67 Camaro - Dad and Son build

[boostin05blacksti]

In the past week we have mounted the drivers coil pack in the drivers fender out of the way from heat being that I felt it was too close to the header. I also ordered and recieved a full magnaflow exhaust (15899) for the car. After some tweeking and a little welding it is on..full 3" dumping right before the rear..I have to get some pictures..In other news I bought a used anvil spoiler from a member on here..Thanks Brian. So I had Timmy mount that last night..Let me tell you that having your brand new carbon trunk lid drilled into is not a pleasant thing..but shes all done now..

So im hoping the car can go to be broke in/tuned this saturday and then I can wrap up the small things to get the car on the road for a shake down this summer. Between me, my brother, cousin, friends and the old man a lot of man hours have been put in recently to get her ready. There is still a lot to be done but the car is far enough alone at the moment to be tuned. Or so I hope...

Heres my done list as of right now...

Mount ecu/relay panel - done
Fill transmission with fluid - done
Fill rear with fluid - done
Tighten all rear bolts/hardware - done
Mount driver coil packs - done
Bleed clutch - done
Tighty up wires for ecu/under dash - done
Install coolant overflow - done
Install driveshaft - done

Still needs to be done...
Install E-Brake
Recheck the driveline angle, adjust
Put clamps on the filler neck
Re-bleed brakes
Install steering box & column - box is done...still have to do the column
Hook up return for power steering line
Wire turn/Healight signal lights inside the car
Install VSS pigtail
Install passenger seat
Install front, rear, windows
Figure out why tach is not working
Figure out why volt is not working
Do final run for water temp wire

[68firebird]

Can you please show me or tell me how you mounted the autometer speedometer and tach in the stock dash bezel. I've been trying to figure out a good way to get it to work, but haven't liked what I've come up with so far. Car is coming along great by the way, that motor is gonna be a beast!

[boostin05blacksti]

Thanks for stopping by Rene. The car is at the shop at the moment but when I get it back I have to do some more wiring Ill snap a shot for you.

So the car was set up to go to the tuner on Saturday. After a long Friday night it was as ready as it could be. They will be breaking the motor in and then tuning it all on the dyno. So my dad and brother got over on Saturday and we loaded the car up. Well the car is so low that the headers/exhaust where giving us problems. Once I get it back I will be addressing all these problems. I’m thinking that either way the headers are coming off and I'm going to have them pulled closer to the floor for more clearance. I will probably have to raise the front of the car a bit also and do some rolling/pulling to the front fenders to not have any issues in the future. Other than that the front chin spoiler was making me nervous so we pulled that off before loading it. We get to the shop and start to unload it but half way down the ramp the car stops. Final we drag it off jack the rear of the car up and try to spin the wheel. Won't move at all. So I crack the bleeder screw and then they turn. The head shop guy named Dale thinks either there was too much fluid and it wasn’t breathing?? Anyone have any suggestions or herd of this..? Makes no sense to me...they are going to dig in and hopefully fix it without costing me too much. More progress as I hear it..Here are some pictures from the weekend.






Also here is the video from last week that my brother took with the exhaust on dumped before the rear axle.

[68firebird]

When you gettin the car back?

[boostin05blacksti]

So I disappeared for awhile but have been working on the car. After a week at injection connection Dale called me and said there was a couple issues with the car.

1) The brakes where locking up and won't release.
2) The motor threw the belt
3) Both axel seals are leaking
4) The ecu is throwing a crank relearn code and won't take the relearn.

So I went and picked up the car. He did put a rough tune on it to keep the car running. I brought the car home took all the brake lines apart and blew everything out with air and bleed them all again. Fixed the issue. The crank pulley I'm not really sure on this one. I changed the crank pulley to another one which I don't think did anything. The crank pulley is still in 3/16". I'm still working on this issue. I called moser and got new axles seals and was told on the phone that the fill on there rear is NOT on the rear cover. It's located on the passenger side pumpkin. So between installing the old seals without a seal installer and it being way over full. That issue has been fixed. The crank relearn me and my buddy John tried to fix with a tech II but again is didn't take. Luckily Dale figured out that the values can be turned to 0%, which is what we did.

