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Hi to all the good folks at camaroz28.com. With all the great help from the fantastic community here helping me to keep my 95 Z28 convertible on the road I felt confident enough to add to my LT1 collection and picked up a 1996 SS. I found it for $5,000 on Craig's List in the SF bay area, it was down in Daly City. It has the six speed, gray leather interior and 214K on the odometer. Overall the car is pretty clean on the inside but a little rough on the outside. It has some road rash on the passenger front fender and fiberglass crazing on the front hood and rear spoiler. Since I am taking it to the track I will probably leave it that way. I would feel like a bum if I kissed the wall or swapped paint with another car while driving a pristine SS. The tires are good BFG 300 tread wear Comp TA, the wheels are flawless, it has very recent stock brakes, passed smog test with low numbers and seems to run pretty well. Unbelievably it came with the original window sticker and SLP purchase documentation along with all the receipts for service from new. It even came with the SLP keychain with the car number on it (209).
I had been looking for a hard top to take to track days at Sonoma Raceway (I'm in Petaluma, not far). I originally thought I might add a roll bar to my convert but IMO they really ruin the looks of the cars. So about a year ago I started looking for an inexpensive hard top that I could just put some high temp brake fluid into and go the the HPDE events at the NASA track days. I first though I would move to the LS car but I never found the right deal and to be honest I really like the look of the LT cars better. I kept seeing nice cars but they were mostly T-tops which I did not prefer (my daily is a convertible so I felt like really moving to a more solid chassis for the track car). I never thought I would come across an SS in my (low) budget but the force was with me I guess.
The young man that was selling this SS had one, distant, rear view photo on his ad but after a year of searching CL and Autotrader I was pretty sure it was a hardtop and so I contacted him. He really loved the car but didn't know how to work on cars and didn't have a garage to do the work on either so he was paying too much on upkeep and wanted to move to a newer car. He had recently had the rear end rebuilt and a new radiator installed (close to $3800 at a bay area shop).
Anyway I wanted to share this with someone so that's my story. What do you think?
If the paint does ever start to bother you, you could dip it for a pretty low cost, which could be re-done inexpensively if some of the wall/other car bonding did happen on the track. Keep us up on what you do with it!
Hi all, thanks for the encouraging words. I will get some photos of the car on track and post them here after my first HPDE event. Unfortunately it will be next year before the local NASA club is offering intermediate level run groups again (I'm too rusty to go out in the group 4 event coming up on the 27th). In the mean time I am planning to work on the clutch hydraulics and as I mentioned before change to some high temp brake fluid. I will certainly be checking the bushings and ball joints to be sure that the suspension will remain tight at the limit.
First though I better get a new photo with both my LT 1 cars so I can update my avatar and signature!
I'll be following your progress with interest. I'm also working towards my first HPDE event at Summit Point raceway in WV early next year. My car was a dedicated track toy until the PO tried to turn it into more of a street car - I'm currently working to undo all of the changes he made.
Thanks for the link to the thread with photos of your car, that thing looks sweet! I will book mark it and check in as you make your updates. I had my eye on a 1LE that is still on Autotrader. It is a 1999 with 50K miles in Oklahoma. They wanted a reasonable amount for it but it was too much for this working man to risk on the track.
10-02-2018 | 01:45 AM
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