Pro-touring the holden vl calais

[capssy]

Hey guys love your forum thought id start a thread on my project been looking on this forum for a while and love the quality of builds on here as well as the whole pro-touring concept has had me hooked for a while now. Pro-touring currently isn't very big in Aus but i'm hoping it catch's on any way back to my project its started life as a 1988 Holden Calais (commodore) with a Holden 5l v8 iron block trimatic auto transmission and bw 78 diff, it was my first car couldn't bring myself to move on to a new one lol. Anyway my out line for the project is to build a car with as much modern tech as i can put into it as well as decent power and do everything from home other than paint, im hoping for 500 hp at the fly ive chosen a ls1 which I've rebuilt with moderate comp and a decent set of hand ported 241 gm heads running lunati turbo killer cam coupled to a triple plate os giken clutch and t56 gearbox that ive rebuilt and a 9 inch setup with a tru trac also looking into a custom coil-over setup.here is the car before i started my en-devour

started

stripping out comes the old drive-line



gone :D



interior stripping



found my car had been in an accident in a past life they did some excellent repairs on the quarter panel and door but neglected the spare wheel well they decided to fill with filler :/



wet down to u pull it and got a new piece tacked it in i dont have a photo of the finished repair



noticed the previous owner cut out some of the boot interior separator for a sound system



again a trip to you pull it



fixed



and dyna mat



started playing with my custom dash and mock up wiring loom (more on this later)



test fitted gear box and extractors everything fits quite well just need to modify sump for more k frame clearance



pulled everything back out removed k frame and suspension for over haul





found some small rust under my windscreen (hole on the right is meant to be there as a drain hole the hole on the left isn't rust hole) rust around front and rear screens is pretty common on these.



and that's my current progress any feed back would be great

[Motorcitydak]

I feel like you guys get a lot more sweet cars than us in the states after the early 70's, it all went to crap here. The car looks really good

[capssy]

edit

[capssy]

I feel like you guys get a lot more sweet cars than us in the states after the early 70's, it all went to crap here. The car looks really good

thanks mate yea we did get some good cars here after the 70s but we didnt get any coupe's :( from 1976 to 2002 withe the new monaros wish they exported vettes over here or even new comaros but no hope im trying to plan a trip to the usa soon im in the hunt for a 68-70 charger

any way few updates
built a trolley to keep the car mobile for the minute also triped the front end and done a bit more work on my dash cluster ive put a picture of the factory dash to compare ive fitted autometer gauges into my factory cluster and rapid prototyped some dash fachia parts still a little bit of work to go but im happy so far

[capssy]

did some work on my nine inch setup today im not running tubs or a hugely modified rear end due to our road laws here im a bit limited but ive shortened it 1.5 inches and cleaned up my factory tubs which means i can fit a 19X9" rim and possibly a 275 tyre i spent most of the day today cleaning up my diff housing i also boxed up my lower control arms to hopefully make it a bit more rigid up back


my diff housing is originally out of a f100 unsure of the year housing is cleaning up ok but ill get it media blasted through the week

[capssy]

haven't really made heaps of progress since my last update but my wheels have arrived :D

[Flintstones]

Sweet build!
Love the new gauges in the original housing, still has that factory feel to it.

Pro touring commo, reminds me of my VK back in the day.
I ran 9" simmons rear with 8" fronts

Was a top car to drive.

Subscribed

Cheers
D

[benno505]

Hey welcome mate, where you located, I am on sunny coast and got a PT 68 charger

[capssy]

Hey welcome mate, where you located, I am on sunny coast and got a PT 68 charger

nice mate yea ill be in the market for one of those as soon as i finish this im down in melbourne

[Zoomin]

I tuned in to see what the heck a Calais was. I'm a big Holden fan as I've had two GTO's in the past.

Love the direction you're headed on the dash, and great choice on the wheels too.

I need to visit there sometime. I've got an ex brother in law that lives in Perth, always wanted to check it out.

Good luck on the Charger search, they're wildly popular here as you can tell if you've checked prices.

[capssy]

cheers mate at this point im kinda teaching myself as i go so its good to hear some positive feed back im an engineer by trade but this is my first really big car project so im trying to do the lot in my shed to teach myself (only thing i wont be doing is painting because im terrible at it and it will only end badly) yeah i know about the charger prices but i think there quite reasonable in comparison to the Australian muscle era cars and bang for your buck.

well update time i decided my trailing arms i boxed were not up to my standard so started from scratch, reason for boxing these is because people have had problems with bending these arms under high hp launches with slicks i've even seen pictures of them bending on dyno's. I had another set of arms here so i pulled them out they were earlier arms which is no problem because the only difference is a spot welded bracket on them for the hand brake cable so off that sucker came




here's what happens when they bend hope no one minds sharing a link

http://i73.photobucket.com/albums/i2...103_153447.jpg

got some plates laser cut this time was so much easier than hand cutting also looks heaps neater



tacked and stitch welded them in i didnt join the welds due to potential for cracking along the welds



my welding its average i know but any pointer's that can be given is great still kinda getting used to my new mig

[capssy]

update
got my diff back from media blasting came up pretty good



also disassembled my steering coloum to solid mount my shift light if you haven't seen these gizzmo shift lights before there such a sweet piece of gear carbon fiber super light and don't take up much space perfect for where i want to put it. i also polished my steering coloum the visible portion anyway came up pretty nice :D.

[capssy]

so i decided to move my coils off the engine and into the plenum to cover up the coils i got a fiber glass panel made up so i decided to give it a test fit had to make some small mods but it came up quite good




also striped the shell bare and sent it to the blasters to get engine bay and the outside of the windscreens cleaned up

[Auto Rod Technologies]

Can't wait to see this one finished up!!

[capssy]

got the car back from blasting and off to a mates panel shop i wasn't happy with the engine bay so we pulled all the spot welds and removed the strut skirts blasting showed up a few previous repairs that i didn't know about so i picked up an arrow straight donor front cut off a 80,000km wreck for the strut skirt panels no one makes any repro panels for these that fit so gotta do what you've gotta do
heres the front with the skirts removed

[capssy]

also began cleaning up the fuel tank i bare metaled it then used a steel filler to fix a couple of very shallow dents that would have annoyed me. the tank i used is off a later model vs commodore i didn't want the 90l factory tank so the 80l was the next best option to reduce a bit of weight still hold a fair amount of fuel and gain a little ground clearance it also has a slightly better swirl pot setup. Only thing ill have to to to fit it is make new tank straps to suit the shallower tank other than that it will fit as factory BONUS



i also sound deadened the top of the tank where it contacts the body

[drktrrs]

Looks like it would make an awesome formula drift car

[MrBlonde]

Keen to watch your progress mate!

[capssy]

no update as yet but im wondering if someone has the expertise to help me im changing my ls1 windage tay due to a sump swap ive only ever installed a windage tray on a fresh build and im concerned loosening off the windage tray nuts may affect my main cap torques has anyone had an issue like this or am i just being paranoid

[capssy]

small update been working on the shell will have pics up soon but we got the tank high filled and all painted up came up pretty sweet colour coded it to the wheel centres