So once all these issues where addressed. I set up to bring the car back on August 3. That's what we did. Got the car there around 11 and was all done by 3. Great experience with injection connect. Dales got a great crew and is very knowledgable with these cars. Being that it was 90+ outside and high humidity Dale feels there is a bit left on the table, so there might be a retune in the fall..now I was told the car made around 540hp & 570tq at the wheels. But when I look at the graph it shows differently..who knows. Here a quick dyno video and the graph.






So now I still have a few things to do until I can register her and actually take her out. Here's the list

1)install front and rear windows
2)wire turn signals
3)put bulbs in turn signals and tail lights
4)buy and install front and rear sway bars
5)get longer power steering lines
6)dial in suspension and get an alignment
7)recheck driveline angles.
8)do big smokey burnout with some skynyrd blasting and get a video for YouTube!!!

[boostin05blacksti]

So not too much going on in the last month. I’ve been pushing hard to get the car on the road, which has happened. Got the front and back windows installed without the trim for the moment. (Going to try to go flush mount when they come back out for paint and ditch the trim all together if I can) Put the front grill in, all new bulbs in the whole car. So everything works at the moment. Bought and installed ridetechs muscle bar. Had to trim the frame where they welded on these big corner things on the front of the shock towers. Other than that it fit perfectly with my stock lower control arms. I’ll have to get some pictures up. Also my birthday has passed and my wonderful wife bought me a wood nardi wheel for my birthday which has also been installed.


So after all that was done I really wanted to get over to the last car show of the year on august 28th. It was around 5 miles from the house. So the night before I got the car registered which gave me 5 days to drive it before inspection. I had the car registered under standard plates. Not antique or classic - which in PA require no annual inspection of any kind but you can only drive the car 1 day a week and it should be to or from some type of car event. I didn’t build the car to not drive it so that weighed my decision. Which opened up a whole can of worms with inspection. So Tuesday comes and I head out to the car show with some friends and I get about a mile before the show and the car throws a check engine light and goes into limp mode at a red lights. We pushed the car to a driveway and it literally dies out. Before it died I looked at the volt meter and it was reading around 8 volts. So I knew it was something to do with the charging system. Got the car towed through hagerty which is part of my insurance. So all in all it worked out. Come to find out that the alternator was not receiving signal from the ecu. Fixed the issue and everything is now working correctly. Big thanks to John over at PSI for the great customer service in figuring out the problem with me. So on this past Saturday I took the car over to the inspection shop to have it looked over to figure out what I need to have done to legally get a sticker. Here is my next list of problems to be addressed:

1)Need windshield wipers
2)Exhaust needs to exit the rear of the car
3)Need a drivers mirror
4)Needs rear reverse lights
5)Seat belts need to be installed
6)Horn needs to work

All of these seem to not be too bad with the exception of the pipes and the wiper. I really dont want to have to put out money for the custom pipes from prodigy. Im thinking I am going to try my self to get them mocked up and then have them welded at a shop. My labor is free. For the wipers I dont have the cash for the dse kit which is what I want. Im going to try to make the stocker work for the time being and see if that gets me by. I have to buy a side window and the rear rs lights as I dont have them..so if anyone has some used parts please feel free to let me know..we can barter also. Here are some pictures from the last month. More to come..

[John Wright]

Man...you are getting SO close to having that thing on the road. Keep up the good work.

[boostin05blacksti]

So not too much really going on at the moment but I am still moving along with the car..the car passed inspection after I fixed these issues:

1)Installed and put on new windshield wipers
2)Exhaust now exits the rear of the car
3)Installed a drivers mirror
4)Hooked up the rear reverse lights
5)Installed Seat belts
6)Hooked up the Horn

Drove the car for a bit but a check engine light keeps coming up for tps..after doing some digging on this the ecu has to have the parameters changed for the throttle due to it being a 102 and aftermarket. Talked to Dale and he said bring the car in and he'll take care of it no problem..so I still have to do that. There is two things keeping me from doing this..one is no ebrake and the other is the weather has been getting colder so Ill have to pick a nice day to try to get over there before winter hits being that I have no side windows or heat. For the ebrake I just finished installing this last night. it works but not great. I have to make a few more adjustments and I think it will work great. Have to get some pictures of this.

