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**ktl711** · April 20th, 2020, 07:37 PM

CHAPTER TWO: Getting to Know You

November 2, 2000 was the original date of delivery for my car by the dealership near Boston MA, and November 2, 2017 was the date it was delivered to my driveway. The next several months would be devoted to finding a number of little parts to fix the usual problems that crop up in our 4th Gens – things like a missing door mirror trim patch, broken seat belt guide loops, missing key remotes, etc. I had just about everything I needed on hand when it was finally time to bring the car home in the spring of 2018.

I had gone through arthroscopic surgery on my right shoulder in February of 2018, so at first I wasn’t sure how shifting was going to work out! Thankfully, it was indeed just a cleanup of the joint and not a rotator cuff, so the rehab went relatively easily, and I was ready to shift my own gears once the car made it home.

The winter had given me time to further research my car’s backstory. I was able to lookup my car’s build information at the Specialty Vehicle Engineering (formerly SLP) site, and it appeared that the original owner took it with him from Massachusetts out to Colorado, and he further lowered the car with Vogtland springs and switched to billet aluminum rear lower control arms.

At some point the car was traded in and ended up in the possession of a woman in Colorado Springs. My only clue to the identity of the previous owner was a single invoice left in the glove box, for a new clutch installed back in May 2015. Over the course of the years, the car acquired some cosmetic damage to the paint, including severe sun damage to the hood, several dings in the quarter panels (wouldn’t you know, the exterior is 70% plastic, but the @$$holes still manage to aim their doors at the quarter panels!), and shrunken leather covers on the front seat bottoms. I can only assume the windows were left down during a rain storm, as the rear seats were in pristine condition.

For whatever reason, the woman stopped making her car payments, and so the Camaro ended up getting repossessed in late May 2017. Whatever keys, fobs, owner’s manual portfolios, or SLP Birth Certificate documentation she had, none of it was in the car when the credit union seized it, so I only received one generic fob with aftermarket keys. Fortunately, I had started to collect many of these items for my Red Beast SS tribute car, so I had an owner’s manual portfolio with the notepad and pen with SS insignia, etc. I also had a set of Camaro SS floor mats and a trophy mat that would go into the “new” 2001.

At first, the LS1 and T56 combination was more than satisfying, and my original intention was to drive, improve, preserve, and enjoy the car without major modifications. A lot of the MI F-Body crew was already anticipating an all-out fire sale of my accumulated project parts at steep discounts (well, at least Darren was). Before I made any decisions about that, however, I had to get the car sorted out.

New DEPO “Whistler-style” headlight units were ordered to replace the badly fogged originals. I paid a visit to Detail Express to get the paint corrected, then sent the car over to Brian at MasterWorks Automotive to fix a laundry list of items like changing the lube in the differential, replacing an O2 sensor and AIR check valves, putting on new tensioners and a new A/C idler pulley, new belts, plus an oil change. They also installed the UMI rear lower control arms and adjustable Panhard bar I bought from Conrad when he was getting ready to sell the car I’d originally fallen in love with, his all-black 2000 SS convertible.

The car was now fully serviced and ready to take anywhere, although my crazy work schedule put a real damper on being able to drive distances for the fun of it. However, I was very much enjoying the time I could spend with the car, and started to toy with the exterior lighting. I switched in the smoked clear front and rear side marker lights from The Red Beast, further decontenting my previous pride and joy. The cold hard reality is that by the time I finally sell it (I was hoping to sell it this Spring of 2020, but we all know how that’s been turning out), it will be just another V6 auto convertible again.

The only other major change that took place with the car in 2018 was the swapping of the chrome 10-spokes and Michelin Pilot Sport tires to the SS from The Red Beast, with the Beast reverting to its original chrome 16” wheels with new Kumho tires that I got from Discount Tire, on sale. After Curtis Templeton got the SS spoiler and Michael Calus got the SS hood, the Beast was looking a lot less beastly.

But we were beginning to witness the origins of The SSon of The Beast.

**DynoDave** · April 20th, 2020, 08:22 PM

So that's where the billet lower control arms came from!

Interesting story thus far! I remember the car at Culver's...it is beautiful.

