The ULTIMATE 3rd gen Camaro! 1986 "Storm Trooper" IROC-Z

[Music] foreign [Music] [Music] what's up welcome to Gearhead syndrome I got a friend Rob here and he's agreed to show me this amazing car that just brought out this past spring and I've been in love with it ever since I saw it at Speed Sport I've been following a little bit on the end on the social medias if you're finishing this thing up so we're going to talk a bit about this and his love for Camaros and uh yeah so how did you come across this particular car what's the backstory to uh oh it's hands on this it has a pretty substantial backstory essentially back before Facebook was popular there used to be like uh some websites called it car domain and stuff like that so back in the in the late 90s and early 2000s so the original owner of this car uh his name is Guillaume Silva he's from Quebec he started building this car in 2003. he'd had the car since he was 18 and he just wanted to start doing something kind of wild with it and it started showing up on the Cardinal main sites everywhere and it really started taking off just because of the the of the amount of work that was being done on the car I started following the car and and as many people later started having screenshots of the car set up for their computers and screenshots of everything that they were doing with the car and around 2010 it just disappeared um had no idea where it went to I had no idea where it was from and this was already like online was becoming like the prototype for everyone that had this generation well before the car was even finished uh it already been featured in a in a magazine before it was done yeah yeah so quality work being done to it everyone was like going nuts over yes so it had a lot of people following the car myself included and essentially uh fast forward you know 13 years and it popped up in a for sale ad and I had no idea I was like oh geez I hadn't seen that car since 2010 and it was unfinished but it was in the same spot that it was in 2010. he didn't want to take it out until it was finished and he was very adamant about being specific with how it was done um as I'll I'll show you after we go with uh it's painstakingly amount of time and effort put into this car between the two of us senior at the show is it is I can't think of a nicer uh like like Camaro from this era it's it's the nicest one I've ever seen wow thank you and so basically what had happened once I seen it for sale uh I wasn't the buyer at the moment I already had several carnivals of my own and uh I was just doing my thing but I reached out to him just to say hi because I remembered you know countless hours of you know daydreaming kind of how I was going to build my current cars and taking kind of bits from everybody else's cars to kind of build your own so when I seen it show back up again I was more or less just calling a message at me just to say Hey you know it's nice to see that car again whatever happened to it at all one yeah and it just disappeared so basically at that point I was just talking back and forth with them saying basically I hope that you find a great buyer for it I shared some of the builds that I had done some of them based off of this car yeah and uh I have another 88 Camaro that I'm in the process of building right now that I was literally just pulling the trigger on to start painting it white and a theme based on this car so it was kind of really crazy when it came up for sale but at first like I said I I wasn't a buyer uh I was just kind of a fan and wanted to let him know that it was pretty cool and a couple of days went by and uh essentially the more and more I thought about it I was like geez I had one of my cars it was a 2001 Camaro and I thought if I could possibly sell it in a quick enough fashion it would be just around the same price point that I would be needing to go pick this up I just had this crazy idea I didn't tell anybody about it I just put my 2001 for sale and uh it sold within 12 hours now I'm a buyer well and not not even so much still at that time I was going through some personal things with my family and basically during that time I lost my father so at that time I had just kind of was like processing life and what it was important and he'd always kind of told me like live life live experiences do things that you want to do and don't have any regrets so as I sat there with this envelope of money after I sold my car I was sitting down in front of my 88 that I'm still currently building and I just kind of thought to myself can I finish this car with the amount of money that I have in my pocket the way that I want it to be finished and the answer ultimately was no but uh I reached out and I said listen I said I've reconsidered and I've kind of actually become a buyer now instead of a just a dreamer or a fan and uh he said well there's somebody come and look at it tonight and I said of course and I said you're doing the math wait it's a 10 hour drive if I leave right now that was pretty much it so you know going through a going through an end of a life experience with a family member it does take some time to do all the paperwork and all the the legal end of things and I kind of just told my mom I said mama if we can get this finished up by you know Tuesday or Wednesday it was it was a Monday at that point I said I think I'm gonna go up there and pick that up and she said you really should you deserve you deserve that car and yeah it became your way of in embodying kind of what you're dead it really was yeah a way to go about your life yeah I can do it now so I reached out to my brother and I said listen I got a crazy idea I'm leaving Thursday I'm going up and I'm gonna pick up a car and I'm gonna bring it back and I said it's going to be a crazy experience but I'd love you to come along and it was a great opportunity for us to bond over our uh going through what we were doing and your family was like this is what Dad would want well they they knew what I was doing and they knew exactly how he lived so Essence we packed up Thursday morning and loaded the trailer and we took off and when we got to the house it wasn't finished uh there was there was lots of lots of things that were left unfinished but when I looked at the project I was like I couldn't help but spend you know a good 45 to an hour in this house and we went from Top front to back top to bottom just kind of really uh exploring what he had what he had done to that point at the time I had a warehouse full of parts and I knew that I could finish the job with what I had what I needed and do it the way I wanted to I wanted to bring it out and show it properly because it had gained so much kind of notoriety through the 2000s that nobody had ever seen the car it just went away we went at finishing up over the winter a lot of interior and wiring and engine based suspension stuff we kind of got completed and it came out for its first drive on the day that we brought it