Homebuilt Pro Street 1968 Camaro
Learning by Doing: How a troublesome buildup of a Pro Street ’68 Camaro ended happily ever after
There’s a first time for everything, like riding a bike or diving into the deep end. But just as you might skin a knee from a fall or cough up some pool water, it wasn’t all easy-peasy for Bren Manke working on his ’68 Camaro.
“This was the first car build I had ever done,” he admits. “I built the entire thing, including all the engine assembly, rollcage fabrication, suspension work, wiring, and just about everything else, in my two-car garage.”
Fortunately, Bren is mechanically inclined and had some previous experience working on snowmobiles with his dad, Bill. And he had one big motivation: to build this car with the sole intent of making it go really fast.
That’s a familiar line toChevy High Performancereaders. Making it happen is a whole ’nuther story, though. Fortunately, when he found the car on a Craigslist ad as a rolling chassis, it had very little rust. “But it was pretty much just a shell,” he admits.
While his idea initially was to build a Pro Touring car, his focus shifted after attending the NHRA Sonoma Nationals and watching some cool old drag cars tearing up the track. So he switched horses in midstream and went the Pro Street route instead.
“The only problem was that I had already mini-tubbed the car,” he notes. “So I got the absolute biggest tires I could fit into the wheelwells without doing fullsize tubs.”
He also welded in some subframe connectors and bolted on Competition Engineering Slide-A-Link traction bars, secured to a 3.70 Ford 9-inch with Moser 33-spline forged axles. To further minimize axlewrap, Detroit Speed supplied 3-inch drop-leaf springs and
shocks.
This setup was for putting some serious power to the pavement—about 750 horses at 15 psi from a 383 small-block topped with a Weiand 6-71 blower. All good in theory, but he encountered a few bumps in the road along the way. The first one happened while testing the engine right after he had gotten the Weiand blower installed.
“I went to my favorite testing spot and floored it,” he relates. “Well, the throttle linkage that hooked to the carburetor wasn’t adjusted right and got stuck against the side of the blower, keeping it at full throttle. I was getting really close to 140 mph when I shut the ignition off.” As a result, the engine backfired super hard, which in turn bent the crankshaft. He was able to limp it home and ended up pulling the engine and installing a new crank.
