Full Build: Squeezing Maximum Power Out Of A Tired 1986 Camaro Iroc-Z

Today at Detroit Muscle we start a new low-cost project that will take a

tired

'80s icon and show you how to turn it to your advantage quickly. Hello friends, thanks for joining us, now we almost have our old UV Mopar project. and ready to go on her journey so we're going to go ahead and start another project and luckily for us she just showed up and we decided to try to

build

a budget and when it comes to cashing in on her There's nothing better than a project like this one, a

1986

irck Z, these were the cream of the crop when it came to 3rd generation Camaros, they were basically a Z28 with an upgraded suspension setup, unique badging, and an A90 horse

power

engine.

Port injected 305 small Believe it or not, that was quite a bit of

power

for the time and with the original muscle era cars becoming rarer and more expensive, one of these '80s era Pony cars is a great place to start If you're working on a budget, there are a million parts available for these cars and they already handled standing still much better than anything made in the '60s or '7. Oh, and another bonus, she has tops. We are going to work on a budget of $10,000 and that will include the purchase. We spent three thousand dollars on the car now, so we're going to have to stretch the other seven as much as we can.

Now we're going to restore some items and then just replace some others first thing. Let's start that engine. After some digging, we discovered that this is a function coded small block, which means that at some point in this car's life someone, probably a high school kid, blew up the original 305. blocks from a 1984 Chevy C10 pickup truck, but the top ends are fine until the ton port injection. First order of business, let's take a field trip up the engine power and put this thing in the Dyno chassis so we can establish a baseline, you ready big guy, I think so and I brought some fashion accessories, so maybe it fits the car a little better, this is a rock and honestly it feels like we're living in a Rock Video 8s so why not embrace that concept?

Yes, especially when it comes to hair. It's okay, it's raining great. First pull 151 horsepower, honestly that sounds good for the wear and tear of this 305 and she's pretty consistent too. 710 more than one horsepower okay I think that's huge 152 152 I tell you what because 152 horsepower isn't going to be enough now as iconic as that irck z can be the 305 under the hood it's never been known really make it a powerhouse, now just to check that We went ahead and did a compression test and a couple of cylinders were down, so instead of just blowing our budget on the 305, which is a little scary, we'll just keep going Go ahead and get it out, it will be much easier to work with.

Once the cooling system is out of the way, but we'll keep it for reuse later, we could take our 305 apart and freshen it up, we could even throw a boost kit on it, but that would require some machining and purchasing. of the kit and we would still be at approximately 330 cubic which is better than the 350 cubic. We've got this short block Chevy right here and it's a little used, but we're going to have about 45 cubic inches of Ines left now. Many of you Gearheads at home might have something like this lying around or know someone who likes us.

We went down to the engine power and picked this up. This is from an old project of his and it has some miles on it, but this. It's exactly the kind of thing you can find online for around $500, so to be fair, let's add $500 to our budget and get on with it. The first thing we will do is remove the timing cover to allow access. As for the timing assembly and cam, it looks like the engine power guys put a nice double roller in here, but it still needs to be done so we can get to the cam.

We're not sure what kind of routine this cam has, what the case is. Many of you would run into it every time you pick up a used block, so we'll go ahead and take it out. A bolt placed on the end of the crankshaft makes it much easier for our puller to remove this gear. It's a good part. but we want to make sure that the one we use matches the parts we are going to install. Some Scott shop towels will be a big help in keeping any debris off the inside of our block as the next step will be cleaning it.

Up top we have to scrape off some old silicone and gaskets because you need to make sure the new ones have a good seal and allow the pieces to seat properly after breaking, figure out what kind of goodies you're going to put in. a little pep in our irck's step, alright guys, we cleaned the whole engine and we're ready to start bolting on our fast stuff. Now we have a high-end trick float kit that will give that body some vertigo. Up and ready, our kit includes a set of 1.5 ratio aluminum roller rockers, a Billet timing chain, all the lifters we're going to need, and a shock that will give us some performance and that sweet sound.

