1969 Camaro road racer
 

This is a customers ex-Silver State open road race car that we are doing some work on.

It came in for a quarter panel, fender replace and once over.

Here is how it came to us.

The fenders and quarter panels were "modified" to clear larger tires.


Follow along as we transform this one to a reliable HPDE and open track car.

A bit rough but a great base.

We ended up having to cut the fenders off. It was partially welded to the body.
Parts are on order now that we know what we need. A quick call to AMD and we should have the pieces in a few days.

Once stripped down we can give it a good look over and safety check.

Nice, Vince. Glad to see you post this one up.

I've been following on Facebook, it's turning out very nice!

Thanks guys!

Once the body parts came in we got to work on figuring out the wheels we could use.

The customer happend to have several sets and brought them in for fitment. Unfortunatly most had offsets that would not work with the front sheet metal and front suspension.

Back to the drawing board.

The car is in pretty good shape.

The interior needed work. A bit of rust to fix and holes to fill would make it a safer car for track use.

The firewall was riddled with holes and patches made from 22 gauge aluminum and sealed with calking. We will replace most of the firewall with 18 gauge cold rolled steel. Also close up the gaps around the roll cage down bars. Another thing that i'd like to move is the Moroso accumulator from its present location between the seats. Put it in a safe place and shorten the hose by 9 feet.

Next step is to strip the car down to get a closer look.

That looks like it may be Boris's old car. My buddy had it at his shop years ago

Yep looks like it. Thanks buddy.

MeanStreetsPerformence will make her mean and clean!! :thumbsup:

It was a bit more "cut up" when it got to me. Looked like it was a nice car.


So we found a set of wheels that he could use but we chose to rehoop the rears from 10.5/19's to 12/19's and buy a new wheels for the front. Its nice to have several sets of Forgelines at your disposal.

After figuring out what backspaces we needed we began to tear into the car. Full interior gut, strip out the old wire harness and then start cutting up the body. We needed a bit more room in back so we are doing a quarter panel stretch.

The customer wanted a different door bar set up for the drivers side so we cut the old one out. While we had it out we decided it would be a great opportunity to redo the floor, wire brush, clean, prime and a coat of POR15 hardnose epoxy paint in light gray with liven things up a bit.

The tulip sections of the firewall were rusted up pretty bad so we decided to cut them out and I found a better place to mount the Moroso oil Accumulator.

Nice, this thing is going to no frills, clean, mean track car! Im envious!

You're doing great work Vince. I think we are in the home stretch now. Can't wait to get it onto the track.

uhh oh the boss is here....get back to work.

More metal work.

We are closing up the firewall and down bars holes changing a few things around.

One of these changes is the clutch and brake master locations. We were unable to access the brake fluid due to the down bars so we went with a Strange compact dual screw off car master.

Usually I would run a master plate but in this case we needed more room up front so I recessed the clutch master a bit. Should clean the area up too.
Pictures tell the tale.

....and the passenger side.

quick disconnect MSD 6al mount, starter harness pass through and panel reinforcments.

Closing up the down bar openings.

Nice, shes coming right along! :gitrdun:

This is definitely the same car. It was nice car in that other picture but here are some pictures when I got it. They had hacked up all of the wheel openings and had these ridiculously large front and rear wheels on the car along with those sweet purple stripes :sarcasm_smiley:

Vinny will make it even better ;) BTW one of those wheels that's on it in your pictures is still at the shop... I saw it today lolol

just the one? WTH ha

more firewall metal work.

We re ran all of the fire supression system lines and re directed the interior one so it wasn't directed at the driver...more on that one later.

I used a bulk head to pass through the firewall.

We can take the four other wheels that came on the car, melt them down and have enough aluminum to rebody the car!!! They are some huge front and rear wheels and weigh a ton.

Vince, the car is looking good but now that you made the firewall look so nice, the headers stand out as being fugly. What can/should we do? Obviously the timeline is short so unless there is an easy/quick solution, then fugly headers it is for now!!!

Do slightly grungy headers impact lap times?

Good point, if they are too shiny then they might blind me on the track!!! At least that is a possible excuse I could use. :trophy-1302:

We can do all of that next winter when we go through that engine for the next season. :D

Yup just the one .The lug holes got messed up so it was replaced,, The car's is looking nice Vinny

Nice car patoke!

Vince, you guys are doing good work. Good luck finishing it out.

thanks a lot guys.

Its a fun project for the shop. It was rough going through the holidays but it looks like we are going smooth now.

Here are a few pictures of the shift hole reduction and fireboot install.

nice work!

Maybe talk him into an LS swap ;)

What trans does he run? Rear end/suspension?

Thanks buddy,
LS? haaa maybe in a few seasons. This ones meant to be a slap down, hang it out track car.

Running a T56, 12 bolt and full Global West Cat5 set up front and rear.

Love what you are doing to it Vince.

thanks Mike!! Hope all is well with you.


Here are some steps taken to locate the oil tank in the cowl.

I added a remote cable to open and close the system. Along with a warning lamp.
I made a few retainer brackets to keep the cable in place and to avoid binding.

More on the accumulator actuation cable.

I made a bracket that will also have relays ,circuit breakers, harness mount and fire suppresion nozzel.

Also the aluminum rock guard for the oil tank. Which can be removed with the fender on.

:thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup:

battery tray and wiring going in...also some more interior work.

One of the other big things that I had to address was the tire clearance issues up front. With the CAT5 suspension there is a lot of built in caster. Not good for stock fenders.

Here are a few shots of what had to be done. Chop here chop there. Im hoping it will be very subtle when finished. Also I cut the fender flanges off and replaced them with 3/16" cold rolled round rod. Then bulged the fender out a bit to match the rear quarters.

fender after trim and weld then full prep

this mod alone added 1" side clearance and 1 1/4" to the rear. From the side the tire looks centered again.

Great work! I check this thread everyday

Looking good Vince

Thanks guys, its finally starting to flow again. Door bars are going in for the last time today. Hope to be done by the time I leave today. :welder:

Looks really good Vince. Just getting wind of this thread. I like it.

thanks Brett, its been mostly clean up and getting it up to current safety standards.
There will be a few more changes next year. Cross my fingers.

BTW, cage was put in with no diag bar. :twak: