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My oldest kid (13) is eligible to start drag racing this year in full-sized cars, and is participating in her first drag and drive Father's Day weekend (relax I'm doing the driving). So we did what any responsible parents would do and found her a ride. The car is a mostly stock and unmolested 1999 Camaro SS 1LE with a M6 with 185K kms (114K miles). The only options are a block heater and rear defrost because it was ordered in Canada, and were mandatory. Car is a total stripper. Last of the true 1LE's and pretty rare if you run the numbers.



The day we made the deal back in December, and after she started it for the first time... establishing a core memory. We had to leave the car with the seller because we were in the dead of winter.



Me dragging it home this weekend.



So what's the plan... other than using the car as a teaching tool?

My intent is to optimize the car and the driver. Having had suffered through nearly 30 years of ignorance, hearsay, trends, outright lies, and some really cool innovation around these cars I have some theories about what can be done differently, possibly better. Hell, I put a "mostly stock" A4 B4C into the mid 12s (12.5 @ 110mph w/1.9 60') on street tires. So with a little more work I figure we can get an 11.99 out of a "mostly stock" engine with a few more bolt-ons.

Short-term mods will include the normal free mods, a custom tune, 4.56s, ported LS6 intake, headers, custom 3" true dual exhaust (modular to remove back half for substantial weight savings when racing), an LPE launch controller/2-step, basic suspension and bushing upgrades, drag radials on a set of CCW Classics, and a modern radio head unit.

Long term will likely see the H/C/I LS1 from my wagon swapped in and a tickle of nitrous.

Here's the 1LE parked next to my wife's 1992 Z28, which will get an LS swap sometime in the coming years... or a turbo. We'll see.

 

Beautiful cars. A white hardtop 91 Z28 was my first car and I had a white 99 SS ttop car i bought to build as a single turbo car but never got to finish it. Have fun! Was your daughter drag racing something else before this? Mines 2 but id love to have a plan to get her into racing if she chooses.

 

Love the car, love the name, and I LOVE the collection you have there!

I've always wanted a '91-'92 Z28, came close a couple of times but it just didn't quite work out. I used to have an '89 Formula 350 back in the mid-'90s before making the jump to a 4th gen. I would consider another 3rd gen Formula for sure, but I'd rather have a late 3rd gen Z28.

 

When those 5k rpm clutch dumps comin in? (that Camaro is PRISTINE )

 

In 1999, Chevy built 74 1LE coupes (66 were M6, 8 were A4). Of those 66 M6 cars, 7 had WU8 SS package, 7 were 10U Artic White, and 55 had the 14B/14D Lt. Gray Cloth interior.

 

That's good stuff, these are such great cars. I was half shopping for a C5 Z06 but you cannot take the family or dogs in them. As for my girls and racing. Neither has done much other than a 24v converted Power Wheels Corvette or the riding law mower. But, they've grown up at the track (drag racing and autocross) and have been in the garage since they could walk. Definitely don't force it. The answer is always "yes" with guidance and supervision. Building engines, general maintenance, welding, etc. I'm currently teaching my oldest how to use Fusion so she can start prototyping things on the 3D printer for the car. That said, my youngest daughter (11) saw a Jr. Dragster at the cars how this year and was asking if she could do it. I don't think we're ready for a full racing program yet.

I had a '91 Z28 (TPI 305, 5spd) and it was awesome https://www.thirdgen.org/forums/memb...ml#post3722948. My then girlfriend, now wife, was rolling in the '02 B4C but was secretly crushing on my '91. So when we found her Z28 in 2020 we jumped at the chance to own it. Third Gens are amazing cars.

Ha! It still has the stock 10 bolt. We're going to learn how to street launch the car first by slipping the clutch. The last time she saw me do a 5K clutch dump we spent the next 9 hours replacing the differential in my Hellcat at the race track hundreds of miles from home without a spare, tools, or a trailer. Talk about trauma bonding...

Yup, and here's some advanced stats for nerds.

 

Nice!

I have the white 1998 SS 1LE. Mine is also Canadian, but I brought it to the US.

 

Wow love it, what a clean car! Looking forward to seeing what you guys do with it.

 

Weather has been weird this year. Everything was melting until it wasn't. Rear driveway was a mud bog until it wasn't. So I took advantage of the flash freeze and played musical cars. Got the Monte off the lift for the first time since October (Rebel LS install and other upgrades), and wheeled the 1LE into the shop. And now there is a foot of snow preventing it from leaving. Good.

Anyway, I put the car up and gave it a more detailed once over to determine what it has had done to it, and what parts I need to order that I haven't already stockpiled. It seems that only 2 of the factory double adjustable Konis remain (in the rear), the fronts are either parts store econo pieces and/or a blown out stocker that is leaking oil. Who does that? It does have Eibach Pro springs on it, which is cool. But I would have loved to have the factory 1LE high rate springs. We may upgrade to some Strano's if and when I can get the kids hooked on autocross. The DS rear LCA bushing is blown out and no doubt contributing to the insane tire wear. I ordered a full set of upper and lower arms loaded with ball joints just to save some time and effort. I may get some better bushings and rebuild the lowers at a future date.