These heads are the best part of our The upgrade is a FL 195 aluminum trick set, they have a 62cc chamber, 202 and 160 valves and they are really going to complement that little small block Chevy to top it all off this dual plane intake street burner aluminum with that open air design that is To help keep the fuel charge a little cooler when installing a set of headers, it is extremely important to torque the head bolts to the proper weight and follow the tightening sequence. torque recommended by the manufacturer. This is the sequence for these heads. The cam comes with a packet of assembly lubricant, but if your cam doesn't include it, you'll want to make sure you have some on your hands, as it stays on the parts during those first critical moments when the motor initially fires up.

A good way to do it. No mess, just lubricate the loes and lugs as you go into the engine, just make sure you don't use so much that you have nothing left for the last few inches. Now we can install the crankshaft gear. that comes with our trick flow timing kit using a brass punch on alternating sides is a good way to avoid damaging it now for the cam gear which is a little more complex now that we are installing a timing kit on a Chevy small block like this. We like to aim the timing marks at each other, which is the easiest way to make sure the chain doesn't come off even by a tooth, but you have to remember when doing this even though the number one cylinder is on top . is at the top of the exhaust stroke and not the top of the compression stroke, so once we put the timing chain on, we'll turn the crankshaft one

full

revolution, which will bring this timing mark to the top and it will give us a true top dead center like he said you want to make sure the indicators are on once the chain is installed then we can install the button and it fits.

The button is not required, but it helps keep the cam where it's supposed to. and these tabs keep everything locked in place now you can turn it to true top dead center with the timing mark pointing up we can put the gasket in place and then install our shiny new chrome timing cover if you use one electrical tool. so to get the bolts in make sure you leave them a couple of turns so you can tighten them to the proper amount while we install our camshaft and timing assembly our lifters here have been submerged in a conventional 30 weight oil the reason why The reason we do this is because these hydraulic lifters need to be pre-soaked so they are ready when we put them on the engine.

The heads come with ARP bolts and we will also use some ARP Fastener lubricant on the threads. like a little Royal Purple assembly lubricant on the valve stems and tappets, then the rocker arms can be put in place, we will tighten the nuts until we meet resistance. Now we are getting ready to adjust our rockers as these are hydraulic lifters. We have to set them to zero play, which means there will be no space or play between the rocker arm and the valve stem. The best way to do it is when the exhaust valve starts to open we adjust the intake side and then when the intake side starts to close that's when you adjust the exhaust side well first the intake turn it until you start to feel resistance, then take the wrench, we'll turn it down half a turn and then a little more with the set screw to keep it in place.

We need to crank the engine until the intake starts to close and then we'll jump to the rocker on the exhaust side. It's the same procedure for the rest of the Rockers. Stay and discover our secret to economical horsepower. Hey guys, while you were gone, we moved on. and installed some new valve covers, a new water pump, reinstalled the balancer and oil pan and switched to this Excel vacuum advance distributor we got from Summit Racing. The reason we had to do it is because when we got rid of our EFI system, I got rid of the distributor that was electronically controlled and switched to this vacuum advance.

Now, if you remember, we rotated the crankshaft for one

full

revolution, which brought us to true top dead center. We have the rotor pointing at cylinder number one and made a mark. We are going to align it right here, that is where we will place the number one cable. One great thing about this particular engine swap is that since it's just another small block Chevy, it will plug right into the bore without any modification to the mounts. or the transmission, we had to pull the valve covers to keep them from getting scratched, but if that's the worst we have to deal with, we're in pretty good shape while you guys weren't looking, we went ahead and fastened the belt drive . and the cooling system on our ey Rock now we're going to move on to the fuel system now originally this car came with fuel injection but now it's going to run a 600 Holly one of the problems with converting to carburetor is a fuel supply, the pump that's in this car creates too much pressure, so we'll just adjust it again using a regulator, but before we start the car, we have something extra juicy to add first now that we have an extra jolt.

Speaking of which, it will come from this NOS sniper nitrous kit, it will add an extra 150 horsepower on top of what our 350 will make and that's good for us because we are on a budget and when it comes to power. Adders, you won't find much better value for your money than a nitrous kit. Now, this is a plate style system that uses this injector plate and it bolts between the carburetor and the intake. It also comes with all the piping to hook it up. These jets that come with the kit will give us 100, 125 or 150 extra horsepower depending on the pair we use and of course it comes with all the electrical components to assemble the system now we go ahead and assemble our board with the solenoids and then we place the Jets there for the hundred shot because we wanted to be a little conservative, at least for now we need to make sure this plate goes with the NOS side pointing up and we can put our carb drop gasket on our Holly carburetor and secure it.