**ktl711** · April 21st, 2020, 03:13 PM

CHAPTER THREE: The Brave New World

Just about the time that both Camaros were headed into winter storage, my employer of 39 years was going through an existential crisis and caused a bit of a pivot in my plans – not just for my cars, but for my life and livelihood as well. On Halloween of 2018, GM extended an offer of a separation package to all employees with over 10 years of seniority. I had been motoring along in my career, thinking that I would keep working until at least 65 just to continue to pad the 401K during the good times, but I now had to do some quick thinking. We had 10 days to accept the offer, and the company had 10 days to review your acceptance to make sure you weren’t considered essential. If Leadership accepted your agreement to take their offer, you would most likely be gone before the Christmas holiday break.

Although it didn’t quite look like deliverance at first blush, this offer was like a message from above, a Godsend. I was working in Information Technology with a Bachelors and Masters in Business, and only had two computer science classes between the two degrees. I graduated before there was a public internet! We were still using telephone cradle modems and punch cards! They say, “fake it ‘til you make it!” – well, evidently I was way too good at faking it, as I’d been in IT for about 20 years, but as the organization changed and the workloads and responsibilities grew, I began to struggle. I used to manage suppliers who were technical people, but now I was expected to be one of the technical people! It started out with each of us in the department having to provide one week per month of “on call” support coverage for our mainframe systems. It wasn’t fun, but for only once per month, you could live with it. But as the reorganizations came, and as headcount reductions took their toll, the shifts went to twice a month, and soon it was every other week. For someone in their 60s who was not a college-trained IT person, it was a lot of stress on my mind and on my body. In the back of my head, I knew that if worse ever came to worse and I felt I couldn’t take it anymore, I could always just hand over my badge ID and my laptop and retire on the spot. But all of a sudden, GM simply stepped forward, removed a barrier, and opened an exit ramp for me.

My last day of work was December 7, 2018. I took some time to visit friends in Arizona, then celebrated Christmas with my uncle and cousins in Rochester NY, and started working with a financial advisor to take over management of my investments for the brave new world of retirement.

There was one dark shadow hanging over all of this, however…

I had started having gastrointestinal issues that intensified back around July of 2018, and they landed me in the Beaumont ER one night. The doctor wanted to admit me to control a diverticulitis infection. Quick recap – diverticulitis is a condition where a diet of rich, fatty foods (basically, the American diet) and a dearth of fiber cause the sigmoid colon to develop pockets in its lining. These pockets can end up trapping fecal material, and the pockets can then become infected and inflamed.

In hindsight, I should have let the doctor admit me, because then a lot of trouble might have been caught sooner. However, as the concerned and conscientious team player that I was, I didn’t want to stick my co-workers with having to cover my work as well. So, I received two different antibiotics to take at home.

I followed up with my primary care physician, and got scheduled for a colonoscopy in November. At that time, I was told that if I ate more fiber, I should be fine.

Ah, nope!

Long story short, I started losing a lot of weight, because eating started to equate to pain. Things finally came to a head the first week of February 2019 when I finally couldn’t stand it and went to the ER again. I ended up staying at Beaumont for 10 days while they tried to bring the infection down with intravenous antibiotics. But once I got home and the antibiotics ran out after 14 days, I was in pain again two days later. On the third day, I started having a fever, I was becoming weak, and my heart began racing. I barely was able to drive myself back to the ER; in hindsight I should have called a friend. I hate like hell to run up an ambulance bill! Once I arrived at the ER, they put me in a wheelchair and rushed me back to the treatment rooms. The imaging revealed that my colon had perforated, and I was in danger of sepsis. They started pumping so many fluids in me that it brought my body temperature down to the point that I began to shake from the cold. As soon as they had an opening, they sent me up to the ICU. They tried eliminating the infection so that they could safely operate, but we were making no headway this time. They finally decided that they had to take the sigmoid colon out regardless in order to eliminate the infection, and scheduled me for the first OR opening on March 20, 2019.

What happened next was not pretty. I was told that the sigmoid colon would come out arthroscopically, and that there was only the smallest chance that I would need a colostomy bag. The reality was that my colon was so full of infection and scar tissue that it was rigid – my surgeon described it as “like concrete.” It required a full abdominal incision just to get the colon out. The damage was severe enough that he had to remove the top part of the rectum as well, and he was unable to reconnect me at that time, so I ended up with an ileostomy after all.