In other news after driving for a bit I felt that the shifter/steering wheel/right leg area was to tight and I wanted to try to free up some space..so the first thing I did was to try to adjust the shifter and change the position to get it more towards the passenger side a bit. Well I failed at that after breaking 2 allen sockets and the allen key head off in the first bolt. The next day a quick call to Josh over at American Powertrain he tells me that the whole shifter I have it old and they have since revised it to have an internal seal to stop it from seeping. He offers to send me a brand new one and for me to just send the old one back. So that’s what I did...got the new one and took me around 2-3 hours to install. It was a bit tight in that tunnel trying to take out and replace 6 allen bolts by hand...but its done now and I can adjust it. Got some more room from that but I still wanted more so I started looking for a tilt column. Steve Rupp had a brushed aluminum ididit one for sale and I bought it from him and as always what a pleasure to do business with him. Called up ididit and ordered their steering wheel adapter and new rag joint. Got the order and the rag joint was wrong (my fault, counted the splines wrong) sent back the wrong one and am waiting on the new one to come back. Did a quick mock up with the column and with the tilt feature I think this room issue will be resolved all together.

So being that I can’t leave anything alone. I talked to Timmy the other day and we talked about starting the paint process over the winter..so he came over last Sunday and we pulled the whole front end apart so he could take the front fenders and weld up the lower extension to the fenders to give the car a cleaner look. He is also going to get me the primer I need to lay on the car for the blocking..ect. I also ordered the semi-gloss hotrod black single stage that will cover all the interior panels, dash, whole engine compartment, and rear tail panel. So that will get started in the near future. There’s lots of scuffing/blocking and prep work to be done so if your around the area and want to lend a hand let me know. The beer and food are on me.

And for my last update ill let the last picture do the talking..haha..






Much more to come..

[vette427-sbc]

Coming along nicely... Love the plate!

[ryeguy2006a]

Awesome project!! I just read through the whole thing. Lots of great work!! What color are you thinking? Will you leave the carbon panels unpainted or paint them?

[boostin05blacksti]

Awesome project!! I just read through the whole thing. Lots of great work!! What color are you thinking? Will you leave the carbon panels unpainted or paint them?

Thanks man. It will be painted a deep yellow with the z/28 stripes on the hood and trunk that will be left carbon. So far away it will look like black stripes untill you get up close. Just have to decide what I will do with the panel above the trunk area..

[boostin05blacksti]

So Timmy came over today being that the fenders where finished for now. I wanted to try to get over to the tuner soon to fix this check engine light that keeps coming up for the tps. Dale has to calibrate the parameters for the throttle body and that should fix the issue. I planned to drive the car over there and put some miles on the car too. Its about a half an hour from me so this would be the cars longest drive to date. So being that we blew the front end apart we reassembled it all again. The gaps and panels go together a bit easier now it seems or maybe I'm just getting good at it.. They have all been massaged in some way so I'm hoping that is the reason. The whole reason for this was to clean up the lines a bit and Timmy has came through again. It looks like it came from the factory like this. Actually when I showed some people they asked me what was done numerous times.. So I'm guessing the job looks good.

In the time I have been waiting for Timmy Ive been busy cleaning up some wiring, installed the parking brake set up, and I also finished installing the DSE wiper kit that I bought used for a good deal. Which went in awesome and works so much better that the stocker. Plus cleans it up a good bit too.

After all that I finished installing the new ididit steering column and getting that where I like it. Again a huge difference over stock, looks great and the adjustable was a must in my opinion. Next stop is back to the tuner for a quick fix and maybe even a colder weather tune... Well see..

Here is some pictures showing the stock position of the column and leg room or lack there of in 1st and 2nd..my right leg is touching the steering wheel



And now tilted all the way up. Hard to see but the steering wheel is no longer on my right leg when I'm on the gas pedal. I have about 2-3 inch of room between now. Same thing 1st and 2nd..



Overall view:

[sjaroslo]

Looking good, Steven! Fender/extension looks great welded together. You're my hero! :-)

[boostin05blacksti]

Thanks Steve. I hope all is going well on your build.

Got to work on the car last week some. The few times I have took the car out it has thrown a check engine light for tps. After getting the voltage readout I figured it just needed to be adjusted in the computer. Talked to Dale about it and he says he'll take care of it for free to just bring it in. Before this weekend the farthest the car has been is about 5 miles round trip and always in town. I have not had too much time and honestly been a bit nervous due to the check engine light. Then the cold weather cane and with no heat/side windows it was just adding fuel to my fire. Well last week I sat down and started figuring out the windows. The are all in which made my itch start to get the cel fixed. Being that I wanted to take the car over a half an hour away I didn't want my expensive fuel modual rattling around in the trunk anymore. I talked to Timmy about it and he did a great job as always.

