Royal Purple / V8TV Royal Sport 69 Camaro Project Update
 

Here's a 2-photo essay of the past two days in the shop... the car goes to the blaster Wednesday. We hope something comes back!

- Kevin Oeste

Kevin, what's the outline for the project?

Did we talk about that already?

Outline
 

Hey Scott -

The Royal Sport is going to be a P/T style Camaro that is obtainable by average enthusaists... we're loading it with a Gen III small block / 6-speed combo, a moderately modified stock flavored interior, and some trick suspension pieces. The car has some issues from the waist down, so we're going to be doing some surgery pretty soon. Imperial Blasting is going to strip the car this weekend, and we're off to the races from that point on. We didn't want to go the "mail order" Camaro route because I enjoy putting old cars back together, but we've got lots of work ahead of us. SEMA is the deadline, the car will be in the Royal Purple booth (it's their car) and we're chronicalling the whole build on our show and in a Build Book with Team Killen. We're also doing some cool stuff with eBay Motors, and a DVD of the whole thing when we're finished.

Sounds like a cool project! Keep us posted, as some of us don't get your show, ie. Direct TV.

man, that really rocks..........hell of a job so far.

Thanks
 

Thanks HotWheels... it's been a long weekend!

Anyone know how to put a Camaro back together?

Latest pics
 

We had the Royal Sport '69 Camaro stripped by Imperial Blasting Technologies... Wally's crew did a fantastic job. We were worried that nothing would come back, as the car's pretty rusty on the bottom. Luckily, our fears were unfounded and we got a whole car back! The media blast job came out really nice, but it revealed some new secrets and made the obvious even more obvious. It's pretty amazing what kind of "innovations" people come up with when they're hacking a body together with pop rivets and body filler! We do have some substantial panel replacement to do, and we're going to cover it all on our show between now and SEMA.

- Kevin Oeste, spending some long nights in the shop!

Pop rivets, nice. :lol:

I was just wondering about this car the other day. Good to see some progress, Kevin. I need to ditch the cable and get the dish!

Pop Rivets
 

Everyone loves pop rivets.... (especially Momma Rivets!)

Shoot me HIGH res versions of those pics and a brief summary of what you are doing with the car. I might be able to get you a little more press. No promises but those pics are just so darn cool.. :thumbsup:

[email protected]

Thanks Kevin

Ok
 

Thanks for the interest, Steve. I'll beam you off some shots from the blaster, plus some tight shots of some of the "fabrication" we've uncovered. We're finishing our body jig today, and the de/reconstruction of the tub begins next week.

On another note, we're all really impressed with the Z069 car! We hope we can make this one come out 1/2 that nice!

Talk to you later,

Kevin Oeste

right on kevin, thanks for keeping us up to date on the progress.......sure wish i could watch that program here....

That wheel tub looks like a bad kindergarten paper mache project. I look forward to seeing updates again as I don't have the ability to watch the show. I would if I could though. I'm addicted to all things automotive....... It's sad, really.

Update
 

The first shot is the car on the Autotwirler immediately post media blasting at Imperial Blasting. They did a fantastic job stripping the car, but the remains weren’t too nice.

The following details show the patched-in floor, the inner rear driver structure we have to reconstruct, and the state of the cowl and front of the rocker panels.

After seeing this, we decided to blow the car apart and make it right…

Like the Autotwirler ..Were looking at picking one up at Columbus...

-Paul

the old girl is rough. keep up the cood work.
rick k :)

More
 

To reconstruct the Camaro’s tub, we had to determine what (if any) of the original structure we were going to reuse. This came down to a couple brackets, inner structures, and the windshield frame. We shot the whole mess in PPG DP-90 Epoxy primer to keep it from rusting…which seems kind of ironic now that I think about it… and then we systematically drilled out every spot weld in the back half of the car to disassemble the tub.

These shots show the passenger quarter panel removed, and then the front half of the car on stands. We have to replace the dash, inner and outer cowl, and side cowl panels, but we’re going to keep the original structure together seeing that it’s already the correct dimensions. Then we’re going to replace each panel individually, creating a new front body section. Then, we’re going to transfer that to the new body structure…

Updates continued...
 

We used the dimensions from the Fisher Body Service Manual to build a fixture to hold the body shell as we constructed it. We built a table out of 3x3 square tube steel, and then we built adjustable cross bars to hold vertical stands to which we will attach the body. The table references the factory datum line, and the stands hold the body to the original dimensions in relationship to that datum line. The whole fixture was checked for straightness multiple times before we started to assemble the new tub.

Updates More
 

The actual construction of the body shell started with the rear frame rails which we obtained from Classic Industries. We bolted the rails to the corresponding stands on the fixture. Next, we obtained a replacement front floor and firewall from Year One and attached it to the fixture. These were spanned by a Year One full length floor, and then we added the full trunk floor pan. Everything was set and bolted in place for measurements before any welding takes place.