to the Moncton speedsport we were lucky enough to come away with a win at the show so it had a different look to it but when I when I looked at kind of doing a theme the Stormtroopers were kind of the a theme that I felt was kind of relevant with the 40th anniversary of the Star Wars Return of the Jedi and uh having built another Camaro the year before which kind of like a Darth Vader black one this one was kind of like a purpose built for this year to bring it to some shows and as a stormtrooper's theme I see you standing here looking at it I don't know I noticed in the past that you'd shaved the door handles so uh it went through a very long process uh rotisserie build uh all of the ground effects were filled so there's no emblems um yeah because where the elbows were there was like there's always an insect okay uh door handles were removed the locks were removed the gas door was removed yeah oh how do you figure it out uh so it has a fuel cell that's inside so we opened a hatch again uh all the engine bay was shaved um did a full wire tuck so there's no wires that you see in the engine bay and then essentially uh the bottom is finished the same as this it's got uh three coats of clear coat on a finished uh Bodywork while it was there like every single bolt and nut in this car down to like the nuts that hold the sun visor uh everything is new so you know one of the fortunate things about this process was I had built you know a couple dozen of these cars over the years so there was nothing that I wouldn't have had to begin with but everything was already provided and new so I just had to put it together walk me through uh on the front end here it's got updated headlights for sure those LEDs so the entire car is all LED uh framework so all the headlights all the turn signals uh interior lights I did some kind of trick uh Lighting in the in the the mirrors we we had some LEDs put in behind the mirrors oh that is cool so yeah because it's all painted white on the inside so it closed uh so basically in the front uh it's LS1 swapped uh it come out of a Corvette as a shell but it was sent to an engine bay an engine specialist and he had redone the entire motor so it's forged crank Pistons rods it's completely built uh it made 522 horsepower so it's it's very healthy yeah sounds all right um long tube headers uh stainless works is the company that provides those all the suspension is all tubular Umi so it's front to back all the control arms all the sway bars this uh this car will scare you how how solid it drives around uh turns it's it's like a freight train on Rails yeah people people are actually looking at us here well a couple of key components to that [Laughter] a couple of key components to make that happen is uh it's all all on air so front and back uh airbags the uh so with the lowered stance of this car it already improves what was already a good handling car yeah it's like a good platform to start from and now it's [Music] yeah so people joints are all heim joints it's a it's a pretty rough drive but it's kind of purpose built to be able to go race and and do turns and have some fun with it is there any plans for autocross in the future oh I've already have yeah okay yeah I'm planning I'm planning next year to do several of the events here in New Brunswick for the auto class yeah I'm gonna take it to all events inclusive to Automotive so you know drag events for the quarter mile it's fast as it is but uh autocross uh whatever whatever I can get into and go driving it's it's purpose-built so yeah but through the suspension uh in the back like everything is connected from front to back subframe bars there's two wheeler suspension in an aftermarket rear end in the back um it's an upgraded uh t-56 uh transmission so six speed yeah well there's deduction in the future there's a boost gauge here and a nitrous gauge here for a purpose for a reason to be continued yeah it's getting a forced induction this winter oh really yeah okay I believe we'll follow along for the update please subscribe there's uh I have a twin turbo set up in the garage that's going over the winter it's not done yet so you know going fast is one thing but uh I'd like to be safe with it too so safety with this car was an important thing to make sure that it can stop well and also be safe inside so if I am on a track somewhere or doing something that I can be safe yeah um absolutely so uh all the brakes were upgraded to C6 Corvette uh rotors and uh brake system it stops extremely well you know roll cage the seats the harnesses and stuff just to make it a little more safer inside yeah yeah for sure well I heard the audio that comes out of the tailpipe yeah that's my audio right now oh my God so a couple of the key things inside essentially in the center console um we uh we put the air ride Center uh in controls right above the shifter so it's easy to access molded in uh the new stereo deck which is essentially a full tablet uh and then above in the vents we took the vents out and modified them to house the air fuel mixture okay and then all the dash was upgraded with a set of autometer gauges but there they don't belong there's a full custom block for it and then uh where the cigarette lighter typically is is integrated into a shift light plate yeah and then below that is the electronic dump exhaust oh so you got notes yeah oh okay wow uh yeah so everything inside was was done all new Carpets New headliner seat buckles seats pretty much everything in the whole thing yeah it's like fantastic seats they're comfortable I think yeah so door access is all poppers on a remote so because there's no handles is there any hidden poppers if your batteries die yeah okay yeah I I have a redundant system in the car so if that does happen you know where they are yeah yeah uh so this is how you steal it there you go a couple of things that uh are things that you see but never understand about the amount of time that was put into this car um GM through these areas of time were always known for their cheap plastic Interiors every piece of interior was all vinyl wraps this is all a vinyl wrap for every every single piece in the car that's a lot of work that's a lot of expense too yeah everything here like every everything was all vinyl wrapped yep so a long strenuous process of heat and molding and heat and bending and heat and flexing so this is the access of the fuel door that's a purge for the air tanks foreign [Music] a little terrifying the parking lot's a good example of what the roads are like yeah well I can already see what you mean about how stiff it is notoriously short on-ramp that requires you to use Full Throttle [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: Gearhead Syndrome

Views: 23,860

Keywords: 3rd gen, Air ride, Chevrolet, F-body, IROC, LS1, Muscle car, Resto-mod, camaro, custom car, star wars, storm trooper

Id: RkCk4-a0t-8

Length: 16min 50sec (1010 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 01 2023