Otherwise it is pretty stock with a janky Magnaflow cat back and some some cat deletes, and a set of rep wheels. But, we'll be tossing all of that in the bin shortly. Under hood it has a BBK 85mm throttle body, a lid, and K&N drop in. Someone blocked the steam ports when they swapped the throttle body. Again, WTF how hard is it to loop the lines? It also a Diablo canned tune which I have to flash back to stock and teach the kid how to tune a car.



The kids have a snow day today so we'll be making the most out of this unplanned long weekend with a different form of education. First step fitting the CCWs... before blowing the whole car apart.

 

Already gettin to work cool ****, how hard would it be to tune one of these? (got zero experience) I've heard the 98's are a little harder to tune cause of the PCMs on them.

 

The springs were also used on 98/99/early 00 SS and 99/early 00 WS6.

You can still buy the Koni’s new but they won’t have the GM part number your originals would have. At this point it would be quite lucky to find an original set. With the sets SLP installed (they had the GM part #, I bought two sets when they sold off the leftover inventory but sold them long ago), I imagine 1,000 sets of 4 were made. Maybe less.

Koni can rebuild your rears.

I do see nice 99-02 stock SS/WS6 catbacks on marketplace from time to time.

This is my car at Autorama last year. Just under 30k kms.

 

I specifically avoided a '98 for just that reason. Thankfully it is a '99 so it doesn't suck, although I thought about repinning the ECM like a later car. It'll be really easy to do once I get the WB02 installed.

 

Hey, that's an amazing time capsule! Love the license plate too. We have a personalized plate for ours... but, that's for a future post.

Thanks for the info on the Konis. I'll sit on them and decide if we want to rebuild them or not. I have a set of SRT.T shocks/struts for this because it is lowered, and may end up more low. They are twin tube and will respond better than mono-tubes.

Here's a question: What's with the spacers under the rear bump stops? I saw something similar on ours and was perplexed. Both at that, and that the bump stops aren't made of foam rubber like the other ones I have seen/replaced. Is this 1LE specific?

As for exhaust we're building a 3" version of the exhaust I made for my wife's car last year... we don't do stock in this house:


Idle sound clip:

 

The tuning options are a little more limited, not really a big deal for most street type setups unless you're planning some ragged edge build or big power forced induction.

Unfortunately, you'll have the bubbling roof issue with your '99 - which is an even bigger hassle to replace with a full hardtop roof. Repinning a PCM would be easier...lol. 1998s (except the last couple months of '98 production) are the only ones that won't have this roof problem.

The spacer isn't 1LE specific, it's actually used on all the 17x9" wheel cars (SS, WS6, etc.). One of the few pieces that many folks wouldn't know to look for to separate a "cloned" example from an original.

 

Considering my kid asked for nitrous on the drive home the night we bought it and is sizing up the local 9 second stick shift GT500 I have to believe the later car is the right choice. As for the roof, the bubbles never really bothered me with our '02. Plus with the advancement in vinyl wraps we can hide it... or I'll just lean into this: https://irocmotorsports.com/product/...ons-available/ It is well within in my abilities to replace.

Thanks for clarifying the bump stop spacer thing. This car was definitely smashing them with the lowering springs and tired shocks.

 

The problem with the roof is that vinyl wrap will not work, the bubbles will still form under the wrap and lift it. And Iroc/Magg is mostly a scam and often doesn't ships orders (if you research all the complaints against them, on this site and others, the owner has been doing this under different business names for YEARS). So the only sure way to fix this is to find a '98 or earlier donor car and pull off that roof, then replace yours. It's a big job on a hardtop car, much harder than a PCM repin. I just wish a legitimate place like Hawks would start reproducing the roof panel so there was a better option.

Anyway, it doesn't really matter as you already have the car. And, as far as I'm concerned, I'd rather folks hate the '98s so that I can buy more of them for cheap! So yes, everyone should avoid the '98s like the plague!

 

Got it, go get a '98 parts car. Too easy.

 

We took advantage of the snow day on Friday. The kids got their hands dirty swapping the CCWs on the car before we blew it apart. 17x10s with 275/40s up front and 17x11s with 315/35s out back.








I asked them which end they wanted start on, they said the front. In between fetching them tools and giving instructions I started work on the rear. Few other little mods revealed themselves. The car has Baer Eradispeed rotors (very tired up front) and ARP long wheel studs (oddly cut down in the back). We got most of the front end off with relative ease (broke one end link) but were thwarted by the rear lower control arm bolts which were both frozen in the bushing sleeves. That became Saturday's problem...



Getting those bolts out was a fight and a half. Took every trick in the book short of turning them into liquid to beat them out of their holes.





That's where the fun stopped for the day because we got a new puppy as a friend for our one year old.

 

Car looks great! I got lucky with my LCA bolts, they (eventually) came out. I was surprised.

Nice dog!

 

Yesterday I spent the morning cleaning up the huge, unpredicted mess from removing the front suspension. After that I tackled assembling the struts. More swears at the stuck components on the old janky bits.



Then I proceeded to remove the torque arm to replace the bushing with a UMI piece.



After that was all said and done I got to degreasing the underside of the chassis, engine, and transmission. She's seeping a bit of oil from somewhere, like the front main seal. That's Future Mike's problem. The good news is now pulling the motor mounts won't be so disgusting. Half tempted to swap the LS6 intake on before doing the mounts to give myself a little more working room with the sagging rubber inserts.