69 Camaro v2.0 - Project "Major Havoc"

[chr2002ca]

All done! Wish you all the best of luck with your builds!

[chr2002ca]

A little more room for those wider tires and lower ride height
Since my car will be around 1/4” lower in the front now with wider(275) tires, and because I already had rubbing issues at my previous height with 245 tires, I decided to go with Anvil’s carbon inner fenders. I don’t necessarily like the idea of putting carbon fiber on a classic car, but the function of these instantly will solve that rubbing issue for me so I decided to go with them. The fact that they saved me about 14lbs off the front versus my heavy GM originals is a welcomed side effect also. The folks at Anvil were great to work with and these fit pretty good actually. The outer wheel arch in my original fenders is slightly off so I had to massage a few mount points here and there on the Anvil inners, but overall they bolted without too much difficulty after creating the 2.5” holes required for the RS headlamp door assembly. I also had to drill the holes for fog lamp harnesses and the 3 mount points for the rear support brackets. I added some rubberized undercoating to the bottom to dampen the sound and protect them. I was going to paint the tops satin black to keep my original look and ‘conceal’ them, but the satin carbon look has grown on me so I’ll leave them as-is for now. I may paint them later. I’m sure some old-schoolers will give me hell about them at shows. Oh well.

This is the only picture I have so far. You'll see them a little bit in a few other photos:



My wallet may be on fire but my new engine shouldn’t be
One thing I completely wanted to avoid with the future bigger, higher-compression, higher HP motor was cooling issues. I decided to play it safe, bite the bullet, and go with AutoRad’s setup. It’s a bit pricey but it’s the right thing to do and worth it, plus it looks much better than my previous setup. The folks at AutoRad were a pleasure to work with, they finished it right on schedule, and I was happy to do business with them. I decided to powder coat the core support and close-out panels satin black to keep the overall engine compartment appearance that I had before. Everything fit pretty good with the exception of where the hood latch assembly bolts to the upper cross bar of the core support. For some unknown reason, the upper bar and mounting holes on the bar were nearly 1/2” lower than where they needed to be. Just seems to me like that the crossbar is simply too low because all other holes and mount points on the support are dead on. There was no way the hood latch assembly would bolt up to this upper bar mount point AND the center support bracket that comes in from underneath it and ties everything together. I had to get the rear mount point to come up somehow. Since the bar itself and mount points on the bar could not be changed, I changed the rear mount points on the latch assembly. Not too difficult since there’s some room(thankfully) on the assembly to move those rear mount points. It just caught me by surprise considering how great all the other mount points had lined up and it took me a few minutes to figure out how to resolve. Overall, I highly recommend this setup to anyone.

I only took a photo of the radiator and you can see the powder coated core support a little in the last photo. I'll take more photos when I get the close-out panels installed and the radiator hooked up.

[chr2002ca]

Time to shift gears, manually
Part of this project is to switch from an automatic to a manual to make it a little more fun to drive. While I had the front apart and the ease of access, I installed Keisler’s hydraulic clutch setup and swapped out the automatic pedals for the manual setup. Also re-did the front brake lines because I had to move my Wilwood proportioning valve and distribution block to clear room for the Wilwood hydraulic clutch cylinder that bolts to the firewall. When I bolted this Keisler unit to the firewall and installed the clutch rod to the top hole in my clutch pedal, the angles weren’t aligning. The master cylinder angled down at 15 degrees below horizontal, whereas the rod going into it angled down at 22 degrees. The Keisler instructions stressed good alignment so I wanted to get these angles to match as best as possible. I could either tilt the master cylinder further down with the use of shims/wedges in between it and the firewall(ugh), or I could simply mount the rod in the lower hole of clutch pedal and decrease the pedal travel a little bit(so it won’t bottom out in the MC due to the extra travel). I asked Keisler about this and Shafi said the lower hole seemed like the route to go for me, so that’s what I did. The lower hole got the rod angle down to 17.5 degrees, so that’s very close to the 15 degrees for the master cylinder and should be good to go. Hope it works okay down the road.

[chr2002ca]

Looking like a car again
With all of the above sorted out, I’ve now been putting the front end back together this week and it’s starting to look my old car again. I still have a few more things to line up properly, a few mount points still to be reckoned with, and need to re-install the front bumper, but I’m almost done. Should be done by middle of next week. Because of the new AutoRad core support and Anvil inner fenders, I’m basically having to realign everything and massage a LOT of mount points which is a PITA doing that all over again. Getting those RS doors to sit just right again on several different axes is a chore also.



