Dmax camaro

[dslhtrdr]

I bought my Camaro from my mom when I was 18 and built it as a high school "senior project" which was required for graduation. After I graduated, I drove it around town and to work all summer, until it started raining in October of '06. Since it had quite a bit of rot (or at least what I considered quite a bit) I decided it was time to tear it all apart and restore the body.



I had the body dipped to remove all the rust, bondo, etc. and got to see what I was up against. It became clear that it was wrecked a couple times in the early to mid 70's before my mom owned it and was "repaired" very poorly. It needed a lot of work.

As time went on, money became scarce, family became divided, and my car sat for 6 years. So in January of '12, I decided it's now or never. I made a deal with my boss to keep my Camaro at the body shop I work at so I could work on it and fix it the way it should be fixed. I've tried my best to take as many pictures as I could along the way. All of the body work was done by me.

Day 1 right after my lunch break from trailering to the shop and mounting it on my rotisserie.

Super Bowl Sunday morning started cutting out the old sheet metal. The rest of these were taken over about a 6 week period working on Saturdays.




I had attempted to replace a crumpled frame rail a few years back and realized it was a lost cause. You can see the end of it through a cut out in the trunk floor.


A shot of the new rocker panel spliced in.

New right quarter test fit.

New tail panel test fit.

[dslhtrdr]

Here's how I patched in the driver side quarter. Since I had to screw around with fixing the door gap on the passenger side quarter (which I don't have pictures of...) I decided to patch the drivers side. I taped out the perimeter of my cut, cut out the old rotten wheel well, removed and treated some surface rust, etch primed and sealed everything, traced out my new patch panel with the old quarter on top of the new, cut it out, punched out a lot of holes for my spot welds, and then welded it on.

[dslhtrdr]

I cut out a portion of the dash that was rotten. Forgot to take pictures of the finished product.







Then I started on the floors.










I removed all the surface rust, seam sealed and sprayed primer sealer on the floor inside and underneath. I also patched a couple spots on the passenger side but again, I forgot to take pictures.

[dslhtrdr]

On my birthday in February I drove down to Pinole, CA and bought my rear axle. I found it on craigslist the night before. It's a Chris Alston's Chassisworks Fab9 housing with their eliminator 2 4 link brackets. I got the link bars with heims, wish bone locator, brake rotors, calipers, aluminum 3rd with 3.89's, Moser 40 spline axles and spool, 11/16" wheel studs, hardware, anti roll bar, coil over shocks and a few other things. I got a really good deal and couldn't pass it up.

[dslhtrdr]

I bought my rear subframe kit from Chassisworks. It's their Eliminator 2 rear frame kit. My friend/coworker/future brother in law Bernie has helped me through this portion of the project. All of the welding on the rear subframe has been done by him.

[dslhtrdr]

[MichaelUser]

Great plan. I love the PPE Chevelle too. That is one heavy engine (800 # dry) so plan for the additional weight, but you know that.
That makes me want to build a car with the new Cummins 5.0L-V8 that will be in the Nissan Titan's coming soon.
Good luck.

[dslhtrdr]

The anti roll bar kit I got with the axle turned out to be garbage so I bought a new kit.

[dslhtrdr]

Great plan. I love the PPE Chevelle too. That is one heavy engine (800 # dry) so plan for the additional weight, but you know that.
That makes me want to build a car with the new Cummins 5.0L-V8 that will be in the Nissan Titan's coming soon.
Good luck.

I planned ahead, trust me. The Duramax weighs practically the same as an all iron BBC. The chassisworks G machine subframe can easily handle it, as well as everything else I built into the car, as you can see from my pics.

[dslhtrdr]

Measured 25" forward of the rear axle centerline to mark the floor for my cut for the front crossmember.







Then I got to cutting.







This is what it looked like before.

[dslhtrdr]

Here's some random pictures of some mud work and how it looked before the final prime.







I got the whole car in it's second prime, basically ready to be final blocked for paint. I wanted to get this done before we started back-halving it.

[dslhtrdr]

Here's right after I finished cutting out the rear floor. Looks like a pretty big hole to fill.

[dslhtrdr]

Here's the rear tubular crossmember tacked in place.



We made fish plates to weld to the inner rockers so there was a stronger foundation for the front crossmember to attach to. Bernie finished the spot welds after I took the pics.

[dslhtrdr]

I went to Reliable Hardware and Steel in Santa Rosa And bought a 6' long, 6" wide by 1/8th" thick piece of steel for the fish plates and this new inner rear body that Bernie fabricated. We held it in place with the bumper bolt holes, and drilled holes in the tail panel to weld them together.





Bernie notched and bent the center of the plate to clear the license plate hole, and it was the perfect amount to weld the trunk latch support to. Funny how things work out unintentionally sometimes.

[dslhtrdr]

We wanted to get a little more motivation early on so we put the wheels and tires on. I looks a little weird like this...




Here's the rear subframe with everything mocked up. Almost ready to disassemble it and get it in the car.

[dslhtrdr]

Some quick pics of when we were trying to establish the rear axle center line. The stock camaro wheel tubs left much to be desired as far as wide tires are concerned.







The drivers side didn't stick out as much because I had a DSE mini tub on that side. When I did the mini tub, I realized that the car was wrecked bad enough on the other side that we couldn't go forward with the mini tubs, which led to back halving the car 6 years later...

[dslhtrdr]

It took a lot of maneuvering and cutting, then notching the package tray and driveshaft tunnel to get the subfame in. But when we finally got it in, it fit like a glove.

[dslhtrdr]

That's it for now, it's getting late and I gotta be up early for work. I'll post more pics for you guys tomorrow.

[Buryingthesun]

this looks mighty awesome!

[cwylie]

You did the mini tubs and then cut them out?