LSA Powered 69 Camaro -"Lou's Change"

[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!

[Lous69]

Originally Posted by 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!

Sorry for the pic size in last post. I will find out why that happened and fix it.

In the meantime, Thank you and others for your compliments on our build.

To be honest, most of the the fabrication ideas come from Kevin and Trevor.

They take the time to listen to their customer and then propose design options they think will yield the happiest owner experience in the long run.

I've been managing new product development engineers for over 25 years and I've been very impressed with their their thoughtful approach, especially from an engineering perspective.

[bonecrrusher]

How much room did you leave between the GT500 intercooler and the radiator?

[Lous69]

Originally Posted by bonecrrusher

How much room did you leave between the GT500 intercooler and the radiator?

Without driving to the shop and measuring, from memory and review of the pics above, I would say nominally about 4 inches or so between the intercooler and the radiator.

The intercooler is the first item in the stack behind the grill. The intercooler fans are "puller" type so they logically reside between the intercooler core and the A/C condensor.

Behind the A/C condensor is the radiator core support. The radiator is mounted to the back side of the core support.

Kevin and Trevor had to juggle a lot of requirements to get everything mounted in an optimized way without violating any constraints.

For instance, they had to leave enough room for the one off, custom grill assembly my son Dan designed.

They had to completely redesign the factory hood latch assembly and bracketry (using builds like JackAss, Red Devil, etc. for clues)

We will be using a stock looking front spoiler that also deflects air up into the heat exchangers.

We will also be using custom, one off hood louvers to further enhance air flow through the heat exchangers.

If you look closely, you will notice that the V8TV team strives to minimize weight while providing function (as evidenced by the holes in the radiator support shelf for instance).

As the owner of the car and one who likes to tinker, I also appreciate how they plan the design of everything they fabricate down to the fastener level so I will be able to take things apart and put them back together without having 3 hands. Whenever possible, they design brackets with captured nuts and/or threads so installation and removal of parts is typically a one sided operation with a logical sequence.