69 Camaro/Firebird

[deaber142]

I'm a new member to this site, although I have been gawkin' at all the sweet cars on Leteral-G for a few years now.
I am currently in the process of turning my 69 Camaro (originally a firebird) into a "G-machine" wanabe. My budget at this time doesn’t allow for all the high-tech gadgets, so I am doing all (99%) of the work myself as inexpensively as possible. ( Not cheap and cheesy, but inexpensively) So it will have the look, but the performance will have to wait.
I have a mild 350 with a 350 turbo in it, (bought the engine and tranny out of friends 69 Camaro after he did an LS2/6speed swap in his car.) The engine and trans work great, well at least it did before we yanked it out of his car.

My short term goal is to get it running. A couple friends came over the other night and we were able to connect a few wires just to get it started. But now I need to go in and get all the wires connected correctly. I'm working with the existing harness that came with the car, The previous owner changed all the sheetmetal and all the interior over to camaro, but left the firebird harness in, I would love to go buy a new harness, but the budget (my wife) doesn’t allow for that, so there’s going to be alot of fixin and splicing going on.

Once all the wiring is done and it’s running again, I will be mini tubing it to make room for some wider tread.
It does have a mostly complete interior, so I will be leaving that alone for the most part for now.
Eventually I will be painting it myself (I used to paint for a living) the body work from the doors back is all done, I just need to work on the front clip.
Of course wheels and tires are high on my list, I'm looking to put 18's on the front and 19 or 20's on the back.

Well that’s about it, thanks for letting me hang out.

[Sieg]

What part of Oregon are you in? I'm in Springtucky.

[deaber142]

I'm up here in South Salem.

[Sieg]

Looks like you have a nice platform to work with. Enjoy it!

Fair warning - If you put those big wheels on the brakes are going to look tiny and that could get expensive.

[deaber142]

Thanks, that was one of the reasons I went with this car, it is very solid. No cancer to be found.
And yes that is going to be a bit of an odd look having the big diam wheels especially on the back with the small stock "drum" brakes showing. Big brakes are on the list, maybe by the time I can afford them, small stock brakes will be the hottest thing

Just spent a few hours tracing and labeling my wires with a continuity tester last night. It went better then I thought. Just need to put the proper fittings on the ends and plug them in.

[lutzy]

[67CamaroKid]

Those are cool projects. for the Camaro

[deaber142]

Well I have been slowly working on the car. I got the wiring labeled and ran to where it needs to go. Once I have everything (lights and what not) working I will then hide all the wiring.

I have been fabricating a center console. It came out of a toyota celica, with a little trimming it fits quite well. I comes with 2 cup holders . I still need to wrap it in leather and add some guages. as you can see in the picture it covers up part of the ash tray, I'm thinking I might use some aluminum and shape it to cover up the holes (where the handle above the glove box goes) and have it come down and cover up the stock ash tray.

I ended up trading my stock seats for a new headliner, steering wheel, switches and knobs, and mics other parts. I ended up deciding to install some seats I took out of a Toyota Celica that my son totaled. They are very comfortable, with some very good lumbar and side support. The back seat fits perfectly too.

I currently have the gas tank out. I was just going to paint it and put it back, but once getting it cleaned up it had a few small dents. So I am using a sheet of aluminum I had and making a cover for it.

Well thats about it for now. I will get some more pics up soon.