'Streamline' 1968 camaro project

[camaros down under]

Do you see many aussie cars in Americaland?
Customs will be scratching their heads as they're used to sending muscle to Australia.
I agree with the stopping point. Get it 'finished' and enjoy it. Then later work out if you want little mods here and there

[minendrews68]

Hey James,
This car is going to be beautiful, Great work! I have a question though, (well actually a lot of questions) but I won't bother you with all of them. Does the late model dash actually fit into the early Camaro, width wise? Meaning, the padded part of the dash does/doesn't have to be altered? Does it fit between the posts? I know there's a lot of work goes on in the fab part of this. Really cool how this is going to end up.
Thanks,
Carl

[slimjim]

Do you see many aussie cars in Americaland?
Customs will be scratching their heads as they're used to sending muscle to Australia.
I agree with the stopping point. Get it 'finished' and enjoy it. Then later work out if you want little mods here and there

No none at all, However there is a guy here in NC who converts pontiac G8's into utes haha

Hey James,
This car is going to be beautiful, Great work! I have a question though, (well actually a lot of questions) but I won't bother you with all of them. Does the late model dash actually fit into the early Camaro, width wise? Meaning, the padded part of the dash does/doesn't have to be altered? Does it fit between the posts? I know there's a lot of work goes on in the fab part of this. Really cool how this is going to end up.
Thanks,
Carl

Fire away, I'm always more than happy to help.
Width wise, the dash fits surprisingly well, the pictures below will show it.
But it is much, much deeper and needs to be trimmed back a lot! It's all in place now and looks quite at home, I'm really liking it. The dash actually isn't padded anywhere, it's just plastic and can be cut easily, but it fits in-between the posts no problem at all.
we'll need to make some custom side panels to close it out and figure a way to tie it into the A-pillars, and then make custom door cards to bring it all together but that is future james's problem, for now I just want to wrap-up the fabrication, which is very close, I sat inside the car today so we could figure the best way to mount the seats, and custom seat brackets will be made as low as possible, also some further reinforcing of the floor now that it has been modified to allow for the wider seats.
Then it'll all be removed in a couple weeks and we'll sand it back to bare metal before having the interior sand blasted a little and put it all back in epoxy.

[slimjim]

Some more finishing touches on the dash should see it fitting perfect. The stock end caps to the dash just wouldn't work and they whipped these up relatively quick and they look great! Also, to fit the wider seat we removed the 68 setup and made all new mounting points and reinforced the floor to compensate.





And now the car has been completely disassembled again, sanded off all of the epoxy that comes on the replacement panels as occasionally it can hide some rusty defects from their manufacturing process(and it was). On monday we have her booked in for some sandblasting and perhaps we'll be reassembling her by the end of next week once it all receives another coat of SPI epoxy.

[slimjim]

The body came back in record time from the blaster so we got it in epoxy straight away. Fortunately there were no new surprises so now it is just finishing the other panels by removing of the old epoxy before applying the new. I'm very excited to see it all in one color finally.

[Motown 454]

It looks good all sealed up. I wish I had used the top of the 5th gen trans tunnel on my car for the extra transmission room and to mount my 5th gen console. It's coming along nice.

[slimjim]

Thanks, there should be plenty of room for any transmission and now it all looks like it came this way. I'm dying to get it home so I can put some time into the interior

[Ben@SpeedTech]

Coming along nicely. I like the fitment of everything, and those closeout panels for the dash were spot on. Really nice work going on there.

[Jimmy]

Wow this build is incredible! I can't believe the amount of time and effort that's going into the build! You're gonna be stoked when it's done, can't wait to see it through to the end.

[slimjim]

Coming along nicely. I like the fitment of everything, and those closeout panels for the dash were spot on. Really nice work going on there.

Wow this build is incredible! I can't believe the amount of time and effort that's going into the build! You're gonna be stoked when it's done, can't wait to see it through to the end.

Thanks guys, I never had a real timeline planned for the build as it's just a hobby but I'm excited to get it home so I can finally spend more time on it. I don't have a massive budget but I spare some money from every paycheck, that will now be going towards saving/ building the engine and then paint, all while planning a wedding... I'm hoping the build won't slow down too much over the coming months although it wouldn't surprise me if it does (the finance' calls it "priorities"). I can't do bodywork so I've had to outsource that entirely up until this point, All while travelling to these shops to do any mechanical work, but I'll have many more updates once it is home and I can put my own touches on the car. Finally it is a complete rolling unit ready for assembly

[jdsegars]

REALLY a nice build going there. Now you have me thinking even more about some things I need to be doing on my own project! Thanks....I think;)

[slimjim]

I wrote some stuff here regarding other decisions but they went nowhere and photobucket has since deleted the pictures, lets leave this space blank

[slimjim]

This excites me! I love the brushed wheels against the black body..

[Motown 454]

It does look nice.

[OldTimer]

An amazing thread... can't wait to see the finished car. Love the attention to detail.

[nicks67camaro]

I love finding builds that have such great work!

What was to verdict on the ride tech spindles with this combination?

[slimjim]

I love finding builds that have such great work!

What was to verdict on the ride tech spindles with this combination?

Thanks mate, the ridetech spindle works fine. I ran into problems with the hubs and brake brackets I chose, eventually however, we it made all to work.

[slimjim]

one color at last!!

A few little finishing touches like flush bumpers, some trimming on the hood intake, wiper test fitting etc, just to make sure everything fits right, and then I'm onto the next step.

[ryeguy2006a]

That car is so bad! Love that stinger hood!

[minendrews68]

Man, the dash and steering turned out very nice! Did you have any problems using the late model steering wheel assembly?