:History of my ’84:
March 3rd, 1998 – After much frustration with engine
repairs and all the body rust on my ’84 Buick Century, my father and I decided
it’s time for something better.
June-July ?, 1998 – As a graduation gift, I got a SONY CD changer and controlling head unit.
August ?, 1998 – As another late graduation gift, I got new Kenwood Speakers (2 ways for the fronts and 3 ways for the rears).
December ?, 1998 – During the month of December, my father and I changed the front rotors, break pad and wheel bearings. Later that month (about a week before Christmas), I had a minor fender-bender with a Ford Escort. The passenger side of my Camaro’s front nose hit the other guy’s fender. Damages were minor, my car was hardly damaged (small gouge on the plastic nose, nothing a filler couldn’t fix).
January 5th, 1999 – This was the night that almost meant a complete end to my Z-28. Traveling down a busy, four lane street, I lost control of my car. The person in front of me slammed his breaks, I hit mine and appears I was treading on some black ice. I started to go into on coming traffic. I turned the wheel (and overcompensated) and was heading for the curb on my side. A few wheel turns later, a 360 that was stopped by going into a snowdrift and hitting a telephone pole (I landed facing the opposite direction of the traffic in the lane I was traveling in). I thought this was the end. The car was towed from the scene. Damages by eyeballing it were: Destroyed driver-side quarter panel, cracked rear driver-side axle, rear breaks, rear bumper cover, shattered rear hatch and taillights, and damaged rim. I only had liability coverage. Either way, the car should’ve been totaled. It was towed home for me to decide its fate. Pics of the aftermath can be scene at the Accident Page.
February 5th, 1999 – My father and I (mostly my father), spent some time working outside on repairing the mechanics of the car. It now had new rear break shoes, a replacement rim and a new axle. It was set to attempt to ride again. We started it up and drove it around for about half an hour or so. Still a great ride. This marked the end of its mechanical difficulty. At this point, we believed we had an "in" with the local high school’s autobody instructor. He looked it over and believed his class should be able to handle the job. It should only be time until he can roll it into his class.
May 1st, 1999 - After some talking with the autobody instructor, it no longer appeared that his class would have time to restore my Camaro. I took maters into my own hands. Striped off the ground FX and began sanding the front fenders and both doors. I was now exploring leads on having a body shop do at least the repair to the rear quarter panel. It appeared that would cost about $2000. I had a lead on another option I just began exploring. Hopefully, this lead may mark the end of my problems and the beginning of a true restoration.
May 22nd, 1999 – My Camaro was rolled into Cliff’s AutoBody in Ravenna, OH (which is a hour and a half away from my home, buy hey, his price and work looks good). This was the lead I got around May 1st. Not just is Cliff’s repairing my quarter panel, they are sanding the rust and completely repairing the body and repainting the whole car. In few weeks from now, my car will be better then when I bought.
June 29th, 1999 – My Camaro has returned from Cliff’s in Ravenna. The trip home was a battle through the worst rainstorm I’ve ever driven through yet. But now, the car has returned, repaired and freshly painted (so fresh you could smell it). The inside needs cleaned out (lots of dust from the body work). All in all, the car is beautiful again.
July 3rd, 1999 – For my birthday my parents got me a new shift plate for the car (I was commenting how I’d like a new one, since the leather boot on my old one was showing marks from frequent shifting over the years). Learned that the GM dealers had a lot of trouble finding a shift plate with a REAL leather boot (some how they had a lot of vinyl boots). Needless to say, after some issues with the dealer, I have a brand new leather boot and shift plate.
July 15th, 1999 – Took my headboard and sail panels out of the car and took it to a local detailing shop (D & S Automotive) and had them reupholster the ceiling cloth on it. The original owner had problems with the T-Tops leaking (left some damage to the original cloth). Since the factory color was not available, had them use the closest match to my carpet.
September 28th, 1999 – Re-detailed the black stripe on my taillights and detailed the license plate light housing. The stripe and the housing were detailed in a metallic black and then clear coated the complete tail light assembly. All this adds for a nice sparkle effect when some one’s headlights hit them. Also ordered the grid style taillights from:
http://members.aol.com/iroczdave/pubpage.html
Will be making the same detail changes to them as well before they go on my car.
November 29th, 1999 - I had my sun visors reupholstered by Clover Car Center (they were the only ones willing to deal with working on sun visors from a vehicle with T-tops). I wanted a two tone color scheme, so I had them use a cloth that matched the plastic trim in my car.
March 7th, 2000 - My father worked on replacing the inner and outer tie rod ends, both sleeves and the center link on the Camaro (now it just needed and alignment). National Tire and Battery wanted $800 to do all that. Instead, all they got to do was the alignment (a savings of a few hundred dollars).
March 11th, 2000 - A couple of my friends and I went looking for some good salvage at the junk yards. I can home with the back set of gray cloth seats out of an '87 Friebird (now I just need to get the fronts).
