1969 Camaro Z28 302 DZ Crossram Trans Am Race Car

[@gareebee]

Bought a slightly used '69 Z28 in high school with my part-time job. Those were the days!

[@mothertree]

Yeah I got my 69 Dart 340 4 spd 3.91 with a part time job for $ 1900.00.With 28,000 miles and garage stored.I was a junior in high school 1976.It was 3 monthsl ater I heard about a 68 Road Runner kept in a garage that had a 383 with a 383 that had a crack under the intake near the lifter section.I finally got in touch with the owner and saw the car in his garage covered up...it had 47,000 miles on it.I bought it for 300.00 and towed her home and built a 383 with high dome TRW pistons 11.5 cr,clevite 77 bearings,hastings ring set and a crane cam CCH-290-NC hydraulic cam,threw a shift kit in the 727 auto and it had a 4.10 gear in it already.Edelbrock torker manifold and 750 holley dp,cloyes double roller timing chain,THe block was bored.honed to .030 and heads were decked with wrist pins full floated and head work done by Larry Solak...hooker headers with hush thrush mufflers...what a runner she was.

[@adamwingate5321]

The memories that car brings back from my childhood my dad had one of those 69 z/28 with the cross ram four speed hugger orange with white stripes he bought it new in 69 keep it up until I started legally driving.

[@peglegsands3373]

There were three cams available. The Duntov, or showroom cam, stage 1 or stage 2. All solid lifter cams, the stage 2 was the hottest one. Powerband was between 5500 and 7500. A real pain in the ass on the street. 69 was the only year to have the DZ stamp on the pass. side of the block. I damn near decked the numbers off my block balance and blueprint. Mine was a Penske backup engine with all three cams.

[@Hot80s]

go to 2:39 I love how every uploader thinks its necessary to add hokey music

[@rtkl13]

No doubt, I cant stand when they play music especially over the sound of the car running

[@TheDRUM2112]

Sounds bad ass!

[@Aegis43]

Hmmm ... Neil Peart fan, are we?

[@TheDRUM2112]

LOL, yes & Rush fan, drummer of 45 years!@@Aegis43

[@clintstephens7287]

Wow that is a sweet sounding motor.

[@josephrogers4086]

Who formed those fuel lines? Stevie Wonder?

[@judgegixxer]

Awesome thank you for posting!

[@eriklorentzen6510]

If the car is up and racing, you should contact Petrolicious to do a video with better audio equipment, the mic you used here just could not handle that exhaust note.

[@catman47y2k]

Wow! Awesome car. I am currently restoring a 1969 Camaro to somewhat of SCCA specs. Great job! Keep posting the updates. Where'd you get the Minilites?

[@gordocarbo]

What type of starter are you using?

[@bigblockmitch]

Is that your car? Just wondering laying shit on the fender like that.

[@walmartmonkey1]

When are you going to make another video of this car?

[@tony3th]

They went with the white engines to be able to spot any type of leak quickly. Makes alot of sense when you think about it.

[@josephrogers4086]

Thank you, Captain Obvious.

[@jonesy4588]

the two carbs were a dealer add on option

[@TheCamarodude96]

very cool, wonder if all Trans am Camaros had the JL8 package....very nice car, love the crossram.

[@AK-DIRECT907]

Power brake booster in a race car?

[@jeremysmith1339]

Those were 660cfm carbs???

[@PH_INFO_101]

Actually, The carburetors for the "Cross Ram" manifold were 600cfm custom made by Holly. The lack of information available regarding the "Cross Ram" manifold & carburetor design is disheartening. What's incredible is these custom designed 600cfm carbs have a Left side and Right side version. The carburetor actuating mechanism had to be inverted due to the Throttle cable being mounted between the carburetors rater than on the side.

[@DannyMostarac-zn6wd]

Whoa

[@sycocop1]

A dz cross ram 302 starts up and I...Jizz in my pants.

[@fastone3207]

Where are the fender covers??? Ya'll a bunch of rookies!

