Camaro or Firebird???

[Joe Rotax]

qube_TA said:

... unless you'd dramatically altered the engine/induction.

That's what they're doing.

qube_TA said:

If you had a stock 3rd gen with a 350TPI motor in it then it'll have up to 240 horses under the hood, if you had a carb'ed motor producing more than that then it probably wouldn't be the engine that came with the car, even if it is you've already spent a lot more money than it would cost with a TPI motor.

Most of the thirdgens I see are modified and there seems to be a presumption that the stock car is just a starting point; many of the owners have either rebuilt the original motor for more power or installed something else.

GM rates the ZZ4 at 355 FWHP with a carb and the same motor makes about 100HP less with TPI.

Edited by Joe Rotax on Monday 30th July 20:58

Edited by Joe Rotax on Monday 30th July 20:59

[tpivette]

At the moment i just use the stock 1228746 ECU,its just 160baud but at least i can set ignition timing and fuel to suit stuff like the 3inch exhaust, holley throttle body, basic stuff. I run a Romulaor for real time changes - via tunercat - and a pocket programmerII for the major revisions.

Thats the thing about third gens they are so tunable and its all been tried before via third gen.org. I do have a hankering to see how the car would run under a four barrel but for the meantime i like the injection.

The bmw wheels fit just fine, half a millimeter aint much, and when i fitted them they already had the chamfered bolt holes so the third gen taperred lug nuts would square them up ok. I took them to my work and had the machine shop run a mill the correct hub size down the centre of the wheel but there were no issues. If i remember correctly the bmw wheel was 2 mm larger hub bore.

Thanks for all those setting ideas, i am keen to try and make the car handle as sharp as possible under my meager car budget. The car is slightly off centre at the rear after the lowering which is why i am making the panhard bar with right and left handed rod ends so i can use this to square it back up.
We have a few real twisty roads around here and the looks from the sportsbikers when i flash/honk them over is brilliant. Different story when we hit the straights though, drat.

I just re-used the spring isolators that i already had, they didnt look too bad.
Subframe connectors are one of the items i am researching at the moment. Spohn stuff does get good reviews but the UMI brand SFC's with the LCA brackets seem a good deal.

I have been considerring a brake upgrade and at the moment I have been considering approaching www.godspeedbrakes.co.uk for advice. unless you have some handy tips.....

Edited by tpivette on Monday 30th July 21:04

[LuS1fer]

Buy a 4th gen. They're very cheap at the moment and far better cars. The only thing you have to worry about on the LT1 275hp engine (93-96) is the silly Optispark ignition which is like a direct drive distributor on the end of the crank where it can get wet and corrode. Can be about £600 to replace but other than that, not much to worry about. Much quicker than a 3rd gen and the better computer is far more parsimonious with the fuel. Better interior and most panels bar hood and rear wings are plastic.

Main differeence between Pontiac and Chevy in either generation is the pop-up headlamp gears strip on the Pontiac but can be replaced. Early 3rd gen interiors are pretty dire too.

[Joe Rotax]

[quote=LuS1fer Early 3rd gen interiors are pretty dire too.
[/quote]

Looks fine to me..lol



Usually the Pontiac interior will be a little nicer than that found in the equivalent Chev platform whether it's for an f-body or not however that may have changed somewhat over the last decade or so.

I happen to like the sparse look of the earlier thirdgens but obviously it’s personal preference. GM always tries to tart things up as the model progresses in order to make buyers think they’re getting something more..lol

[Joe Rotax]

tpivette said:

I have been considerring a brake upgrade...

For information on the various uprades available have a look at posts by ebmiller on the thirdgen.org brakes board.

You'd have to use someone local rather than ship it in but you could likely piece together the parts and go from there - use whatever is easiest to get in the UK I suppose.

I'm guessing that it might be easy enough to find C4 or C5 parts and then you'd just need the bracket or the specs for same so that you can fab them up.

[qube_TA]

Joe Rotax said:

qube_TA said:

... unless you'd dramatically altered the engine/induction.

That's what they're doing.

qube_TA said:

If you had a stock 3rd gen with a 350TPI motor in it then it'll have up to 240 horses under the hood, if you had a carb'ed motor producing more than that then it probably wouldn't be the engine that came with the car, even if it is you've already spent a lot more money than it would cost with a TPI motor.

Most of the thirdgens I see are modified and there seems to be a presumption that the stock car is just a starting point; many of the owners have either rebuilt the original motor for more power or installed something else.

GM rates the ZZ4 at 355 FWHP with a carb and the same motor makes about 100HP less with TPI.

No 3rd gen had that sort of power, closest was the 1989 Turbo Trans Am.

Bottom line is if you bought a 350TPI 3rd gen it'll cost far less to get your 355HP than it would if you bought a 3rd gen that had any of the other V8's the cars came with.

[Joe Rotax]

qube_TA said:

No 3rd gen had that sort of power, closest was the 1989 Turbo Trans Am.

Bottom line is if you bought a 350TPI 3rd gen it'll cost far less to get your 355HP than it would if you bought a 3rd gen that had any of the other V8's the cars came with.

A ZZ4 is a GM crate motor with aluminum heads. It makes about 355 FWHP, 405 ft/lbs of torque and it’s fairly common to swap one into a thirdgen.

A question which comes up all the time when installing a crate engine or building up the original motor is whether to keep the TPI or go with a carb.

The answers to the foregoing are usually similar to the following quotes from a moderator at thirdgen.org:

“If fuel economy and driveability are primary, keep the TPI. If power and cost are the drivers, go carb. It's not that you can't get power out of TPI, it's more the cost to get there. If you do keep it, you need to make that decision before the engine is assembled as cam choice is very important with TPI.”

“Can you put a ZZ4 under TPI and get 350 HP? Probably, if you're talking gross flywheel HP. And, that would involve replacing about every piece of factory TPI hardware, with the possible exception of the fuel rails.”

I’m not suggesting that people should remove the TPI systems from their stock motors and replace them with carbs just as a bolt on modification. But when it comes to doing a complete rebuild for more power or installing a crate motor then one of the questions is whether to go with a carb or keep the TPI.

The consensus, and the bottom line, is that all things being equal, the same motor will make more power with a carb than it will with a stock TPI and you would have to spend a lot of money on aftermarket TPI upgrades/modifications etc. to recover that lost power.

[qube_TA]

I agree with you however if you have a perfectly good engine to start with what's the point of spending £2500+ on a new crate motor and converting the car to carb just to get 355 horses (you'd need a new exhaust & headers before it would do that anyway) when you could get the same power out of the existing engine for much less.

[tpivette]

Joe Rotax. how about a few words on your intake and carb setup, why you chose it, how you jetted and set it up etc, any problems discovered along the way etc.

Am i correct in thinking a demon is the Barry Grant hot rodded version of the plain vanilla Holley 4 barrel? Why choose that model over the cheaper Holley ?

Also are there different considerations over carb choice for a "road race" application rather than the more common "drag race" setup.

Thanks if you can help, I'm still in two minds over a change to carb.

LuS1fer - "and the better computer is far more parsimonious with the fuel" I had to shift-F7 that one, nice word use.

Edited by tpivette on Wednesday 1st August 09:44

[Joe Rotax]

qube_TA said:

... if you have a perfectly good engine to start with what's the point of spending £2500+ on a new crate motor and converting the car to carb just to get 355 horses...

It depends on what you want out of the car; how you use it etcetera. A stock TPI making 225 HP is certainly adequate for most applications but for some it’s not enough. Looking back on it I realize that I should have got something with around 400 HP because now I have to install a better cam and 1.6 rockers.

qube_TA said:

... you could get the same power out of the existing engine for much less.

I don’t think that is correct but I’m not an expert on TPI systems.

Consider the stock TPI 350 and the ZZ4 crate motor as examples. Then consider the following quote from my previous post:

“Can you put a ZZ4 under TPI and get 350 HP? Probably, ... And, that would involve replacing about every piece of factory TPI hardware, with the possible exception of the fuel rails.”

Also consider that the ZZ4 has aluminum heads, 10:1 compression and a better cam as well as better internals in the short block.