We will use these adapters on the stock fuel lines and mount our regulator to the wheel. We made a couple of hoses that will join the feed and return lines, so we'll plug those in as well. Make sure you use a proper anodized line wrench if you are using internal fittings then we can connect the lines to the solenoid on the carburetor because it is a wet nitrous system which means it sprays more gas in addition to the nitrous oxide we use. Then we'll hook up our nitrous line and store our bottle in the back of the car.

Now that we're getting to the end of the line, when it comes to our installation here, the next thing we're going to do is finish up the wiring. The first thing you would normally do is mount it on a big, twisty switch inside the cabin, somewhere that will energize the system and then the next thing you'll want to do is connect this microswitch, which it does, it actually energizes the solenoids that it produces. Let everything be happy, this micro switch is actually quite simple, when the accelerator is fully depressed, the switch is pressed and the circuit is closed, which then sprays our go-Go Juice, the next one is D, it's not time for let's have our 350 plugged in. our little yellow rock hey and she's ready to go back to the old Dyno with low engine power are you ready to do this yeah I'm out of the way okay you might wanna take a step back now 227 say that again 227 227 227 yes,Our first get our power number wasn't all that impressive, but after our drastic improvements, we're not trying to set earth-shattering numbers with this small budget block, but we're already quite a ways ahead of where we started and she's looking really consistent with the pulse it looks like we have about 75 horsepower alright guys let's take a little time out of this and pretty much a rule of thumb is 2° times 50 shots the reason you would want to do that's because removing the timing reduces the chances of detonation because every time you spray that nitrous it increases the pressure in the cylinder.

Another thing you'd want to do is put in a colder set of plugs and we went ahead and done that, every time we were doing the install with our 100 dose of nitrous, we were taking 4° off the timing, putting it right at 4° , a little bit, a little bit, there, here we go, let me get out of the way, uh- oh, I didn't like that, did I? I bet you don't have any look once we manage to find a can of gas, it's time to run the engine with that timing out just to make sure it still likes 220, yeah that's it. what she did before, okay, so we're done with all of our engines, so let's go ahead and

build

the system here, try the nitrous, she pulls a lot harder with the spray, putting it right at 294 horsepower and 351. ft-lb of torqueWell, we managed to put a lot more pep in the step of this irck and we're going to be conservative on things like tuning, timing and nitrous because this is a budget build and we don't want to find the next one.

The weakest link in the future, you never know, we may end up throwing in a Spurs T a little more, but hey, even being cautious, we managed to double the power we started with and with about $3500 more to spend. There's still a lot more room to be made in suspension and interior upgrades today at Detroit Muscle. Learn how you can take an upgraded interior and for $1,000 transform everything into a better looking, more comfortable and better smelling cabin. To see you back with us, we are dangerously close to getting our Mopar back on the road after its 20+ year vacation, but today we will mainly focus on building our budget, now that it still has a lot of work to do.

It remained to be done before it was what we would consider ready for public consumption last time. Baseline Dino that took out the 305 I had under the hood and made a monstrous 152 horsepower after we took it back to the shop, it was time to swap that anemic small block for a slightly used 350 bottom end and then throw some tricks at it. fast flow along with a small nitrous kit. Once everything was done, we doubled the power of that great old fi we started with and after purchasing the car and those power upgrades we still have $3,500 left to spend on our unfinished business including suspension, paint and, of course, the interior.

Now the interior of this old one has seen better days, but be amazed at what you can achieve with a little money and some time to improve it. To start, the board is cracked and quite rough. The rug makes me think I need an update on some vaccines. The main poster looks nice. twisted and of course the seats need some help too so if we are going to renovate this inside we have to get this old junk out of the way. The first thing we are going to do is start. these old junk seats should wear gloves ah velcro velcro you know velcro was quite an invention hey that's where I left my dog's food that's enough make sure you're careful when you remove these plastic panels and components on one of these third generation.

