Camaro has been in my life since I was born. My Father had a 1967 Camaro SS and kept in garage kept for decades. At a certain point him and me went to work on restoring it. It took eight long years of work. During that time we went through loss and two deployments to Iraq. Also during that time I bought a 1998 V6 Camaro. I know the V6 gets a lot of grief and jokes thrown at it. No matter, without us V6 guys, the V8’s would be out of business. Melissa “Tweety-Bird” Porter is her name and after buying her in 2000 I’ve racked up a little over 185,000 miles with no major maintenance.
After returning back from Iraq the second time I was honorably discharged and began school in Florida. Leaving Texas meant leaving any accesses to tools or lift support for my Camaro. Recently she began to misfire. It was determined that it was the spark plugs and/or wires. With no tools I feared I would have to take my car to a mechanic and I hate doing that. She’s mine; I’ll work on her. Enter Jeff Kaplan. Jeff became friends with me on Facebook after seeing my Camaro film Return of The Camaro. He lived locally so I contacted him to see if he knew of a shop where I could take my Camaro that I could trust. Instead he offered to help me fix it with his tools.
Jeff had fallen on hard times and had to sell his fourth generation Camaro SS. But he was still Camaro. All he asked for was a little bit of money for the work which would be no problem and much cheaper than labor costs at any shop. We went to work right away and found the culprit: A worn spark plug wire. We replaced the plugs and wires but when we went for a drive we had the same misfire problem. After clearing the codes and rescanning the car the same code came back up. Which left only one other option: Coil packs. So Jeff once again helped me out and we replaced the coil packs. Sure enough, that fixed the problem.
That’s why I’m proud to be a Camaro / F-Body driver; that people who have never met each other will help one another out because we understand what it is to set the standard and live up to it. I’ve said several times that Camaro / F-Body owners must exceed the norms and do what’s right. No street racing, supporting each other, and supporting those that help keep Camaro alive. Jeff Kaplan is one of those people.
Jeff:
Jeff's Camaro:
Return of The Camaro: