1975 Camaro Bumblebee Autocross Build

I've posted on this forum for a few months asking some general suspension questions and I feel as though it's a good time to show others here what I've been working on.

In October of 2018 I bought a 1975 Camaro in the hopes of making a near perfect replica of bumblebee from the transformers movie. And I plan on sticking to that for the most part....but plans changed and so did my goals.

So I'm staying true to the cosmetics of my car while also making this car capable of autocross. This in turn has caused me to make some questionable decisions that hurt the capabilities of my car....but I will march ahead haters be damned.

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Thats what my car looked like before I gutted it (and about a year of owning it) Was in alright shape, rust around the rear window, terrible rattle can red. Other than that, it was pretty solid. I intended on enjoying the car and slowly making it better, but the engine started to have problems and I didn't want to dump money into something I knew I was going to get rid of.

So at the start of the year, I tore it apart, tagged and bagged everything, and now the car sits on it's side ready for the next steps in the process

You can view the video of the tip over here

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[/COLOR]When everything is all said and done, I hope for it to look like this

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Anyways, none of that is particularly special, what makes this stupid is that I'm putting in a gen V lt4 into the car with 4l75e, ford 9" and torque arm. Along with global west front suspension and proper coilover modifications to the front subframe. The biggest challenge I have faced is getting good brakes on 15" rims with how much power I'm putting in the car. And good solutions for making the tires rub in the rear because the offset on the rim is dumb.

As of posting this, the car is on it's side as shown, I'm going to strip off the undercoating, weld on the torque arm suspension points, spray SPI epoxy, upol bedliner, and then go from there.

I have an entire spreadsheet detailing out my plans and what I'm going to buy along with supplies, listed below is also a flow chart on the order I plan on accomplishing everything. You can view it by clicking here

That pretty cool the way you tipped it. At first I thought u had it on its side lol. Couldn't see the wood

Well, to me Bumblebee will always be a VW Bug, but cool build none the less.

What if you use an air suspension setup that allows for you to drive around with more wheel gap for normal driving, but then lower it for autocross events? Just an idea.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Toccoa

Well, to me Bumblebee will always be a VW Bug, but cool build none the less.

What if you use an air suspension setup that allows for you to drive around with more wheel gap for normal driving, but then lower it for autocross events? Just an idea.

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I don't really want air suspension to be perfectly honest with you, it is something a lot of people brought up.
With how often I'll actually need to lower the car undoing 2 bolts in the rear isn't a huge deal, plus I'll have to adjust the torque arm anyways if I adjust ride height

I started to clean the car with easy off so I didn't gum up my grinding discs.

Oven cleaner is magic, it ate through a good portion of the undercoating of the car and went to bare metal which was fantastic. I'm obviously not done, but here's what it looks like after just some light scrubbing with a dish sponge, nothing crazy.

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I also started to do a lot more research into wiring the car, a lot of people suggest to go with dakota digital to get the info, but I feel as though thats just throwing money at a problem due to people not wanting to deal with wiring. I drew up some schematics to my car so I can integrate the engine and trans harness into parts of the factory replacement painless bulkhead (I don't want to use a custom 21 circuit or something even though it has been suggested often)

I don't have a problem doing all the wiring myself, and I already know the chevy harness is much longer than it needs to be so I'll have to shorten a lot of runs for my application. Once I'm done I can upload a PDF if anyone would find it useful.

One thing of note, on the trans controller there is a blue wire that I guess you can change the tune on? It's not clear to me if thats just just another profile for the transmission, or if it's another profile for the engine as well since they plug into each other, I can't find info in any of the documentation.

Next post I'll have the car in epoxy I hope. Still waiting on my suspension to be finished by Chassis works thus why I've been dragging my feet.

