81 camaro project car

I just baught a 1981 Camaro. with a 350 30 over. 350 turbo trans. head work and a old bm shifter. It's a little rusted out n needs interior work. I plan on having this car for drag strip and car to ride out in town. What are some sugestions on parts and things i should do to give it more power and a good 9 sec or better car?

So, you want a car that will do a 9 second quarter mile and be able to drive it around town as a daily driver, I think you are going to want two different cars.

Well, for starters...

- Replace the TH-350 tranny for a TH-400 tranny that has been rebuilt with high torque racing parts installed, the flywheel and the torque converter will need to be upgraded as well or they will self destruct.

- Replace the drive line with the thickest walled drive line you can find, u-joints are going to be your weak point particularly at the front of the drive line where it makes a slight change in angle, get the kind without the grease fitting as this is a weak point in the u-joints as well, yes this will mean you will need to take them apart to grease them.

- You will need to up the gear ratio of the rear end to something higher than stock, replace the gears with racing quality gears or bad things will happen.

- Bad things also happen when you are going that fast, install a roll cage.

This list should give you plenty to do for a while.

The unibody design of that car cant handle 11sec quarters without help, i speak from experience. You will need frame rail connectors and a roll cage. You will need a regulation book to see if and what type of roll cage are required for a 9 sec car. Loose all your dead weight, rear seats, use racing buckets, strip everything out of the dash you dont absolutely need, if you only plan on driving in the summer that includes the heater and all related components. Loosing excess weight is the cheapes thing you can do in my opinion. I cant understand how all the street racing ricer cars want to be fast then their owners load up 2000lbs of stereo equipment.

not as a town car. but a car that i can drive to the dragway n not have to worry about hauling it

There are 5280 feet in a mile, if you divide that by 4 (to get a quarter mile) you get 1320 feet, from some calculators online that I ran you will have to accelerate 11.1 miles per hour per second to get up to 100mph to do a 9 second quarter mile.

How you do this is going to be based on how heavy your car is, the basic curb weight I found for an 81 Camaro is 3328 pounds, using another calculator I found it says that in order to do a 9 second quarter mile the horsepower required will = 902.284 horsepower.

But, you are going to have to weld a sub-frame under the car to keep the uni-body from twisting into a pretzel, and a roll cage inside the car, and the added weight of a giant engine capable of generating 900+ horsepower you are probably looking at over 1,000 horsepower by the time you are done.

Now, at 1,000+ horsepower I really do not think you are going to be able to drive it on the street and will have to trailer it to the race track.

Now, if my math is wrong someone please let me know.

81 camaro (2nd gen) already has sub frames, its not a uni body. Matter of fact the sub frame "package" second gens come with people like to use to upgrade many different cars for many different reasons. When you see an antique car with a chevy motor and disk front brakes, chances are its "subbed" with 2nd gen camaro front or rear suspension.

They sell SFC kits exact for second gen camaros, but they are expensive and considering how much they cost and as simple as the design you can just build your own with tools and know-how. Making the car rigid enough to handle high HP is only half the $. MOST* race tracks will kick a 9 second runner off the track unless you have the proper safety equipment. Meaning your roll cages, fire equipment, ect.

Newer performance cars you can have the best of both worlds street/track, but an old school camaro that can run 9's wouldnt be streetable. A more realistic goal would be mid 12 to low 13's.

It all depends on how deep your pockets are, if your pockets are real deep you can mak your car go as fast as you want it.:smokin:

Regardless of what you have been told or have been lead to believe , all Camaro's and Firebirds are unibody cars ( they do not have a full perimeter frame ). While it is true that they do have a front "subframe" you still need to add subframe connectors between this subframe and the rear frame rails to tie the car together and make it stronger if you plan to install a roll cage . Weld in connectors are the better choice but are harder to install , but if you are already doing the cage you should be able to install them.

I'm doing a cage in my sons 77 Firebird as we speak.

If yo want a quick tip on how to figure out your notches save all of your old toilet paper rolls. They fit snug around the roll cage tubing and can be pushed up to the tube you are butting into to get the shape you need or close to it. Trim the paper tube , put it on your tubing , put it in place again and see how close you are. Just keep doing this until you have it right and then you can slide it down the tubing, trace it with a black sharpie and either grind it out or cut it with your notcher . There is also a tool you can buy that slips around your tubing and can help you get the profile you need. Better to trash cardboard than ruin expensive tubing.
Sounds stupid but it works.

Use ratchet straps to hold your top hoop up, another one going around it and your main hoop will pull the two together so you can tack weld them in place. Just measure everything about a hundred times or so before you cut and sneak up on your final fit, you can always take more off, i'ts hard to stretch a tube once you've screwed it up.

With good traction and some "aero" work, 750 HP will get a Camaro into the "9s". This is no small task. A 750 HP engine running on 93 octane (a true "street" engine) is both expensive and "rowdy". Difficult to actually DRIVE. Easy enough to "race". It will take a WHOLE LOT MORE than a smallblock to get there... A 502 with all the "right stuff" CAN do it. The 572 makes it a bit easier...

Most of what "just Homer" says about the F-body chassis is 100% correct. The reason the F-body subframes are so popular in street rods is the ease one can install a Chevy or Pontiac V8, with all the "timmings" actually fitting, into most any other type of car. The steering box from '77-'79 WS-6 T/A is the best "recirculating ball-nut" steering box there is. The big disc brakes are also a MAJOR asset.

FWIW

Jim

I just baught a 1981 Camaro. with a 350 30 over. 350 turbo trans. head work and a old bm shifter. It's a little rusted out n needs interior work. I plan on having this car for drag strip and car to ride out in town. What are some sugestions on parts and things i should do to give it more power and a good 9 sec or better car?You can install a carbon fibre hood to make it more lightweight