finally my camaro build

[68vert]

This is the 4th Camaro I've owned. In high school, a bright yellow 69 was the first car i bought with my own money. Life always got in the way of my other 1st gen Camaro projects. I Bought this car in 07 and started working on it. Had to put in storage in 09 because of some house remodeling. Now (2011) its so pissed off from not being driven and showing me by leaking every type of fluid there is.

Heres a pic right before I got it.



I was just gonna put a fuel injected motor, AC, and some mini tubs in it when I got a little carried away.......

[68vert]

Picked up this 96 vette LT1 for the car awhile back

[dropit69]

Wow nice ..looks to be really clean..keep updating us..

[68vert]

The same LT1 now with port matched heads, polished up with some ceramic coated parts awaiting turbo

[68vert]

The car is completely disassembled and at media blasting. Really excited to get to the next phase (mini tubbing, subframe connectors, body mods at Austen's shop).

[68vert]

The body is back from media blasting and looks great for being 44 years old. Went over to Austen's shop today to help get the car on the rotisserie. That was a little more time consuming than I imagined. Check out all the media that fell out when we turned the body. This is after a good shaking in the trailer.

We put it on the rotisserie with the subframe to make the subframe connectors. Austen started the driver side. Custom fab using 3" X 2" X 1/8" wall tube and its looking really nice. Stay tuned!

[balljoint]

Awesome, I put an LT1 in my 68 and love it. Got tired of the 4L60E and just put in a t-56. Good work.

[68vert]

thank you Balljoint and Dropit!

Heres a pic of the subframe connectors in the works. Drilling the holes through the 1/4 inch mounting plates was tedious work. Heating up and scrapping all the original sound deadner off (that the media blasting bounced off and didnt remove) was a lot easier than I thought. Good thing Austen had a plan.

[68vert]

Fast forward a couple years, got married, and taking the car to another shop. It didnt work out with Austen so I moved the car to Allways Hot Rods in Phoenix. My brother did biz with Allways HR before and recommended them. They did a great job. Basically saved the car by rebuilding the entire back half. All new sheetmetal from the rear floorpan back. As it sits today, it has DSE min-tubs, AME tri-link rear subframe, 9" narrowed rearend, & a DSE front sub.

The LT motor is gone and the plan now is an LS based motor.

Thanks for all the support from my wife Kelly, my brother and best man, and other family as well as friends!

[68vert]

Been working on the front sheetmetal. The original front fender had so many puller holes, it looks like it got shot up by a tommy gun. I have 4 passenger fenders, none of which made sense for Allways HR to invest labor into. Now that its back home and completely on me, I got tired of collecting passenger fenders so I decided to slice the AMD fender to make it work. From the side the fender originally stuck out about an inch and the bottom body line was 15mm high.





I ended up making 2 pie cuts at the bottom to align the lower body line, and cutting the inner fender brace to flatten it out so the fender profile lines up with the door. While I was at it, I filled in the side marker light. I'm really happy with the fit now. How many times did I have to test fit the fender, weld, grind, and repeat the process. Well.........a lot

[68vert]

The drivers side fender was not issue free either and took almost as much work as the AMD passenger fender.









In the end, it turned out great for a 46 year old fender.

[68vert]

I'm accepting the fact that every body part on this project (aftermarket or original) is going to require work. When I originally tackled the passenger fender, I was hesitant to cut into body parts. Now, no hesitation what so ever.



And about an hour later, fits better than new

[68vert]

My brother has been making great progress on his 70 RS split bumper, 12 bolt car. He bought it as a shell with the rear end, no drive train. He's put C6 brakes, and all ridetech suspension under it. Drivetrain is a LS1 and T-56.



Those wheels look great Steve!

[68vert]

Its looking like a Camaro once again, and has a nose now. Back in its cozy little bay till next weekend. Hopefully next weekend......

[driveit]

Both are showing progress. Keep it up.

[68vert]

Not quite work on the car but its something that needed to be done. With plans to do at least some of the painting myself, I needed a good dryer since I had moisture coming out of the line. Found a nice desiccant dryer from Divelviss but the only way they guarantied dry air at the the nozzle is if the dryer is a minimum of 25ft from the air exit of the compressor. I didnt want to have plumbing all over the garage and wanted the whole system portable so I clamped a piece of plywood to the compressor and ran my plumbing on the back with the dryer on the front for easy access.

[68vert]

Finally scored a hood for the car and mocked it up today.



Then not the most exciting but also needed to be done. I wanted to weld the ends of the rear apron where they met the quarter panels so they are smoothed in together. Was not looking forward to it at all as the passenger side gap was like the grand canyon.

[68vert]

Picked up a LS1 built by Texas Speed. CNC'd heads with 2.02 & 1.57 valves, Torquer V3 cam, 11:1 comp, ARP head studs and other ARP bolts, LS6 intake. Aftermarket crank pulley. Not sure if its a underdrive unit or not? 476HP at the crank. Really clean. 30K miles on both the engine and T-56. Just drooling over it today after some detailed clean up.

[dragonfly jones]

Looks great.

[68vert]

Looks great.

thanks dragonfly jones