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'68 Camaro - Another one?! Again?! Really?
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All right... And with that, I'll start my project thread about my '68.
As some of you know, a number of years ago I built and infrequestly raced a '67 Camaro NASA AIX/Vintage car. I was a member of a number of other boards as "PAI Racing" although I don't recall being a member on here before and didn't find my user name in the list. So, I've newb'd up and here we go! The '67 was painted to resemble my '68 street car and as a homage to the Penske "light weight" '67 that was ultimately re-assigned a '68 identity. Ultimately the '67 will get it's own sort of retro-active built thread, but the long and short of it is the car was (regretably) sold to a racer in Australia where it lives and competes to this day. (https://lateral-g.net/forums/show...181#post544181) As a formal introduction to Lateral-G, here they are together 10 years ago. |
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I'll add a link here to the thread about the '67, once I finally get it posted up.
I love the '67, but I'd always had one hang up about the car... I didn't build it myself. And as awesome as it was, I always felt like I should have been capable of building my own car and so there was always that little pit in my stomach everytime someone complimented me on the car. My '68 and I have very long history together. And in reality, I suppose I should have just turned the '68 into a race car in the first place... I can't sell the car, ever. So I would have been stuck with what I had and it would have kept me out of a lot of past and future trouble! You see, I'm the second owner of the car. The first owner was my grandmother, who bought the car new and then passed away in 1969. I have had the car in my personal possession since I was 17, but never really did much with it, maybe out of "repsect" or maybe because I subconsiously new I'd make a mess out of it back then... Anyhow, the car was purchase new in the spring of 1968 from Kennedy Cheverolet in Marcellus NY. It was the first non-big block, non-SS, non-convertible, non-B body, my grandfather had purchased for my grandmother since 1962. But she saw it, loved it and just HAD to have it! According to my mother, it's the first car I ever crashed. Her version of the story is that when I was 4-5 years old, she left me in the car for "just a minute" to run into the store (that was totally cool back then, right?!) and when she came out, I'd put car in N and it rolled down a hill and into the back of another car. According to my father, it's the 10th car my mother crashed and he never believed a word of the "rolled down the hill story" as he likes to call it (it was his mom's car). Here's me with the car in 19741975-ish... Obviously I was pretty fond of it even then, even with a 250/glide power train with the deluxe interior and trim. I will not put up the white tux with red tie and cumberbun photo with the car from my senior prom, but I will tell you that a) I did have a mullet, and b) I matched the car, not my date! |
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When I moved to CA in 1997, I left the car with my buddy in NY. He stored it and took care of it for me until 2003-4 when I finally shipped it out to CA.
Hmmm, should I drive a whipped on old granny six '68 or a big block SS '69... By the way, The '69 is nearly through a 6 year long nut and bolt resto now and it looks amazing! |
Awesome Lee-roy. Look forward to more. :cheers:
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Thanks man! Got to end this procrastination session for a bit, but I'll get back on my horse a bit later tonight!
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Actually, one more thing I need to get off my chest early before I sign off...
The stripe. Yes, it's horrible. I still have nightmares about it and I still hate it... Not the fact that it has the stripe, but the B/S repaint version. In NY it seemed like everyone had a "body and fender guy" that would do little spring refreshes on your cars. Paint, rust proof, dent and ding repair. For years my grandparents and parents used a guy named Willie Clemmons down off of Salina St. in Syracuse. Willie was a nice guy and hell, you get what you pay for right?! Over the years, the car took on sort of a multi-colored, wavy appearance as a result of this ad hoc annual bodywork. When I was around 17 or 18, I talked my dad into trading some accounting work for a repaint from one of his clients. The car went to Hawk Frame and Collision in the south eastern suburbs or Rochester (can't remember exactly where) and was introduced to a concept that I've never fondly referred to as the "paint car wash". It came home with many insteresting acts of aggresion that could loosely be referred to as "bodywork" but the real touchstone for how half-assed it was was that horrible, mis-aligned, unbroken nose stripe. So now you all know that I know, and you all know why. Ahhhh, feels better to get that monkey off my back! Until a few weeks ago, it was a standing source of embarassment. As of now, the car is virtually stripe free, but that's a story for later! |
That's so cool. Great set of pictures.
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Very cool story. I love cars with history behind them.
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Killer cars. Great story and photos! Glad you're on board. :thumbsup:
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Thanks guys! Yeah, feels good to get a little internet inspiration to keep moving on this thing!
Brett, I'm going to have to come up to your shop sometime and look around. So much interesting stuff on your website! And I'd have to imagine that in-cabin radiator really kept things comfortable and fog free on chilly Mojave mornings up at Willow! |
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So, back to the story... But first another quick interjection about the '67, since you guys got a kick out of my '68 being a "family" car. If any of you guys know Ryan Flaherty from NASA, you'll enjoy hearing that his mom bought my '67 brand new and I dug that car out of Ryan's grandparents back yard in Tarzana back in 2001.
