Project Fool's Gold

[PARKERRS]

I didn't specify anything in particular. I told them the extra depth and width and what I would be doing with the car along with the engine set-up. I also specified a Walbro 255lph pump and left the rest to the guys at Rick's. Hopefully it's right, if I have problems on track then I'll pull it and modify to suit.

[formula]

sounds good to me, I just am having a ton of trouble drawing to the bottom of the tank (mine is a modded stock unit) and have heard that some have had similar problems with rick's units in first gen cars, but they may have this sorted out by now....

[cdoggy81]

Wes, what about the Spectra tanks? For $450 it may be a cheap answer.

[WS6]

Spectra only has tanks for early 2nd gens unless something has changed. I thought about that for my car as well. Nothing was available so I cut and modded my tank

[cdoggy81]

hmm..... :(

[protour73]

Come on Tommy...........................let's see some update pics!!!!!

[RJ66]

Hi Tom, I hope I don't have to wait to see up to date pictures of "Fools Gold" till the Motor State Challenge.


Randy(D&Z Customs LLC.)
[email protected]
1-262-347-9741

[paintitblack08]

Haha well guys he would put pics up if he could but his camera is all screwed up now and has missing memory cards. Guess that's what happens when you trust the In-Laws with your good equipment! HAHAHA!

[PARKERRS]

Like the header says, I've been missing for way too long on this project. Several things held me up.
Scheduling and getting the car in at Bell's chassis for the roll bar work sucked up a couple of months. Then I went to my interior guy's shop to mock-up the custom interior. This really got out of hand, we've been friends since high school and I was helping at night and it was going good. Then my friend found a new girlfriend that he was very serious about, this was the end of working on it at night. I told him to just do it during the day like any other customer and charge me, well friends figure that friends will understand and wait while they do other projects. This meant my car stayed on the back burner for way too long. Every interior panel is hand built and fitted, door panels, qaurter panels, package tray, seats and console as well as modifying the dash of my choice to fit the down bars. All of this held the car up for 14 months, way too long.
Now it is back at the body shop where several other custom touches have been added to make it have a sleeker appearance. The car has been primed and blocked six times fully assembled, then completely disassembled and placed back on the rottiserie. The bottom is recieving final detailing and prep and should be sprayed next week. After that I'll finally have some update pictures.
Once the bottom is sprayed, I will place it back on the suspension and it will be ready for color. It also spent a few weeks at Exotic exhaust having headers and 3 inch exhaust with X pipe custom fabbed.

[PARKERRS]

Ok guys I finally have some pictures and a real update.

I wanted to stiffen the car with a bar for track time and auto-x. DSE sells the main hoop, cross bar and rear down bars as a kit. They however do not sell the forward portion of the bar like the one in their 70 test car due to the age of the cars and body variations. This meant that I would have to do this part myself.

Since I don't have the equipment to bend 1 5/8 DOM tubing, and I'm also not a TIG welder and don't have a tig, I contracted Bell's Chassis here in north Georgia to build it to my specs. A life long buddy of mine owns and operates a machine shop, so we turned and milled a pair of heavy steel bolt together fittings for where the bar comes through the firewall. After that I left the mocked-up car with Joey Bell for a few weeks. Man do they do nice work, and it came out exactly as planned.











All in all it came out really tight, nice and how I envisioned.

[PARKERRS]

After getting the interior mocked-up and built ready to cover the car went back to the body shop.
After reading about James Shipka's One Lap Camaro and Steve Rupp's Bad penny which both use the same three link rear suspension, it was evident that a rear sway bar would be needed to tune it in. I'm not sure what rate bar will actually be neccesary, but fitting one before paint is easier. I sourced a bar from Helwig which was designed by David Pozzi for the OLC car. The clearance for the end links was the problem. We cut the rear floor pan and built two pockets which will both mount the end-links and provide clearance for the bar ends.



Hopefully this will give a good start, as the rear bar is adjustable. If it doesn't work out then helwig can make a different rate bar by this pattern, which would make it a simple swap out with no fab work to be done.
Friday the bottom of the car was painted.







The filling and smoothing of the firewall with one of the new weld-in DSE close outs was finished today and will be sprayed tomorrow.
Once that is done the car will get back on it's suspension for the final time. Painting of the top side will begin then as it has already been blocked 7 times while assembled and mocked-up.
It's starting to feel like Christmas. The ceramic and powder coating came back today. The tank and annodized parts will ship in next week. I used the previous tank when switching my grey 73 to fuel injection. This allowed me to order a new one for this project with the all new vaporworx fuel system including the Pressureworx pwm controller.

[craigs73]

wow it looks pretty clean under there ..... good work ;-)

[Rybar]

Looks good man, thanks for posting the updates. These things always run off track, dont worry.

[Hotwire]

Tommy the car is looking fantastic! Can't wait to see it running at RTTH! ;) Good luck with it and please do keep the updates coming.

[David Sloan]

Looking really good Tommy
Hope to see you guys @RTTH.

[PARKERRS]

Thanks for the comments guys. I should have another update by the weekend.

[PARKERRS]

New update! The firewall has been finished and sprayed. I waited till the last minute to do this which turned out great as DSE decided to market a weld in panel for second gen. firewalls. Here it is in place, fit and qaulity were excellent as always with DSE. I think the semi-circle area for the front down bar hit perfect considering we put the bar in over a year before this panel was marketed or made.







I purchased a set of billet trunk hinges from Eddie Motorsports. They come bare aluminum finish, so we used them this way for pre-fit and mock-up. After dis-assembly I carried these along with my DSE battery hold down to a local business I use and had them black hard coat annodized. I think they came out nice.







More to come next week.

[FRENCHBLUE72]

Im getting in late on this build but damn I cant help it very nice work..

[dropit69]

Comon Tommy..i know youhato be doing something to the car..ya skipped RTTH for some reason..lol

[daveybtv]

WoW I love the second gen Camaro's.. awesome build!