March 25th, 2000 - Finally cleaned and installed the back seats. Still waiting to come across a good set of fronts. Also, while installing the seats, found that my floor boards are in bad shape (pull the carpet in the back and pull up a nice chunk of floor board). For pics of the old seats and the new seats click Here.
May 20th, 2000 - Front seats finally found (a local guy in Painesville had them). They are from an '87 Trans Am (with 50K miles on it). Drive's side one is currently need to go to an upholstery shop for some minor repair work. A couple small holes and thinned out cloth, but foan and springs are in great shape! Perfect match for the back seats I installed in the car!
May 31th, 2000 - Arranged a deal with a John Agli (http://pages.prodigy.net/berlinetta/home.htm) to trade my old zebra striped rear seats for a 145 MPH dash cluster a couple weeks earlier. Today, the dash cluster arrived (the odometer is roughly 15K miles ahead of mine, waiting for mine to catch up before install so the mileage is almost identical).
May 31th, 2000 - Dropped of the driver's side Trans Am seat to the upholstery shop (Clover Car Center). Now the wait.
June 23rd, 2000 - July 8th, 2000 - My father, his neighbor Mike Huelsman and I worked on replacing my old rotted out floor pans. The pre-modeled ones came from Classic Industries. By the time we put it back together, I had new carpet and a complete set Firebird Trans-Am seats to throw in (I got the driver's side one back from Clover). My 16 year old Camaro now has a very fresh, almost new, look to it!
September 18th, 2000 - At long last, I finished my IROC Taillights Project (repainting the black detail with a metallic black and a clear coat).
September 18th, 2000 - At license plate renewal, I decided it's time to get some vanity plates just for kicks. I was trying to get "NYTMARE" and all that was available was "NYTMRE". It lost it's appeal then, so I decided to go with "CRZY Z28". Eh, what the Hell, it's all fun.
October 11th, 2000 - Aquired a '93 Buick Century (another Century, reliving High School all over again). At this point the Camaro has retired from Winter driving duty. Before 2nd snow fall (whoops, missed the first), I parked it on the side of the garage. Under the tires sit patio blocks to keep it from sinking into the mud and it has been covered with only one of the finest car covers I could order from Classic Industries.
May 4th, 2001 - The beginning of a new dream has taken shape. Not long after the accident of January 1999 did I learn about the aftermarket hoods for 3rd gen Camaros. Ever since I began finding the parts to bring my Z28 back together, I learned of the Turbo Daytona Fiberglass hood. On this date, it finally arrived and I was able to test fit it on my Camaro (seen on Appearance Upgrade - Turbo Daytona Hood page 1). This project was quickly put on hold by some one rear ending my '93 Buick Century on May 6th (details available on my '93 Buick Century - Wrecked page). The Camaro was almost the vehicle involved in this accident (a bad transmission mount guarenteed I would not be driving it that day).
July ?, 2001 - Drove the Camaro an hour and a half to Nelson's Diagnostic Car Care. At this shop is where it acquired a beautiful custom bent, stainless steel exhaust system (muffler is also stainless steel, NOT aluminized). It sounds and performs GREAT!!
August ?, 2001 - Approaching 140K miles, it appears the Rochester Quadrajet carb on my Z has seen better days. Thanks to my dad's neighbor, Mike Hueslman, this carb has been rebuilt and runs great once again. In the process, Mike also found a fuel line that was in need of emergency repair (or problems would be faced later).
September 11th, 2001 - Horrible date in history (with the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon). Yet my father and I managed to unglue ourselves from the television to begin painting the Turbo Daytona Hood.
October 13th, 2001 - At long last, the Turbo Daytona Hood has been placed proudly on my Z28 Camaro. It can be seen on Appearance Upgrade - Turbo Daytona Hood page 2.
June ?, 2002 - Sent the Camaro to Northern Ohio Automotive for transmission problems (I was unable to downshift). They ended up replacing the transmission with a rebuilt one (as the one currently in my Camaro was damaged too much for reasonable repair).
August ?, 2002 - The Camaro began making a noise that has been identified as bad rod bearings. At this point, the Camaro is sitting awaiting my decision. Current ideas are either remove and rebuild the existing engine or replace the existing engine all together.
June 27th, 2004 - The Camaro has had almost a full two years of nothing to report. I decided it's time to make some form of progress to bringing it back to the road. This date was the beginning of project "Rebirth". With the help of my step-brother Kyle Fisher and my friend Rich Kennedy, the engine was removed in about 6 hours of work (couple of minor issues along the way). It was found that at least one source of problems for my Camaro's engine was a spun bearing.
August 16th, 2015 - Even though no note-worthy progress has been done to restore the Camaro, the trailer hitch assembly has been removed from the body. This was something one of the previous two owners had installed on the car, and I've wanted to remove it for years and simply never did when bolts began rounding off.
