6th gen LT1 Camaro - my Green New Deal

ScottyB said:

TimM said:

Great thread on a great car!  It is a refreshing color compared to the typical reds, whites (), blacks...

Clean cars do perform better - it is fact!

Thanks for posting.

Thanks!  And I'm with you on that.  I made a pact with myself I wouldn't do any black, white, silver or gray.  Blue would have been ideal but I had my eye out for orange and red too!  The green totally snuck up on me, I didn't even realize it existed and thought the car was black first because the pics in the listing were so dark.  Pretty much fell in love as soon as I saw some good shots.

I had the same experience when I bought my Armada, it looked black PO told me it was black.  Inspected it on a gray day so it looked black, turns out it is bass boat metal flake brown.

Great car, love the color and the education on these, I approve.

akylekoz said:

Great car, love the color and the education on these, I approve.

Thank you sir!  

LS Fest at work the other week.  CTS-V, 18 SS, 20 LT1 (not shown, sweet 5th gen ZL1).  I honestly prefer the look of the early Camaros but the 19+ do have a brutish presence that I like.

potential Slack Group names:

• V8 Vaqueros
• Pushrod Posse
• The GM Jockeys
• Torque Team
• Hostile Takeover
• Chief Excitement Officers

Sweet, someone actually bought a LT1 Camaro! GM almost secretly rolled these out, with zero media coverage to boot. It's the closest thing anyone has to the old LX 5.0 Fox Body Mustangs that anyone has done in decades. I love it. Great color, too! 

I'll be following this one. It's a keeper for sure. 

Tony Sestito said:

Sweet, someone actually bought a LT1 Camaro! GM almost secretly rolled these out, with zero media coverage to boot. It's the closest thing anyone has to the old LX 5.0 Fox Body Mustangs that anyone has done in decades. I love it. Great color, too! 

I'll be following this one. It's a keeper for sure. 

Thanks man!  And you aren't kidding, I had no idea these existed until I basically stumbled on mine by accident.  Watched a few reviews and realized I was getting exactly what you described - a 5.0 LX with a chevy badge, everything you need for daily fun, nothing you don't.  Feels a lot like it has the spirit of an overgrown GT86.  Light(ish), 4 seats, RWD/LSD, manual, cloth seats, just the basics.  Oh, and those skinny 245's its on make it hilarious on the street,  you can hang the tail out at will.

Sure...I still wish I could have found an SS in my price range, just for the cool factor, but I'm too busy smiling every time I drive to care much.

now that the pollen has mostly run its course, gave it a detail again and decided to go blow the carbon out in the local countryside and find the prettiest trees i could.

and just for laughs, here's a sobering shot.  3600lb muscle car or not, its NOT a big car.  still only the size of an XL sports car at best.  my head is at the door handles of most trucks.  or maybe the moral of the story here is just that your average 1/2 ton truck is a zipcode unto itself now.

And your camaro dwarfs my 911...

I didn't know these exist. What's the best comparable Mustang of the same vintage? 

In reply to yupididit :

hmmm, i guess something like a 5.0 GT base that's literally bare bones aside from maybe the premium package. no performance package, base brakes, base wheels, just the manual option. 

the GT would have the nicer interior at that level, whereas the camaro has, IMO, a better driveline (tremec and 3.73 gears) and wheel setup.  both cars would have 4 piston front brembos, clutch LSD's, no aux coolers, and cloth seats.  i think the LT1 handles really well on what is essentially the lowest tier SS suspension, even though the grip level is fairly low.  both would run mid to low 12's in manual form with a good driver.

Ford's premium package would upgrade your mustang interior the same way the RS package would upgrade the camaro.  and the mustang's performance pack is roughtly equivalent to the SS camaro trim.

ScottyB said:

yeah. its fine. no you don't need a Yukon Denali SuperCab XXL Safari Rated® 8.8L Harley Davidson Family Values Edition™ truck to do that stuff.
 

I LOL'd.

There's a name for what you did but I'm not smart enough to know it.  It's like in another thread where somebody said "Boss 426 Stingray" to describe a generic muscle car 

Good read and I'm glad to hear someone is making a modern LX.

Color reminds me of my mountain bike when I was a kid. In the store we thought it was black. It wasn't until we got it in the sun that we saw the deep green. I was very proud of that bike's paint.

And your writing is fun to read!

nice to see a thread on it

when you txted me about it loved it. 

we will both miss our Si sedan brotherhood.

we still have the suv thing 

----

i too paid my dues in underpowered cars. the "slow car fast" thing is done in my life a while ago. time to be an adult and drive actual fast cars 

my cousin in Alpharetta has a ZL1 and a new GTR. The ZL1 is brutal, mean, a bully. Everything "MMMMurica."

