When I bought my car in 2003, it wasn’t going to be a project car. At the time I worked slinging tires. I was in college and I didn’t have that much money coming in. Before that I was without a vehicle and needed something to drive. I looked around for something I wanted because until then it was whatever I could borrow. When I looked at the Camaro is was in pretty decent shape nothing special. It was a base model v6 coupe. it had no features what so ever, other than it being 5 speed. However, I remember getting in it and feeling like “this is a car I can like”. The alternative option I was looking at was a 99 Acura Integra. Since my first car was an 88 Integra I liked those cars and how well they held up to a 16 yr old beating it up all the time. The only problem was the Integra was double the cost of the Camaro. Because I was in college and didn’t have a that amount of money coming in, it was a pretty easy decision.
For 2 years after that I enjoyed driving my Camaro and fell in love. It eventually blew a head gasket because of a flaw that let coolant leak out and myself being young didn’t pay attention to some of the important gauges such as temperature. The 4 years following that I couldn’t fix it because I didn’t know how and also moved around quite a bit so money and time were not leaning in my favor. I refused to let the car go so it moved with me everywhere I went. A situation arose where I had to gamble on fixing my truck that I was driving or my Camaro. I bought a used motor for both and fixed my truck because it was the best vehicle between the 2 or at least the easiest to get road worthy
In early 2010, I joined an online V6 Camaro forum called V6F-Body.com. I met several great people and started getting the itch to get my Camaro back on the road. This group of people really changed my life. I made some really close friends and got the support and motivation I needed to take that first step to reviving my Camaro. On June 18th, 2010 I made the decision that “today is the day I start my build”. Operation X was born. I told myself that nothing would stand between me and the goal. I learned everything through research, help from the forum, and just trying. Lucky for me the people on the forum were a wealth of information and really made it easy to “go for it”.
To this day Operation X continues on. The Camaro is better than it ever was. I drive it everyday and even on trips we take. It’s a part of the family now. I hope that it has a long life ahead of it.
“Never let anything get in the way of your goals. Sometimes the only solution is to push harder.”