Vorshlag Build Thread - 69 Camaro Pro Touring/Track Car

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On the 69 Camaro we had less latitude on the placement of the hood exhaust ducts. We spent many hours (only a faction of the options are shown above) trying to find a way to duct the 3 heat exchangers and fit inside the confines of the OEM style, aluminum, 69 Camaro cowl hood. The raised cowl section just did not lend itself to placing the large hood ducts we needed in the proper places (ow pressure zones - which helps extract air).

Then we tried an flat 69 Camaro hood and had new styling constraints for the ducts. Even the front tires themselves limit where the ducts can be on the hood - stuff 315s under stock fender contours and they begin to intrude inboard, in a big way (shown above right at "full bump travel"). I will expand on this when we finally have the new hood installed (a composite hood is being built now) and the final hood ducting design is under construction. These ducts are gonna be BIG.



The "straight on" approach for the inlet tube we used on this 69 Camaro is the cleanest routing for the intake air and should work fine here. This produces the cleanest, straightest path for air to get to the engine (only one small bend in the inlet tube, behind the airbox).



A big K&N filter is stuffed inside the airbox and it draws air from two open grills in the upper grill section. The filter element is visible inside those grill openings in the grill block-off plate pictures in that section above. An LS3 style Mass Air Flow sensor "blade" will be added to the intake tube ahead of the throttle body later in the build.

FRONT BRAKE DUCT FABRICATION



The car came in here with 2-piece 14" Wilwood front rotors and some 6-piston calipers installed up front. Well as big as those are, for longevity on a road course this car still needs some forced cooling air thrown inside the at least the front rotors. Ryan fabbed up a pair of custom brake backing plates with 4" inlets to keep these cool.



Simple aluminum plate was laid out and cut to fit around the C6 Corvette front spindles / hubs and seal to the inside face of the 14" rotor. The 4" oval tubes were made on the tubing roller and welded to the backing plates, then fitted with 2-layer, high temp, 4" ID brake duct hose routed to inlet ducts in the splitter (which I will show later).

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No rocket science here, just careful measuring, some experience, and good craftsmanship. The main thing to remember is you want to get as much of the duct aimed below the rotor face. Blowing air directly at the rotor face doesn't do much cooling - but ducting air inside the rotor hat cools the front wheel hub and allows the vented brake rotor to act as a centrifugal air pump, which pulls the air through the rotor from the inside out. Even without ducted air the rotor will do this on its own to a small extent, but high pressure air forced inside the rotor makes for a HUGE bump in brake cooling efficiency.



Along with the brake duct hose some November work is shown in the image above. I will talk about what's coming up in the final paragraph of this update.

SPLITTER MOUNT FABRICATION

All of the factory front structure is gone, from the radiator support to the inner fender unibody structure. There are critical items that need a solid piece to be hung from at the very front - like the splitter, which can put 200-300 pounds of aero load through the small struts that mount at the leading edge of the the lower splitter plane. There are also other pieces that need some mounting structure at the front of the engine bay, like the radiator, coolers, headlights, front bumper, and more.



The exterior "bumper" is an aluminum OEM reproduction unit, mostly added for styling (it covers several seams between OEM panels). Underneath this black aluminum bumper is the real structure added, by way of a 1.0" diameter DOM tube. This piece of tubing is bent to follow the contours of the OEM front bumper and then many things were tied onto this structure.



Reproduction OEM headlight buckets were mounted at the bottom using custom brackets welded to this 1" front structural tube. There are also splitter support rod mounts that attach to this front tube, with brackets hidden behind the exterior of the black aluminum bumper.



More things were then added to this bumper, like structure to mount the various heat exchangers, which we will talk about next time.

WHAT'S NEXT?

That's it for the October work, but there was a lot accomplished in November which I will show next time. This includes finishing the steering shaft, power steering and oil cooler mounting, front anti-roll bar "splined arm" and end link fabrication, fitting the front body panels better to finalize some mounts, a big discussion of hood and duct choices (including flat hood vs using the existing aluminum cowl hood), making a new front steering arm that bolts to the C6 spindles, then making new tie rods to finish the steering, planning out the wiper motors, making room for the driveshaft at the rear of the frame, as well as some exploratory work on hood hinges.



We will cover all that and more in my next update. Thanks for reading.

Cheers,

[MoparCar]

Thank you so much for taking the time to post such a detailed build on this site. Wow-you and your shop have skills and I really appreciate the "everything for a purpose" type design. I for one had never heard of your shop (not sure how I didn't know about you guys), but now I need to research all you're builds.

Again, thanks for the build and inspiration! Top Notch!

Wes

[fleet]

Bar...


...raised.

[Sieg]

Great reading Terry, thank for taking the time to share all the talent within the walls of Vorshlag.

[Dave Pratt]

Man I'm out of breath! Great engineering and then some...really impressive work !!!

[Graham08]

Wow! Thank you for posting this build and sharing the rationale behind the decisions made during the build process. I'm definitely looking forward to more.

[Dr. Jekyll]

DAMN that cage is serious business!