The pieces will be at least approximately 24 years old, so it doesn't take much to ruin them. Somehow I lost a bed. I think everything is fine, thank you sir. We have removed most of the inside of our eye. Rock and we're going to go ahead and snatch this headliner off because otherwise that crap is going to keep falling and we're going to have to clean this car twice, that didn't take long, no need to leave all this nasty stuff underneath. here before we put down our new carpet, so you want to make sure you have a nice clean floor before we move forward.

Okay, so we've got the inside of our ey rock taken apart and we're going to start working on these. trim panels now these things have seen better days, they have been re-stained at some point in their lives, so we have to take extra care and make sure we prepare these things properly so that when we stain them they look the best they can. They look new again A scuff pad and some soapy water is an effective way to remove the old, dirty sticky substance from our panels. It takes a little scrubbing, but this old Dy doesn't seem to be hanging too tightly, as you can see here.

How many of those things are we eliminating? You'll probably still want to do this even if your panels haven't been stained before, as there will be a few decades of dirt built up on them, which is why we have our panel all scratched up. now and as you can see, the original surface is showing, now we're going to take some Scott shop towels and a little bit of this pre-cleaner and we're going to remove any remaining residue so that our stain adheres well. We've got all of our panels prepped and we're here in the booth, we're getting ready to spray this dual color vinyl and fabric coating.

Now you have to use good ventilation with this, but since we have a cabin, we are ready to go. For this panel, you want to keep the can 6 to 10 inches away from the surface and, like painting anything else, use consistent, even strokes. You can help prevent bleeding by applying several light coats once the previous one becomes sticky after breaking down our lowu interior. The transformation continues with new things coming back to the irck, we are now making some pretty good progress on the interior of our ey Rock and with our car with tea jobs, we all know that they are prone to leaks and from the MEO that is in this seat, there's a good chance this car will add some moisture inside so we bought some cleaner from AutoZone and hopefully we can add a little elbow grease and these seats clean pretty good and that's pretty much what it's in that seat.

I bet we'll go through some of those paper towels. Cleaning things like this will not only improve the smell and appearance of your car, but it also has health benefits. Reasons to Get Rid of Mold It's not good for you to be around all that stuff for too long and that's probably the most important reason to get rid of it after spending some quality time with a roll of paper towels and something else clean, our seats they look a lot better now it's time to start putting some new pieces on our ey Rock now the first of those new pieces we are going to install is this mat that we got from the first year, it is pre-molded and fits right onto our eyck, but we need to adjust it a little bit around the edges so it fits perfectly, it's cut out here this is where the seat support is so it needs to come forward about 6 inches, we'll make a raised cut right where the shifter is. and brake lever E goes through the mat so we can slide it further forward.

This seat belt pedestal goes over the carpet, so we'll make a notch for that and find where we need to make the holes for our seat mounting bolts as well. Thanks to a good fit, we won't need to trim any of the edges and our back mat simply stays in place nice and tidy. Alright, guys, we installed the carpet and now we're going to move on to the headliner, the reason we're. When doing that, this thing has a lot of trim pieces that go over the headliner to keep it in place, we don't want to risk bending them and breaking something, for the most part, this thing is held in place by the trim pieces, so we'll bolt them on.

Instead I guess we need a visor with some reliefs. The cuts will show us the mounting holes for the visors that we have already replaced with some new ones from the first year. Now we can start placing the other panels again. the car, most of them are pretty easy, the biggest challenge is finding the holes for the trim screws, a couple of them have some tricky parts like this rear panel, once it's lined up with our big bad 6x9, it clips on around this pedestal, our old man. The speaker covers were too worn out, so we also picked up a couple of the ones from the first year still ahead.

We completed the interior transformation of our low Buuck. Hey guys, while you were gone we went ahead and installed the back seats. Next we go. to tackle this console and then we have something special to show you if you remember our original irck seats were in pretty bad shape so we decided to go to Summit Racing and get a set of their reinforced seats now these things run around 160 bucks and they have Many benefits, one of them is that they already have the holes cut out in case you want to use a set of harnesses, they offer them in a few different colors, so this makes it especially obvious.

