Introducing: Project 1/2-TRAK

[syborg tt]

Looks like an Awesome project.

I have an odd thought (which isn't strange for me). I really think that you should somehow figure out how to incorporate some pink into the graphic / color seperation bar. I think it would cool to way to pay tribute to the car and it's heritage. Plus it's history for your Grandparents.

ps - you've already got the blue know your just need the pink in there

Originally Posted by Damn True

In July of 1969 my Grandparents purchased a 1968 Camaro that had been sitting a while on the lot at Courtesy Chevrolet in Santa Clara, CA. They needed a new car to drive to Arizona where I was to be born in a couple of months and since the car had been slow to sell the price was right. The car was a bit different in that it was a special order that wound up not being delivered to the customer it was originally intended for. Playboy had placed an order through COPO for 50 pink 1968 Camaros to be distributed to playmates through the year. They only took delivery of about 30-40 of them. The rest wound up being sent to dealers. This was one of them....and yes, I said it was pink. This was my Grandmothers car for close to 35 years. They drove it all over CA on vacations and fishing trips. In fact, to this day there are bait shops and mountain lodges that I go to and when I mention my Grandparents people say, "Oh the couple with the pink Camaro!" The car was nothing special other than by virtue of it's color. A basic 327 coupe with a powerglide. But it was cool and I knew that eventually this car would be the basis for my Camaro road-racer project.

Fast forward to the year 2000. I was getting out of the Coast Guard after eleven years and moving back home to the Bay Area. My grandparents at that point decided to give me the car. A couple of years earlier some redneck had yelled something vulgar to my Grandfather while he was driving it and it scared him so he had a cheapo Earl Schieb spray-job done on it so it was now blue rather than pink.

[ArisESQ]

maybe you could paint the exterior of the car blue, and just do some very slight powder pink accents in the engine bay.. like annodize the fuel rails, or valve covers or something?

OR just paint the car pink! there are some pretty badass pink cars!

[Teetoe_Jones]

So we have new goodies at the shop. The guys at LG Motorsports drop shipped a set of their C5/C6 Corvette spindle brake ducts. We will be adding them in place of the wheel speed sensor bracket on our forged aluminum AFX spindles. The only issue we had was that during our engineering process of making the AFX spindle we needed to rotate the forged in brake bracket so we could tie it into a fillet gusset while adding about 50% more material to it to eliminate brake flex. This makes the cut of the duct interfere with the upper brake bracket hole due to our redesign. No big deal, the bolts go in from the back side anyways.

Here are the spindles as we test assembled them with the 1/2"x20x3" long ARP stud upgrade. Hope to have this stuff out to you in the morning True!











Tyler

[Damn True]

Note to self:

Order axles that are compatible with BIG ASS WHEEL STUDS!

[68protouring454]

Originally Posted by Damn True

Note to self:

Order axles that are compatible with BIG ASS WHEEL STUDS!

?????

[Damn True]

Different size wheel studs front/rear = no bueno

[68protouring454]

oh, all axles can be drilled and same studs pressed in, but good point its something easily over looked, and is much easier/cheaper to buy them with them installed
looks great

[Damn True]

As stated, the next step is to install the ATS double shear coilover bracket. I've gotten the sense from some that this is percieved as a difficult task. I mean, it's one thing for Tyler to install these in his shop with a bunch of quality tools and equipment but perhaps another for someone to do at home. Tyler bills this thing as an easy to install upgrade. Well.....let's see.

Here is the bracket:



A darned robust little item if I do say so. 1/4" steel plate (how do you bend this stuff?) nicely mig welded into an assembly that I'm pretty sure could support the weight of the car a couple times over.

I have at my disposal a small Kobalt air compressor and cutoff tool. A cheap Sears Craftsman grinder (with cutoff, grinder, wire and flap-disk wheels), a sawzall, a Miller 175 welder and a little something I borrowed from work that we'll get to later. By no means professional quality stuff. IMO your basic homebrew fab tools.

Since this the install is done twice (left side and right) I've decided to examine two different ways of accomplishing the task.

Here is what we start with:



The sandblasted subframe and it's OE single shear shock mount and upper control mount.

The first step is to remove the single shear shock mount. At first I tried using the pneumatic cutoff tool......lesson learned here. Cheap air compressors and pneumatic tools are just that....cheap. The $200 compressor from Lowes (Kobalt brand) just does not have the ooomph to handle this. It couldn't keep up with the cuttoff tool. So I switched to ol' reliable. Sears.



The Craftsman grinder with a 4.5" cuttoff wheel made quick work of the shock mount.



But it does leave a lot of material behind. The lap-welded portion on the subframe arm partially surrounding the spring pocket and the portion still attached to the UCA mount need to be cleaned up.



No worries...I am using both hands on the grinder (with eye and ear protection). My wife leaned over my shoulder with the camera to take the photo.

[Damn True]

Still grinding away the mess



Getting rid of the last of the junk attached to the UCA mount



.....and finally all cleaned up.





The next step is to remove a portion of the spring pocket. This will open up the top of the subrame and allow enough room for the coilover to pass through to the bracket after we attach it.

You'll need to open this up to roughly 4 inches in diameter. I went a little wider for an extra margin of clearance for the shock/spring. You can see the red line guiding my cut below.

[Damn True]

Again I tried the pneumatic cuttoff tool. Again I was dissapointed. So I tried an alternate method. I used the sawzall to take small pie cuts out of the material. Sorta nibbling away at it until the hole was "mostly round" then finished it with a grinder. No pictures of the middle of the process here.......it was ugly. But once cleaned up with the grinder it looks fine.



I also took the time at this point to add a little extra weld to the UCA brackets. Nearly impossible to get that joint in there clean and it's tough to get the torch close enough for good puddle control and see what you are doing. The welds reflect that but they are fully penetrated.....just ugly.

On the other side I decided to try something different to see if the process could be sped up a bit and improve the quality. It involved a slightly more sophisticated tool than the sawzall.



Boy do I like this thing!

Where it took me nearly an hour to cut away the other spring pocket with the sawzall bit by bit, the plasma cutter did the job in about 45 seconds leaving a muuuuuch nicer hole...