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Want to talk about humble beginnings? This little base model 1985 z28 was VERY humble when Mark brought it home from a title pawn shop for $1000 in early 2000. This was orginally an lg4/auto car and came with the mighty 3.23 gears. *side note, Mark Walter is my father.*
we decided to go ahead and see if the little lg4 would be able to hold together, so we put a holley street dominator intake on it, Crane "blue racer" cam, 214/224 .442/.465 on a 114 in it. hedman shorties, dynomax 2.5" catback on it, his old Cam Dynamics aluminum roller rockers, a holley 600 vs on it and went out on the street to beat on it. the th350 loved it and would smoke the 3.23 geared half-rotted 225/60/15 goodyears to the top of second...but the th350 had a strange leak that we never could get rid of...so we snatched it out to look at it. yep, cracked case. within 15 mins, we had gone and grabbed the powerglide and 8" ATI converter out of the shed and had it sitting, prepped to go into the car. after DROPPING the trans onto my father, we wrestled it in. oh boy, this car was LAZY off the line, but would run some ridiculous mph! powerglide and 3.23's! with all of that and the motor listed above, it ran 14.5's! ran it like that for two NSCA races and lost oil pressure. it never really saw much street use, cause the 350 that we had laying around was going into it and it was a little less "streetable". here is a pic from the first year, with the old 235/60/15 BFG Drag Radials holding on for dear life:
it was less streetable, cause it had an OLD school grind cam in it. he put his old Torker II cam in the 350, which is 232/234 .488/.488 on a 112 i think. doesn't sound like much, but it was wierd on the street. had some 462 casting double humps, 10.5:1 c/r, and went ahead and put his old 650 double pumper on it. while we were building this motor, my father spent 9 hours under the car putting a set of 4.10 richmonds in the car with a powertrax lockright locker (which my 305 later DESTROYED!). We also decided to go ahead and upgrade to a slightly taller tire. a 275/60/15 BFG Drag Radial was being used to replace the old 235's. also, note that we had an 82-84 Z28 factory Fiberglass installed on the car to help with the sleeper look.
the rearend only lasted a few 12.5 passes(the 8" converter stalled at 3500rpm) before we snapped on of the old 26 spline axles and in went the 9" moser my dad had just ordered "just in case". we already had a center section with 4.56 gears and a full spool from the monza...so that's what went in. Here are a few pics of the incident when we broke the rear. I had to get the car back together since it broke during 1st round of qualifying in order to get it back up there to qualify.
here is the new rearend that found it's way under the car, just a few short days later, here you can also see the Hotchkis rearsuspension pieces. LCA's and panhard rod. it's also fitted with a spohn torque arm with powerglide retrofit crossmember.
at the end of 2003, the 355 came apart...spun a main bearing...i guess in our haste, we put two of the main caps on backwards...the valve train was out of alignement cause the deck on the block head been milled, so the stock length pushrods were too short and making wierd things happen there...ended up completely TRASHING the heads...and wiped like 3 lobes on the cam.
my father at that point was about to retire from the military and was going to go into full-time on the road racing ministry and had no time between seasons to do a rebuild...BUT! our ministry had grown pretty big at that point and two of our main guys just happen to be professional engine builders! we dropped it off with them in Michigan and let them rebuild the motor. this time, we used the same shortblock, but the motor recieved a set of 200cc Dart Iron Eagle heads and a solid lifter cam with 252*/258* .536/.520 on like a 110 or 108 lobe center...can remember. the car also recieved a full paint job from Bret Plankenmire and Steve Bishop as a ministry gift. repainted a deep rich black. the cowl hood also recieved some air brushed graphics to glorify our savior with a cross ala Don Garlits style.
went out, first pass was a 11.8 something at NO Problem Raceway in Lousianna.
For Christmas this year, i decided to redo a set of wheels for my father and put them on the car. he LOVES them...
car sees NO street time at this point. but, all it would take to put it on the street is DOT tires and tags/insurance. the rest is all there...oh, and a full tank of 93 octane with 3 bottles of 104 octane booster
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