Doesn’t seem like I got much done today. I got the little filler panels made for the front of the tubs and will get them fit up better when I’m ready to weld it all together. I built fillers from the frame to tubs, but forgot to get pictures of that. I then set out to fix the rear gaps on the trunk pan. I cut off the old flange and started making a new one that fits tighter to the tail panel. Hard to see it in the pictures though.

We also had a C7 at the shop so I checked fitment of the 285’s. It’s a 20x10 rim and I think they look to big on the car, however they fit. Now I need to find some 325 or 335’s in an 18” or 19” rim to see how they fit.

I didn't feel like I got a lot done Saturday since it took longer than I hoped it would, but I got the tin work finished up on the trunk metal and its ready to get epoxied. After that it will be ready to weld in for good.

On the bottom side I got the support welded up and it really stiffened up the metal and took the rattle sound away when knocking on it. Now its more of just a thud.

Oh, I also threw a 335/25-20 under the back of the car. It will physically not fit because of the upper control arm. If I cut the quarters and moved it out then it would. I have to assemble the front end and see if a 315 on a 19x10 will clear. If I have to cut the front fenders to fit even a 295 then I'll have to also cut the rear to match.

The trunk is looking nice! Bummer on the tires being tight, hopefully you can work that all out without too much trouble.

Thank you. We shall see. I need to get a 315 so I can get the front mocked up and see what all I'm going to have to do. Then I'll know the direction for the rear.

Bumpers
 

AJ.......
Going back a step to the bumpers......are u going to fab sheetmetal brackets
(irons) or cf?......surely not the originals?

Nice work on the English wheel and bead roller!!! Looks like GM made those trunk panels

:king:

Thank you, I was real happy how the english wheel stuff come out. I was even happier when they were really close to matching enough that no one will ever notice once its painted lol.

On the rear bumper, I modified the 3 stock middle mounts to fit the steel bumper I built as a mold buck. Once I find them in one of the many totes of parts I have my plan it to bolt them to the car then panel bond the bumper to them and then cover them in carbon so they are sandwiched in the bumper. After that stuff is done I'll decide if I need the side mounts or if its stiff enough to not need them.

Lots done Saturday. Seat montes are done, factory corvette floor cut and fit ready for finishing. The cut sections will be bonded back together and then they’ll all be sealed with 12k carbon.

AC mounted and fit the old firewall bracket fit the new chassis better than I thought it would. Lots of clearance everywhere for ducting and electronics.

I got started on the new firewall with a bunch of thinking and drilling out spot welds. I have a good plan in mind for it to tie everything together and keep the wipers out of the car and not totally have engineer something to make them work.

Hey AJ, I saw your question on Instagram about stretching the rear quarters. I used the techniques in this thread:

https://lateral-g.net/forums/showthr...bottom+Camaros

Don

I forgot all about that thread, thank you. The car you did came out amazing. I think I'm going to end up pulling the trigger on the rear wide body as of right now I can only fit a 10" rim and a 295 and thats not very appealing to me. My trick is I've already built a bumper to the car and I have NACA ducts in the quarters that all line up with the doors. I may have to cheat it a lot.

One of the most difficult parts for me was maintaining a straight body line across the quarters, doors and fenders. A laser level helps. Keeping both sides the same takes some effort too. I did OK but learned a lot the hard way.

Don

So get the doors on and lined up first, got it. I have a laser level already.

Question about the bulge part, do you think it would help to run the shrinker over the top flange of the quarter to help give it the outward curve?

Shrinking might help but it gives that wrinkly finish that can be hard to metal finish.

I had to make a pretty good sized pie cut along the body line from the door towards the wheel arch to get it to wrap around. Some creative metal shaping might help avoid that.

My metal shaping skills and tool set are pretty crude, looking forward to seeing how you do with your skills.

Don

This week I got the driver floor bonded together and wrapped with 12k carbon fiber. I ran out of both epoxy and carbon so I wasn't able to get the rest of the floor panels done so I'll have to put that off until I get more.

