Cutting floor with G-Bar/Air Ride suspension???

[scherp69]

Has anyone ever had to cut their floor to get the G-Bar or air ride rear suspension to fit? Mine's going into a 68 Acadian (Nova), but I'm also wondering about other cars. It's always been advertised a bolt in, so I'm just curious. Before I cut the floor, I'm going to go and take some pics and post them. Any advice would be great. Thanks in advance.

[scherp69]

Here's the pics.
Main brace in place

Gap between frame and brace

Where's it's hitting the floor

Also where it's hitting the floor



In the third photo, the black lines are felt lines where I will have to cut.

[dhutton]

I had the same problem with my 69 Firebird but to a lesser degree. I was able to beat on the trunk floor with a rubber mallet to push it up a little and then welded in some small shims to get the G-Bar to fit tight. I asked around and no one said they had seen this problem before. I assumed it was just my bad luck.

Don

[justanova]

it may be a case of the production tolerances from the 60's being far worse than that of airrides so some minor "adjustments may need to be made. I'm sure the airride guys will chime in here

[absintheisfun]

I dont have one yet, but will soon...

is it possible it is not lined up correctly? (again, I speak from inexperience)

how do you tell you have it set the correct place?

[Bowtie1z28]

I am just getting started on my G-Bar install in my 2nd Gen Camaro and have run into some fitment issues. One issue is the holes in the Pass side frame rail bracket do not line up with the bump stop tapped frame holes. The other issue is due to having a Ford 9" the weld on axle brackets will wind up on the edge of the center housing not the axle tube as they should be and were desiged to be with a 10/12 bolt GM rear. Both Mark at SC&C and Alston told me I would need to open the holes some and grind the brackets to provide the right fit. Although not excited about having to do this on a "bolt in" kit I also understand that the factory placement of holes are not always where they should be and of course I am not using the rear end the package was developed around. In the end It will work out fine just going to take a little more planning, effort and time. Good luck with what ever direction you go, just take your time. The rules apply here as in construction.........measure twice anc cut once!

[ProdigyCustoms]

Mike, you can jack the brace up and it should go into place. I have run into this in a few installs. It does seem to be car and crossmember tolerence. Get each off a tennie and the hammer must come out. I would put a block under on corner, bolt it, then go to the other side, jack it and bolt that side. Then plug weld it.

[scherp69]

Mike, you can jack the brace up and it should go into place. I have run into this in a few installs. It does seem to be car and crossmember tolerence. Get each off a tennie and the hammer must come out. I would put a block under on corner, bolt it, then go to the other side, jack it and bolt that side. Then plug weld it.

Thanks Frank. I'll try that in the morning. If I find when I'm jacking it up it's putting too much pressure on the floor, I may just cut the indents of the floor out to give me that extra little bit. Thanks to everyone else also for your replies. Will post pics when I get everything mocked up.

[dhutton]

Sounds like this is a known issue with the Air Bar and G Bar. Why would CA not modify their design to give a little more clearance? I tried jacking mine up but it doesn't help when you're working on a bare shell, there isn't enough weight.

Are you listening CA? Why don't you fix your design? The least you could do is acknowledge the problem when customers call you for help.

Don

[Fesler built]

You do not have to cut it at all, just follow what Frank stated all these cars are different and you can beat it into place, bolt it in and tach weld it to keep it strong. I do not think we have had a car yet that it just falls into place on with out any beating. you do not need to cut your floor out as you will make more work for your self. Good luck and post it up here when you have it in place.

[jb@ridetech]

We have seen this before, but never enough to cut, we just use a rubber mallet, and like justanova says the tollerance in the 60's were nothing like today. we have installed these on many cars, we have only ran into it on 1 car that i know of. and it was a easy fix.

[silver69camaro]

If I find when I'm jacking it up it's putting too much pressure on the floor

Not sure if that's even possible. Too much force when jacking it into place would just raise the body up. You'd be surprised how flexible the sheetmetal is. Should turn out great.

