I purchased Inky's Camaro in 1979 of a QS friend, Duncan Smith from Papakura. Duncan had restored the body from its OSCA battles but the mechanicals needed to be upgraded to the original specs. The corvette discs, 12 bolt were gone and while the engine was ok it certainly was not the LT1, the M21 was poo.
Over the years I worked my way thru this apart from the brakes. Pullman built LT1, T10 close ratio gearbox, 4.1 12 bolt posi diff, and a beautiful set of American Racing Daisy Mags, 15x7 on the front and 15x8.5 on the rear. Tony Gordan tidied up the body work and installed the new chrome work all supplied by Kevin Green from the Chevvy Shoppe.
Over the years along with good friend Garry Price we researced the historys of the majority of the Camaros that raced in GTX plus a few others as well. Inky was most helpfull with info on the car.
Late in 75 Ian went to LA to souce a Camaro to race. He purchased this car, a 1970 1/2 RS Z/28 from Badger ( from memory) Chevrolet and sent it to Paramount Chevrolet in LA where Kevin Haig built the car to race in NZ. This car was originally automatic and was top spec car with delux interior with woodgrain accents.
New LT1 was built with the then optional Z/28 cam, crossram intake, M22 gearbox, 69 transam Camaro disc brake 12 bolt diff, and Corvette discs all round.
The car first appeared at the 76 Grand Prix meet but with tuning issues and oil surge didn,t start to win untill Kevin Haig had sorted these issues out. After that it was game on and Ian,s battles with Art McKee were to be pretty heated.
He won the 76/77 GTX championship, many long distance races and set the hillclimb record 2 years in a row on Coranet Peak. In 78 he contested in OSCA but was off the pace as the car was just to heavy.
Whe I sold the car it was equiped with a Smoke Ram intake and I offered the Crossram to Ian but he stated that they had to much trouble tunning it so ran with the LT1 intake after 3 meetings. I sold the Crossram to a guy in Texas for $$$$ and it sit on an historic 69 Z/28 these days.
I will think of more as the days go on but any info or corrections are welcome.
Looking at Bruce302 Firebird the other year bought back the passion and if 10 years ago was today with what you guys are doing with HMC I probably would still own the car. Cheers, Bruce