Tommy,

I'll bet you can't wait to try out that new suspension setup. Any thoughts about marketing a 3- link kit for second gen camaros? Oh and I don't know if I missed it, but what type of trans are you planning on running? Great project and looking forward to more progress pics !!!

Paul

Man that is one heck of a cool project.

The 3-link was manufactured as a kit by Lateral Dynamics. The transmission is a Tremec TKO 600. Thanks for the compliments on the build, I appreciate it.

Nice project! That suspension is already looking killer. Look forward to seeing more...

Wow Tommy. I just read the entire thread. Can't believe I missed it all this time. Car is gonna be sick. Motor is an awesome piece of machinery as well.
Keep us posted and keep up the great work.:thumbsup: :cheers:

Any updates?

Hey Tommy, anything new with this? I would love to see any updates you may have.

Your roof swap is going to be a huge help for me. Thanks for taking the time to document and post it here.

Great build Tommy. Just read the entire thread. You got me...:drool:ing

I've been missin too long!
 

Like the header says, I've been missing for way too long on this project. Several things held me up.

Scheduling and getting the car in at Bell's chassis for the roll bar work sucked up a couple of months. Then I went to my interior guy's shop to mock-up the custom interior. This really got out of hand, we've been friends since high school and I was helping at night and it was going good. Then my friend found a new girlfriend that he was very serious about, this was the end of working on it at night. I told him to just do it during the day like any other customer and charge me, well friends figure that friends will understand and wait while they do other projects. This meant my car stayed on the back burner for way too long. Every interior panel is hand built and fitted, door panels, qaurter panels, package tray, seats and console as well as modifying the dash of my choice to fit the down bars. All of this held the car up for 14 months, way too long.

Now it is back at the body shop where several other custom touches have been added to make it have a sleeker appearance. The car has been primed and blocked six times fully assembled, then completely disassembled and placed back on the rottiserie. The bottom is recieving final detailing and prep and should be sprayed next week. After that I'll finally have some update pictures.

Once the bottom is sprayed, I will place it back on the suspension and it will be ready for color. It also spent a few weeks at Exotic exhaust having headers and 3 inch exhaust with X pipe custom fabbed.

Ok guys I finally have some pictures and a real update.

I wanted to stiffen the car with a bar for track time and auto-x. DSE sells the main hoop, cross bar and rear down bars as a kit. They however do not sell the forward portion of the bar like the one in their 70 test car due to the age of the cars and body variations. This meant that I would have to do this part myself.

Since I don't have the equipment to bend 1 5/8 DOM tubing, and I'm also not a TIG welder and don't have a tig, I contracted Bell's Chassis here in north Georgia to build it to my specs. A life long buddy of mine owns and operates a machine shop, so we turned and milled a pair of heavy steel bolt together fittings for where the bar comes through the firewall. After that I left the mocked-up car with Joey Bell for a few weeks. Man do they do nice work, and it came out exactly as planned.

http://i189.photobucket.com/albums/z...s/DSC_0229.jpg

http://i189.photobucket.com/albums/z...s/DSC_0219.jpg

http://i189.photobucket.com/albums/z...s/DSC_0212.jpg

http://i189.photobucket.com/albums/z...s/DSC_0216.jpg

http://i189.photobucket.com/albums/z...DSC_0177-1.jpg

All in all it came out really tight, nice and how I envisioned.

After getting the interior mocked-up and built ready to cover the car went back to the body shop.

After reading about James Shipka's One Lap Camaro and Steve Rupp's Bad penny which both use the same three link rear suspension, it was evident that a rear sway bar would be needed to tune it in. I'm not sure what rate bar will actually be neccesary, but fitting one before paint is easier. I sourced a bar from Helwig which was designed by David Pozzi for the OLC car. The clearance for the end links was the problem. We cut the rear floor pan and built two pockets which will both mount the end-links and provide clearance for the bar ends.

http://i189.photobucket.com/albums/z...s/DSC_0221.jpg

http://i189.photobucket.com/albums/z...s/DSC_0205.jpg

http://i189.photobucket.com/albums/z...s/DSC_0206.jpg

Hopefully this will give a good start, as the rear bar is adjustable. If it doesn't work out then helwig can make a different rate bar by this pattern, which would make it a simple swap out with no fab work to be done.

