♠ Posted by Admin in Chevrolet,Chevy Camaro Z28 1971 at 23:30
Clayton drove the car to a friend's
house so they could fit-check some 17-inch wheels and tires that were
borrowed from a '70 Camaro, as well as talk about suspension, brakes,
and engine options. After he saw the car for the first time, wearing
17x11-inch wheels and 315/35-17 rubber, Clayton was hooked and
construction began shortly thereafter. That's also when the difficulty
of building a car reared its ugly head, and didn't let up for a year and
a half.
About
that same time, we had just finished one of Danger Mouse's best engine
combinations (Part 6, Test 15) where we installed GMPP's Vortec heads, a
COMP Cams Xtreme Energy hydraulic cam and rockers, an Edelbrock
Performance RPM Air Gap intake, and a Demon 750 carb. DM made great
power with this combo, and told Clayton it would be the perfect way to
motivate the Camaro he was putting together that affectionately become
known as "Zilla."
But
Clayton admitted he wasn't comfortable building his own engine, so he
had a copy of DM built. That turned out to be the easy part, and Zilla's
new engine made over 420 hp and a monstrous 450 lb-ft of torque. Then
it graced Super Chevy's cover in Aug. '03 with a follow-up story in the
Jan. '04 issue detailing the entire buildup and test. Once installed in
Zilla, Clayton trucked it over to Westech Performance Group for a day of
riding on their Superflow chassis dyno.
The
power results were typical. Zilla lost an average 21 percent through
its 700-R4 automatic and 3.08-equipped 12-bolt drivetrain on its way
toward making 326 rear-wheel horsepower and 398 lb-ft of rear wheel
torque. Note: We would like to take this moment to correct a mistake we
made in reporting Zilla's engine story back then. It was erroneously
listed as having a stroke of 3.76-inch, when it's actually 3.48-inch,
just like every other 350-cid Chevy ever built.
Any
of you out there who have ever tried to paint a car black can
understand this next part. Black is unlike any other color. In fact,
black is the only color that has EVERY other color in it, except for
white, and even sometimes that may be mixed in, too! When you look at a
black car, everything shows-every minute detail, every scratch, every
pit, every ripple; that's what caused the problem. Clayton couldn't find
a painter in SoCal who was capable of delivering the kind of seamless,
smooth black paint job that he wanted Zilla to wear.
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