Before and After...Turbo '98 Z28 Transformation
08-17-2008, 02:53 PM
#1
Before and After...Turbo '98 Z28 Transformation My '98 has undergone some pretty significant changes over the last year and a half, and I just thought I'd share the story and some before/after pics.
I bought this Red '98 Z28 in January of last year. I wanted a built hardtop car, and stumbled across this one in Florida.
After about 2 months of waiting for a good opportunity to fly down from Oklahoma City to Orlando, I finally got my chance a week before my birthday. The previous owner was going to college and needed the money...so I ended up with a heavily modded car that needed a tune pretty badly. The previous owner had planned on spraying the car, the motor had a set of TEA prepped big valve 853 heads on it, MS3 cam, Fast 90, and a forged bottomend. The tranny was a 'built' 4l60e with a TCI 3500 converter. Also had a stock 10 bolt with 2.73s and corbeau A4 seats in it. It was needing some TLC (still does), but its in good shape and will continue to get better. 2 weeks after I bought the car I took it to the local 1/4 track and went a couple of 12.0x and 12.1 @ 115 on MT 255/50/16 DRs and BONE STOCK suspension (all these goodies and not a single suspension part on the car..kinda funny). I knew the car had more in it, but I wasn't sure exactly how much as it was cutting deep 1.8 60's even with 2.73 gearing. Soon after I replaced the window tint as it was pretty torn and nasty in a few spots, and had the car retuned. The car put down 421rwhp/378 rwtq. I was pretty pleased as the heads weren't an optimum casting. I also changed the stock 10 2.73 rearend to a LT1 10 bolt with 3.42s (needed a 3 channel) and got this one cheap. Also got some smaller brake calipers in the deal too (LT1) so I could run a 15x10 prostar with less grinding. Hit the track again minus backseat, spare and added the prostars, went the best the car has gone as of yet, 11.82@115.5
Fast forward to about 7 months later, got a steal of a deal on a bolt in wolfe 6 pt rollbar, so I threw that in and replaced the carpet with dark gray ozite stuff. Went in pretty well and turned out pretty nice. Did some appearance stuff as well and zaino'd the car...wow what a difference in shine and overall look of the car.
I'd planned on putting a bottle on the car after the rollbar, and intended to spray a wet 100-150 shot. I'd always been interested in FI, but thought the cost of doing everything correctly was gonna be about $8K+ and I wasn't going to have money for that anytime soon. Until last October, I came across a used Street Killer Turbo Kit from HiFlo Turbo that TURBO LS1 SS was selling on here. I managed to be lucky enough to get the kit and he had it here in no time. The kit came with a 76GTS turbo, all hot parts, cold parts, big front mount, BOV, WG, cam he'd used, etc, etc, etc.
By November I had found a place to do the install and started taking stuff off the car. I sold the 853 heads, Fast 90 intake, and MS3 cam in favor of some 317 truck heads (to lower compression some), the turbo cam TURBO LS1 SS had included in the sale that he'd run in his car, and an LS6 intake/ported stock Tb in place of the Fast. I also sold the duals that were on the car that I'd had installed a few months before.
Sadly, when we were tearing the motor down to replace the cam/heads, we found out that the bearings were bad due to the crank not being align honed after the main studs had been installed on the previous assembly. My friend and I ended up having everything checked over, block prepped again, crank micropolished, etc and we built the motor over again from scratch. Luckily, everything else in the install went pretty smoothly, a base 2 bar SD tune was loaded into the stock ECU, and the car was fired off about 8 months later. While the car was down, I did a few other things. Swapped the TCI 3500 converter in favor of a Vigilante 3200, relocated the battery to the trunk, added some chrome ZR1 wheels and hoosier 315 DRs, painted the billet grill I had up front black, added the 'zo6 style' z28 badges, the berger panel with stainless inserts, revamped the stock gauge cluster and added autometer sport comp II gauges to the pillar (as well as painting the piller the matching gray interior color), and swapped the narrow backed corbeaus for some MRC cloth racing seats.
Here's how the car sits now, only 400 more miles on the 1000 mile break in procedure I'm doing (as well as saving up the rest of the cash for the full tune!)
I'm hoping to have the full tune done in mid september, get the battery box and cutoff switch done, buy a jacket, and get some baseline runs at the track on 7-8psi to start with. I eventually want to add a th400 t-braked tranny, and a 9" with 3.25 or 3.50 gears.
I bought this Red '98 Z28 in January of last year. I wanted a built hardtop car, and stumbled across this one in Florida.