Anyhow, since I already had a road-race Camaro, I began to flirt with the notion of cloning a 396 SS with this car. My wife actually came with an all original iron head, solid lifter L71/L72 427 when I married her (ain't she cool?!) so that made its way into the car, backed by a Muncie 4 speed I had kicking around after I sold my '66 Impala convertible as a roller). But before long, I developed a bit of a fantasy about possibly using the car for some sort of drag racing, and it begain to take on that persona, with a bit of "Aloha Bobby and Rose" thrown in for good measure. At the end of the "big block drag car" posing phase, it had a TH400 in it instead of the 4 speed. I couldn't find any good underhood pictures with the 427 in the car, other than a close up of the lifter valley... After I blew up the 427 out on PCH acting like a 13 year-old (the pictures with the radials and the black hood were taking immediately after it came screeching and rattling to a stop across PCH from Bolsa Chica State Beach). |
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So with the motor blown, my '67 and my boat sold (boat nonsense it a whole different episode of Jerry Springer) I decided to do something stupid and rebuild the car to corner based on the random spare stuff I had kicking around...
I still had the CCWs from trying DOT radial race rubber on the '67 (yes, I was wearing arm restraints in that pic, hated the window net), I still had a 570" Merlin wide rail block motor from the boat and my buddy had a pretty slick looking T101A kicking around... Sounds like fun to me! At one point, I even decided that I was going to cage the car and picked up a fiberglass front clip, doors and truck lid! I'll admit it, I was still kind of trying to "find myself" and a direction on this project! |
Wow very cool story, I just the back story on our cars!! Can't wait to see where it goes from here.
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Keep it coming Sean!! BTW did you ever live in Tarzana?
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Kids baseball all day today. If I can stay awake I'll add some more later.
I didn't live in Tarzana. My wife is from Van Nuys though and my buddy responsible for the T101A had a effects shop up in Van Nuys as well. |
waaay cool story!
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It was really more of a Kelly "F-in'" Powers mullet than Joe Dirt, truth be told...
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All right, I actually just found some "in progress" pictures that I can add as we go, but at this point I think it's probably time to explain what the overall goal is for this project and what my plans are. Ya know, so a year from now, when I'm doing something completely different, we can all come back to this post and laugh at me!
As I said, the car has been pointed a number of different directions before finally setting on a return to my first-love, the road racing theme... I will say that when I finally decided on this direction, it felt "Right" and I'm glad I finally got back to this. When I had the '67 built, I stripped the car down to the tub myself, in a three car deep, one car wide garage under my apartment in the Sunset section of San Franciso (California and 17th if anyone is familiar with the area). Then I loaded it on a trailer and the car (and large stacks of money) dissapeard for about three years. With that perspective in mind, I really wanted to do the '68 project in phases to minimze downtime and kind of develop how the car was going to work and what I was going to do with it as I went. That's stil an overriding philosophy of this project, even though it has taken an astronomical amount of time to get even part way through this first phase. I wanted to use as much "off-the-shelf" upgrades as I could on this project. I wanted a "real car" that I could drive every day if I wanted to. I wanted to do most of the work myself. So my expectation is that the car isn't going to be anything radical, but should be fun to drive, look decent and give me the ability to make relatively simple short term upgrades over time. |
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Phase 1 -
Drivetrain, suspension and brake upgrades. Rust repair and bodywork necessary to effect the upgrades. Goal - running driving car and a platform for future upgrades. I know, I know... You guys are like "Dude! A 570" big block and a T101A aren't exactly what I'd call 'daily-driver' stuff..." Initially, I wanted a cool weekend bomber I could run up and down PCH with and have a little fun laying tire in then neigborhood along with a Saturday morning swing by Adams Ave. Donuts occasionally. But the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to drive the car like a "real car". So obviously the Merlin had to go. I am still very attached to running the T101A in the car, although popular opinion is I will want to shoot myself after a month of driving it with the dog-box. I just miss my Jerico from the '67 and haven't been able to get over that yet. About the time I'd sobered up and decided the 570 wasn't the right direction, another buddy decided that he didn't want to go ahead with the LS2 project in his '67 Chevy pickup. This ended up at my house... |
OK, so get to the point right?! What I'm actually doing to the car in Phase 1.
This is the current powertrain/front suspension parts list. I'm sure I'm forgetting some stuff. I'm sure I'll get some "ugh" responses to some of this stuff.
On the bodywork side, this is what's either been done or coming down the pipe (need to finish the front so I can turn the car around and start on the rear - wait, that didn't sound right?!)
