Yet another 2nd Gen Camaro - Project/update

[gerno]

A few more updates. Optima this weekend is now officially out but progress still continues on the car.

Clearanced the frame to maximize turning radius.
Mocked up the sway bar but ran into clearance issues with the steering/tie rods. Hoping bent tie rods will correct the issue. may also move the bar forward if possible to straighten the links. Still in progress.
Mocked up the upper shock mounts. Eventually there will be bay bars tied into the cage to reinforce the hoops. I may also remake the hoop to make is slightly narrower and to ad 5 degrees tilt to the shock mount.

[cpd004]

Looking great! You're making some great progress!

[Panteracer]

Thank you so much for all the detail
Looks like a lot of work but I know it
will be worth it...keep after it

Bob

[gerno]

Its been a while since I updated this so I figure its about time. Lots has happened in the last few months. First, I missed the Optima COTA deadline. I decided it wasn't worth rushing the rebuild to hit the event. One of the big reasons was due to my girlfriend who pointed out I was getting completely OCD on the project, becoming a bit of an ass due to the stress of the deadline and had forgotten about many other important things, such was my dog, maintaining my house, my truck, focusing on work...oh, and her too. It was a good reality check for my that this is supposed to be fun and I am doing this to learn how to do things right. I took a bit of a break from the car, did some traveling and now have started to focus on it again. New deadline is March of next year (hopefully).


I still haven't finished up the front suspension. I've found just how difficult it really is to package everything in the front of a car including the tie rods, sway bar and maximizing the wheel travel and starring angle. I also decided to cut the frame up even more. If I'm going to build it I might as well make it easy to work on later. This meant completely removing the spring buckets.






From here I needed to figure out how to fit the sway bar. Ron provided me some bent arms to use, and I did my best to try to fit them. Unfortunately it wasn't possible with my goal for the most steering angle possible. I decided to make a test arm with a different 30 degree bend in it to see how things fit and it seems to be the best choice.







Next piece before I finished up mounting the sway bar was to get the steering geometry correct. Ron talked me thru this process and I ordered up all new linkages. This included a bumpsteer adj centerline, bumpsteer adjusters for the outer tie rods and bent tie rod links for added clearance. Process overall was pretty simple. First I leveled the pitman arm on the steering box, it was 2.5 degrees off. This included shimming between the steering box and the frame until is was level. Next, because my pitman and new idlers arm are the same length I measured the distance from the axle centerline to the centerline mount for both with both the pitman and idle perpendicular to the axle centerline. I also needed to make sure the centerlink was level. This showed me I needed to move my idler arm mount ~1/2" from the original location. I thought about some link of fancy bracket but ultimately decided simple is better and I just drilled new holes in the frame. After they were both level and square I had to clearance the passenger side of the frame because the idlers was little much higher. Once clearanced I was able to check the angle of the centerlink thru the steering travel. I put a gauge on the centerlink and turned the box lock to lock. Happy to report it was spot an and didn't change angle at all.

[gerno]

Next issue I ran into was that my new coil over mounts were hitting the wheel while turning and in suspension compression. Of course this wasn't going to work. I had to start over on the coilover mount. I could have bought some new arms but I already work geometry with Ron so I didn't want to chance screwing up the geometry. I had also hacked these up already so figured they were pretty worthless in terms of resale.

I went ahead and cut the mounts and entire spring bucket out. I added a cross tube and some additional 3/16 plate to make an area to mount the coil over bracket at 4.5" from the ball joint centerline. My welds certainly aren't the straightest but I'm happy with the overall results so far.











After all this time that's really all I have to update. I'm hoping this week to finish up bother LCA's with coilover mounts and decide on final mounting of the sway bar. You can see in one of the pick I have the new sway bar arms and have drilled them for the dual mounting locations. After this I have to rebuild the hoops for the coil over upper mounts because of the change in height for the lower mount revision. Maybe that will get done next week but probably not since I'll be headed to SEMA

[Dave Pratt]

This is so cool to watch guys doing all this great work in their own garage.I'm no welder but I'm looking at getting something for the garage...I'll learn as I go I hope. Great work on the build!!

[preston]

I've found just how difficult it really is to package everything in the front of a car

I read somewhere that Bruce McLaren himself said designing a race car was primarily a packaging exercise.

Looks like you're on the right path. Of all aspects of (pro tour) car construction, I find the front suspension the most interesting and in fact the dis-satisfaction of trying to band aid the suspension on my '67 Mustang was what got me started building cars in the first place.

Looks like you're doing the right thing and with Ron involved your in the best of hands. And every time you decide not to compromise, you've made the right choice, especially if its mostly an issue of labor (everyone has $ limits).

As much as I like to work on "open design" tube front ends, I find there to be something really satisfying about working with the stock subframe and the original steering gear, for example I found 73CP's thread really interesting for that reason. As long as its someone else's car !

[waynieZ]

It looks great, nice work.

[Flash68]

Impressive Steve. You are really goin for it (within reason) and stickin with it. I am glad you didn't bail on the Camaro.

Did I hear you picked up some other vehicle in the meantime?

[SSLance]

Nothing wrong with stepping back every now and then to tend to other priorities...it's all about balance.

Huge kudos for stepping into the deep end with your fab work, I agree...if you are in it this far just keep doing things right instead of compromising. It will pay off in the end.