Take a $10,000 budget, buy one royally clapped out $800 1979 Chevrolet Camaro, one junkyard 5.3L LS V8, an eBay turbo kit meant for a Chevrolet Silverado, and then proceed to hack, weld, bodge and kit-bash until the end result runs hero-level numbers at the track. Sounds like a good time, right? Well, to the guys of Hot Rod Garage, it sounded appealing…at least, at first. But somehow the Camaro didn’t burn, the turbo LS cranked out 530 wheel horsepower on the dyno, and now it’s put up or shut up time. It’s one thing to have a dyno mule engine in it’s own portable carrying case, but putting power down is something else altogether, and doing so in a sketchy-ass second generation Camaro is much easier said than done. So, to make sure that the car doesn’t torque itself into a pretzel or immediately jump into jackhammer-like wheel hop, the subframes are tied together and slapper bars are bolted on out back. A boost controller, a couple of monitoring gauges, and one pilfered seat from a rather famous Dodge round out the modifications. With all of the work done, it’s now time to head out to Fontana and see just how fast this junk is…especially since there is a bet between the HRG guys and Finnegan over whether or not this pile of disco fever is going to run a ten-second quarter or not. For that matter, will it even survive the first shakedown run on the street tires and old Monte Carlo wheels?
