69 Z/28 with Max-G Chassis - Lateral-g Forums

67pro-street · #1 12-07-2012, 02:50 PM

Hello All,

My car is a true 1969 Camaro Z/28. Since i didnt have the original engine, tranny, or rear end and since I bought it i decided to go the pro-touring route instead of original. This is round two of my project. Round one involves a sappy story about some "professional" I took my car to for some sheetmetal removal/replacement. This is how it looked before I picked it up from the "professional shop."

I decided to attempt to put the car back together myself and at that time the plan was to put an Art Morrison back half and seperate AME front subframe in place then weld in the connectors. After a brief hiatus of doing nothing to the car and primarily visiting this site to read the Investing 102 thread, I have since sold the backhalf and got a full Art Morrison Max-G chassis from a shop down the road from me called Pyramid Street Rods. These guys are dealers for Art Morrison and some of the most honest people you will ever meet. So i put the frame on a jig, got it all leveled and centered, BRACED the car and cut the floor out. I also realized i screwed up the wheel wells so those will be going bye bye pretty soon here.

Here are some pics of the progress so far:

67pro-street · #2 12-07-2012, 02:55 PM

Here are some more pics...

67pro-street · #3 12-07-2012, 02:59 PM

I think using this jig and having everything level is going to work out a LOT better than my first attempt where i had everything on jackstands with a shim here, a shim there, a shim everywhere...

And some pics of the bracing and floor removal...

67pro-street · #4 12-07-2012, 03:13 PM

Since my plan is to work on the car myself and my time doesnt cost any money, i would like to try and make the frame removable from the body instead of welding the two together when i make my floor panels. I am not quite sure the best way of doing this yet, but i have studied some photo's of the the shop RK Collections that did accomplish this. Here's there site if youre interested... http://www.rkmotorscharlotte.com/pc/...-Camaro/132163

P.S. I realize I have bit off more than i can chew and took on a project that requires way more experience than i have, but nothing like learning by diving in head first right!! That and having a whole lot of this

Thanks in advance to all who help contribute to this build. Hopefully Round 2 turns out better than Round 1

EBMC · #5 12-07-2012, 04:20 PM

Theres a couple of Max-g threads on here. Our shop completed this one this year, you may want to look through it....
https://lateral-g.net/forums/show...light=tenacity

67pro-street · #6 12-11-2012, 05:16 PM

Steve, thanks for the link. That Camaro is Amazing!! I checked out your website as well and there are a lot more pics on there. I may be contacting you from time to time to get some pointers if thats okay with you

BobK · #7 12-12-2012, 05:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 67pro-street

I think using this jig and having everything level is going to work out a LOT better than my first attempt where i had everything on jackstands with a shim here, a shim there, a shim everywhere...

And some pics of the bracing and floor removal...

Looking good. I'm assuming you know that the roof panel got whacked about 2" above where it meets the quarters, right? That line of drilled out spot welds on the inner structure below the roof cut is where the quarter attachs, and the roof slips down over it. You may end up putting a new roof skin on if you don't want to have to fab up a 2" wide patch to tie the roof and quarter together- that area has a lot of curve/shape to it and isn't something I'd want to try to make look right with a patch.

67pro-street · #8 12-13-2012, 04:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BobK

Looking good. I'm assuming you know that the roof panel got whacked about 2" above where it meets the quarters, right? That line of drilled out spot welds on the inner structure below the roof cut is where the quarter attachs, and the roof slips down over it. You may end up putting a new roof skin on if you don't want to have to fab up a 2" wide patch to tie the roof and quarter together- that area has a lot of curve/shape to it and isn't something I'd want to try to make look right with a patch.

BobK yes i realize the roofline is cut too high. I still have the two original pieces though. I was going to try and put a thin strip of 18 gauge metal behind the roofline and plug weld it into place using half the strip. then put the original piece up there and plug weld that to the other half of the strip, leaving ~1/32" gap between the two pieces. Then i will spot weld the two roof pieces together. My hope here is that i wont warp the roof material when it cools after welding and will want to shrink in. I am also hoping to avoid ghost lines in the paint by spot welding the two together since that part will be at eye level. If that doesnt work, then i can look into roof replacement. The pics dont show it, but it is rotted out along the rear window channel so i need to address that as well. Clear as mud?!

canrc, thanks for the offer i may take you up on that in the new year when all the holiday rush across the border dies down. I checked out your build, Rybar posted it and that is a sweet camaro! Rybar's is pretty nice too! My original colors were garnet red with black stripes which is what i was thinking of going back with on my car. But i dont know if the car gods will allow two pro-touring cars within 100 miles of each other to have the same paint scheme!!

67pro-street · #9 11-05-2013, 05:52 PM

Been about a year and haven't had a chance to touch the car much until recently. One of my goals was to keep the body removable from the frame. I had a hard time trying to figure out how i was going to do that so basically I was too scared to touch the car until I did. I have to give a lot of credit to Gary Betsy on my final solution. He build the Voracious Cuda on this site. Anways, once i had my game plan, it was pretty easy to execute the plan...like two weekends!

Basically i took the art morrison frame and started created a sub structure on top of the frame using 3/16" flat bar. I will then take that sub structure and weld it to the body of the car. That substructure will then bolt up to the AME frame and have polyurethane pads in between.

You can see the pilot holes drilled into the frame. Eventually the threaded bungs will be welded in these spots. It was next to impossible to bring myself to drilling/welding to this frame...once i did though i was happy with the results.

Here are the final holes for the threaded bungs.

Welding the bung into place.

Bungs all welded into place!!