So Saturday my brother cane over early and we made the maiden voyage. The car was great.. Seemed to track very well on the road. Felt good at 60-65 on the highway. There are defiantly some things to be addressed but overall I was very impressed and it seems a lot of others on the road where too. It felt great to get some actual seat time and get to know the car some. Got to the shop and was in and out within a half an hour for free as promised. Drove her home and no check engine light whatsoever. As I was about to pull into the drive way(now note that I had babied the car the WHOLE way there and back as I want to break it in correctly) I gave it a little more than half throttle and my brother looked like he was going to need a diaper. The wheels spun a bit and the rear started to slid.. Just enought to get his eyes big and make him get off his phone.. Good times.. All in all it went great.. Now I just wish it was warm out and with more day light. More to come.. Here are some pictures..

[boostin05blacksti]

Been busy lately. Got sick of scrapping on the headers and rubbing the tires. So after some though I decided to just go air. ridetech says that a car can be just as competitive on air as coils. With that being said I started looking. Well new kits are pretty expensive.. 4/5k -/+ I need to have the better of most things and this is no exception. I had a few bucks from Christmas and decided to try to find a used kit for less. Maybe something that will get me on air and then I can upgrade little by little. I found an older system that was made by ridetech. Guy wanted 2k and after a few email with pictures to Danny over at Ridetech I purchased the whole system for 1500. Thanks for all the help Danny! The big downfall to the system is the management system is very old but I plan to upgrade to the E3 when I get some money saved up again.

While all this was going on I took advantage of MCB Ridetech deal and purchased the tru-turn. So in the past week me and some friends installed it all. The tru turn original did not clear the drives tie rod with my dynatech headers. I did some digging and Chev67 has the same exact setup. After some talking to Jason (Chev67) he let me know that I need to put a 1/4" spacer under the pedestal mounts. After that was done everything cleared fine. Big thanks to Jason.

After all this work I was motivated to get my front wheels on. After some searching I found a very nice set of 275 KDW's for the fronts. Had them mounted and balanced and slapped them on. I still need to order the 1.5 " spacers which will be done this week.. Enough talk onto some pictures..








And Daddy's little helper..


Im thinking for this spring/summer Im going to do a semi-black or flat on the outside..cheap and easy and it will look badass.. Mr. Vengeance what do you think? Wanna come up and help me?

[Josh@Ridetech]

Been busy lately. Got sick of scrapping on the headers and rubbing the tires. So after some though I decided to just go air. ridetech says that a car can be just as competitive on air as coils. With that being said I started looking. Well new kits are pretty expensive.. 4/5k -/+ I need to have the better of most things and this is no exception. I had a few bucks from Christmas and decided to try to find a used kit for less. Maybe something that will get me on air and then I can upgrade little by little. I found an older system that was made by ridetech. Guy wanted 2k and after a few email with pictures to Danny over at Ridetech I purchased the whole system for 1500. Thanks for all the help Danny! The big downfall to the system is the management system is very old but I plan to upgrade to the E3 when I get some money saved up again.

While all this was going on I took advantage of MCB Ridetech deal and purchased the tru-turn. So in the past week me and some friends installed it all. The tru turn original did not clear the drives tie rod with my dynatech headers. I did some digging and Chev67 has the same exact setup. After some talking to Jason (Chev67) he let me know that I need to put a 1/4" spacer under the pedestal mounts. After that was done everything cleared fine. Big thanks to Jason.

After all this work I was motivated to get my front wheels on. After some searching I found a very nice set of 275 KDW's for the fronts. Had them mounted and balanced and slapped them on. I still need to order the 1.5 " spacers which will be done this week.. Enough talk onto some pictures..








And Daddy's little helper..


Im thinking for this spring/summer Im going to do a semi-black or flat on the outside..cheap and easy and it will look badass.. Mr. Vengeance what do you think? Wanna come up and help me?

This is awesome man! If you have any other questions give me a call man, I'd be happy to help you in any way! Keep it up!

