Usually when most of us see a restomod car, we only see and think about the finished product. You don’t instinctively wonder how many knuckle busting hours went into the engine, or how many times the plan for the suspension and brakes changed. And even when someone shows up to a car show with a build sheet and pictures of the process. You don’t really understand the blood, sweat and tears that have gone into a car unless you worked on it yourself. Now Sam Rodriguez is one of the few that might understand. He is in the thick of a build while still mostly driving his Camaro on a day to day basis. So everyday he learns a bit more of what it takes to build your dream car, and is creating a bond with his 77 Camaro, that few people have made with their car.

Sam’s story with his Camaro started just last year in the early months of 2019. Being a young gear head looking for his first car, Sam knew that he wanted a muscle car. He was enamored with the sleek lines, old styling and the potential of a rumbling V8 under the hood. After an extensive search of cars on craigslist, Sam found the perfect Camaro for him. This particular car was a survivor of the devastating camp fire, and it did not get through without its share of battle scars. The tail lights were completely melted, the paint was bubbling in multiple areas, and the oil filter was seized on the housing. But this was still the perfect car for Sam, because it had many of the things on Sam’s wish list for his first car.

To start, this Camaro had the front end that Sam wanted. The second gen Camaro has a look, that tends to divide people, and in Sam’s opinion the later 70’s models had a much better looking front end. Which lead Sam to look for a 77 model year. Another thing that was on the check list, was that it had a V8. The original engine that was in this car was the 305. But that was swapped out by the first owner to the much more popular 350. Also the first owner swapped the trans to a 400R Hughes transmission with a B&M shifter. But besides those few things the car was pretty much stock. So that means it still had all the factory smog parts that choked power from an otherwise good set up.

After Sam was able to get the old oil filter off and flush the engine a few times, he took his new Camaro for a drive and realized that something just wasn’t quite right. The car would move, but it didn’t really go how it should. And upon further diagnosis, Sam determined that the head gaskets were blown. While he was swapping the head gaskets Sam decided to do a port and polish on the heads and intake manifold to make the best of what he had. But while this did add some power Sam still had that itch for more. And he wanted better engine response with some added reliability too. Through some time fixing small issues and switching over to an electric fuel pump, Sam landed on the decision to add EFI to his Camaro.

The only problem with this though, is that Sam lives here in California, so his 77 Camaro still has to go through California smog testing. And for those of you who don’t live in California, pretty much anything that you do to your car is under tight scrutiny. Sam was determined though, and found a MSD EFI kit that would bolt to his existing manifold. But with California standard there were still issues. For example when Sam took his car to the smog ref to have it deemed acceptable. The referee told him to use a solid fuel line to the carburetor even though the directions with the MSD kit said not too. After going back and forth with the ref a few times though Sam was finally able to get his car to pass smog and legally be able to drive it. But the story does not end there.

Unfortunately this car also had a lot of rust throughout the floor panels that couldn’t just be ignored. So Sam did what he needed to do, and got himself a welder to start cutting and replacing said floor panels. And during this he changed out all of the carpet and added Dynamat to help with road noise. Another thing that needed to be addressed were the seats. The seats that came with the car were some Ebay special “racing” seats, that did not have the correct brackets, and so the second owner of the car had just piled washers and used a long bolt to fasten them down. That added with the seat belts that were probably from the same Ebay store, were a disaster waiting to happen. Sam got himself some nice seats that look like they belong and added some Corbeau seat belts, and in doing so finally made his car more or less road worthy.

Now as of recent Sam has been daily driving the car and is continuously upgrading and fixing his project. He has had to replace the water pump, tighten up the brakes and has gone through multiple fuel pumps due to them burning out almost on a regular basis. In fact when Sam and I left to go somewhere for some good pictures of his car, it stopped running less than a mile from his house, from an electrical issue that he soon fixed. But despite these set backs, Sam will not be turned off from turning his car into a completed restomod. Less than two weeks ago he swapped the heads for some Edelbrock performer heads and bought a new brake unit that will allow him to convert the rear drum brakes to discs. And for the future Sam is going to start working on getting the exhaust, suspension and brakes to what he wants. Slowly but surely making his way to that completed dream. I can’t wait to see what all Sam does to this car and how far this little Camaro will go. Lastly, even though this Camaro still has an open diff, it still likes to party and burn some rubber into its next upgrade.