Car Feature 1994 Chevrolet Camaro Z28It's safe to say Port Huron, Michigan, is not at the top of one's mind when enthusiasts think of high-performance hot spots. It's a small, quiet city of about 33,000 residents, located about an hour northeast of Detroit. Its claims to fame include being the boyhood home of Thomas Edison and, as a border city with Ontario, Canada, holding up the American half of the Blue Water Bridge crossing between the two countries.
Port Huron's proximity to Detroit keeps it in the shadow most of the time, but its place in the greater reach of that metropolitan area has always benefited its car enthusiasts, who don't have to travel too far to take advantage of the Motor City area's tuning shops. There's lots of homegrown hot rods in Port Huron, too, contributing to a vibrant community of--and we must say this diplomatically--late-night performance recreation enthusiasts.
One of those enthusiasts is Bob Bailey and his recreational tool of choice is a teal 1994 Z28 that ought to be running in the 9s by the time you reading this. Most of those passes will be done at historic Ubly Dragway, in Michigan's rural "Thumb" area (the state looks like a mitten, and the Thumb area is the eastern section that looks like, well, the thumb part of a mitten). Then again, some of the passes will not be made at the strip. We should probably just leave it at that.
"There's a lot of racing in Port Huron," says Bailey. "It's not like Detroit, but there's about 60 or 70 cars that typically gather when the weather is good. There are some pretty quick cars around here, too." Bailey's fourth-gen F-car is a comparatively rare sight these days; it's still running LT1 power--and lots of it. With the 250 shot from the blue bottle in the hatch, he figures the Gen II small-block is putting about 550 horses to the tires.
"I planned to modify the car when I bought it in 2006, but not to the extent it is now," he says. "I was just looking for some more power with small cubes--355 inches--and a small shot of nitrous." Yeah, we've heard that scenario before. And so have countless girlfriends and wives who've made due with a malfunctioning washer or dishwasher in order to support the porting job on a set of heads.
Of course, one wife's money pit is another husband's worthy investment. With Bailey's project, he invested in the original LT1 engine and had it punched out to 383 cubic inches. That's also including having the cylinder block converted to four-bolt mains, with Eagle billet steel caps and ARP fasteners. He also had the block and new caps align-honed before dropping in an Eagle ESP forged crankshaft, Eagle H-beam forged rods, and Diamond nitrous pistons (with Hellfire rings). All of the reciprocating parts were balanced, with Phil McLain at Superior Engines doing the short-block assembly chores.
A roller camshaft from Comp Cams delivers 0.589/0.598-inch lift and actuates the valves in a set of AFR LT4 cylinder heads. These 23-degree heads have big, CNC-ported intake runners and large, 2.08-inch intake valves and 1.60-inch exhaust valves. They're good for more than 300 cfm of airflow at 0.700-inch lift. On the top-side of the heads are Comp Cams' 1.6-ratio Pro-Mag lightweight roller rockers. Capping the engine is a GM LT4 intake manifold that Bailey says he found as an open-box item at a Chevy dealership.
"The parts guy there let me have it for only a couple of hundred dollars," he says. "If you can find them anymore, they're going for, like, $800 on eBay, so I was really lucky with that purchase."