Choosing upgrades for the drag race camaro

Now that I've decided that stages was the way I was going to have to get my camaro drag race ready it was time to decide what those stages would be. I thought things through and decided that this camaro was still going to be a street car for the forseeable future so I wanted some fun stuff.

At the time I was deciding on this, a few things went into my thought process. First, I wanted to spend about $5000. Second, I also have a 1991 Nissan 300zx twin turbo, and that car handles like a dream with the 4 wheel steering, lower center of gravity, and better suspension. All said and done, I decided to get some engine work done.

The package I settled on for stage one of my camaro drag racer upgrades was: Custom grind cam kit, ported oil pump, new timing set, under drive pulley, new plugs, airbox lid, mass air sensor, american racing long tube headers, off road y pipe, magnaflow catback, dyno time and a custom dyno tune. The total cost for parts and installation: $5500.

The results were pretty inpressive for a cam only car, especially considering that this is a 2000 and it has the older, somewhat crappier LS1 intake. 402 hp and 398 tq SAE corrected.

More important than what I did choose to do with this stage is probably what I didn't do. Come back in a few days and I'll talk about the short-comings of this setup for my camaro drag racer project.

Powering up the Camaro

In March of last year I got a pretty decently sized tax refund and I decided it was time to finally get some work done to my camaro. I'd been reading up on various message boards, like LS1.com, for a while about what to do and whatnot, and decided on my end goal. I went around to a few shops to start pricing stuff up. As I said before, my Camaro is a 2000, meaning it has the mighty LS1 engine in it. The LS series of engine is now GM's go to engine for most of their v8 applications. It's been in the Camaro, Firebird, GTO, Corvette, SSR, and they also made it into a truck engine. There are lots of after market parts for them, and finding a shop willing to work in them is pretty easy.

I originally wanted to do heads, cam, intake, and exhaust, as well as all the supporting modifications that go with these main areas, like throttle body, mass air meter, rocker arms, etc. I was also going to need a clutch to hold onto this power.

I got some prices from a few shops and was looking at something like 12-13000 all said and done. This would have put me in the 600 hp 550 torque area, but the pricetag was more than I paid for the camaro when I bought it, so I settled on stages.

My goal was and is still to have one of the fastest street dirven camaros in the area, but I'm just doing it in stages now.

My z28 Camaro Drag Race Odyssey - A Beginning

I've decided to start a blog about my experiences drag racing my 2000 z28 camaro. I bought the car as my college graduation present to myself in June 2004. At the time it was bone stock, except for better than factory tires. It was my daily driver until November of 2007, and I never bothered to take it to the track, because I figured that there are enough timeslips out there for stock Camaro and Firebirds. I couldn't afford to get any work done to the car. Then in 2008 I had some spare money and it was time to get some work done.