ATS Project 50/50

[TitoJones]

Alrighty Boys and Girls. The death threats have started to become less frequent over the weekend, and I feel I can now reward your understanding of my twisted humor with a short story and a ton of pics.

Those who are not aware of my (never-ending-never-finished) Project 50/50 Camaro- here is the cliff notes:

Sept 1999- Car is sent to Wayne Due's Chassis shop in Maryland, WA for a complete tube chassis build based on a C5 corvette.
Mar 2002- chassis is completed and sent to Tustin, CA for carbon Fiber body kit prototyping.
April 2003- car is rescued from crooked body kit shop and delivered to secondary garage for completion of body molds.
Feb 2004- Car is again rescued from 2nd crooked body kit garage and trailed home. All bare steel is covered in rust, vehicle condition is poor.
Feb 2004-October 2008- Car sits in garage under car cover. I try to forget about all the money & time lost on project and wince every time people bring up my failed car on the internet.
Nov 2008- car is trailer to Ironworks in Bakersfield for some modifications to the sheetmetal and rollcage.

So there is the VERY condensed version. It could go on and on for almost 4 pages, some good humored times, some slit your wrist times, some kill everyone within a 3 mile radius times.



Rodger is one of the few people I trust for my personal projects. We met in 2006 and I just knew that this man had talent and determination. Seeing the work come out of his shop for the past 2 years and the numerous 2 hour phone calls we've had discussing our ideas, Rodger suggested I let him have a crack at the car.

He 'stole' it from my storage space during the week of the 08 SEMA show and took it back to Bakersfield. When it arrived the roll cage was promptly cut out of the vehicle. I'll show you why in a few posts....

Here is the car as it sat under the car cover for the past 4 years. All the brown is surface rust from being outside near the ocean for over a year.

Engine setback and firewall:


Rear transaxle cover, rear main roll cage hoop and floor:


Engine compartment with front down bars that don't clear the tires under full lock:


So it needs a slight re do in a few spots. No big deal. More to follow....

Tyler

[TitoJones]

The roll cage. It was built to standards not completely approved by any racing sanctioning body. One of the reasons for not passing tech would be this little gem:



Yes. That is indeed an entire Sharpie marker stuffed into the non-notched-grand-canyon-sized gap of the tube joint. That is just one of many slight blunders of fabrication that went into my $14K chassis and roll cage.
Other fun facts include:

Inner frame too narrow to fit an actual exhaust system.
Front down bars hit both front tires when turning.
Frame rails made of 2x4 and 3x3 .120 wall metal (tank chassis)
Front A pillar down tubes leave under 10 inches of room for 3 pedals
Large gaps in joints of roll cage
Sheetmetal doubled up in most places for strength (tank floor)
Chassis could be built lighter and stronger with even lower ride height.

Here are more cool pics from the cage:

Don't worry about the MIG wire, it will add strength over time.


What?!? Seriously? Come the 'F' on....


How does this get the thumbs up to be shipped to a client?



Frame pics next...

Tyler

[TitoJones]

Tank frame by Wayne. None of you can tell me that Wayne didn't build it strong enough. He used some serious wall thickness on the frame rails and added beef like it was going out of style. The car was a bit over weight for my standards, so it got put on a diet.

The 50/50 Camaro before it goes onto the frame table for its new chassis:



Here is the M1A1 Abrams C5 chassis:



It had to be a bitch to cut that thing out in one piece. I'm surprised they were able to do so. If anyone would like it, make me an offer.



Rodger and his crew have done a tube chassis once before and took some lessons from them to create this new tube frame. This is the rear. The front will be very similar. I think he shed 50% of the cars weight just by making a new frame for it.





Tyler

[TitoJones]

So here is the money shot for me. I've never had a chance to put the HRE 542R wheels on the car before as I never purchased any tires. I plan to race this car so I figured get some tires that will do me right on the road courses.

I picked up some Michelin road race slicks from a former LeMans C5R Corvette to fir the 18x12 and 18x9.5 HRE wheels. Rodger mocked them up on the frame table now that the car is on it. Rocker to ground is 6.5 inches. Roof height will be about 47.5 inches from the ground.







That is all as of Today. Progress will be updated as I get pics from Rodger.

Tyler

[David Sloan]

Congrats Tyler!
I sure you are in good hands now!
Cant wait to watch this thing get built.

[brrymnvette]

I always wondered what happened to this unicorn.

[69Nova]

Very cool Tyler. Glad to hear you didn't give up. Whats the plans for the engine?

[LMDGUY]

are you joking about that roll cage? lol

[Damn True]

That old chassis would be good for a salt car.

[PhillipM]

Holy cow! I thought this car was lost and probably underground with other forgotten projects. Also, who would have thought that you needed to supply a sample photo of how bars should fit on the cage they are building for you! Gosh! You know.. something like this! Haha

[Chad-1stGen]

I think video updates are in order...

Tyler with that sales pitch on the frame I'm sure people are beating down your door/inbox to buy it off you...

[TonyL]

Looking good Tyler! Woot!

[Yelcamino]

Cool! Glad to see you on back on the road to completion! Do you have an ETA to completion or just letting the chips fall?

[andrewb70]

Nice to see it coming together finally. Don't make it "too" nice if you plan on racing it!

Andrew

[6'9"Witha69]

I thought you wanted it Able to survive a land mine hit?! There goes that idea.

Good to see you getting something done for yourself after everything you put into this hobby.

[lh_kustoms]

Tyler glad to see this back on track.... glad to see you building one for yourself

[novanutcase]

Tyler,

I almost had Wayne make me a frame also. Thank god that didn't happen! I found out about Rodger when I saw his truck build on Lat-G and since he was fairly close to me I figured I'd go up and check out what he was doing. In the course of about 5 minutes of talking to him I knew he was the the guy for the job. He's one of the few that can tread the fine line of new school/old school. This is what got my car up to his shop. I knew he would take it to a level I couldn't even imagine.

Be careful! Now that it's their you're going to find out what is truly possible! LOL!

Congratulations! I know you're in good hands!

The only thing that sucks about all this is now us Nova boys are gonna get shoved back into the shadows! DAMMIT!!!! LOL!

John

[BrianP]

Lesson learned here: keep the stock subframe and throw on some ATS spindles (I hear they're pretty nice).

[WILWAXU]

Congrats on the progress!

[Damn True]

Should we merge the two 50/50 threads?