Today though I got quite a bit done on the firewall. I finished cutting off the upper cowl to access the bottom and got the main middle section shaped, bead rolled and welded in. I'm undecided how I want to finish the passenger side of the firewall so I focused on the driver side and got most of that done. I feel that I'm more than likely going to have to cut off the fender mounts and make my own to get everything to look right and not just patched together. I also need to mount my wiper motor since I'll be able to retain stock style wiper transmission and not have to go after market making the firewall the way that I did. I think that I'm going to mount my ECM to the firewall behind the supercharger since there is a lot of room there and it will keep the engine bay clean with less wiring.

Anyways, heres some pictures since thats all thats really important lol.

Doesn't feel like I got a lot done Saturday since I cut more off the car then I welded back on, but overall it was quite a bit of progress. I started out with getting the bumper brackets bonded to the bumper and all of that lined up.

While the bumper was curing I went back to work with the firewall. I hammer and dollyed the upper wiper cowl straight again and got it clamped back on and lined up and the wiper bases in so the cowl would line up right. With that set I was able to start the middle section of the firewall. I hammer and dollyed a round curved edge to match the curve of the cowl and got the bottom side welded and metal finished. The hard part will be filling all the small pieces now. I think I'm going to build a jig and cut off the stock fender mounts so they don't look scabbed together and all flows well.

Since I've already made reference in this thread about it I started on the wide body fit up. I cut the front and rear flanges off and used my shrinker across the top and on both sides of the wheel arch. This was just a light shrink as I can always go more and I didn't have the car here when I did it. I took the quarter over to my trailer and laid it over. I'll get back on this once the firewall is done, but so far I've gained almost 2" with it just set on it. With it held tight and the calibrated eyeball it's right about 1 3/4" wider.

Car is looking great and it's hard to for people to understand how much you actually do as even the simplest projects can eat up an entire day.

Thank you. Yeah the big projects tend to go quick and the small ones drag on. Always seems like there is a never ending amount of small stuff too.

I was still recovering from a cold on Saturday so I didn't feel like breathing in welding fumes and grinder grid and I took a pause from the firewall. Still needing to get work done I did a quick and dirty rough fit check on the front wheels. I need to get my measurements solid so Boze Forged can build me some wheels for the car. The wheel I want is a 19x10 and It will work, but I think I'll be doing some mods to the fenders for tire clearance.

After that was done I got started on the driver rear wide body. I started with getting the rough fitment of the new quarter laid over the old one. Once I got that close I rough cut the old quarter off. After getting the new panel fit even closer I was able to cut the tub so I could make the extension. I gained 2" so I should be able to get a 335 under there now. Lots of shrinker work slowly and lots of fit checks.

For the new outer tub extension I made poster board patterns and bent flanges with my bead roller and you get a scrap looking piece of metal. The Harbor Freight shrinker is actually amazing and does just as good of job as my mittler shinker/stretcher. I worked the metal threw it with light pressure on a big bite a few passes and then a medium pressure on half the lip followed by a few more passes on a whole bite to remove the ripples from shrinking. The pictures show how much it changes with just a little bit of work.

Nice! Keep it coming, I can't wait to see it on it's own rollers. And hope you're feeling 100% soon enough.

Thank you, I'm feeling much better now.

AJ you’ve Come a long way, that’s some tricky bends your making. I like the stretch on the quarters. Will you just seam seal the tub to the quarter or does it get tacked too?

I was pretty concerned with trying to do that much of a line and still be able to get the curve and fitment I was looking for. It came out much better than I expected so it was for sure worth trying.

It will all be spot welded like from the factory and then gone over with seam sealer to keep the water out.

Saturday was a lot of fitting and on off on off of the quarter to get the outer wheel tub fit right. I did start with a 19x10” wheel fit check and I’ll have plenty of room for 12” wheels though.

The outer tub took a long time to get right and then get the end panel fit. I had to work it in the English wheel and the shrinker to get to fit right. I got the welding done and most of the grinding. I really wish I had a hand held planishing hammer as the takes forever, but those are expensive. With the wide body I’ve gained a little over 2”. I think the front door jamb area and the gills are going to be the hardest to get right when it’s time to weld it on. The rest fits pretty good.

Looks great!

Nice! Details count!!

Now that is how you do an outer wheel house modification.

