A recent Camaro auction on BaT sure brought out a lot of old Camaro stories in the comments section. This one about the factory rep coming out and restamping a 1969 DZ block with a 1968 VIN sounds a bit far fetched, but you never know! Well, Kurt S. might know.
HarryQ 326
My first new car was a 68 Z28, this color, 3.70 rear axle, M22 rock crusher close ratio, manual steering, AM/FM, no console, ordered from the Chevrolet dealer where local Waterford Hills racer Tom Swindell was a salesman. My dad, then with GM, ordered it on his employee discount and, I was about to graduate from college.
Within three thousand miles I had bent two push rods. same cylinder. After the second, the dealer service manager accused me, politely, of over-revving it.
Shortly after my dad told me he was in a meeting sitting next to Jim Musser, then assistant chief engineer for Chevrolet. He relayed the story about my bent pushrods. Jim asked the same question about was I over-revving, and satisfied with my dad’s answer, said he would look into it. My dad called me soon after saying they wanted to look at my engine.
A few days later I got a call from the service manager at the dealership. “We have an engine for your car.” I left it for a couple of days, and when I picked up the car, the service manager told me what I had. It was a 1969-spec DZ302, which had 4-bolt main bearing caps. But the best part owas he told me was that the GM employee who delivered the engine and supervised the swap had brought with him the number dies to stamp in my original VIN on the blank machined area of the block.
I got drafted shortly thereafter, and ended up the remainder of two years after basic training at Aberdeen Proving Ground, with a PFC wage less than my car payment. My wife, who found a teaching job, made enough to allow us to make the payments.
Never ever had a problem with the internals. I added an Addco rear sway bar, and on weekends I enjoyed driving it on twisty paved roads of Southeast Pennsylvania near APG.
I got out of the service and joined a struggling small company in Ann Arbor, with no savings. After 103 thousand miles on that same, likely hand-built motor, the air cleaner stud backed itself out of the carb, the wing nut unscrewed itself, and the stud slipped into one of the cylinders. I didn’t have money to repair it, but I had a buddy who swapped me even for a working 307 4-barrel engine he had pulled out of his 1969 Camaro when he swap in something hotter, and over a weekend we performed the change. My now destroyed one of one 4-bolt main numbers-matching 1968 Z28 went on several thousand miles until I sold it for enough to make the down payment on my next car.
My buddy rebuilt the Z28 motor to put in his boat.
Here is the auction. Ended at $50,500. A nice looking car, but a bit higher than I expected for a suspected restamp.
https://bringatrailer.com/listing/1968-chevrolet-camaro-16/
