Most of you have heard of the yellow ’69 Camaro called “Jackass”. It was built by Mark Stielow for a good friend of mine Charley Lillard. Well, with Charley things (and cars) do change. The car now belongs to Mark and he has plans for some updates.
We’re very fortunate at Lateral-G that Mark posts his builds on our site. The original build was featured in this thread. The new updates start on page 28, but I’d recommend reading from the beginning to see all the mods Mark did on the car.
This article will be like my last one on Marks last Camaro “Hellfire“. The text and q&a will be in the forums at the link above, but I’ll keep all the progress pictures here. To get this started let’s hear from Mark himself regarding his plans for the car.
“I purchased Jackass back from Charley Lillard to give it a freshening up. That car has been on 4 power tours and ran in the 2009 OUSCI and finished 3rd. It is a great car and just needs a little updating.
Plan:
Swap out the Morrison subframe for a Detroit Speed front subframe. At the time we did not know how to make the LS9 fit in the DSE subframe and now I have that sorted out.
Adding Bosch ABS to the Brembo Carbon Ceramic brakes. The car is very hard to drive fast with the grabby carbon brakes. I’m going to copy the ABS system off Hellfire.
We updated the LS9 last year with CNC ported heads, a bigger cam and smaller pulley. It runs strong but not super strong. So I’m going to get a new 427 short block from Thomson Automotive to make another 900ish hp engine for JA. Kind of a mister potato head engine from parts I have laying around. If we can sort it out it will also be an E-85 flex fuel deal.
I’m sold on the DYAD Centerforce clutches so I’m swapping that out and also switching to a Tremec T-56 Magnum transmission to handle the 900ish ft*lbs of torque.
From everything I learned on the Z/28 program and Hellfire I now know how to keep these engines cool and reliable. I have C&R making the latest and greatest cooling system for JA. Those guys are great.
We are also going to rewire the whole car to be common with Hellfire. This was the first LS9 we did or for that matter that anyone had done and the wiring could use some cleanup. I’m also adding the same Race Technology dash and data logger as Hellfire. It worked great and I loved having all the data to look at later.
We scaled the car before we tore it down and for an all steel Power Tour car its weight was about where I thought it would be. I think we might lose 50 lbs but that is about it. I’m keeping it a steel fendered car.”
Enjoy the pics below of the build. Special thanks to Camaro Performers for the great lead photo. Keep checking back for new updates!
