My first Muscle Car - '67 Camaro street racer

[SeattleCarGuy]

My first Musclecar: '67 Camaro (SS clone) with 468 ci BBC, TH400, 4.11's. Car was pretty much home built with help from friends, Paul Olsen and Ron Olsen; 2 bolt 454 block, cast crank, 3/8 rods with ARP bolts, .580 lift solid cam, 12:1 TRW pistons, Torker 2 intake with 850 Holley double pumper. I match ported the intake to the oval port heads and then hogged out the ports as best I could at home using a Dremel tool. Ran very large 1 7/8 inch primary tube headers dumping into 4 inch collecters and 3 inch exhaust with Flowmasters. Whole combo breathed great and manual valve body TH400 was shifted at 6700 rpm. Balanced bottom end so no fear running that much rpm with a cast crank; at least it never broke. Car was pretty much unbeatable on the street in 1988-89 in Seattle area. Street raced Everett and South Park regularly. With street tires and thru mufflers, car ran a best of 12.21 (no nitrous). There was next to no traction on the street with this thing, even with the N-50's in back. With 15x9 slicks and through mufflers at the track, the car ran consistently in the mid-11.40's. I had a Nitrous Oxide Systems Stage 1 Cheater system on it (125hp), but it was largely unusable as the car already made so much torque that there was no hooking up off the line with nitrous, let alone without. I ran one pass with the nitrous hooked up and hit it in the top of first gear out of the hole at Pacific Raceways. The slicks broke loose so I shifted to second at about 7000, hit the nitrous again after letting off the button for a split second and then stood on it the whole way. Fastest run of my life as the car went 11.09 @ 126 mph. Never ran it on nitrous again as the track officials were already warning me about running time trials in the mid-11's every weekend and then dialing in at 12.00. The car had a 6 point cage, but was only legal to run to 12 flat, the bottom of Heavy Bracket at that time. I sold the car shortly thereafter when I was in college and lost interest in the car for an interest in waterskiing. I knew based on the 126 mph run that this car would have run in the mid-10's if it had enough tire under it to get out of the hole on nitrous. I never got that chance, but today I am thankful that I had a car that pretty much ruled the streets around here in the late 80's and was a blast to drive. Today, my hot rod days are over and it's all stock restorations for me.

[olredalert]

----Paul,,,Lets see some pictures of that E63. Those things are major HP machines, and very cool.
----Oh ya,,,Camaro....also very cool. Low elevens is a good ride!....Bill S

[427TJ]

Love the huge SS emblems on the fenders!

[SeattleCarGuy]

Bill,
I'm boarding a flight to Estonia via Germany in 1/2 hour. I'll post some E63 shots when I get back in the new year. The E63 is all stock, Iridium Silver. Tire burner, but my buddy's CTS-V with mods eats it up.
Merry Chridtmas all.

Ps- the big SS emblems on the fender were offa Chevelle, I believe. After selling this car in 1990 or '91, I saw it again at the track in about 2005. It had a small block in it then. I offered to buy it back for sentimental reasons, gave the guy my name and number, but have never heard anything more about it.