Then, the inflammation took over. While still in the post-surgical ICU, I started vomiting because my stomach couldn’t move any fluid into the intestines (I learned that even if you’re not eating, your stomach still produces fluids that have to be moved down the digestive track). So on top of a catheter, and two IV ports, I was now rewarded with my very own nose tube to suck the fluids out of my stomach.

Unfortunately, as the pressure in my abdomen increased due to the inflammation, it started to crush my kidneys and I experienced total kidney failure. So I received one more port so that they could hook me up to the dialysis machines.

The final straw (port?) was when they decided it had been too many days since I had eaten anything, and the inflammation would not allow me to eat. So, a team of specialists came into my room to install a special port directly into my carotid artery, allowing them to feed me intravenously.

There was really only one good thing – actually two good things – at this point. I had really good people and really good care from the folks on 7 North, and I was allowed to have Dilaudid! Dilaudid was my friend!

Eventually, the tide started to turn, and I slowly began to lose my hoses. I was allowed to drink and have soft foods, so they pulled the feeding port and the nose tube. My kidneys started to come back. After 40 days, I finally was released – walking with a cane, by this time, but at least I was vertical!

With the help of friends, I was able to get the SS back home from storage, but I was in no shape to drive it much of anywhere. I would tire very quickly, and being in that hospital bed for so long did something to my back. I would need the rest of the spring and summer to do physical and occupational therapy to try and regain strength. Since the SS was one of my few joys at this point in time, I decided that I would go ahead with the installation of another part I had intended for use on The Red Beast 2.0 – I would install the MGW short-throw shifter. It seemed like a safe and easy way to get back into playing with the car. I got that task completed during the second week of May, in plenty of time to take the SS to its first MI F-Body Meet & Greet on June 8, 2019. (I missed the 2018 Meet & Greet due to being on-call for work, and because it rained all day.)

I didn’t know it at the time, but between the side marker lens swap-out and the MGW shifter, a seed had been planted, and the car I had wanted to leave stock would begin to receive further modifications. It started out pretty simply, with changing the exterior lighting (including the headlamps) over to LEDs. I had to take another break from the car at the end of July to finally get colon reconnection surgery, so there would thankfully be no more ostomy bag hijinks to deal with.

With all the turmoil going on over the past year, I thought that maybe the easiest and most prudent way to proceed with my fleet of cars was to keep the SS as-is and stock, sell the decontented Red Beast, and conserve cash for the car purchase I knew I would have to make in December, due to my 2017 Chevy Malibu Premier lease being up. I started to quietly shop around some of my cache of parts, and quickly discovered that go-fast parts are like new automobiles – they lose one-third or more of their value the minute they leave the store! People really expect a gigantic discount!

The day that everything changed came while I was working with Curtis Templeton on the refinishing of the SS’s SLP grille. We were talking about some parts I had that wouldn’t work on my SS, but that he could use for his wife’s 1998 Bright Green Metallic Z28 vert. I learned that his shop could handle a certain amount of mechanical work as well as body and paint, and I started to think about asking him to put all the Red Beast 2.0 parts on the SS. I was seriously mulling things over as we prepared to hold our MI F-Body Dyno Day on September 14, 2019. The baseline for car in its in its bone-stock form was 311 HP and 327 ft. lbs. of torque.

The following Friday, on September 20, my buddy Corey Groth came over and helped swap the front seats out of The Red Beast and into the SS. The Beast received a set of decent Ebony leather seats I had gotten through one of Curtis Templeton’s connections.

I had a couple of other distractions going on at this time; I found a replacement daily driver to take the place of my leased 2017 Malibu Premier – a 2017 Buick LaCrosse Premium AWD in Crimson Red Tintcoat. That deal closed on September 30. Then, in early October, I found out about a 1955 Packard Caribbean coming up for sale about five miles from my house, and it seemed to be in better shape than the one I’d owned since I was in high school. Soon, I found myself the owner of two 1955 Caribbeans, or exactly .5% of total 1955 production!