Getting stiff and getting some protection – Nope, not a Trojan ad
Next up was the roll bar and seat harnesses decision. This was a big debate for me. On one hand, you have a perfectly good roll bar setup sold by DSE that I could get shipped to my door for about $650 with their free shipping offer. The alternative was the RideTech Tiger Cage and harness bar shipped to my door for $2750 thanks to a good price from Matt’s Classic Bowties and $10 shipping by RideTech. Quite a difference in price though. Here’s how I approached this decision. The Tiger Cage is much easier to install obviously. With the help of a new set of cobalt drill bits, I could basically bolt it in for a test-fit, unbolt it and paint it, and then bolt it back in. In the future, if I changed my mind about having it, I can simply unbolt it and sell it and it would be like new and I could fetch a good price for it. So I was digging that ease of installation and flexibility. Furthermore, the bars that go from the hoop to the package tray hug the roof line better than the DSE kit, lessening the chance that a rear passenger could wack their head on them. Also, the harness bar is already pre-bent to allow you to slide the seat back further which is very helpful. Lastly, I like how the Tiger Cage ties into the package tray instead of running through it. Seems like that adds some more rigidity in that area. The stainless steel I could care less about because I would spray it satin black anyway, but it’s nice to know it would never rust. So the big question that I pulled hair out on was: Are these advantages worth the extra $2000 dollars? (cuz that’s a lot of f’ing wampum). Well, fark it, I bit the bullet and decided it was worth it and purchased the Tiger Cage. Others would probably decide different, so roast me if you want. My wallet’s already roasting so we’ll pair up nicely. RideTech has always been pleasant to chat with at the shows, they weighed my car for free, etc, etc, so I was happy to pass some business their way. I’ve already spent some good money with DSE also, so I’m an equal opportunist. The cage arrived a few days ago and I’ll install it in the upcoming weeks. I hope it’s as bolt-in as they say it is. I’ll let you know how that goes.



I’ll be adding these new Sparco Comp 4-pt harnesses and finally make use of the harness holes in my seats. The new camlock and grey(instead of yellow) colors on the belts is sharp looking. I’m sure RideTech is bummed to not see their harnesses going with their cage, but my car has always been a melting pot for vendor’s products so why try to be consistent now? It’s not like I’m getting hand-outs.

[chr2002ca]

The next few months
So the cage and interior will be installed over this next month along with a few new extra gauges and the center console which will need to be revised for the manual shifter. Then the minor rear suspension changes and Aeromotive gas tank the following month. Then probably the new wheels and tires in September/October. I was going to keep my Budniks and just have them rehooped, but the cost to rehoop and get the tires unmounted/remounted is a little pricey. It’s at that price where it’s almost the same cost to just get new wheels and tires and sell my current ones if I can fetch a decent price. Still undecided on it and pricing out my options. After the wheels and tires get resolved, I’ll finally be ready to concentrate on the engine and manual transmission which was supposed to be the original scope of Version 2.0.

Almost forgot, here’s what started all of this
I already have the new ZL Engine block. That’s actually what started this whole fiasco. It’s a gorgeous hunk-a-metal as Todd Akes can attest to(although he heard about my project and immediately put his car up for sale so he wouldn’t have to go up against a faster ZL1-powered Camaro ):




Can’t wait to get that built out and watch it run on the dyno and see what she produces. That’ll probably start late this year unless our ‘creating-a-family’ adventure continues to sap the life out of us. Since the new motor will be partially blue to match the car and will be a ZL motor, I’m giving her the name ‘BlueZiLLa’. Even got the mascot ready to go as you can see in the photo(yah, I was really bored one day). Not quite the ‘monster’ like other motors nowadays, but hey, it’s enough monster to get my sorry arse in trouble.

New Badging
Also had a chance to swap out my ZZ454 fender badges with a ZL489 badge. I grabbed the ZL letters from the new ZL1 Camaro and found some vintage numbers to go along with it. I like the new look. It’s not as big as it appears in the photo. About the same size as the previous.

Before:


After:

[Rybar]

Very cool updates Chris!