get that silly little toy of an air filter off that car and get a real one, that is why you car is so stinking slow.

 

Now I'm a bit late in responding. :P I'll look for that label tomorrow morning.

However, I finally got around to swapping that little air filter with a K&N one that was actually designed for my intake, and good LORD does the car kick now! Just look at the difference:



And another: unnamed_zps9716ba63.jpg Photo by gunmetaltrevan | Photobucket

I knocked off over 4 seconds in the 0-60 run and over 2 seconds in the 45-60 run. It feels much better. However, I discovered (though it's kind of obvious now that I think about it) my car belonged to one hardcore tweaker, so I'm probably going to be going back and forth with this thread.

Since last time, I got a new battery. The last one was dying after a couple days and actually got so bad it wouldn't even hold a charge overnight. It turns out the car lot not only (more or less) ripped me off with the car itself, but they threw in a cheap car-lot battery they throw in all of their vehicles. Bastards.

I only have a couple concerns now. The first one is that my rear tires spin with very little throttle applied, no matter the weather conditions or temperature. I can be at a red light and push the gas and have the tires sit and spin at only ~2100 rpm, so I evidently burn up my tires on accident all the time, which you can imagine isn't something I'd want. My other concern is that when I have my steering wheel turned and am pulling out of somewhere (this is only in reverse) there's some sort of thumping correlating with a wheel, as if there were a massive lump in the brake disc or something.

 

Do both rear wheels spin, or only one? What brand and size tires do you have? Is the tread decent? Any indication that they are very old and the rubber is hard? Are they inflated to the correct pressure (per the label on the door)?

 

Sorry to respond so late -- I'm graduating this year and have been extremely busy with schooling things.

I'm 90% sure both tires spin. I haven't seen it for myself, but the car doesn't turn at all until it catches grip (at something like 40mph) if I floor it on pavement, and even then it's just a slight jerk to either side. My rear tires are Falken FK452 275/40ZR18 99Y, and they don't look terribly old. The rubber isn't too hard, and there are no cracks or indications of serious age. I believe I'm about 50% through the treads. The max load on the tire says 42psi, and I tested them to be at about 39psi and 37psi.

I'm not sure if the tires are the reason they spin so easily, especially since their performance rank is labelled as "ultra high" on Onlinetires.com, but it's certainly a problem I'd like to hunt down.

 

You don't inflate the tires to the "max load" pressute shown on the sidewall. That is the pressure required for the tire to carry it's max load (weight) rating. The tire is nowhere near carrying max load on your car. You start at the tire pressure shown on the label on the driver door or door sill. Given the size tire on your car, try 32psi. 37-39psi is way too high.

Go to an open parking lot. Floor it. Stop and look to see how many black rubber stripes you left. That will tell you if one wheel is spinning or two.

 

Alright, I'll try that. I've actually never tested the tire pressure since I bought the car. :/

 

So I went out and stopped, floored it until I caught grip, and then I turned it off and walked over to see what it had done (I had a sign nearby so I knew where I started). The weird thing is that I couldn't find any tire marks at all. I know they were spinning, though, because when I glanced in my rear view mirror I saw two small trails of smoke (one may have been thicker than the other, I don't remember). I thought I'd try again and check my mirror again to make sure I saw two trails of smoke instead of just one, but something happened.

First off, it wouldn't start within the first few seconds of turning the key -- it was chugging for a bit. Then when I got it started, it idled normally, so I went out for another run. This time, the tires didn't spin at all because the car was accelerating so slowly. When I had my old air filter, it would shift at 5000rpm when I floored it, but this time it went all the way to the 5500rpm redline before shifting and it still had the slow acceleration. Any ideas to what could have caused that?

EDIT: Also, the other day I pulled out of a parking lot and while I was going down the road, the car was chugging and borderline dying like it was out of gas, but I had just filled it. After a few seconds, it was fine. On top of that, my gas mileage has been progressively getting worse and worse for the past few tanks.

Oh yeah, and I have smelled gasoline a few times throughout when I turn the car off when I get home. I'm hoping it's just the fuel filter.

I'm sorry if this thread is sort of bothering since I just come back with question after question, but lots of new things keep coming up. I'll try to tone it down a bit if it's any kind of annoyance.

 

We are all here to help others and receive help when needed ....
There are no stupid questions... Nobody was born knowing everything about a Camaro
although it may seem that way some of the guys on here that really Know there stuff !!!

Press the brake put in drive keep foot on brake squeeze gas pedal until tires spin apply gas as needed

 

I've been super busy lately, so late responses are probably going to be a common thing now... sorry.

I dropped the tires to 32psi and they seem to want to grip more. In that, I mean before it felt like I was driving on ice where the tires would just spin all day without screeching or making really any sound. Now, they squeel a little bit, in quick, loud sort of chirps. The spinning is better -- at lower takeoff speeds they don't spin like they used to, but they still spin really bad when punching it a bit more. And unfortunately, I still have no guarantee both tires are spinning, but I'll get on that as soon as I can.

I also changed the fuel filter, and that seemed to help with the sporadic performance issue... But only time can tell.