Whenever you can think of trying to find an original set of seats that aren't broken and then put them on a real sign now to mount them, Mark made some simple brackets so now all we have to do is screw them into the hole, right? You know? One of the most common complaints we have is that everything we put together seems to be going perfectly well, well that's not always the case as you can see here, so stop emailing us about it, oh boy we gotta get that circuit breaker there, oh yeah, mm first. day yeah, I don't know, let's see if we can slide it down like that, man, how do you do that?

Wait, that's it, try it now, it's close, it sounds like it's fine, guys, I'm sure that's how I'm sure that's how it's supposed to go, it fits, let's not forget about that nasty Dash in I roll Camaro, it also needs a lot of help, okay, so we're going to give the final touch to the interior. from our eyck is this dash panel we got from the first year. Now all the rest of the work we did inside would be a waste once people laid their eyes on that crack. Dash, just a few screws to attach it, so let's go. to go ahead and change it, oh look at that difference, well, that works for the inside of our eye.

Now we spent about 0,000 of our budget, but it was money well spent because he looks so much better than I do. I'll tell you one thing for sure and it's for sure that emails are a lot better now that we still have a little more money left in our budget, so we're going to do some things with the suspension, but that will have to wait. Until next time, so come back to Detroit Muscle today, we're going to go under our low cost irck and make some budget suspension improvements. The last time you saw our irck Z budget project, we were taking out the seats and vacuuming some. dog food that was part of the Interior rebuild that took it from ugly to fancy for a thousand bucks and turned out pretty good.

You'll also remember that we hooked up a 350 that inhales nitrous and tied it to the dye where we found that. We doubled the power of this 86 Camaro with all those improvements. We're almost there to get our Ick set up, but there are a few small issues we want to fix and that's the topic of today's conversation. It's the suspension now, the overall design of the front suspension of this 3rd generation fb is really good overall, however, there are some things we need to check, such as the wear elements, the tie rod ends, the links from the sway bar, the ball joints, all of ours can be dirty and greasy. but they are in very good condition, the next thing to check are the stabilizer bars.

Now this 86 irck Z would have come equipped with a 32mm front stabilizer bar. Someone already upgraded it to 36mm, which is almost an inch and 7/16 thick, enough for what we're going to do. The next thing we'll take a look at would be an ARS. There are some aftermarket ARS available and they cost around $500 for the pair which is not in our budget plus. Anyway, we are not going to see the limit of these, what we are going to spend our money on would be those struts in terms of the rear suspension of our r. It's a pretty good setup and the only problem is that it has a few components. which are a little weak, especially when you consider that we're throwing double the power at it now.

One of the iconic pieces of the third generation is this torque arm, as we mentioned, with the power that we're throwing at it, what this thing does. It will flex and tighten a little bit, the good news is there are a lot of components available for these things that just bolt into place, we'll lower this rear end andwe will go ahead and get a few things out of the way including the springs and the driveshaft we will also remove the shocks since we are replacing them and with everything freed up the rear end can come out fine so now that we have the rear end of our eyck taken apart , it's time to start taking a look at the pieces we're going to put back together.

We went to Summit Racing to pick up a bunch of this Umi stuff. Now the Lynch pin of this rear suspension is the torque arm, this is made of inch and a/qu steel tubing. Solid rod ends and a 3/8 plate where it mounts to the rear end. Now you compare it to the original piece and it doesn't take long to realize how strong it is and it will give us much less deflection. now moving on to the control arms, the control arms on the Hard Rod tray are simple in construction but very effective, they have these polyurethane mounts, grease fittings and are direct bolt on ends, compare that to the stock unit and just like the torque arm, a big difference, another piece.

We chose this drive crossmember, it is designed to work with our new torque arm, it has a poly bracket and a built in drive shaft. Now installing all those new stiffer suspension components would be a waste if you had a lot of flex in your Chassis, that's where these subframe connectors come in. Now third-generation Camaros are famous for having a flexible chassis and let's add the fact that ours has T-shaped covers and we double the power output. We definitely need a set of these now that we are going to get. We start first thing on this drive crossmember, we will use a screw jack to hold the trany and remove the old crossmember, then sliding it down the driveshaft, we can install the new crossmember in the factory location now for control.