To get the stock 350 TPI motor up to par with the ZZ4 you would have to add a cam and heads package; then, to get it to make 350HP or so with a TPI, you would have to dramatically revise if not replace the stock TPI with an aftermarket variant as described in the above quotation.

I expect that the foregoing would be rather expensive and after all is said and done you would still be left with your stock and possibly rather elderly shortblock which isn’t as good as the ZZ4 shortblock to begin with.

There are many reasons why FI might be a more practical choice; I just don’t happen to ascribe to any of them..lol. That said though, my pickup truck gets better mileage than the TA.

NB - The quotations herein are from a guy who posts on thirdgen.org as 57kid; he moderates a couple of the engine boards there. He appears quite knowledgeable and I suspect that he works in the auto industry.

[Joe Rotax]

tpivette said:

Joe Rotax. how about a few words on your intake and carb setup, why you chose it, how you jetted and set it up etc, any problems discovered along the way etc.

Am i correct in thinking a demon is the Barry Grant hot rodded version of the plain vanilla Holley 4 barrel? Why choose that model over the cheaper Holley ?

Also are there different considerations over carb choice for a "road race" application rather than the more common "drag race" setup.

Thanks if you can help, I'm still in two minds over a change to carb.

Here's a picture of it. Very much in the nothing special category as you can see..lol



The intake is just the one which came with the motor because that’s all that would fit under the hood. I think it’s similar to an Eidlebrock Performer or something like that. A high rise would be better but I like the stock hood.

Demon is Grant. They make a 650 specifically for the ZZ4 but it was more expensive and from what I can tell the only difference was the jets and maybe the idle bleeds. I just bought a box of Holley jets and set it up from there because none of them are the same and they’re usually a bit rich from the factory.

The carb was easy to set up. Idle dialed right in. I changed the power valve to 8.5 I think it is now; set the floats and messed with the jets based upon reading the plugs and how the car ran. The AFR was close when I had it checked.

It ran differently at the track though. The straight at Mosport is about 3/4 of a mile long and the car gets up to 140 mph pretty quickly with the 3:23 gears so it’s wound up for quite a bit. Anyway, it started popping and banging so I went up about 5 or 6 jet sizes front and back which fixed it.

I chose the 650 because that’s supposedly the correct size for the motor and a smaller carb will usually have better throttle response for road racing. GM got their 355 HP using a 750. I think that the car would probably be better with a 750 on a long track like Mosport. When I was karting we used different size carbs for different tracks but I just run lap days with the car so I’m not going to bother changing the carb.

As for Holley v. Grant, price wasn’t really a consideration. I got the Demon for $400 which is cheap and as I said they had made some efforts to produce a carb specifically for my motor. I also, like the look of it better than a Holley but that’s neither here nor there.

As for swapping out your FI for a carb I wouldn’t suggest it unless you’re going to be rebuilding everything and going to a sort of limited use street fighter or track car. There’s other issues too with getting the lockup to work etc. so just as a bolt on I wouldn’t recommend it.

[qube_TA]

Joe Rotax said:

qube_TA said:

... if you have a perfectly good engine to start with what's the point of spending £2500+ on a new crate motor and converting the car to carb just to get 355 horses...

It depends on what you want out of the car; how you use it etcetera. A stock TPI making 225 HP is certainly adequate for most applications but for some it’s not enough. Looking back on it I realize that I should have got something with around 400 HP because now I have to install a better cam and 1.6 rockers.

qube_TA said:

... you could get the same power out of the existing engine for much less.

I don’t think that is correct but I’m not an expert on TPI systems.

Consider the stock TPI 350 and the ZZ4 crate motor as examples. Then consider the following quote from my previous post:

“Can you put a ZZ4 under TPI and get 350 HP? Probably, ... And, that would involve replacing about every piece of factory TPI hardware, with the possible exception of the fuel rails.”

Also consider that the ZZ4 has aluminum heads, 10:1 compression and a better cam as well as better internals in the short block.

