How to Build a Chevrolet Camaro for High Horsepower

How to build an old Camaro for high horsepower, this article isn't about building the engine, it's about building the body; frame; drivetrain, and suspension of the car to handle that incredible pavement burning beast that you just built for your old Camaro.

By now most of us have learned a bit about building an engine for our cars, that is if we are true car guys. But there is a lot more to making that car perform the way that it should then just the engine. You need to pay close attention to a lot of details, unless you want bad things to happen.

Let's say that you have just built your engine, you have spent a lot of time selecting your camshaft; heads; valves; intake manifold, and carburetor. You now have the perfect engine for your car, this is the same thing that you need to do for the rest of the car.

To build an old Camaro for high horsepower; you need to think about the parts that you need for the drivetrain. The first thing that you need to know is that sub frame connectors are a must, there is no getting around this you must have them.

Old Camaros are built on a uni-body platform, this means that the car doesn't have a full frame, it has a sub frame in the front, and a rear frame half the in the back of the car. These two frames are not connected together any way, other the the body of the car.

This is no good for a super high horsepower application, you need to connect the two frames together for it to work right. Let me explain a little about what will happen if you choose not to do this. The front sub frame is what bares all of the force form the engine.

When you lay in to that pedal your going to twist the front sub frame, and the body of the car. This in a lot of cases is not repairable, what it does after it's done twisting the front sub frame, then it begins to twist the body of the car.

If this happens you might as well pull your engine, and trash the rest of the car. You will no longer be able to open the doors to get in, or to get out of the car. Always put sub frame connectors on a high horsepower Camaro.

I'm not talking about 350 or 400 horsepower, I'm talking along the lines of 500 and up. Sub fame connectors are an absolute must. Some of the other things you can wait on, if you can put up with annoying little things like wheel hop.

The next thing that you should replace, or upgrade is the rear end of the car. It should be a twelve bolt rear end with a high end gear set, and over sized axles. This will insure that you don't blow out the rear end on your first run.

You could also change to a Dana 60, or a Ford 9 inch rear end, out of the two I would choose a Dana 60 for my car. Now that we have those things taken care of, we need to look at the leaf springs. If the car has single leaf leaf springs, you need to change to multi-leaf leaf springs.

This will cure that annoying wheel hop that I was talking about earlier in the article. If it were me building that car I would also use a composite drive line, they are a lot stronger then the normal steel drive line that you get from the factory.

The last thing that we have to deal with here is the transmission, this is obviously a very important part of the high performance Camaro build. The transmission is what puts the power to the pavement. If it has not been built to withstand the power that your engine has, it's only a matter of time before it blows out.

Rather it's an automatic, or a standard transmission you can get eirher to handle the power that your engine builds. There are a lot of places out there that specialize in just that, and they do nothing else. Keisler is one that does standard transmissions, and B&M does automatic transmissions.

Just follow these steps, and your high performance Camaro should do everything that you want it to. All you have to do after this is drive it right, and it will perform right.