For the arms we will use a little lubricant that came with the kit to make installation a little easier and then they can be plugged into place. Once this is done, we can begin to reattach the back. We also opted for a set of sway bar connectors as the ones on the car seemed worn out and aren't very expensive now as for shock absorbers, we needed to upgrade them as well because they left a lot to be desired so what we got is a set of kybs from Summit Racing, are adjustable and by turning this dial it is that easy, installing an upgrade is very simple.

These cars are a little different when it comes to the upper shock mount that attaches from the inside of the car. It might be helpful to have a friend upstairs to get them. Tight bottom brackets are your typical style, just slide them on and secure them. Next, we'll show you how to harden a chassis and set the pinion angle. Alright guys, we're ready to install our torque arm now, if you want. When running this style of suspension it has a few benefits, one of them is that it has less stiffness during articulation or flexing of the rear end, another thing to keep in mind if you are running a stock style unit here if you increase or decrease the height of Well, in the car you will not be able to adjust the pinion angle and this will allow you to do so.

The main purpose behind this torque arm is to prevent the axle from spooling, which will cause wheel hopping. We can go ahead and slide our springs again. place as they are in good condition and then the hard bar can be installed fine, so normally the next step would be to go ahead and set the pinion angle and then tighten all the suspension components, but we can't really do that until The car is on all fours, so for now we are going to move to the front, the improvement that we are going to do in the front does not have the work that it required back there, all that we are going to do.

What will be changed here is the front strut, but before you get too happy and start taking everything apart remember that thing has a coil spring hidden in there, you don't want to hurt yourself, we used some WD40 rust release braid to help. We remove these nuts and then we will attack them with an impact gun. Now we'll lower the car a little bit and get a floor jack to use this. Keep an eye on the spring as you pull the strut out of the car. If you don't do this the spring can fly away, that's a good way to hurt someone, it's a good thing we're upgrading these struts because they're really worn out, you can see the weight of my hand, it's collapsing.

So what we're going to use is a set of these kybs that we got from Summit. Plus, they are adjustable. You just have to do it here at the end. We have to reuse this dust cover and they just screw on. in place now one more thing, those new struts that we put on have that adjuster on the top, these upper strut mounting covers are going to prevent us from being able to get to those adjusters, so on this one we drilled a hole right on the top that we Allows you to maintain the factory look and still fit our new struts.

Alright guys we brought our car here to the big shop and we put it on this four post lift that way we could get the car high enough to be able to work on it while it's sitting on all four now we're going to go ahead and set up the pinion angle and tighten those rear lengths and then continue welding those subframe connectors. You want to make sure you do it with the car supported by its weight because otherwise, if it's falling like a lift, like we did right, the car doors may not close properly now to set the pinion angle, which in this car it should be 0°, just make sure when you do this it is parked. a flat surface so you can get an accurate reading then the suspension can be tightened and tightened to spec now for the frame connectors yes some types bolt on some types weld on and these particular ones require both no big deal thing, we'll get them. burned and we're ready to go, so that's going to be enough for our eye suspension.

Now we still have about $11,000 left to spend on this and we still need to do something to make it look a little better. So check back next time and see what we're doing today at Detroit Muscle. We have very worn paint in our budget, but we will show you the solution to revive it without draining your wallet. We will also customize the Camaro. Wheels, then it's time to put on our mullet wigs and sleeveless shirts and take her for a spin. When we started working on our 86 iro Z, the first thing we had to do was get rid of that

tired

305 it came with and trade it in for a cheap 350.

On the bottom we threw in some quick gold stuff, like flow heads. tricks and a NOS sniper nitrous kit that doubled our power output, then it was time to address that disgusting interior by removing most of it and then replacing it with a stack of new ones. year 1 parts and Summit seats and that was a big improvement after we upgraded the suspension there was one more thing to address with its appearance this is the factory color of the car but that yellow has faded beyond all hope or it is obviously today. We're going to be working on painting our ey Rock now, normally we'd push this thing around on the stand in the same dirt for hours and hours and hours, but this car is a budget deal so we all know that.

