After a week of monitoring my coolant level and doing everything in my power to reach a diagnosis, I have come to the conclusion that one of my head gaskets have finally failed on me. This is all after I had to repair the damage from a leaking power steering oil cooler. I have the tell tale coolant smelling exhaust, light amounts of white smoke, radiator coolant level dropping without any noticeable leaks, rough idle, bubbles in the radiator's filler neck, and I have tried replacing the radiator cap.

Just a little background, this car has been stolen, wrecked, had most of its major components replaced or repaired, and the engine was hydrolocked and rebuilt. Supposedly the shop that rebuilt the engine after I hydrolocked it will cover a blown head gasket but I have to plan for the worse.

Since it may be necessary for me to shell out $1500 to have the head gasket replaced, I cannot see why I would not consider the possibility of getting a new cam and set of heads. I have not done too much research on the subject because I had many more mods I wanted to perform before these. So here is my question. For a person like myself who uses his Camaro as a daily driver and has a budget of between $2,000-$5,000, what type of head/cam combination would best suite me?

I want to race the car eventually but I also need to drive the car daily to and from the military base where I am stationed as well as perform 800 mile trips to visit family in Texas. I am currently stationed in New Orleans and the closest LS1 shop to my location is Thunder Racing in Baton Rouge (60mi). Street-ability and drive-ability are paramount. Beyond just the heads/cam, what other parts need to be considered when performing a H/C swap?

I am going to be doing a ton of research for a while but I also concede that this forum is filled with knowledgeable people who have been in my same situation and are willing to provide their input. I will consider any and all advice and I thank any and all involved personnel before hand.

 

why will it cost u 1500 to get it replaced??? GM mLS head gaskets are $40 for the pair on summit, say another $100 for oil, filter, coolant, misc. and about 6 hours of work.

 

To be honest, I do not consider myself mechanically inclined enough to tear apart my engine and guarantee I can put it back together even with guides from sites like LS1howto. I have done the majority of the mods in my sig myself with help from friends and the base hobby shop, but trying to tackle a repair of this magnitude is slightly overwhelming. The $1500 is just a rough estimate of how much it would cost to have a shop do to work. This is all under the assumption that the heads have not warped or the any other engine damage has not occurred due to the excessive heat.

Don't get me wrong, if I could go without my car for a couple of weeks and felt more comfortable tearing apart my engine I would do the work myself.

 

Well if i was in your predicament and trying to get the most for my dollar i would get a cam that would drive well on the street 228ish intake lobe or smaller, trick flow 220s as cast heads, ls6 intake, ported throttle body, bigger injectors as needed, and then of course tune it. That will give you plenty of power while retaining a high hp per dollar ratio. Not only that you will know the entire top half of the motor is new and should be very reliable for the time to come.

 

gotcha. i completely understand. keep us updated, and good luck