I was too dizzy to tell from all of the left and right turning of my head to see the pics. :sarcasm_smiley::sarcasm_smiley: Looking good though!!

Thanks guys, means a lot.

I have no idea why it does that. On the other board I posted this on they uploaded there just fine and the preview on here was fine too.

IPhone?? If yes, you have to take pics with the Home button horizontally ( 3 o'clock position) Only on some sites I think.

Yeah iPhone and I Air Dropped them to my iPad to post here. I'll keep that in mind when I take pictures this weekend and see if that takes care of it. Thank you for pointing that out to me.

Not a great update as I had a family emergency to deal with Saturday so I had to pack it in about noonish. During the week I put together a hand held planshing hammer as a $3000 one is out of my budget for the few things I'll need it on. I have about $75 invested in this one.

Friday night since I was going to make a lot of noise I waited until most the shop cleared out and went to work banging out my wheel tub. I didn't notice the curve until I already started welding and by that point it was too late. I'll hammer and dolley that out of the passenger side once I get it cut out. Made more work for me, but it came out pretty good.

Saturday I got back after the firewall now that I found all my wiper and a/c parts. I got one panel in and ground down before I had to go.

The rest of the pictures.

That is pretty cool and I would have never thought of anything like that.

Thank you, I got the idea off the youtube channel of hotrodhippy. It worked ok, still a lot of hammer and dolley work though. It might work better if there wasn't so much crown to knock out.

Looking great!!!

Worked more on the firewall Saturday. This time on the driver inner cowl. Lots of cutting old stuff out, fitting the new panel, some English wheeling, welding, and grinding. Still have a few small areas to finish up, but I’ll get to that in a few weeks when I get to work on it again. I think I’m going to put the driver tulip back to factory looking and put my wiper motor back there like I had it.

I finished off the day putting the dash in. I need to fit a 3 gallon dry sump tank somewhere and I’m looking at the area in the corvette frame in the passenger footwell. There is a toe board there that ties the frame to the inner frame. I’m thinking I can cut out the top section and build an access panel on the bottom for oil changes. I’ll have to move the HVAC module to the middle of the dash, but it looks like I’ll have the room to do it. There is about a 5” deep area where GM put the fuse block and BCM so that gives me a bit of room to work with too.

I’m going to have to widen dash about 2” to get to the door jamb and lengthen the side panels. My other option is to build out the door panels to meet up to the dash. I’ll figure it out when I get the door mounted back up.

Saturday was kinda a waste of a day for progress. I worked most of the morning on the driver firewall trying to figure out how to build it and look good. I ended up throwing all of the templates away because it looked terrible.

I did cut out the section I've been thinking about for the oil tank and made a mock up tank though. I think it will work out very well there and now I just need the actual tank so I can move forward on the passenger side of the firewall. To make it work the HVAC has to move over. Since I have a Vette dash there is a ton of room to move it on top of the trans tunnel and I still have tons of room for electronics if I end up putting anything behind the dash.

Feeling like I got nothing done I built the console mount so that I could say I at least got something done.

EDIT: Not sure why some of the pictures turned upside down as they are right side up on my computer.

I'm at a point on the firewall that I need to order an $800 oil tank, so we're going to take a break from that and focus on cheaper projects that still need done lol. I moved back to the passenger wide body quarter. After I got the old panel rough cut off I got the new one stretched to match the driver side, a little over 2" more than I had to start with. After lots of on and off with more shrinking of the flanges both sides are the same distance from the dame datum point on the frame, the contour gauge also lines up on both sides from measured distance points. So its pretty much ready to be welded to the car now.

After getting the quarter where it needed to be I went to work on the outer wheel tub. My bead roller bent the flange with the shape the finial tub need to be and then lots of shrinking to make it actually look like the right shape. After some small adjustments I marked the cut line and cut the old tub apart. With the new outer panels fit up and the use of a few clecos to hold it in place it was time to tack it in and again, recheck the quarter fitment.

With the quarters in the right place I rough cut the bumper cutouts to see if the bumper was still going to fit. It actually fits better than it did before.

Thanks for taking the time to post your updates...

Great work as always AJ. :thumbsup:

Looks great AJ

Thanks guys. I'm real happy with the amount I got done this weekend.