By the end of October I finally made my decision. Part of it was a sense of the tenuous nature of life, thanks to the health ordeal I’d just gone through, as well as the fact that I’ve had more yesterdays than I have tomorrows; plus, a desire to see the dream of The Red Beast 2.0 be fulfilled in the SS. But another part of it was just a big fat middle finger to the thought of anyone else getting my go-fast parts for cheap! LOL! I’d be damned if I was just going to give this stuff away! I’ll enjoy it myself before I let that happen!

Work began in earnest the first week of November. Curtis dropped the cradle out of the SS (confirming the car DID have an LS6 block) and installed the following parts:

New starter
2003 Corvette Z06 “243” heads with sodium-filled exhaust valves, 3-axis CNC machined by Livernois Motorsports
Livernois Motorsports LS Dual Spring Kit (Includes Titanium Retainers, Locks, Viton Seals, Spring Cups)
Livernois Motorsports Powerstorm LS1/LS2/LS6 Performance Rocker Arms with Upgraded Trunion Set
GM Performance LS Series Lifter Guides
GM Performance LS Lifters
GM Performance Corvette Head Gaskets
Livernois Motorsports Powerstorm L92 Stage 1C Camshaft (selected as a slightly hotter cam than the Corvette Z06/LS6 cam)
Livernois Motorsports Powerstorm 7.425" 5/16" Diameter Push Rods
Melling LS1 High Pressure Oil Pump
JP Performance V8 GEN IV LS2/LS3 3-bolt single row chain with 4x cam
GM Performance LS Intake Manifold to Cylinder Head O-Rings
ARP SBC LS1/LS6 Head Bolts/Stud Kit
GM Performance LS Series Balancer Bolt
AC Delco Irridium Spark Plugs
SLP Air Box Lid
SLP Smooth Bellows
Kooks 1 7/8" x 3" Stainless Steel Headers with Airborne Silver Jet Coat
Kooks 3" True Dual Exhaust with Ultra High-Performance Green Cats and Quad Tips
Tick Performance Adjustable Clutch Master Cylinder Kit
Tick Performance Remote Clutch Speed Bleeder
SLP Stage 1 Spring Kit
Bilstein Shocks, Front & Rear (we took the newer ones off the Red Beast and moved them to the SS)
SLP Shock Tower Brace
UMI Rear Drag Bar Axle Mounts
UMI F-Body Aftermarket Sway Bar Installation U-Bolt - 2.75" Axle
BMR Driveshaft Safety Loop
BMR Panhard Bar Lowering/Leveling Kit
Strano Brake Master Cylinder Brace

Although Curtis and his helper were working all-out on my car, we did take a little time towards the end of the project to have a little fun with Mr. OVRBDGT himself, Brent Schubring. They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and Brent’s car was definitely an inspiration for my vision for my SS, so we put a set of candy corn export tail lamps on my car with a mock-up Michigan license plate that says “LO BDGT” and then posted it on the MI F-Body Facebook page! It got some good-natured laughs!

And then on November 20, 2019, it was all done except for the weeping! Why weep, you may ask? Well, being late November in Michigan with snow and salt already flying on the roads, it meant that I would not be able to sample this new beast – this SSon of The Beast – until the spring. I could not have been more pleased with the work that Curtis did on the car. He did everything just like I had envisioned, which was to make everything look as factory as possible.

All that was left now was to use my Hagerty Drivers Club membership to get a discount on a flatbed that would give extra care to carting my reborn baby to its winter slumber. We would have to wait until the spring of 2020 to see the actual proof in the pudding!

**MP81** · April 21st, 2020, 03:36 PM

Man, I didn't realize just how serious that all was.

Diverticulitis is no joke - my grandpa has had that like three or four times - to the point where one of the last times he was in the hospital due to it, he joked with the nurses to just put a zipper on him to make it easier the next time.

**DynoDave** · April 21st, 2020, 09:21 PM

Holy cow Kevin. Didn't know you had gone through all that. And right after retirement too.

But I can understand you taking the package and getting out, as a guy who spent 30 years with EDS/HP/HPE on a Bachelors in Automotive! You did well.

**ktl711** · April 21st, 2020, 10:34 PM

CHAPTER FOUR: Something Wicked This Way Comes

After the kind of 2019 I had, I was all too eager to shake the dust of that cursed year from my feet, and start afresh with 2020. Boy, was I ever looking forward to this year!