[@swiftxrapid919]

more air flow for the engine

[@jeffshockey9456]

What color is this

[@howabouthetruth2157]

Try to tell most ( if not all ) of the clueless critics that these FULL RACE DZ302 engines with cross ram/dual 4 bbl carbs as built by the Penske/Donohue team as well as Smokey Yunick.........made 490+ hp, and they try to tell ya "you're full of sh*t". Most of those idiots swear these made "almost 400 hp". I'm willing to bet most of those fools weren't even born when these cars dominated for 2 years.

[@gordocarbo]

Well said and so true. Somewhere it said so on the internet so it must be true. Exwas like that...drove me fn nuts. They didnt make anywhere near 400 stock haha and had chit for torque.

[@howabouthetruth2157]

@@gordocarbo Yeah, if I remember correctly, the factory rated HP was something like 290, but that was only at 5500 rpm or near abouts. Because of the 283 crank giving this engine such a short stroke, it could rev to the moon safely. Factory stock at 8,000 rpm, it probably made around 350 HP........because the factory top performance 327's with solid lifter cam made about 375 HP at something like 6500 rpm, due to having more displacement @ 25 more cubic inches. Both engines were real gems, especially for twisty roads & tracks, because a small block doesn't push the nose of the car like a big block does in tight turns. Even Carrol Shelby was dead-set AGAINST putting a big block in his Mustangs & Cobra's for road courses........but top brass exec's at Ford demanded them, and they wrote the checks...........so Carrol Shelby had to comply.

[@kennymay9036]

power brakes? How?

[@tony3th]

The heads were machined to the extreme by Trico so they can flow 2 carbs fairly easy.

[@donrutter6765]

Could have done the JB weld trick, where you get a great pair of ported aluminum heads, build up the castings with JB Weld and paint them to look stock. Its no trouble to get 70 hp over a set of 462 camel humps. Even bone stock AFR eliminators flow 57 hp. Over the vortec heads.

[@howabouthetruth2157]

@@donrutter6765 You obviously can't comprehend what PERIOD CORRECT means.

[@Aegis43]

I believe it's "Traco," not Trico.

[@tony3th]

@@Aegis43oops

[@gordocarbo]

@@Aegis43 Tray-co (pronounced) as you said.

[@littlejpl]

Ha..... where is the air-conditioning pump, Hi side, low side condenser. Man this engine bay is missing a lot lol.

[@lucaswooldridge8810]

It literally says its a racecar. What racecar has a/c. Moron

[@littlejpl]

Obvious you don't know what the word "Satire" means

[@zxtenn]

Stock cam and heads or just manifold because 500 is a lot for a 302, I know the crossram had a wilder cam and some had what GM called 'angle plug' heads or that could have been dealer only

[@joelp19761]

jim dandy 440 hp

[@joelp19761]

David Mc I’ve only seen one in person but everybody was making a big deal how much the intake up would be worth alone much less a matching numbers car. I don’t know if you remember the commercials or adds for the Z28 cross ram GM had marketed that it had all power of a big block (427 450 horse) yet handled quite nimble through the turns. It’s truly an amazing car I think but you’ll have die hards that say that they rather have a big block car over the Z/28 302 package but the cross ram 302 is a breed apart from the regular 302. Finding them around and running is very rare. That was a good motor and they kept together stock with a single carb up to 7500 rpm the down fall is the clutch could only handle 6500 rpm stock. I’ve heard stories of one guy bringing his clutch or what’s left of it in a brown paper bag to the dealership to have it replaced under warranty multiple times and they never told him no. They just fixed it and he’d go out again and tear it up. I found that book on Amazon only 153.00 bucks if they really still have it. My uncle was telling me that GM,Ford,and Chrysler dealerships were unofficially coming up with parts for street and dragstrip. Let’s say a guy comes into the dealership and swaps out his cam and tells him it was a purple cam but doesn’t tell him what lift or duration of the cam that was installed. Then if the guy won some races with it they would put it into others cars as well. Then guys like Yenko came about and Copos (central office production orders) You could basically order a titled race car from the factory for street use. GM would allow this even after the father of the corvette Zora Arkus-Duntov stayed in a inter office memo that nothing produced by GM will be faster than the corvette and even had a pecking order on who gets performance equipment first to last. I guess they thrown that out the window a time or two.

