i am a proud owner of a 91 Z28 camaro , i have the L98 350 TPI and the 1LE performance package and i love the car as is but i am just sick of tuner cars getting all the attention, i have searched all over for ideas and have gone nowhere, i can find power and torque all over but nothing but hoods as far as looks go, what can i do to give my much loved car that little something extra to make it stand out? without having to custom make everything myself. any ideas or places to find parts would be greatfully recieved.  

I know alot of people are probably going to disagree with me.
but Im going to say it anyway.

PROBLEM

I love those cars....I think they are some of the better looking camaros. i too am sick of flashy tuners that are all show and less go.

Alot of the trash that we see in most magazines these days is chromed and shaved with low-pros and big inch rims and crate motors....any middle aged male who makes too much money can go out and build the ultimate middle class profile  piece of crap.

tuners leave much to be desired in the way of looks and performance....without loads of body kits and wings and uber shots of NOS and boost.

SOLUTION-

Build a car that no one is going to like...that no one is going to put in a magazine and that no one will ever want to buy off of you......until they race it.

All go and no show....

gloss is for retards.....shiny! shiny! shiny!
      Suede is the way to go....flat clear coat looks way cool.

As far as the lines go....you can never go wrong with a slick cowl hood...but not the kind that arent parallel to the windshield....needs to be long too...

Smooth sleek and fully functional....add some subframe connectors and a small cage...to get the power to the ground.

Youll still wanna keep it on the street so cam shouldnt be too radcial nor should stall....but the block is a roller cam block so youve gotalot of extra power on tapthat isnt available with a flat tappet cam....idle can be smooth and misleading to unsuspecting civics and rx-8's.

But as is the case with roller cams, it can sound smooth and be smooth and still be a powerhouse. TBI is way cool...but there are cooler means of induction....you can never go wrong with the reliability and look off an rpm air gap and a demon 650.

This is just my 3or 4 cents.
I just hate the "nu" hot rods these days....I like to see rubber on the rims...and the rear fenderwells...chuckle.

Im full of ideas and...well....crap...but if you want more I can think of other things

Good luck..
-Shred

he doesnt want to make anything, and just wants to improve the looks of his car and you tell him to build a motor from scratch, ???.  Why do you think crate motors are "top sellers" people such as the first post poster, may not have the facilities, technical know how, or time to build a engine from scratch, i agree i really dislike crate engines, but home-built power mills just arent for everyone...

P.S. do you want to start a argument on how much "better" roller cams are for street cars? lol

An LT-1 L98 ought to have enough punch to leave the girls impressed with your burn outs, without the need for weird rims with spinners, hood scoops, blue neon lights, etc., etc.

I'm just an old fashon guy who will take the sleeper everytime, yeah like a Z-28 can be confused with a sleeper. Like Teddy Roosevelt said; "speak softly and carry a big V-8"; or something like that. Anyway, I prefer to let the engine speak for me rather than the sheetmetal. You have a great place to start from, a few parts from TPIS will wake up the TPI above 4000 revs, a set or Fastburn heads will add 30-40 ponies over the L-98s, an LT-4 cam will let the valves take advantage of these improvements to the tune of 40 to 60 more ponies. Then your well on the way to leaving the tuner Civics in a cloud of tire smoke. With very little work and expense you can be getting 380-400 horsepower, or you can spend the money on neon wheel well lights, just depends.

Bogie 

I got carried away posting things i want to do to MY car...sorry about that...

Whats wrong with roller cams for the street?....Ive never had one cause theyre so friggin pricey....but I heard theyre the shinizzle....or whatever the kids these days are saying.

Sorry bout all the confusion.

-Shred

i should be able to tell you what the kids are saying these days, but shinizzle, you lost me

i see very little advantage to a roller cam for street motor, maybe mileage can improve slightly and wear but performance gain i believe is minimal. Once you get by the "claims" of 5-40 HP from just the friction reduction of roller lifters ( i think 5 is closer to the real gain), everyone says they can have more valve area for the same amount of lift compared to flat tappet, i dont think this is the case, a roller can have more LIFT but not necessarily a whole lot more valve area, especially in consideration to low lifts and off the shelf cams for a street car, i saw some interesting cam doctor tests between two crane off the shelf solid cams, one roller, one solid flat tappet and the only place the roller shined was in the top 20% or less of the lift curve, sure this would be worth something but factor in the lift was already high and that you would need bigger ports to take advantage of this and for street car it is less appealing. so it will only help get more lift to flow more air through the engine, but when guide/valve spring wear limits lift for street cars, we dont need .800 lift and the resulting high lift/high flow heads. Also hydraulic rollers designed for a lot of street use in mind dont have the acceleration, or valve speed at low lifts than a flat tappet does because if the acceleration is high, the cam is basically trying to break the wheel off of the lifter and this side load creates a lot of wear, of course in pro stock this makes no difference as the valvetrain is replaced every 7-12 runs but to a 100,000 street car it does. One more thing involved in this argument is how the cam companies say, look at the solid roller lobes and tell me they dont have more area compared to a flat tappet, yet the point of contact between a roller wheel and flat tappet is totally different and if the squared off lobes werent used, lift for the duration would be less than a flat tappet, also the side loading also plays into effect with these squared off lobes and im amazed some of those wild solid roller street machines last as long as they do, but not all of the stories for solid rollers on the street are good, fairly recently in hot rod mag's Q & A with Marlan Davis he told about his friend with a .700+ lift solid roller in a wild BBC in a old chevy that lasted for about 500 miles i believe, even with frequently lashing the engine. haha