[whytry]

If you go airbar they probably want it as close as possible to the existing body, so you have more travel with the airbags...

[darren@ridetech]

We have been selling these AirBars systems for about 3-4 years now. We kits for the 64-70 Mustang, 67-69 Camaro, 70-81 Camaro, 62-67 Nova, 68-74 Nova, 55-57 Chevy, 60-64 Galaxie, 70-74 Mopar E Body and the 68-70 Mopar B Body.

Being in the sales/tech dept. here I have the honor of talking to customers who are having installation problems. The only two cars that I have ran into the OCCASIONAL tolerance issue with are the 55-57 Chevy (frame width can vary 3/4" from one vehicle to the next) and the 67-69 Camaro (same problem Sherp69 is having.) The Nova is virtually the same as the Camaro, we designed the Nova kit on our 70 Nova.

Obviously the Camaro that we designed this kit on did not have this problem. However we did run into this problem on another Camaro that we installed the kit on, but a few swings of a hammer to the floor pan cured the problem. I have only heard of a few other customers having this problem.

[ProdigyCustoms]

Looks like a happy ending. A little pressure from some jacks and it was in.

See it installed here:

https://www.pro-touring.com/forum/sh...ad.php?t=42214

[dhutton]

We have been selling these AirBars systems for about 3-4 years now. We kits for the 64-70 Mustang, 67-69 Camaro, 70-81 Camaro, 62-67 Nova, 68-74 Nova, 55-57 Chevy, 60-64 Galaxie, 70-74 Mopar E Body and the 68-70 Mopar B Body.

Being in the sales/tech dept. here I have the honor of talking to customers who are having installation problems. The only two cars that I have ran into the OCCASIONAL tolerance issue with are the 55-57 Chevy (frame width can vary 3/4" from one vehicle to the next) and the 67-69 Camaro (same problem Sherp69 is having.) The Nova is virtually the same as the Camaro, we designed the Nova kit on our 70 Nova.

Obviously the Camaro that we designed this kit on did not have this problem. However we did run into this problem on another Camaro that we installed the kit on, but a few swings of a hammer to the floor pan cured the problem. I have only heard of a few other customers having this problem.

Sorry but I just don't get it. I see multiple reports of this problem in this thread alone. One person says that he has yet to see one that doesn't require beating with a rubber mallet to make it fit. I don't recall reading this need to massage the fit in the instructions. Certainly no one fessed up to it when I was having trouble. How difficult would it be for you to work with CA to improve the clearance by a half inch or less to completely eliminate this problem? How difficult would it be for them to implement a fix?

Don

[darren@ridetech]

Moving it down will affect ride height and such as well, but we are looking into that.
It is being added to the instructions.

[AccuAir]

We ran into the same issue with ours. We put some pressure on it with jacks and the sheet metal gave pretty easily. Before reading this thread, I figured that it was designed to be that tight... I would rather have it tight on that sheet metal rather than have an 1/8" clearance that ends up creating the rattle that you can never find.

[darren@ridetech]

We really appreciate the feedback guys. It's hard to fix a problem that we are not aware of.

[thomaspe]

To all,

I had a similar problem installing the Airbar system in my 67 Camaro Convertible. However, I had replaced the ENTIRE back half of the car (frame rail, full floor, full trunk, DSE mini tubs, full qtrs, etc). When I mocked up the Airbar, it fouled with my trunk floor. No biggie, I did not want to "beat" to fit, so I marked both sides of the Airbar. Then I cut out the floor & welded in an inverted 1 1/2" x 1 1/2" x 1/8" angle (upsided down Vee). This gave me clearance for no rubbing & room for Lizard Skin. Cant really tell after seam seal / epoxy primer / coating!! Took about 3 hrs to do. Sometimes you have to do things like that on 40 year old cars with repop parts!

Regards,

Thomas