IROC-Z DONOR PAGE CONT...
4/13/01
Here I am checking to see if the rear wheels are working...oh, good, they are. (this is sometime in Sept. '00)  Well, this car has a considerable amount of power now.  One reason, is that I don't have the entire muffler system on it like I should.  I just had the muffler stuck on the end of the Y-pipe and left it at that for a few months after the project.  I went through most of the winter with it on the Y-pipe, and then sometime in January, it fell off with a shower of sparks down the Lloyd expressway, where some guy in a van ran over it behind me. ($$$, $60 mistake! That hurt!) We pulled over and trecked some couple hundred yards back IN THE SNOW to get it.  It was cooooooold.  I then went the rest of the winter without a muffler on it at all, only the Y-pipe.  Talk about little backpressure, so you can imagine the burnouts and 0-60's this thing could do.  Well, I had all I could handle with the noise, so it was time to purchase a muffler. I considered many options for exhaust.  I called Jeg's performance parts and got some estimates and checked around local parts stores to see if I could get some headers, and true dual exhaust!!!   I bought some FlowTech performance headers from Pep Boys, and held on to them for a while to see if putting true duals on an '84 would be possible.  Well it's only possible to get true duals on like '90 and up or something.  So getting factory duals on it was out of the question unless I pay some big $$ for a custom job.  I finally decided to go to a muffler shop and just get the stock style exhaust.  I got a catalytic converter, exhaust pipe, and dual outlet FLOWMASTER muffler with dual tail pipes, as you can see in the picture above.  I purchased this back in early March, 2001.  It cost me $388.
I didn't get to put true duals on this car but I am completely satisfied with the way this car performs and sounds.  Flowmaster makes one sweet muffler.  It has a nice sweet rumble to it.  Sometime, I will put a sound byte of the muffer.  The amount of power this car produces now has dropped since the addition of all the pipes.  But as a daily driver, it still has all the power I need, and the sound to boot.  Perhaps someday, I will do the exhaust up right and perhaps race this thing.  Right now I can just dream about it.
Here is a small upgrade Bill did for me, I never had keys for my doors from the junkyard, so I either A) didn't lock my doors, or B) had the key to the back hatch and using a stick leaned forward and undid the lock from the inside.  I had the keys to the IROC, and the door lock cylinders, so one nice pre-Spring afternoon, Bill and I prepared the locks to put in my door.  AHHHH, what a luxury to have keys for your doors.  I can finally get that stick out of my back hatch!!  (It's been a while since I've seen red on this car!) Now, time for some performance upgrade.  Bill brought back the front stabilizer bar from the IROC down home from the Johnson's farm.  You can see how much thicker the IROC bar is compared to the Coupe's.  Surprisingly, the IROC one is lighter.  We're prepping for installation to the Coupe.  This part just simply bolts on.  I'll need to get a new set of stabilizer bar end links.
Here is an example.  What, in the way of performance, is similar about these two cars?  They look the same, ya, but my car has 100X the engine Bill's '84 Firebird has (HEE HEE ;)  No really, his Firebird has a Trans AM sway bar in the front.  He has a rear sway bar on it as well. So his 4 cyl. Firebird handles every bit as well as my Coupe. This picture was taken right out side of his apartment on campus.
The endlinks keeping the Coupe sway bar on were rather stubborn.  They finally just broke off.  I purchased a set of endlinks from Auto Zone, but they weren't the right length for some reason.  I took them back and got a much better more durable set, with polyurethane bushings instead of the cheaper rubber ones.  You woudn't believe the difference in the way this car handles.  It stays really flat in sharp turns.  It steers better because of this, I can weave in and out of traffic with less body roll.  It is really nice.  I encourage you to find a nice fron stabilizer bar for your Camaro or Firebird, you'll love the way your car handles!!
5/31/01
Bill and I decided to take an afternoon and do some more IROC-Z Upgrading!  Up until this point I was using the steering box stock to the coupe, Bill and I finally got around to putting in the IROC-Z steering box.  (It's in the plastic bag next to the car on the left side of the picture)  It was really easy to pull out the IROC one, only a few bolts and these babies come right out.  We pulled the car into the garage and out of the drizzle and began to get to work. There she is.  Bill was taking some cleaner to it to clean off some of the grime that has collected over the years on the thing.  Don't stand too close those fumes will knock you out.  These parts aren't that big, but boy are they heavy.  I hope at this point the part will swap out with out any problems.  Bill pulled the IROC one out after the engine was pulled.  Lots of room to work with, I wonder if we can manage with the engine it.  We'll see....
The first thing we did was take off the bolt of the control arm and the pitman arm from the steering box.  You 'll need a special tool to pry the arms from each other once the nut is off.  (It looks like a tuning fork.) We decided then to loosen the other remaining bolts to the steering box.  Get the WD40 and a breaker bar ready! Here is what the inside of the driverside wheel well looks like.  You can see the three bolts that need to come out.  At this point we've loosened them and are getting ready to pull them out.  (Suggestion: Leave them in until after you break loose the pitman arm and the control arm) We took these bolts out first.  That made for too much slack and we couldn't use the "fork" tool effectively to pry apart the joint.  In the background you can see the polyurethane bushings for the front swaybar. 
Well, she's loose.  You can see that we have disconnected the lines to the box.  What we're working on now is removing the left radiator fan and disconnecting the sway bar from the car.  We need to move these out of the way so we can manuver this box out of the car.  You can see my bright shiny alternator that I had to replace a while back..  It quit on me and my electric fans quit working and I overheated and broke down on the side of the road.  Bummer. Here they are.  They are the same size, so they'll swap right in.  The IROC on is on the left.  Be sure to keep towels and "catch" containers handy to catch the draining fluid. The IROC steering box will offer a closer ratio steer.  This will cause a tighter feel to the wheel, and less travel of the wheel to turn the same distance as the old box.  We got everything all buttoned back up, did some minute adjusting and took it for a test drive.  The difference is night and day between these two.  It feels like I'm driving an entirely different car.  Bill is going to go to a junk yard and Lord willing get a steering box out of an '87 Formula that he knows of to put in his '84 Firebird.  I hope he can get it.
That's it for now. There are just a few more things to add to my car. I will bring them to you when the time is right.  Hopefully now that the weather is nice, I can get some more things accomplished with this car.  Thanks for keeping updated with me on this web site.  I enjoy getting emails from you concerning your comments and questions about this project or Camaros and Firebirds in general keep them coming!!