and I think it was valve springs that were worn out from the many over-revs over the years.

That fall I bought a set of heads from someone off CamaroZ28.com and began working on them. Bigger intake valve, extensive porting in the bowl, with lots of attention to the short-side radius. I installed new Comp 981-16 springs with steel retainers and Comp Magnum roller-tip rocker arms. At the same time, I switched to the Edelbrock 6872 TES headers that were slightly modified in the port area: I ground out all extra welding beads to keep the ports open as much as possible. The cam was a Comp XE262 with 218/224 degrees of duration. It was probably about six degrees too much cam, but it revved to 6000 RPM with very little perceptable power loss. A Turbine Technologies torque converter (which was a steal at only $160) completed the package and the car went from 15.80 to 14.04 E/T's with the original CLCC carbuerator. I think that had it not been for the fact I was building a new stroker engine, I could probably have tuned that engine combo into the mid-13's. It certainly would have responded extremely well to nitrous since the exhaust port was so wide-open. I too, used the catco converter. However when I pulled it in 2005, I noticed that the catylist had burned nearly completely out of the catco, probably due to open-loop operation where the engine ran rich. When the Qjet went closed loop, the idle always smoothed out and the exhaust cleaned up. With tuning, I am sure I could have fixed the problem and NOT burned out the converter. If you stick to the Comp XE254H grind (212/218 @ .050, I think) your engine might respond better. I had to run my XE262 at 104 degrees on the intake center to maximize its performance.