And then came ‘Rona…

By the time March rolled around, we had experienced a few rain showers, and the roads seemed pretty salt-free. I’m sure most of us could see that we were going to be in a bad situation quickly, and even if we didn’t get hit with the virus right away, I knew the people wanting to get tunes done on their cars were going to be lining up deep once the weather broke. Trying to juggle all this, I decided to jailbreak the SS from storage on (insert sad trombone sound here) Friday the 13^th of March, 2020. It almost became a true Friday the 13^th too, as once I left the warehouse and tried to get on the public roads, I found that I could not get the car to idle. You had to be constantly giving it gas and keeping the revs up. I don’t think I’ve ever experienced that in an electronically-controlled fuel injected car before. This was before the shelter in place orders, of course, so there was still typical Detroit Friday afternoon traffic on the freeways, including some construction and merges that kept my fingers on the ignition key and my heart in full-pound mode. I did make it home unscathed (unless you count the mental and emotional damage), but I knew that I was not going to be driving the car up to the shop for a tune. Again I called upon my Hagerty membership to get a flatbed and a (semi-competent?) driver to take the car up to see Steve Boldizsar at Power Dynamics near Port Huron on Saturday morning. I trailed behind the hauler in my Buick, and after a detour to Steve’s house (for whatever reason, the address given on the Power Dynamics Facebook page is for Steve’s house), we got the car delivered. While I was there, Steve got right in the car and put a base tune on it.

Strangely, on Saturday the car never exhibited the same stalling issue as Friday the 13^th. Coincidence? However, Friday had at least been sunny and cold, whereas Saturday was just wet and cold and nasty, so I was just as happy to get back into the nice warm Buick and hit the road back to Detroit.

I definitely must have beat the springtime rush, because Steve had the SS ready to go for me by the very next day! However, I needed a business day to be able to go to the credit union to pull out enough cash to pay for the tune, and I also needed to set up a ride. Although the lobby of the credit union was still officially open for business on Monday, that was the very last day that they were open without having a specific appointment. I was able to get my buddy Corey to drive me back up to Steve’s shop. It actually turned out to be a reunion of sorts, as Corey recognized Steve from several years back when he had done a tune on an LQ9 for one of Corey’s trucks.

A comparison of the two output sheets from September 2019 and March 2020 showed that the modifications resulted in a gain of 93 horsepower (311 vs. 404), or a 30% increase, while torque went up by 50 ft/lbs. (327 vs 377), a gain of 15%. This mated up very well with what I had discussed with the folks at Livernois Motorsports – I was aiming for 400 horsepower at the rear wheels.

Finally it was time to head home in my newly-perfected baby, The SSon of The Beast. The change in power was beyond amazing! I stopped at a Speedway station to fill up before hitting the freeway for a rainy and slushy drive home, using napkins and washing hands after all transactions.

It definitely is a lot louder than when I first got it, LOL, but I know that this will be a very rewarding car for me to own and drive!

**DynoDave** · April 22nd, 2020, 07:25 AM

404 at the wheels....that's sweet, and a very successful batch of upgrades!

Depending on what the Gov does, maybe we can have a somewhat informal MIFB Meet & Greet From A Distance in the Hub parking lot at a date later in the summer, or fall. I'd love to check all this stuff out.

**Atrus** · April 22nd, 2020, 11:00 AM

Wow, Kevin - mirroring what others had said, no idea things were that severe for you!

Really happy for you that the car is bringing you joy, and you are so thorough and meticulous on your planning and execution, I am sure this thing will be a beauty for years to come. Look forward to seeing more of it!

**farmington** · April 26th, 2020, 05:52 PM

Of course 404 rwhp is good, but by this time next year you will be looking for 450. I know the drill.

**MP81** · April 26th, 2020, 08:35 PM

Or more:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yS_060pJfnw

**DynoDave** · April 26th, 2020, 09:34 PM

That sounds sweet!

I'm thinking about one of these for my TBI 305 before dyno day this fall.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7a_J2X88fSE

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Announcement

The SSon of The Beast: 2001 Camaro SS convertible - SLP #2474 (a.k.a. LO BDGT)

[Project] The SSon of The Beast: 2001 Camaro SS convertible - SLP #2474 (a.k.a. LO BDGT)

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