[@howabouthetruth2157]

You guys obviously can't comprehend the talent that the engine builders of the Penske/Donohue team as well as Smokey Yunick himself, could get out of these engines. It is A FACT that both were getting around 490 hp out of these. For crying out loud........do your research. Because there weren't very many engine builders back in the day, that could get the kind of power out of these engines that those cats could. Example: Back when Smokey Yunick was building engines & cars in NASCAR, many other car owners, crew chiefs, and drivers swore that it was fairly common for Smokey's engines producing an average of 40hp more than the rest of the field. Also: back when Bobby Unser broke the record on Pike's Peak, he personally chose Smokey Yunick to build the engine for his car.

[@Fullerboss]

I know a guy who sold one of the carbs off of that he found on a truck for like 300 dolla haha.

[@TheRexx101]

410 ft-ibs of torque?!?!. thats a lot for a 3 inch stroke engine. But i bet its because it Revs so high.

[@joelp19761]

Carter Thistlethwaite 440 hp I’ve only seen one in real life besides this.

[@howabouthetruth2157]

@@joelp19761 Both the Penske/Donohue and Smokey Yunick prepared DZ 302 Crossram engines were making more like 490 hp. That is a fact. There weren't very many mechanics back in the day that could get that kind of power out of these, like those cats could. For example: back when Smokey Yunick was racing in NASCAR, I've heard at least several other team owners/crew chiefs & drivers swear that it was not uncommon for Smokey's engines to have an average of 40 hp more than the rest of the competition.

[@frankrizzo2724]

The 302 was in the z28 so they could use it in trans am where there was a 5 liter limit. So why did Chrysler get to sell the challenger t/a and the AAR cuda with a 340?

[@michaeldavis5775]

I believe it was because in 1969, the SCCA had a 5 liter (305 CID) displacement limit on the Trans AM class. In 1970, that CID limit was increased to around 5.7 liters, and that's when Dodge and Plymouth started making the Challenger TA and the AAR Cuda with the 340 motors to ra e in Trans AM. In 1970 Chevrolet replaces the DZ 302 with the LT1 based 350 to take advantage of the new rules for increased displacement.

[@josephrogers886]

Why do people say "DZ 302"? Was there another?

[@bluesky-ud9wg]

No, it was just the engine code DZ was the 302 designation. It just caught on that's all

[@clint4004]

Because you can bore a 283 .125thou and have one or swap the crank from a 283 into a 327 and use the 283 piston .125thou over..and also have one..so DZ means you have a factory stamped block that was a 302...as opposed to just having a 302 displacement..

[@howabouthetruth2157]

@@clint4004 I'm pretty sure the actual DZ designation didn't come along until the 2nd or 3rd year these Chevy 302's were produced, and the DZ did indeed have improvements over the earlier versions, I just can't recall what the refinements were.

[@willybones3890]

@@clint4004 4 bolt main caps, forged crank?

[@tomhanson4582]

@@howabouthetruth2157 I had a 1967 MO ( not DZ) 302. It was a 2 bolt main, forged crank and rods, 11-1 etc

[@williepelzer384]

Where's the fender covers , laying anything on the paint deserves a ass kicking!😢

[@AutomotiveZar]

Not quite the correct configuration.. but.. looks ok.

[@jim78250]

It kinda makes your thighs quiver at around 3:12!

[@zapper302]

The only thing wrong with the crossram is the whole intake has to come off to do a lash the valves. What a pain in the ....... that was to do often.

[@joeyramirez6355]

'...seen at tracks...' but does it get driven? Typical trailer queen, can't get it dirty?