Those paint supplies add up pretty quickly, so we brought in our friend Chris Johnson with Pro Corrections and we're going to see if we can bring this paint back from the dead. This is an example of what Chris does by taking weathered and weathered paint. Reviving them to a great finish, he has worked on everything from supercars to old hot rods and they call this paint correction. Now you've seen us take a new paint job, sand it down and bring it to that mirror finish, bringing back an old one. The paint job is pretty much the same but a little different and technology has come a long way in recent years, hasn't it?

Has the shocks, the compounds and even the techniques we use have improved to help produce a better quality product now I know you are kind of a wizard when it comes to this type of thing. What is the first plan of attack? What we are going to do is do a test spot to determine which PAAD and product combination works best, yes that makes sense because paint varies by manufacturer. That's right, for example Porsche has a very smooth clear coat. Something like a BMW has a very hard clear coat and everything requires a different process, so normally on a vehicle it's pretty good.

Condition, you would use a less aggressive method to recover the paint. This particular car is in pretty rough conditions, so we're going to be a little more aggressive with its shocks. Chris uses a line of products from a company called Shine Supply that offers a number of polishes and detailing compounds. I'm going to use classic cut, it's a compound that's a little more aggressive to recover the paint on this car because it's quite rough and then we'll refine it with a polish that we already did. Make sure the surface is clean and decontaminated before performing any polishing.

Failure to do so can grind contaminants into the finish. A microfiber cloth is the best option to clean the surface and then Chris will take a look. on how that compound handles, so the next step is going to be to grab a buffer and a polishing pad and finish it off. This is a much less aggressive product, like if you are sanding, you want to reduce it to improve the shine. The real trick here is to keep the damper moving. Chris is good enough to be able to feel what the pad is doing on the surface, but for beginners, the constant movement prevents burning off the paint or clear coat.

Now let's take a look at how the test is performed. The place is compared to the rest of the car. Damn, now you can tell this paint has some orange peel, but since we're on a budget, we don't want to take the time to wet sand this entire car. What we're doing here is Chris is showing us that we're okay. Chris is going to hit another spot so we can check the consistency of the finish across the car, if this spot reacts the same as the one above the fender. In the business, another tip for you, if you want to try this on your own vehicle, don't do it in direct sunlight because that could bake the polishing compound into the surface and as you can see this is a big improvement over to what we all had.

Well, when you do a job like this, obviously, there are some tools of the trade that you need to do the job right. Chris, tell us a little bit about what we have here, so obviously we're going to have microfiber towels, so. I have a couple different towels that I use, one is long pile and the other is short pile for most vehicles. You can use one with long hair. It is very soft against paint, but on very soft paints it can even scratch it. So when you want to use a short pile it will leave a nice finish on the paint.

As far as polishing pads go, you have a cutting microfiber and you have a finishing microfiber, this one has more cutting ability, but it's obviously not. is going to finish as well as this on some harder paints, you can actually finish this completely without Maring, so if you want to go a step further you can move on to a foam pad after the microfiber pads, the Orange is If you need a little more correction, black is the final pad that will give you

maximum

clarity. Now that we know what all this is and how it works, I think we should probably get out of your way and let you get back to work still ahead, you see the tremendous transformation that can happen to faded paint with a little effort and you know how, then You jump in and hopefully it won't rain because we left the t-shirts in the store.

Hello everyone. I'm glad you're back, oh Chris stayed after this and is taking our irck from cream to dream. Now there's still quite a bit of real estate he's going to have to work on and some obstacles that will give him a run for his money so I can give you an idea of ​​how much he's capable of improving the paint on this old Camaro, let's watch him do all the hood work, so When you do work like this you have to make sure you protect it. The rest of the services that you're not using with the buffer now what Chris is using here is painter's tape and the reason he does that is because when he uses the buffer it can happen like on the emblem where it is now and it could scratch it, Another reason you do this is because the polishing compound will get trapped in the cracks and crevices and is very difficult to get out.

Using a blower to get rid of the old compound will help the process and give you a better finish. Finally, as we said before, you'll want to tape off delicate areas like emblems, vinyl graphic decals, and rubber moldings to protect them. Has a few different wheel sizespolishers to get it into tight spaces and work around edges wherever you want. To be the most cautious, just keep the machine moving and everything will be fine. Remember the last time you saw a third-generation Camaro where the headlight buckets didn't look so scratched like that? Well, after a few minutes with Chris, here's one. so look at the before and after, here's our Camaro before and now look at that shot son, with some shocks and the right compounds, managed to completely transform the look of this car which our old Camaro definitely did.

