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!
Brian Hobaugh SCCA National Tour June 2014
First Hemi 'Cuda Convertible Ever Built
Short clips: Goodguys Pleasanton autocross and pit videos
Mario
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