I secretly want it but I cant pull the trigger 

the H1 and Caddy are enough GM for me, although as you know I almost pulled the trigger on a frozen green ctsv5 blackwing new. 

will live vicariously through you for now 

be safe out there! 

Had a SS 1LE for a couple years. Enjoyed it quite a bit but was drawn back to the older ones

I dig the green  a lot. Any plans on modifying it? Those LT2 manifolds are cheap and these sure do like E85

make sure you drive as obnoxiously as possible everywhere you go to fit in with all the other camaro/charger/challenger drivers!

super sweet color that I have never seen.

Opti said:

I dig the green  a lot. Any plans on modifying it? Those LT2 manifolds are cheap and these sure do like E85

love that red with the black 1LE hood.  nothing wrong with the old ones either, they're quintessential animals and i respect them a lot.

you guys will probably boo me but not really plans other than drive the hell out of it and get good at handling it.  i'll probably add some stickier tires and more aggressive pads, but for now, its quite enough to thrill me.

onemanarmy said:

make sure you drive as obnoxiously as possible everywhere you go to fit in with all the other camaro/charger/challenger drivers!

super sweet color that I have never seen.

roger that; the exhaust is always in sport mode haha.  i do step on it from time to time, because POWERRR, but generally i just like getting down the road without being in anyone's way or acting like "that guy".

thanks on the color - it was truly a weird find and i've come to love it.  i wish all manufacturers added more greens and bright shades to their color lineups.  

nsxmr2elises2000 said:

will live vicariously through you for now 

thanks brother you know the keys will get tossed your way if you ever get over to my neighborhood some day.

brutish/mean is a really good way of putting it.  it feels like it constantly wants to break off the leash and chase that squirrel.  i can't imagine what one feels like with a blower, pizza platter brakes and 335's.  

i'm not a GM guy at all but this one just felt right.  weird how that works.  and i'd never fault you for bringing home a blackwing, those are mega hot!

P3PPY said:

Good read and I'm glad to hear someone is making a modern LX.

Color reminds me of my mountain bike when I was a kid. In the store we thought it was black. It wasn't until we got it in the sun that we saw the deep green. I was very proud of that bike's paint.

And your writing is fun to read!

thank you sir!  its been a fun journey and i hope it comes across that way.  

i really gotta work on bringing these numbers down.

this is what an average week of commuting looks like.  378 cubes, 3600lbs and 3.73's, and cruise set to 80 every day (with me preferring to arrive there briskly) and it almost always shakes out to 25+ every week.  Basically identical to my old Civic Si's average.  modern engines + DI are pretty amazing.

nothing super exciting to report.  went up on stands last weekend for some fresh distilled dino juice, 10 quarts of it.  the drained oil got collected and will be sent off for analysis just to get a decent baseline, general bill of health, and to see how much, or if i should extend my drain intervals out past 5k miles.

the last dealer ape hulked the filter on so tight that even with full access to it, i couldn't unscrew it or even get it to budge with a strap wrench.  so i sacrificed this junk filter socket and went ham on it with some self-tappers.  messy, but effective.

The self tapers in a filter socket is a good idea, gonna have to remember that one

In reply to Opti :

I was thinking the same thing. I've also done the method where you pound a screwdriver all the way through the filter as a last ditch effort, however on my rotary-powered cars the filter is up high and upside down near the firewall, so I've avoided that method as I didn't want to send any filter housing metal into the oil system. Recently I was trying to remove a filter that the previous owner had so tight I was sure it was tack welded in place - I had to unbolt the entire filter pedestal and then put the filter in a bench vice to get it unscrewed. 

In reply to Opti :

its definitely not a pretty solution but i wasn't losing any sleep over putting holes in an $8 filter socket, AND my filter hangs downward so to Danny's point above, I wasn't going to drop metal chaff into the filter base.  1 screw was all it needed to crack it loose!  i was sure i'd need at least 2 or 3 to keep from tearing the sheetmetal can, but those filters are tough.

ScottyB said:

thanks on the color - it was truly a weird find and i've come to love it.  i wish all manufacturers added more greens and bright shades to their color lineups.  

I'm also a fan of the color and spec. I've kind of wanted a Camaro or Mustang for a while. 

In reply to ScottyB :

Any luck upgrading the LT1 rear brakes? The calipers use an actuator for the parking brake unlike the ss/zl1. They use an internal drum... Worried about a can bus error

Evander said:

In reply to ScottyB :

Any luck upgrading the LT1 rear brakes? The calipers use an actuator for the parking brake unlike the ss/zl1. They use an internal drum... Worried about a can bus error

everything i've seen and read about so far is a No Go for swapping.  maybe someone will come up with an adapter system in the future that maintains the stock sensors to keep from throwing a code.  for now, the only way around the small rear calipers is to do an entire rear cradle swap but you'd still have codes due to the system not seeing the rear actuators.