Looking forward to seeing more, for a second I had deja-vu until I realized I saw this on Reddit as well hahaha

Not much has been happening since it's too dang hot to paint the epoxy, and I have been waiting on my torque arm to be finished (If I knew it was going to take 3 months I would have ordered sooner)
Anyways, here it is in boxes, I'm not going to take them out yet because I need to move all the things in my garage for the solar inspection so they can turn my system on.
Someone tried to get me a good deal on a torque arm, was very close to going with speedtech but the chassisworks option ended up just being much better overall I think
This unit costs more than I actually paid for the car itself, so there is no going back now......
For those interested, I got the following options

splined antiroll bar
viking double adjustable shocks (not sure what spring rate I'll get yet, maybe 225)
Watts Link

Everything else you select just asks what type of rear end you plan on using
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Next thing I'll need to figure out is to see fi my subframe is bent or not (pretty sure it's not) If it is, I'll get a chassis works system, if it's not, I'm going to put UMI parts on my car.

Watts link
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Traction Bars
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Torque Arm
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Shock mounts that weld to frame rails
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Subscribed and looking forward to seeing the car in Yellow.

Side note I have a 2010 SLP575 Transformer Camaro.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by syborg tt

Subscribed and looking forward to seeing the car in Yellow.

Side note I have a 2010 SLP575 Transformer Camaro.

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Thats rad, I almost got the transformers edition as my first car, but common sense kicked in and I realized that would have been stupid.

Anyways, I attempted to install the rear suspension in my car this weekend and came to a hault really quick. The instructions say I need to be 4.5" away from where the measurement is. As you can see I have 8" and there is no way it can be closer....so I'm pretty sure the instructions are completely wrong.

I have been trying to contact Chassisworks, but everyone I have gotten on the phone has not been helpful at all. and it's really disappointing being how this cost more than 4k and there is no help what so ever

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it's been almost 4 months but I finally have updates! My dad had surgery on his arm so we haven't been able to do anything....on top of that, as you guys know the instructions for the torque arm kind of sucked when it came to placing the brackets needed to weld. I called the guy and the only notes I got were "it needs to be 2" away from the center of the axle" Which was all fine and dandy but that was wrong too. So...said F it, squared it up and went about my life and will cross my fingers we didn't totally screw it up.

There isn't much adjustment so it's as good as it's going to get.

Anyways, pictures. I wired up an outlet to use, as my house had been pre-wired for an outlet for an electric car....well I couldn't find the other ends of wire in the breaker box, no idea where it terminates too. I turned off my solar panels for a moment and high jacked the connectors for the plug to use on the welder.
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Here are the practice welds to dial in the settings (this was done on 110v instead of the 220v that we ended up with)
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Here are the welds that I did when my dad was teaching me, this is the first time I ever weld, the line on the top was pretty good, the giant blob at the bottom was me trying to do one continuous line going back and forth...it made sense in my mind but I ended up just making a giant puddle. But according to my dad they were pretty good for never welding before.

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Drilling out a section in the frame for the u bolts
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Pants caught on fire while welding, we didn't notice because I was focused on our jank wiring set up didn't catch on fire
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JdT...ture=emb_title

Finished welds on top bracket, angle of the picture makes it look like it's crooked, it's not, I swear, we checked at least 10 times. (I will clean up the slag, don't worry)

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We also took apart the rest of the front subframe, because taking out the springs are terrifying we heated them up with a propane torch to weaken them. Worked great
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I need a shed...

Anyways, I wanted to weld the front suspension stuff as well, but it dind't come in the mail in time, no idea when I'll get it....probably march. I got this kit from global west. I expect it to be very nice. We'll see how it plays out.
Also, yes I know, you can get aftermarket frames, I did this purely because I wanted the 12.19" wilwood rotors and they don't work on the CA spindles. Is that reason absurdly stupid? absolutely, do I care? No, because I'm using 15" rims, what I'm doing is already dumb. Heard it a million times already. Already know I should be using 18" rims

I also stitch welded the floor pans as suggested by others.
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Next plans, strip the rest of the underside of the car, epoxy it, upol raptor, and then it can go back on wheels to do body work! Hope to have the underside finished by April. depends on the weather.

