I can tell you this, guys--if you do decide replace the sheetmetal on your car, spend the extra money for the best you can find. No sheetmetal on the market is as good as the original GM, and the cheaper stuff is even worse than the "best" aftermarket. I had to replace the header panel, fenders, doors, tailpan and deck lid on my '68--all of it Goodmark, touted as the best--and NONE of it fit right. I spent $1000 on aftermarket sheetmetal and had to pay a professional bodyman $1000 to fix the damn mess and put it in primer. It's why Waynechipman got $1000 for a NOS fender! The GM stuff isn't available anymore and I had no choice, although I did score a GM cowl panel. If I had it to do over again I'd have patch-paneled my GM stuff and actually saved money. Despite what their advertisement says, Goodmark is made overseas, too, not in the USA. If you have a restoration business locally I'd make friends with them and they can recommend the best stuff currently available. If not, I've found that Year One is a super bunch of guys to do business with, although they're more expensive on the average. Modern Chevrolet in Winston-Salem, NC is also a great source. And you guys have to also remember that the magazines have an agenda when they run an article promoting things--they get kickbacks like any other business and will tell you the great things and leave out the warts, or are ignorant of them. MY 2 cents. Ain't this Camaro restoration thing fun?

Thanks, Dave. You learn something new everyday! That's why I love this site.

Flow, I know that on a '69 almost everything will work as is--even the small-block frame mounts for the engine. As I said in my post, I've swapped a 396 for a 307 and it was a virtual bolt-in. Correct? No way, but it worked for a hot rod. The heater core clearance was VERY tight, as was the carburetor-to-hood clearance. We used headers instead of manifolds and that simplified things a bit. We even used the 307 10-1/2" flywheel, bellhousing and clutch stuff. The car already had a Muncie and a 4:11 12-bolt out of a Z/28 in it. Seems like we had to change the starter nose for the BB and it did need a bigger radiator. Of course, back then you could get any small parts cheap at the junkyard! It was incredibly crude by correct standards, but the car was already a bastard of mixed parts and the 396 was functional and ran like a bat out of hell. Some of us do some dumb things in our 20s! Hope this helps and good luck!

The dumb guy's guide--like me!--is to look for 4-leaf rear springs. Only the Zs had them as far as I know, and that's a dead giveaway on the surface. It would also have to have front disc brakes and a Muncie 4-speed. No production '69 Zs had automatics, a/c or were convertibles. Hope this helps.

Don't see what the '67 springs have to do with anything. If you have the '68 springs and new correct perches for the rear axle, it's a bolt-in once you weld the new perches to the axle tubes. If the new springs have the locating tabs (which they should) and the new perches have the locating holes (which they should) it's a no-brainer. You can join them with U-bolts or tabs, either way. Energy Suspension makes some nice urethane spring pads, by the way--inexpensive and they won't rot like rubber. Hope this helps.

My Fisher Body manual says the stripe was dropped mid-year or thereabouts, due to production problems like L30 suggested. The manual says it was a legitimate option, so who knows if any made it through? It would be cool to see an original one!

Viking, do you have new spring perches for the rear axle? You'll have to have new spring perches to match the multileafs. Monoleaf springs have a locating tab, too, and I don't exactly understand your problem. You can shim monoleaf springs into multileaf perches (not good) but not the other way around.  Can you be more specific?

It's tight, jd, but it'll go.  In the '70s I helped a friend swap a 396 into a '69 where a 307 was and it all bolted right in with no cutting or hammering. That was one tire-smoking rascal....

For my 2 cents there is no way I'd clone it to a Yenko--that's for grocery-getter 307 slugs with 3-speeds and 10-bolts. Even though the car isn't highly optioned, the main option checked on the order sheet was Z/28! I have no idea what the market value of a '69Z without a DZ engine is, but if everything else is original it would be a sacrilege to destroy a 1st-Gen Z in my book. They're getting more scarce every day, and even though you have a Rat in it, the Rat is not a 427! Try building a COPO 427 and a DZ 302 will seem cheap! And you'd have to replace the front springs with big-block springs. Even worse, you'd have to remove the Z 4-leaf rear springs for 5-leaf big-block springs, and the list goes on and on. For what it's worth, if it were me I'd build a nice 350 or 400 that looked aesthetically correct and enjoy the car. The 302s weren't torque monsters anyway, and the extra cubes would make it a blast to drive. 

TY to all who responded. The prob was the IAC valve. For some reason (humidity and heat?) the car would only act up when the temp was around 95 degrees or higher, and the engine was cold. I know it sounds crazy, but it's true. It was 103 today and sure enough, the thing puked on startup. I'd bought a new IAC valve and I put it on, and problem solved! The pintle on the old IAC was coked up and maybe the heat and humidity was enough to screw up the airflow response to the computer. Damifino. I idled the car for half an hour with the a/c on and it's cured. Hope this will help someone else with TPI.

Dab--I meant no offense--I don't know what your generation is, but I'm 48 and in "my day" we called them hogsheads, at least around here. Pumpkin is also a familiar term, and as Lake implied, there were a few other words for them you can't say in polite company! But they were the old '64-back Chevy 10-bolts without an inspection plate, and Camaros never had them. I know--my 1st car was a '64 Impala and that ^$#@% hogshead shelled spider gears like clockwork. Just didn't get why you'd want to put one under a Camaro.

what is a "cabbage head?" Sounds like you're talking about an old pre-Spicer axle with a "hogshead" chuckle. The Camaro 10 and 12-bolts didn't have "cabbage heads" or 'hogsheads"--they had an inspection plate and the guts didn't come out from the front. The only things I know that will interchange from a 10-bolt to a 12-bolt are the brake backing plates.

Do know what cam you have? Is it hydraulic, solid, roller, what? What are the specs? Any cam over .490" lift with early stock heads is going to likely cause problems with coil bind, hence broken rocker arms, bent pushrods, etc.. But if you had a broken valvetrain component you'd have a dead skip on one or more cylinders. If you have a solid cam it'll be a little noisy from the lash chatter, but you haven't given us a lot to go on. Cams don't cause errrant noises and misses--mismatched parts do. I don't know what to tell you without knowing what is in your engine.

Rich is right--octane booster should have no bearing on it. After checking all tune-up specs, the first thing I'd check would be the accelerator pump adjustment on the carburetor or look for a vacuum leak--sounds like a lean spot when you suddenly hit the gas. If you have a vacuum-secondary Holley it's very easy to fix if you've perchance put a screw in the secondary linkage--just take the screw out. If not, it sounds like not enough initial pump shot if you have no vacuum leaks. The accelerator pump spring on a Holley should never be screwed in so tight that the coils can bind--this is a common mistake that actually shortens the pump shot and makes it less responsive.
   Next I'd check the valve lash--you may have a valve too tight if it backfires through the carburetor, but a cam lobe going flat can do the same thing. If you don't have a rocker arm ticking you may have a valve too tight.   
   It could be a dozen other things, but these came to mind first. Just my 2 cents. Good luck!

Thanks for the links, Kevin, and the super info SS. I never knew they had a 9th injector.  And you've gotta love spanking them 5.0 Mustangs! Once in my '68 I set a 5.0 out 2 lights at the drag strip, was even with him when I hit 2nd, and when my girlfriend took a photo of me crossing the line he wasn't even in the picture. You gotta love it.