LSA Powered 69 Camaro -"Lou's Change"

[waynieZ]

That fits nice and tight. It looks good.

[Ron in SoCal]

Originally Posted by waynieZ

That fits nice and tight. It looks good.

x2! Thanks for the write up Lou. I saw the cage at SEMA and for prefab it looks really good. Your mods make it top notch

[EvoIX]

That rear setup looks nice.
What's with the Wilwood calipers ? I count six but it is clearly marked 4 piston?

Great build thread. Learned alot.

[Lous69]

Originally Posted by EvoIX

That rear setup looks nice.
What's with the Wilwood calipers ? I count six but it is clearly marked 4 piston?

Great build thread. Learned alot.

Good question.

The shape of the rear calipers certainly suggests there would be 6 pistons inside but there are actually only four. Here are some pics of the front and rear calipers before installation that show what is really inside of each.

The front, 6 piston calipers:





The rear, 4 piston calipers:





Glad the thread is helping you just as other threads are helping us!

[jlwdvm]

What is installing the headliner going to be like with the cage tucked up nice and tight?

[V8TV]

Originally Posted by jlwdvm

What is installing the headliner going to be like with the cage tucked up nice and tight?

It's going to be a little tricky, but it's nothing that our interior guy can't handle. We're not putting the cage tubes butted against the roof or anything like that. I think the bigger challenge will be for the painter to get good coverage on the cage.

[Ron in SoCal]

Originally Posted by V8TV

It's going to be a little tricky, but it's nothing that our interior guy can't handle. We're not putting the cage tubes butted against the roof or anything like that. I think the bigger challenge will be for the painter to get good coverage on the cage.

Kev...how do you weld the crossbar on top where it is clsoe to the roof? With great difficulty, I'd imagine...

[V8TV]

Originally Posted by Ron in SoCal

Kev...how do you weld the crossbar on top where it is clsoe to the roof? With great difficulty, I'd imagine...

Yeah, and a flexible TIG torch, short tungstens, and small hands!

[V8TV]

Here's the 2 videos covering the install of the T-56 Magnum 6-speed manual we installed in "Lou's Change". We needed to cut the floor in our Camaro, but we're told some stock subframe cars might not need the trans tunnel mods. We're also hearing of transmissions with certain ribs ground off to gain clearance. In our case, the tunnel mods were the best option.

[Lous69]

I thought I might share some of the modifications that we made to the roll cage rear drops and explain the reasoning behind those changes.

First, lets look at the stock first gen rear suspension. The blue arrows indicate the load path points between the rear axle and the body.



Since we installed the Detroit Speed QUADRA Link rear suspension and mini tubs the load path between the rear axle and the body changed. The rear most location of that load path is now at the coil overs as shown in this sketch.



In order to shorten the load path from the rear axle to the roll cage we decided to modify the rear drops of the cage as shown in this sketch.





Here's what that modification looks like in real life.

Some high horsepower first gens. have been known to develop stress cracks in the rear quarters. While welded in frame connectors have a reputation of reducing the risk of stress cracks, we feel this modification might further reduce the chances of that happening.
Short of doing a full blown finite element analysis of the entire system its hard to know for sure.

Some might argue the weight of the fuel tank is less supported with these modifications. Most design decisions are trade off decisions. In the end, the fact that these mods will clean up the trunk so nice won out. Our reasoning included reminding ourselves that the factory structure was designed to handle the weight of the fuel tank without any assistance from a roll cage structure.

To further clean up the trunk area we plan to mount the battery on top of the rear shock cross member. We will also mount our two II Much Fabrication vents, one for the gas tank and one for the rear axle, on top of the cross member.

The V8TV crew re manufactured the rear drop bars so they closely followed the rear window opening. The goal on the whole cage install was to make it show up as little as possible as viewed from outside the car.