For anyone with the intestinal fortitude to sit through an Ally McBeal episode to see when Titus comes on, you know it's absolutely astounding how good that dingbat is at getting stressed out at work. She invariably blows a gasket and collapses into a pile of her own neuroses, with everyone having a good laugh in the process. The sad reality is this problem afflicts many type-A people--female lawyers in heat and automotive writers included. It's difficult to have a job that requires such focused intensity; showing up at court, interspersed with talking about sex and freaking out with similarly afflicted air-headed friends tends to stress people out. And don't get us started on Ally.
Green Lane, Pa., resident Tom Guellich has all of the prerequisites necessary for a catastrophic meltdown--he has a great eye for detail, which would probably make him more type A than type B. And he holds the high-stress title of Mechanical Support Manager at his day job. So why is it that the 6-foot-9-inch (he played hoops at Villanova) Pennsylvanian hasn't applied for a job down at the local post office?
Because Tom ordered a 1986 Camaro from Barlow Chevrolet in Delran, N.J., as a stress reliever. But amazingly enough, it wasn't the same car gracing this month's cover.
"After I placed my order, a different Z28 came into the dealership a couple of weeks later," Guellich says. "Apparently, a GM representative had ordered it, and then decided he didn't want it. It was delivered to Barlow, and since the options were almost identical to what I had ordered, and the color scheme was right, I took it."
Tom's Z came with a 305 cubic-inch engine, the 700-R4 auto transmission, 3.23 gears and four-wheel disc brakes. Equipped with every option save for T-Tops and power locks, he drove the car every day for two years before fate steered him toward a Super Chevy show--and onto the drag strip.
"When the car was stock, the best that it could muster was 16.1 at 85 mph," Tom admits. Well, we certainly can't have that, can we?
Enlightened by the idea that his snoozemobile could be saved from the depths of leisuredom, Tom went to work.
The lollygagging 305 was soon besieged by a bevy of bolt-ons, including exhaust, intake runners, air filters, and 3.73 gears. A custom-ground cam was also included, and these changes really woke the LB9 up--by over two seconds! That same engine now propelled the Camaro around it to a 13.7 at 103. Then the overachieving 305 developed a bit of a sniffing habit, if you know what I mean. Juice motivated the F-body to a 12.15, but by that time Guellich decided he wanted more displacement, and he sold the still-running 305 in favor of a short-rod 383.
"That entire engine was a big mistake," Tom laments. "The builder installed the wrong cam, and I was looking at the cam card saying, 'What is the problem here?' I tried to get that engine to work for months, to no avail. One day a friend who used to work for Joe Amato dropped by, armed with a dial indicator. He turned to me and said, 'This isn't the cam you're supposed to have!'"
Tom's patience with the mismatched combo expired, and the short-rod engine was tossed. He installed another 383, but with 5.7-inch rods instead.
"What a difference that made. I had the right cam in it, and everything worked great. That motor went 11.8 naturally aspirated."
Tom again agreed to dance with the nitrous devil to hit the 10s, and the clock at Atco Raceway flashed 10.40. Unfortunately, the 150-shot was too much for the crate motor, and as the number eight piston expired, one of the more printable thoughts bouncing around in Tom's skull was that he would go all-motor from that day forward.
"It was great picking up all of that power with the nitrous, but it was too hard to be consistent while bracket racing," he says. We're pretty sure the juice-induced carnage didn't help much, either.
So he commissioned Bob and Craig Wise of Racekrafters (Lancaster, Pa.) to build him the first of his 406-cubic inch naturally aspirated motors. A new Bowtie block was filled with a Callies crank, and AFR heads and 6-inch rods worked under the TPI/Super Ram intake manifold. The 10.5 to 1 mill ran 11.2s at 117, but gasped for breath on the top end.
"That motor was a huge step up, but it was still running out of air at 5,800 rpm," Tom explains. "I wanted something that would pull to 6,500, make more power, and still be fuel-injected. So in 1996 I went to a Brodix HMV1000 intake and longer 6 1/8-inch Manley rods. We also upgraded the heads to Brodix Track 1s with stainless 2.05 intake and 1.60 exhaust valves. And I had a special Camotion cam ground to take advantage of all of that extra airflow."
Tom fabricated the exhaust system himself, with help from Steve Majer of Kober Mechanical in Red Hill, Pa. The pipe is the same oval tubing used in NASCAR, with a 3.5-inch cross-section on both sides. A 2.5-inch balance tube gained 20 ft-lbs of torque with no power loss, and the Jet-Hot-coated system uses Borla mufflers to quiet things down.
The now 13.5 to 1 motor made a whopping 650 horsepower at 6,500 rpm, with 525 ft-lbs of torque ravishing the Camaro's body. Or trying to, since Tom had checked the burgundy beast into Nagle's Rod Shop in Green Lane for frame connectors, a roll bar and some seat brackets.
Ron Edwards of Performance Transmissions in York, Pa., was called upon to provide a brawny trans that would stand up to the deep-breathing 406. He responded by building a Turbo 350 that Tom is obviously impressed with.
"Ron is a magician when it comes to transmissions," he raves. "I've never had a problem with it."
An equally strong Summers Bros. 12-bolt rear takes all of the engine's abuse without complaint, as Guellich has logged over 1,200 runs with only a Positraction unit failing.