Although the panels come with braces and brackets welded to them, we elected to supplement these with additional spot welds. We used a Blair Rotabroach spot-weld drill to cut the top layer of steel, then plug-welded the pieces together for additional strength.
Once the dimensions were checked, we welded the trunk floor to the rear rails, then the trunk floor to the floor. This is as far as we can go until we mock up the rocker panels, add the cowl section, the doors, and the quarter panels. The rear section of the car is non-adjustable, so we must make sure the door gaps and quarters all fit now before we move on.

The last shots show the new floors spot-welded together. The factory used a giant spot welder which applied tremendous clamping force as well as the welding current to fuse the panels together… we obviously don’t have a GM factory in our shop, so we’re approaching the job differently to achieve similar results. Again, we’re using the Rotabroach spot-weld drill, a hole punching tool, and standard drills to put holes in the panels where they will weld together. Then, we clamp them with Vice-Grips, C-Clamps, and even devices consisting of Porta-Power hydraulics. Once they’re in place, we fill the holes with our HTP MIG 200 MIG welder. The welds and resulting joints are as strong as factory with no seam welding to crack. However, they produce small “mushroom heads” on the welds which need to be dressed. We’re not really going for a perfect concourse restoration, nor are we going for a Rad Rides perfectly smooth structure, so we use 3M Roloc wheels to grind the welds to a semi-factory like dimple. These will be body worked to remove the grinding scratches, but we like the look of the dimple. In our opinion, if it’s too smooth, you wonder how much filler is hiding under there.

Cowl update
 

Up front, we’ve removed the dash panel, the upper cowl, the lower cowl, and the sides of the cowl panel and replaced them with new steel. We’re close to welding the new pieces together. Notice that the whole upper structure is detached from the firewall. Once the dash and cowl pieces are solidified, we’ll transfer them to the new body structure on the frame fixture.

Chassis 1
 

Meanwhile, the chassis for the Royal Sport comes together at Schwartz Extreme Performance. The Schwartz Precision Chassis is a true bolt-in road-race style chassis made specifically for a variety of vehicles, and this is first-gen F-body chassis #1. The whole chassis is designed to attach to the Camaro’s underbody in place of the subframe in front, and between the factory rear rails in the back. The two arches are the front. It utilizes off-the-shelf road race suspension parts, and we’ll be assembling the whole shebang soon. Parts include tubular arms from Coleman Engineering, a NASCAR spec Ford 9” from Speedway Engineering, BAER brakes, Bilstein coil-overs, and rack and pinion steering. We’re setting it up for a GEN-III small block and a 5-speed manual tranny.

You can follow the build on the Royal Sport Camaro on our show V8TV airing on The Men’s Channel. We’ve got a long way to go, but at least we’re finally putting things back together!

Chassis
 

By the way, the tranny crossmember is upside down in the chassis pics above... it just got set on there that way.

Thanks for all the encouragement!

Back to the shop!

- Kevin Oeste

Lot of work in that project...Just keep at it...


-Paul

that looks......
 

like a bit of work. I do not get you show on my cable. Please keep us posted on the installation.

Very Cool!! Keep Us Updated!!!!!!!!!!

I sure wish I could see the TV show...

We sure wish you could see it too!

damn driect tv!!!

but what are you doing as far as inner fenders, im trying to picture how the mount for the strut would be worked around... care to explain?

Brian -
 

I think we'll do a better job explaining the front sheetmetal fit when we get to that point. I'll post some pics when we make it all happen. We still have to locate the core support on the chassis, and we'll probably be doing a little dancing here and there as we fit the inners, but we'll keep you posted. How's that for a non-answer? In all reality, we're going to be back on the chassis / suspension assembly the 2nd week of July. Right now, we're trying to get the body tub together so that we can go to paint in August.

Kevin:

Thanks for adding the pictures to the dicussions. As your project moves forward, I would be very interested in seeing additional images as you can put them up. :thumbsup:

Thanks,

tyoneal

inner fender
 

The mount does not look that tall. The ones that we made for my car would fit.

...
 

1969 Camaro rickshaw...

Dash and Cowl Boxes
 

Dash and cowl box replacement

More dash and cowl
 

More dash and cowl

even more dash and cowl
 

even more dash and cowl

More body construction
 

More body construction

More body construction...
 

More body construction - vise grips on inner rear quarter structures...

Can I borrow a vise grip?

Looking good, can't wait to see it in person!

Royal Sport Daily Video Blog
 

The countdown to SEMA is on, and we thought it might be cool to post a daily clip of the car as we thrash to SEMA. 23 days left!

http://v8tv.truckworld.com/tenarticl...id=2897&sid=96