Great transformation and Chris, I want to thank you for all the hard work you put into it, it looks great man, hey, no problem at all, sure, we still have a few more things to do, so let's get on with it. Next, let's see how to design a custom candy look on your wheels Hey guys, welcome back. I guess you may have noticed that our 3rd generation Camaro is on the jack stand, that's because we just ran out of cinder blocks, joking aside, we had to do that because we got our wheels and tires off, We shipped them out and installed these new tires.

We chose the Mickey Thompson Street comp ultra high performance tire and a 2454018. This tire has a speed rating of 97 wi so that will be enough for our vehicle and the tread design has these large patterns. for dry traction and these grooves for wet traction and this tire comes with a treadwear rating of 300 so it will outlast this tire's competitors. Now I know you're thinking the iro Z's didn't come with 18 inch wheels and you're right, they came with 16's, these 18 inch replacement wheels are actually in pretty good shape and we're going to salvage them but we have something special to add , that special thing you were referring to, is this right here, it's done in dupli color and it's the Shadow Chrome opaque coating, now it comes as a two part setup, it has a translucent paint and then a top coat that's pretty much a transparent layer.

Now we have a demo setup here where we're going to paint this chrome. valve cover to show you exactly how it works. Okay, so what we did here was we taped a section of the valve cover, we're going to spray a coat and move the paper. We will do this process three or four more times. this will show you each individual step and how it changes color so we can determine how many layers we want in our wheel. This paint is essential, a candy that tells you to be very careful with the overlap to avoid streaks, take a practice piece like this valve cover to get comfortable with it, then what you have here is nothing, a layer , two, three and four, and what this shows you is the level of concentration of that translucent paint, now let's get to what we're going to do. because the effect we like is between two and three, we like both and that shows that we only need to put so many layers on the next thing we have to do is clean this wheel and we're going to use some of the dupli color prep spray , simply spray it and wipe away all contaminants.

This prep spray also comes in cutting jars which you can use for larger jobs such as any painting project, cleaning this is imperative for a good finish. a little oil or broken dust on your wheel can really ruin your day once it ruins the paint. Now, instead of just spraying the entire wheel with that shade, we decided to give it a different touch, more like an original iro Z wheel. It would have had carbon or black inserts here and in the middle of the spoke depending on what year it was. that the next thing to do is knead it Tom, there's your roll and that's fine, and when you have tape hanging over the edge here that needs to be trimmed from the sheet, it's best to go ahead and cut it first.

Instead of stacking another piece of tape on top of it like that, you can cut a single piece very easily instead of trying to cut multiple layers of tape at once, so I'll leave this piece a little long so it overlaps a little bit. , so when I take my blade and go to trim it, I have something to hold on to. Okay, now we're ready to spray our black. Every time you spray something like this wheel, it has all these opponents. edges, you're going to have to pay attention to the overlap because every time you overlap your spray pattern well, you're going to add a lot more paint to it and you think you're only going to have one coat, but it's actually two or three, so try.

To apply it as evenly as possible now with this here you want to make sure you shake it really well otherwise you're going to have to fight smudges or it's going to be very inconsistent after letting the first coat set for a few minutes. We can start hitting number two. You have to keep track of how many coats you are putting on with this type of paint. It's very important. The transformation these wheels have made is easy to see from these ugly old ones to our blackened new ones. and it only cost us about 30 bucks now we have three more to do after the break it's time for our irck to be ready to rumble well we've managed to land just above our 10 grand budget Mark and with our They're all very nice and have that jumped 350 on top of an upgraded suspension, it's time to take it for a ride, so Mr.

Mark, what do you think about riding IR Rock, buddy? It's fun. The IR Rocks were actually one of the best handling cars. from that era, what I don't like about this thing, the t-shirts, yeah, the air blows with the wind, yeah, the t-shirts definitely give you the feeling of that freedom in a way that you know from what we did in those updates of Summit suspension and Mickey Thompson took this. A car with excellent handling and absolutely phenomenal. I feel like something is missing, yes, yes, we will do it.