After about 2 months of waiting for a good opportunity to fly down from Oklahoma City to Orlando, I finally got my chance a week before my birthday. The previous owner was going to college and needed the money...so I ended up with a heavily modded car that needed a tune pretty badly. The previous owner had planned on spraying the car, the motor had a set of TEA prepped big valve 853 heads on it, MS3 cam, Fast 90, and a forged bottomend. The tranny was a 'built' 4l60e with a TCI 3500 converter. Also had a stock 10 bolt with 2.73s and corbeau A4 seats in it. It was needing some TLC (still does), but its in good shape and will continue to get better. 2 weeks after I bought the car I took it to the local 1/4 track and went a couple of 12.0x and 12.1 @ 115 on MT 255/50/16 DRs and BONE STOCK suspension (all these goodies and not a single suspension part on the car..kinda funny). I knew the car had more in it, but I wasn't sure exactly how much as it was cutting deep 1.8 60's even with 2.73 gearing. Soon after I replaced the window tint as it was pretty torn and nasty in a few spots, and had the car retuned. The car put down 421rwhp/378 rwtq. I was pretty pleased as the heads weren't an optimum casting. I also changed the stock 10 2.73 rearend to a LT1 10 bolt with 3.42s (needed a 3 channel) and got this one cheap. Also got some smaller brake calipers in the deal too (LT1) so I could run a 15x10 prostar with less grinding. Hit the track again minus backseat, spare and added the prostars, went the best the car has gone as of yet, 11.82@115.5
Fast forward to about 7 months later, got a steal of a deal on a bolt in wolfe 6 pt rollbar, so I threw that in and replaced the carpet with dark gray ozite stuff. Went in pretty well and turned out pretty nice. Did some appearance stuff as well and zaino'd the car...wow what a difference in shine and overall look of the car.
I'd planned on putting a bottle on the car after the rollbar, and intended to spray a wet 100-150 shot. I'd always been interested in FI, but thought the cost of doing everything correctly was gonna be about $8K+ and I wasn't going to have money for that anytime soon. Until last October, I came across a used Street Killer Turbo Kit from HiFlo Turbo that TURBO LS1 SS was selling on here. I managed to be lucky enough to get the kit and he had it here in no time. The kit came with a 76GTS turbo, all hot parts, cold parts, big front mount, BOV, WG, cam he'd used, etc, etc, etc.
By November I had found a place to do the install and started taking stuff off the car. I sold the 853 heads, Fast 90 intake, and MS3 cam in favor of some 317 truck heads (to lower compression some), the turbo cam TURBO LS1 SS had included in the sale that he'd run in his car, and an LS6 intake/ported stock Tb in place of the Fast. I also sold the duals that were on the car that I'd had installed a few months before.
Sadly, when we were tearing the motor down to replace the cam/heads, we found out that the bearings were bad due to the crank not being align honed after the main studs had been installed on the previous assembly. My friend and I ended up having everything checked over, block prepped again, crank micropolished, etc and we built the motor over again from scratch. Luckily, everything else in the install went pretty smoothly, a base 2 bar SD tune was loaded into the stock ECU, and the car was fired off about 8 months later. While the car was down, I did a few other things. Swapped the TCI 3500 converter in favor of a Vigilante 3200, relocated the battery to the trunk, added some chrome ZR1 wheels and hoosier 315 DRs, painted the billet grill I had up front black, added the 'zo6 style' z28 badges, the berger panel with stainless inserts, revamped the stock gauge cluster and added autometer sport comp II gauges to the pillar (as well as painting the piller the matching gray interior color), and swapped the narrow backed corbeaus for some MRC cloth racing seats.
Here's how the car sits now, only 400 more miles on the 1000 mile break in procedure I'm doing (as well as saving up the rest of the cash for the full tune!)
I'm hoping to have the full tune done in mid september, get the battery box and cutoff switch done, buy a jacket, and get some baseline runs at the track on 7-8psi to start with. I eventually want to add a th400 t-braked tranny, and a 9" with 3.25 or 3.50 gears.
Last edited by Photochop; 08-18-2008 at 09:58 AM.
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car is super clean, i like it a lot 
08-20-2008, 08:54 AM
#16
Thanks guys
Yeah I didn't wanna ditch the A/C...I could've made it fit but it would've been a lot of work to get it in there right. The pass. header/downpipe clears a compressor, but I'd had to relocate the evaporator, run longer lines, etc. I had a hard enough time getting the radiator to clear the downpipe with the condenser in place. So yeah, yanked it. Really its only unbearably hot here from middle may to middle september. The car's not a daily driver so it's not as big a deal...usually just get it out at night so its not too terrible.
Yeah I didn't wanna ditch the A/C...I could've made it fit but it would've been a lot of work to get it in there right. The pass. header/downpipe clears a compressor, but I'd had to relocate the evaporator, run longer lines, etc. I had a hard enough time getting the radiator to clear the downpipe with the condenser in place. So yeah, yanked it. Really its only unbearably hot here from middle may to middle september. The car's not a daily driver so it's not as big a deal...usually just get it out at night so its not too terrible.