Friday the bottom of the car was painted.

http://i189.photobucket.com/albums/z...s/DSC_0193.jpg

http://i189.photobucket.com/albums/z...s/DSC_0191.jpg

http://i189.photobucket.com/albums/z...s/DSC_0195.jpg

The filling and smoothing of the firewall with one of the new weld-in DSE close outs was finished today and will be sprayed tomorrow.

Once that is done the car will get back on it's suspension for the final time. Painting of the top side will begin then as it has already been blocked 7 times while assembled and mocked-up.

It's starting to feel like Christmas. The ceramic and powder coating came back today. The tank and annodized parts will ship in next week. I used the previous tank when switching my grey 73 to fuel injection. This allowed me to order a new one for this project with the all new Vaporworx fuel system including the Pressureworx PWM controller.

Almost forgot about this one, good to see it going again :thumbsup: Please keep us updated with lots of pics :cheers:

Yeah, what he said. ^^^^:)

Freakin awesome Tommy! Glad the car is still being built even if it was moving slowly. Thanks for bringing us up to speed.

Tommy,

There is something to be said about builds taking longer to compete. Vaporworks, plain and simple works!!! Adding the rear sway-bar.. Thumbs-up:thumbsup: !! I love the undercarriage colors. :cool:

Hope you can make RTTH this year just to hang out!! I'll be there socializing, without the hobby in tow. :)

Matt

OMG!!!!! Say it isn't so, update pics from Tommy???? (Insert --> sound of a body hitting the floor from fainting)

Thankfully I keep up with your car's progress behind the scenes!! :unibrow:

Thanks for the comments guys. I'm heading out to the body shop Friday. The firewall was finished yesterday and will be getting sprayed today.

The exhaust is back from being ceramic coated along with the sub-frame and rear housing which had to be re-powdercoated. After welding the down bars to the front along with tie down brackets the front needed to be re-done. The rear housing was also modified for the sway bar so it also needed re-coating.

I'll have some fresh update pics by the weekend. This will be something new compared with the last year, fast progress!

P.S. You can get up off of the floor now Scottie!! LOL

Hot damn Tommy...looking good....its about damn time..lol..

Very Nice !

Great looking work you're doing. Even better project name!

New update! The firewall has been finished and sprayed. I waited till the last minute to do this which turned out great as DSE decided to market a weld in panel for second gen. firewalls. Here it is in place, fit and qaulity were excellent as always with DSE. I think the semi-circle area for the front down bar hit perfect considering we put the bar in over a year before this panel was marketed or made.

http://i189.photobucket.com/albums/z...C_02480009.jpg

http://i189.photobucket.com/albums/z...C_02470008.jpg

http://i189.photobucket.com/albums/z...C_02470001.jpg

I purchased a set of billet trunk hinges from Eddie Motorsports. They come bare aluminum finish, so we used them this way for pre-fit and mock-up. After dis-assembly I carried these along with my DSE battery hold down to a local business I use and had them black hard coat annodized. I think they came out nice.

http://i189.photobucket.com/albums/z...C_02450006.jpg

http://i189.photobucket.com/albums/z...C_02440005.jpg

http://i189.photobucket.com/albums/z...C_02460007.jpg

More to come next week.

That's because the car finally got out of Interior-Jail LOL

I'm up off the floor now!! :faint:

That firewall panel looks great Tommy. That is the first one I have seen installed and painted.

Is it just me or is the foot of that lift right at the very edge of dropping your car? Passenger side looks pretty close.

Man just spent the last hour going through this whole thread, WOW is all I can say. Very nice can wait to see this one finished :hail: Oh and Scott has alot of room in the garage to fall and not hit anything so see if you can make him fall again :lol: :P

Color finally goes on Friday. I'm waitng till middle of next week to go see it and take pics. Can't wait!