LSA Powered 69 Camaro -"Lou's Change"

[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.

[syborg tt]

Hi Guys

Okay drag racers have been doing this modifications for years. Here is an example in a heavily modified 2011 Nickey Camaro.

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.

I bet he still calls you a few names while he is installing the headliner.

Car is looking awesome

[Lous69]

Recent work at V8TV has included mocking up the radiator, A/C condensor and intercooler along with the custom hood latch assy. to free up the room needed behind the grill for all those cooling devices.

The parts being used include:

2nd Gen radiator module from C&R that includes two fans
Vintage air A/C condensor
Shelby 500 Intercooler with its own two fans.
Volkswagen "THING" Hood latch

It's all still a work in process but the fabrication of the various needed brackets is coming along. We'll post some more pics when the parts are further cleaned up and painted.

We went with C&R's 2nd Gen. F body module instead of their drop in place 1st Gen. module simply because it has more total cooling area.

Once the location of the radiator relative to the core support was determined
a bottom support bracket for the radiator was fabricated. The yellow tape on the core support denotes where the window in the core support was enlarged to allow airflow to the whole radiator core.











The hood latch assembly was mocked up, bracketry made and then mounted.









So.... it's starting to come together. Combination shroud / mounting brackets are now in place.







Since we have so many fans, we want to use Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) fan control of the radiator fans instead of On/Off control.

We don't want the car to sound like a vacuum cleaner unless it's really hot and we need all fans full on.

There are numerous ways to setup PWM control of the fans.

In order to figure out the best way for this application, I started a thread in the engines section of this forum.

There is a lot of really good information and tips brewing over there in that thread.

Here is a link to it: https://lateral-g.net/forums/showthread.php4?t=40215

[GeoffP]

Whoa - HUGE picture alert!

Very cool build - I've been lurking on this one since the beginning and had to post a comment on the roll cage. It's good to see someone thinking through their mods with purpose behind them and not just do something to "be different." Great work on the build so far!