Car looking good and the floors look fantastic.

Not much to update, lots of things delayed due to shipping, was also waiting for the weather to get a bit warmer to paint which I will do next week or two.

I will say this though, I got my global west control arms in the mail. Those brackets will weld to the subframe and will allow more shock travel.
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A lot has changed since the last post. Stripped the entire bottom of the car, coated it with SPI epoxy, seam sealer, then upol raptor black

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After that We had to weld the support braces to the new shock mounts. I dind't do this before painting because the bar was bolt in and already panted from factory, and would have gotten in the way of full coverage.

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From there, we cut off the shock mount on the stock subframe to weld in a coilover conversion bracket from global west

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After that we welded up a bracket to the end of the subframe for the Chassisworks subframe connectors/torque arm

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Bolted in the subframe connectors

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and as of right now I am waiting on the lower control arms to come in the mail to bolt in temporary shocks to roll around, and I need to make a temporary panhard rod for the rear as it is not centered and sitting back too far.
The rear end I have in is the old 10 bolt, I'm in the middle of a move, after I'm settled I will put in the order for the ford 9" and strange 3rd member with s-trac diff which will make the rear sit correctly.

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Haven't updated this in awhile, a lot has been done in a year!
May 2022, I got the lower control arms and the car could roll around again before I moved
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My rear end still wasn't purchased at this time, so I had to ratchet strap everything together to get it on the trailer, I eventually bought a strange s trac and new spindles.
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Project went on pause for awhile, April 2023 I finally have the rear end with strange floater housings, I shortened the axle by an inch on each side to fit my rims (I refused to buy a different set of rims)
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From there I had massive problems with my torque arm from chassisworks. Long story short, the subframe connectors they gave me were for a 70-74 even though I needed 75-81 connectors (these are longer) This in turn meant the torque arm they gave me (which was correct) was too long.

They fought me every step of the way to get this resolved, they eventually agreed to shorten the torque arm, but they should have just swapped out the subframe connectors for the correct part number.

They treated me like I was an idiot and I didn't know what I was talking about even though I had multiple pictures and measurements to prove otherwise. I never want to deal with them again.
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That aside, I got my LT4 and paired it with a 4l60e and got it in the car this weekend. This will come back apart and I will have a proper 4l60e built for my car, but this is for mock up purposes.

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Next step on this project is figuring out the wiring, I have all the wiring diagrams I need to make this function correctly. I also have a brake booster from a tesla, so I will start the project soon as well.

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I also started a youtube channel if you want to follow along with the build progress
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuo...sg1nDcQugfrHXA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AKTB2ZpXskhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZdP9bo0gBk

Nice A+A+ VERY NICE

https://youtu.be/NF2aagJStDM?si=ReVQwAr0zD2tnFYt

Here is a new video, not much to show, but stuff is expensive.
I got a special bracket to bolt up a bosch ibooster to my firewall so I have electric assisted brakes instead of vacuum as the LT4 does not produce a lot of it. I do have a vacuum pump from the corvette the motor came from, but I plan on selling it as I don't actually want to use it.
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I also got a radiator from dewits and it fits as if it was meant to be there, which is really nice for a change. After all the effort with the suspension it's nice things are "easy" for now

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I put the fenders back on in a pretty lazy way to see if I had any potential problems with fitment. It's just held together with zipties and stuff, it sort of looks like a car again though, which is nice.

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Anyways, I did this because I need to know where I can put the oil tank as my motor is a dry sump, the problem is that there really isn't a good place to put it due to it's auxiliary tank.
I don't think I need it and I can remove it, but I don't actually know, still researching it.
As it stands right now, the most likely spot this tank is going, is where the battery tray was, but I don't know if I am married to that idea.
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