I took delivery of my 2002 SS (#671) on August 20, 2001 at Domingo Vara Chevrolet in San Antonio, Texas. I originally had a 2002 Z28 on order, but I got tired of waiting for the car to come in. The sunset orange metallic paint was a MUST, so I searched Texas and Oklahoma to find this car. I drove to San Antonio and bought the car for 200 dollars under invoice.

My first primary goal with the car was to obtain an 11-second timeslip without touching the engine. It's easily attainable with the right aftermarket parts, and I know of many guys that have already done this. I could've had my 11-second slip with stock internals had I gone with the Yank PT4400 torque converter in the beginning. I got impatient and really wanted to swap cams, so I decided to leap into the 11's, but without stock internals. After selling my '98 Trans Am 383 in April of 2001, I had a good grasp of the LS1 and what it took to achieve my goals. The LS1 has progressed from 1998 through 2002, and it really shows in the performance. While using the stock '98 LS1 camshaft, it took all of the bolt-ons and a set of CNC-ported stock heads to reach 331 rear-wheel HP and 345 rear-wheel TQ with the 346 cid LS1 in my Trans Am. I picked up exactly 30 RWHP with the addition of these cylinder heads. My last dyno run with my SS was before I swapped out to the 3.73:1 gears and had Ed Wright tune my PCM, and it put down 332.9 RWHP and 348 RWTQ. With the TSP 224R (224/224, .581"/.581", 112 LSA) camshaft and Yank PT4400, the car made 379.9 RWHP and 358.2 RWHP. With an unlocked converter, the car put down 361.3 RWHP and open cutout. Opening the cutout was worth 11 RWHP. After I swapped from the 224R to the 228R camshaft, I picked up an additional 9 RWHP throughout my usable powerband!

My overall goal of keeping the SS streetable has not changed. No matter what I do to the car, I still want to be able to crawl in the driver's-seat and go anywhere! That is the main reason that I swapped out to the Century Automotive-built 200-4R transmission. Texas Speed & Performance has paired up with Mike Kurtz at Century Automotive to offer the toughest overdrive transmission conversion packages available for the f-bodies! With this transmission, you retain overdrive AND torque converter lockup capabilities! What's even better is that you get rid of an electronically-controlled transmission, so you can truly manually shift the car at your desired shift points without worrying about reprogramming. Mike has tested these transmissions to over 800 RWHP and low 9-second ET's! After rebuilding my 4L60E with only 10,000 miles on it, I knew it was only a matter of time before I had problems again. I keep adding power, both N/A and with a nitrous bottle, so I needed a transmission that could take a lot of abuse!

See all of the parts listed here, and more, at Texas Speed & Performance!

New pictures will be up very soon!