Project "Jane Doe" 69 Camaro at Best of Show Coachworks

[Gandalf]

Jesus & I had a marathon assembly session to get back to where we were before the firewall/tunnel do-over plus fit a few other items. Front sheetmetal for the most part, door and trunk seals, trunk latch, door handles, jamb vents.




D*ck followed-up with aligning the Carbon Fiber hood from Anvil on the DSE hinges, trimming the openings for the Marquez markers, fitting the Anvil rear spoiler and GM Sport Mirrors.




I fitted the Marquez billet 3D taillights along with the spaghetti engineering LED rear lights.


I changed out the style of mesh insert that comes with the Anvil cowl panel to have it match the cowl induction grill/insert also from Anvil. I really like how this piece turned out.

[Gandalf]

Time to take her home for some wiring and assembly. Stopped off on the way home to see Jimmy @ Warner Muffler in Oceanside, CA to get my exhaust started. The guy is a wizard with exhaust!



As we pulled up the sun peeked through the clouds and we got to see a little blue....



He hung my 3" stainless exhaust, x-pipe and joined to the Art Morrison headers with stainless v-band clamps. After adding the 3" Borla XR1 stainless mufflers Jimmy noticed that we did not have enough adjustment in our Gbar setup to get the rear to sit close to where he thought it should be. There was obviously an issue with the Moser 9" housing we had purchased with pre-welded brackets for the GBar. We decided to just dump the exhaust at the muffler for now and complete the system when we had all the rear end geometry worked out.

[Gandalf]

Back home now with a list a mile long of things to get done.....mostly wiring, ISIS, basic interior, seats, steering and lighting plus working out the rear-end/pinion angles.

With the focus of the car being mainly street with a little weekend-warrior/show, I wanted a more modern, comfortable and functional interior. Since we were doing every nut and bolt anyways, I had to figure we could bring the interior up a notch or two. Change out the first-gen seats, update the dash, controls and instruments. Quiet the interior as much as possible (good luck with that and your 3" exhaust!). A nice steering wheel and shifter combo. Modern a/c and lighting and of course update carpet and materials. So much for the list getting shorter…..

Some time back we had fitted a Gen4 dash. I’d seen one or two others do it so I was confident going in. It fit nicely once we had cut out the original dash and reused the 4th Gen cross-brace to help mount the dash solid. More on the dash later…

I chose a C6 Corvette steering column, mainly so I can use the controls like wipers, lights etc on the column instead of the regular dash-mounted switches. We are using ISIS for our wiring so we should have no problem making these work. The C6 column, like a lot of modern steering columns, is a multi-piece, collapsible column. D!ck and I collectively designed and created a mount for the column and incorporated this into the dash mount. A universal joint under the dash and a Borgeson bearing mounted in the firewall were required along with a lot of fab time and test fitting. It came out great.




Note to self – make sure the parts are available to adapt your aftermarket steering wheel to your chosen column BEFORE selecting a column (!). Long story short, there was not one available for the C6/Momo combo I had selected (in fact there weren't any aftermarket hub adaptors available for a C6!). I ended up re-using the GM spline insert from the original wheel with some NRG hub adaptor components to create a one-off. It came out great PLUS I ended up with a removable wheel! Thanks to Mike @ NRG who was very helpful selecting the NRG components for modification, despite not having an exact part off-the-shelf for our combination. A local company here in Carlsbad used their CNC machine to help prepare and perfectly machine the parts. We press-fit the spline insert and backed it up with a welded collar which we fastened to the hub.




The finished product:


I did not want the aftermarket gauge / race car look plus we already had the LS7 and E38 GM PCM so I chose to use a C6 (Z06) instrument cluster. The cluster fit inside the Gen4 Camaro dash with the help of some custom mounting but like the dash itself, would require some extensive finish-work by the interior shop later on (more to come on this subject). Here it all is mocked-up and in place.


Huge thanks to Gus and the gang @ Cleveland Pick-A-Part who provided most of the C6 Corvette components used in this build. The parts always arrived in great shape and packed perfectly and the price is always right! – perfect partners in a project like this. Thanks guys!

[mdprovee]

Nice story. It was fun meeting you at RTTC 2 last year delivering your fenders.

Hope to see it at RTTC 3.

[Gandalf]

Originally Posted by mdprovee

Nice story. It was fun meeting you at RTTC 2 last year delivering your fenders.

Hope to see it at RTTC 3.

Great to meet you also Mike. We will definitely be at RTTC 3 this year!

Gregg

[DOOM]

Gregg is that a Acura color ''NIGHTHAWK BLUE''? I see the blue pop out in the sun ..

[ironworks]

I think it's so funny that you have edit Dick's name in your post.



HAHA Poor Dick.

[tones2SS]

Originally Posted by Gandalf

I thought that dash looked very familiar! Are you keeping the traction control and fog light switches on the dash, as is?
Great looking car.

[Gandalf]

Originally Posted by tones2SS

I thought that dash looked very familiar! Are you keeping the traction control and fog light switches on the dash, as is?
Great looking car.

Thanks for the compliment. I had intended to re-pupose those switches and had even added an Infinity push-start engine button to the mix. But hold that thought - things get even more interesting with the dash later on.....

[Gandalf]

With the Gen4 Vintage Air mounted under the dash, it's time for some wiring.

Some of the ISIS components.


The SpearTech engine harness, E38 PCM and Vette DBW pedal. This harness came fully labeled, complete with fuseblock and separate labelled diagrams specific to my harness. I had John make the harness so I could locate the PCM inside the car, add a second OBD2 connector to pull some data for the dash and also added some lines for me to route to the Corvette cluster. I have to note that John was one of thee most helpful vendors during this build. He never quits being available for questions and followup. Thanks John!



With the tunnel and firewall now modified, I re-mounted the PCM, re-installed the Speartech engine harness and fuse block. I modified the ISIS mount that Chris had originally come up with. The SpearTech fuses and the ISIS system (the MasterCell and 1 PowerCell) will be hidden under the dash and be accessible by dropping down the glove compartment door. I started wiring the C6 column into ISIS which was a breeze with the ground-switched inputs and 22ga wire.



I had seen the Corvette guys switching over to these Braille batteries and at 17lb it was hard not to at least try one. The small size and bracket that would fit nicely in the side recess of the trunk could work well. I plan to add a C-Tek maintainer with an external connection. The grey of the battery would later be changed to black and the aluminum bracket that was anodized did not come out as nice as I had hoped so that will be powdercoated.



I ran the battery cables from the passenger footwell to the trunk alongside the ISIS power and a few lines I ran separate from ISIS. I ran these through the rear side panel using a large grommet obtained from John @ SpearTech.



I designed a removable aluminum panel to mount behind the rear seat to try and help keep any noise down. I neglected to get a photo of the final product so you get to see the cardboard mockup lol. We later covered the aluminum piece with Dynamat.



My 2nd PowerCell and InMotion Cell are mounted in the trunk along with all of the main ISIS power fuse blocks. If I could have found a tidy way to mount a cell in the engine compartment somewhere, I’d have done that and just run the few rear lighting circuits back to the trunk. That would have been more efficient for the individual circuits (lights, fans etc) but with the battery in the trunk you have to think about where you are going to route your power to each cell AND where to mount the main fuse blocks. Planning ahead makes all the difference with the ISIS system and it worked out well here. Here’s the mock-up of the rear ISIS modules mounted vertically in the forward trunk area while I wired everything and made sure everything would work as intended. The module on the left is the inMotion cell for door locks and windows. To the right is the second PowerCell.