Again, I'm sure there's a buttload of stuff I'm forgetting but that's sort of the overriding list of things for this phase of the project. I'm likely going to do a Fay's watts link in the rear as well. But still sort of sniffing around on that. The car also already has bolt in subframe connectors, a 12 bolt rear with Tom's KA axles and rear GM style single piston discs. As you'll see in some of the photos, I wanted to use a Unisteer rack conversion (given to me by my buddy with the LS2) but ultimately wasn't happy with it. I'm not going to complain or bag on the company because I never went to them directly to try to remedy what I didn't like (since I didn't get it from them) and ulitmately, I'm actually overall happier with using stock style power steering, given the overall drivability goal. At the end of Phase 1, I want a car that I can turn the igintion key and drive to work, to the store, to lunch... Expectations regarding comfort and "drivability" would be equivelent to my recently departed '87 C30 dually or my '95 F350 PSD. So I'm shooting for "effective" not "perfect". |
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Back on page 3... Dang, that ain't cool. I'd better get off my butt and get some more pics up.
OK, so as I said, the car had a 427 in it for a while. The 427 had a bit of a bad day and had to take some time off... Here's the starting point. And yes, that is duct tape on the MSD box. No worries boys, it's not holding the box onto the car! It's covering a hole in the box... I know you're all pretty impressed so far! Ha ha. |
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So with some help from my buddy John (who will feature prominintely in this project... a bit of a spoiler alert, but I wouldn't be surprised if he ends up finishing the car when the F-it button gets pushed at some point in the future) the cat got skinned.
For those playing along at home - John is one of my closest friends and is nearly always involved in my vehicular shenanigans (cheeky and fun, I assure you). John is a very experienced and meticulous fab guy... Me, not so much! His handywork can be seen over at Steve's Nova Site, where he's doing a really nice resto-mod rebuild on a '67 Nova wagon. So simple point of refrence... Nice and well thought out = John, halfassed or slapped together = me. |
:hello: :thankyou:
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Cool.
17x10 on the front? How wide of a tire are you going to run? |
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Thanks guys. More to come! |
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That was the original, 40 year-old NY salty fresh subframe that came out of the car. The tails were a bit rough, but all in all the Turbo-Thrift Leak-o-Matic rusts proofing seemed to do its job pretty well in keeping a lot of the underside, slimy, grimy and relatively rust free!
Still, I picked up a nice solid subframe locally and had it blasted and powdercoated the perfect Penske-poser-grey... |
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Cool stuff Sean. I keep seeing people call you Sean so I guess that's right. Did you weld up the seams in that sub after blasting or do any clearancing mods? |
Rob, it's Sean. Leroy Rochester is what it says on the NYS Thruway exit (47) that you'd get off to go to my parents house if you were coming from Buffalo or points west. Always thought it was hilarious...
I did some fairly arbitrary seam welding on the subframe. Didn't really do any mods for clearance becuase it wasn't done on my '67 and those wheels worked fine. The factory welds on the sub were (are) horrifying... It's honestly the worst I've seen. I had half a mind to cut them all off/grind them and start over, but then I figured they were on there for 40 years and haven't broken, I'll give them a shot... I think ultimately, if I decided to get a lot more radical with the car, I'd go with a fabricated subframe rather than polish this turd much more. I'm always at something of a crossroads about what I "really" want to do with the car. Sometimes I want it to be more hard-edged and sometimes I want it to be a cool street car I can pass on to my kids when the time is right... Day to day on that one! Fortunately the time won't be "right" for a long time! |
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Initially, I also did my little tribute to Uncle Dick... But I've kind of moved away from running it and figured I could pick up the difference with the adjustable upper arms, ball joint and some mondern spindles, etc. like the ride tech kit.
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I applaud GM for such pretty welds in that last pic……
Cool story and I'm eager to see this one roll along. |
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And I'll admit, I'm on the fence about the T101A on the street, but I miss my Jerico sooooo much! I have to give it a shot. I can always do something different if that doesn't work out. With the race car, I had a tripple disk 7.25" clutch and basically slipped the rear tires rather than the clutch anytime I left in the car... You have a Jerico in your car right?! What was it like driving it on the street? |
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What I am really excited/worried about is the Tilton 7.25 triple I will be using for the first time... that will be interesting. |
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What little time i had with my Jerico and Tilton 7.25 triple .....I LOVED IT. But I wouldn't want to drive it in traffic.. Just spin the tires to get her moving.. We'll be together again soon :hello: |
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All right... Was out in the garage today for a bit, a hour or so under the car made me realize I had to undo the last 6 or so hours of work I've put in on it... But here's some more "and then..." photos from a year-ish ago.
The firewall repaint was done with and eye towards "not going to paint what you can't see" and the notion that this will all eventually come apart and be done right sometime in the future, or it will end up being a racecar afterall, and then I can invoke the 50-50 rule and go have a sammich! |
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I guess I should mention that at that point, I was still planning on running the big motor, so there was a fair amount of test fitting. Bought a really bitchen pan from Stef's so I could run the wide rail block in the stock stub. The motor is gone, but I still have the pan!
I was also still planning on running manual rack at this point. |
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