[KnightMare]

I love that tag haha. great project

[boostin05blacksti]

Thanks man. I love it too..I can’t wait to see the ford owners reactions to it. Hopefully they can take a joke.

There has been lots to post so ill bring this back to the surface. The car has had some bad luck recently. The goal for this summer was to get the new wheels on the front. After some brief research into adapters I decided instead of paying 200+ for some custom adapters to make the wheels work I would talk to forgeline and see how much new lips/barrels where. I spoke to Mark over at forgeline and he has been great all the way around. I can’t say enough good things about him and his company. I had 8" barrels and 1.5" lips and we came up with me keeping a 9.5" wheel and changing them to 6" barrel and 3.5" lips bringing the backspacing to 5.6" and front spacing 4.9". Mark even sealed them together before shipping so all I would have to do it put the faces in and bolt them together. I received the assembled lips/barrels and it was just as talked about. I placed the centers in and hand tightened all the bolts down, then started going star pattern with the torque wrench. Got the first wheel done no issues and moved onto the second one. Got 3/4 of the way done and snapped one of the titanium arp bolts into the face. After talking with Steve over at forgeline he said send me the center. Well they extract the broken bolt and send it back. FOR FREE. He did just that..the wheel center was repaired and should be here today. Again thank you Mark and Steve for all the help and great customer service.








In other news I took advantage of MCB ridetechs sale in December and ordered the lower control arms to help with the clearance of the new wheels. They came in and being excited I put them on. After putting them on I could not get the wheel on. The hub was too far up into the wheel well. With the stock upper and lower control arms I had no issues getting the wheels on and off. I called ridetech and after some picture and talking we came to the conclusion that the used front bags that I bought where to short of a stroke. The new lower control arms have a 2-3" drop in the mounting pocket compared to the stock lower control arms. So basically in a nutshell I either need to order new front bags or run stock lower control arms. So for the time being I installed the stock lower control arms.

The next issue was my yellow top battery has been not holding a charge. Being that I bought it through jegs I called customer service and they said no problem. Send it back and we will send you a new one. Pulled the battery and sent it back on a saturday. On that Monday my little brother came over to help me get the tail pipes cut up and reshaped to fit around the rear bags when they are fully aired up without touching. We started around 8pm that night and we were done around 10:30. He says to me do you want to do anything else for the next half an hour. I just received the new lower control arms. So I said yea lets jack up the car and pull the wheels..ect. I always jack the car up under the center of the subframe. Well the car was a bit lower than normal because I didn’t air the front all the way up before I pulled the battery. Being tired and not thinking I went ahead and tried with the jack on the edge of the frame. Got it up almost all the way before the car rolled back a hair, slipped off the frame and the jack went right into the bottom of my radiator. A costly mistake on my part. The next day I talked to Tony at entropy radiators and he told me he would build me a new one for a lot less. Thank you Tony. I was told the lead time would be around 3-4 weeks but I didn’t have any extra cash at the moment so I was fine with the wait. A week later my wife tells me that she has a suprise for me. She went behind my back and ordered me a new radiator. Talk about an awesome woman. So this past weekend I replaced that.





Late last week I took my one good wheel and had the tire mounted to it to do some test fitting to see how much work needed to be done to the fenders to get the wheels to fit. I put the wheel on and it was close but after some rolling and talking with Timmy we decided to just make custom front fender wells. This was if I want to ride the car a little lower on the road it will work and I can take advantage of how low the car can go when parked. We will be continuing this weekend and should have them wrapped up before the spring really hits. After all that is done we will be painting all the trim and the car a flat black for this summer to roll around in. More to come soon..

[boostin05blacksti]

So over the past two weeks we have pretty much wrapped up the custom wheel wells. These babies are big, real big. No fitment issues though which is very nice. I can go low, ride low with out any rubbing. Timmy has them now to finish the welding and then prep and paint so more pictures to come. I also am in the process of ordering new triple adjustable shockwaves from ridetech for the front..just need a bit more money. I also wanted to show everyone the work that has been done to the fender lips as I'm sure some are curious. Onto the pictures..

Custom wells:




Fenders:







All the way up:


Ride Height:


All the way down:


Hopefully some all black action soon with some new goodies..more to come.

[Chadman27]

I like that license plate, it made me lol.