🔧 BUILD JFish's 98 Camaro SS

General Information

Been thinking about doing this for a while and finally decided to pull the trigger. It's nothing special or as bad ass as most of you guys but trying to be part of the community and share. And as of now I don't have any other real plans for it, but I do have most of the pictures I saved from when I was doing stuff.
So the story begins...
I had gotten divorced and wanted a fun car again, I knew what I wanted and had been on the lookout, low and behold I found this gem on LS1Tech for sale in Michigan. with my budget I wanted something decent but didn't want to break the bank, pictures online looked super nice and as long as it was as nice as it was in the pictures it was a done deal. Had my buddy drive me up to Michigan with an envelope full of cash. And the car was way beyond what I ever anticipated getting for myself, and super low miles (31,600 at the time of sale), so I picked it up and drove it home.

Few pictures of the listing, and one when I stopped at McDonalds on the way back home, then finally in the garage.

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JFish75

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Nov 11, 2019
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Forgot to mention in there before I did the headers and intake, I had decided to take a little personal road trip and drove it down to Nashville. On the way back home the clutch pedal started hanging up and sticking to the floor while I was stuck in a huge traffic jam on 65 coming home. I was using the clutch as little as possible and thank god I made it home, after I got home it was permanently stuck to the floor so after some research found that it was a very common issue with these cars. The clutch fluid was BLACK as night. I tried flushing it and bleeding it to no avail, and ended up replacing it with a Tick master cylinder. I don't have any pictures of that since it was more of a needed repair at the time and I wasn't thinking about documenting it. It fixed the issue and haven't had any real problems with it since, the engagement is a lot different as it hardly has any pedal travel and the pedal is a lot firmer, its closer to an on/off switch, but I got used to it, just makes it hard to launch at the dragstrip since there really isn't any slipping the clutch.
I had a few pictures from the Nashville road trip but not sure where I stored them, once I find them I will try to add them
 

JFish75

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The corvette museum is pretty awesome. When I went there. They had just poured the new floor after the sink hole fiasco. It was still an awesome experience.
Yeah I was there about the same time as that, they still had all the wrecked cars from the sink hole on display in the original spots before they fell. Was a surreal experience, I was talking with one of the workers and she said she was the last one to see the cars before it happened as she was doing last round before closing, she started to tear up as she was telling me about it.
 

JFish75

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Nov 11, 2019
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Little more update, this is spring 2018 and I did some suspension upgrades. Installed Founders tubular rear control arms, and Strano sway bars and poly bushings I also installed Strano's brake master cylinder brace but I don't seem to have any pictures of that as it was a different day and pretty simple install. The Girlfriend likes car stuff also, and wanted to learn so I put her to work! Also got some BLING with a fancy SS cylinder head plaque and I filled in the bowtie with black carbon fiber vinyl wrap, it was originally filled in blue by the original owner but I like the black better

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JFish75

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Nov 11, 2019
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And the biggest part of the build so far, did this over the winter of 2018-19. I have a small one car garage but there is enough room to make it work so I just did it little bits at a time and took shots at it when I had time along with a little help from the GF and my neighbor. Parts installed - Texas Speed 228R camshaft with double valve springs and their titanium spring retainers, 7.4 hardened pushrods and I also put in the Straub trunion bushings to get rid of the stock needle bearings. replaced the oil pump, LS2 timing chain, and a new ARP crank bolt. I think that covers everything, so onto the pictures!

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JFish75

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Nov 11, 2019
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Winfield, Il.
I had this in another post but thought it should fit here as an update, when I bought the car the original owner had a billet gas cap and antenna. I was never super thrilled about it and I have the original with the box of original parts that came with it. But I think this turned out pretty cool as an accent and I painted the antenna black also. Just wrapped in “carbon fiber” vinyl wrap.

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