To get the stock 350 TPI motor up to par with the ZZ4 you would have to add a cam and heads package; then, to get it to make 350HP or so with a TPI, you would have to dramatically revise if not replace the stock TPI with an aftermarket variant as described in the above quotation.

I expect that the foregoing would be rather expensive and after all is said and done you would still be left with your stock and possibly rather elderly shortblock which isn’t as good as the ZZ4 shortblock to begin with.

There are many reasons why FI might be a more practical choice; I just don’t happen to ascribe to any of them..lol. That said though, my pickup truck gets better mileage than the TA.

Personally I'd rather have a 3rd gen with 220 horses and spend the money on suspension, chassis and breaks over a 400HP car with everything else as stock (and 20 years old) the breaks especially are scarily hopeless.

I also wouldn't rip out a good 350 just to fit another unless it was something like an LSx, just don't see the point as the costs of buying and installing a 350BHP crate engine & converting the car to carbs far outweigh the costs of getting an extra 130HP out of a stock 350 FT motor.

You could take a 350 TPI, fit a decent cam and put in a Holley Stealth Ram/Mini Ram system on there, coupled with an exhaust, headers, cold air induction & throw in a DIY porting of the heads you'd be around the 300+ HP mark and spent about a 3rd of what you'd be looking at.

Spend a bit more and you could get the ECU remapped, port the heads, add a shot of nitrous etc. But then you'd run into problems as the stock transmission and axle can't cope much beyond 350 horses so you're really starting to spend money now & have yet to address the breaks, chassis & suspension and all your car does is spin the rears!

[Joe Rotax]

Which ever way you end up going with the motor you pretty much have to do something about the suspension first.

[mustang'73]

Being a Yank I would ALWAYS go for the Camaro Hands Down. as your fellow compadres suggested Parts are easily acquired and it is just a better car all around!!

[ghostrider116]

I would say Camaro but them im being biased lol Fuel consumption I reckon on my 5.0 is 15-18 0-60 is around 6.5.There is a lovely camaro on e-bay 330154701385 If I was looking to buy one that would be it

[pezz]

Just catching up with this great thread! Top info in it too.

I was stuck making the decision between camaro and firebird. I opted for 3rd gen camaro
which currently has carb setup. Its currently in garage getting some work done, but with a few suspension mods it feels tight and steering very sharp. I have not had a chance to burn rubber (mainly due to weather and not having the car when weather was good) but wondered how well these cars can put power down without losing lots of traction...

Sonmv have you had a chance to test drive or sit in both camaro and firebird as yet?

Any closer as to making a decision?

Edited by pezz on Tuesday 14th August 11:35

[ws6]

my third gen is terrible with traction, in the wet/damp have ended up facing the way I just come from too many times to count ! might be the XP200's are bad ? Thrid gen brakes are notoriously bad too - makes for much fun and heart stopping moments though !! First mod, metallic lined pads.


oh and, Firebird every time

[qube_TA]

The stock shocks are like $11 each, I think they're made out of cardboard, after 20 years they tend to get very saggy.

Mine used to spin all the time too until I put some decent springs n shocks on, it's fine now.

Agreed that the breaks are hopeless, there's been a few occasions where my arse has nipped far tighter than the calipers have when I've needed to stop quickly.

[pezz]

Swapping ends on wet roads is def a no no... I need to double check but I think I have eibach suspension all round but not sure about brakes.

Are brake upgrades (vette conversion - c4?) silly money on these firebird/camaros?

I think chevy stu had rear anti roll bar removed after lowering and beefing up suspension.. this helped handling but will this also help traction?

[ws6]

i think you can get EBS, semi-drilled/slotted discs cheaper than GM stock ones. Then add decent pads (green stuff).

As for 20 year old shocks, I had it when it was 18months old and 10K on the clock I never changed the brakes, just the pads, and gave myself a days notice when to brake Honestly, cant lock them up in the dry, and rarely in the wet - kinda poor mans ABS

Re: facing backwards. Every wet roundabout I took with utmost caution, some I won, some I didn't, Decent pirellis all-round would help... had some P Zero on the front once, which were excellent, always had XP200 on the back -

Edited by ws6 on Tuesday 14th August 16:19