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Old 12-31-2015, 08:24 AM
Fair Fair is offline
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Default Vorshlag Build Thread - 69 Camaro Pro Touring/Track Car

Howdy, Lateral-G members! I just wanted to introduce myself before you start to read this build thread. I own a shop in Plano, Texas where we design, CNC machine and assemble various suspension components for late model sports cars mostly for road course use. We are a small company but have some great fabricators, engineers, our shop manager takes the pictures, and several of us come from professional and semi-pro race team backgrounds. Not trying to sell anything, just explain who we are.



We build and service street and race cars in our service shop, mostly for road course use but also autocross, drag racing, hill climb, and high speed events like Bonneville. Our shop is known for LS swaps and we have done V8 installs (and make swap kits for) several BMW chassis, the Scion FR-S/Subaru BRZ, NB Miata chassis, and this 69 Camaro has an LS3 as well. I've been racing since 1987 with SCCA and since 2007 with NASA, and have run the Mustang below (which we built) in the Optima series and Goodguy events for the past 4 years.



Whenever we have big build projects like this one I always document the construction for the customer with pictures, videos and write out all of the details as the construction progresses. Its not much extra work to share the build publicly, so I do these detailed build threads on forums that will let me post there. A moderator here (Flash68) follows this build on another forum and today he asked me to port the thread over to Lateral-G, so here it is. Feel free to comment, make suggestions, poke fun, and share. We started this build in May 2015 and the customer allowed me to share the build starting in August, so I will post that first then follow up with more updates after that until I catch up with real time. Plan is to have the car on track in 2016. Thanks for reading.


Project Introduction August 6th, 2015: This one is a bit unusual for Vorshlag - a Pro Touring build. Yes, this is the first classic Detroit iron we've done up to this level. No, we're not selling out and trying to cash in on a "new trend" - I grew up building and driving 60s-70s F-bodies, Mustangs and Mopars. They were great looking cars with good drivetrains but had pretty terrible brakes, suspensions and chassis. I have watched the Pro Touring trend evolve from day 1 (BigRedCamaro) and have been waiting patiently to build one with more of a performance slant than a show car.

This customer came to us with his 69 Camaro project because he thought we had the skills that best fit his needs. This will be no ordinary Pro Touring show car / Cars & Coffee queen, but a real deal track beast with giant Hoosier tires, big aero, and LS V8 power. Sounds a lot like what we do, but it needs serious safety gear and custom everything to work well.



Quick picture from where we are now on this build, in August 2015, when we launched this build thread

We've been working on this car now for about three months and this has turned into something pretty amazing, and I cannot wait to see what the end result looks like. Many people have commented after seeing the car in person or the few pics we've shown that they wanted to see a build thread. So let's get caught up on the progress, starting at the beginning - when the customer found us. I will start this forum build thread with the first post showing the tear down and some of the new frame work, and follow up with more progress in upcoming posts.

Picking A Shop Is Important

Earlier in 2015 we had a customer contact us about finishing a build he had started at two previous shops, which will remain unnamed. He came to our open house event in February 2015 to check us out in person, see some of the work we've done on customer cars, and get a feel for our shop - to see if we might be able to deliver what he wants.



He focused a lot of his attention on a 2013 Mustang GT (below left) road race car and silver Subaru Land Speed Racer (below right) that were in our shop that day, with recent work completed by Vorshlag. The owners of several cars we have built were also in our shop so he could talk to multiple customers face to face.



This type of research is smart, because not enough customers really check the background and skills of the shop building their dream car. They might hear about some shop that a friend says "check this place out", then without much further investigation they drop off their car and hope for the best. Well, this guy didn't take our word for it - he came to our shop when several customers and their cars we built were there and learned a lot.

I watched this video recently where shop owner Vinny Ten said these things - that customers need to research the shops they work with - and I hadn't really thought about this much before. Sometimes customers want to blame others for their poor planning and bad decisions, but Vinny says its partially their fault for not researching the shop that did the work.

Luckily this 69 Camaro customer did his home work - and after he researched Vorshlag he brought the car up to us for a look, along with a truckload of parts, back in April 2015. We looked over it, made a list of recommendations and changes, had some good discussions with the owner about intended use and concerns, gave him some detailed estimates, and work got underway in May. Here's what we've been up to...



Note: Most of the pictures in this forum thread were shot by our shop manager, Brad, and most of the work so far has been completed by one of our fabricators, Ryan. Our whole shop has been involved in researching and selecting components, ordering parts, in discussions about safety and layout, Jason and I have had engineering input on many aspects, etc - its always a team effort here. If a photo looks noticeably ugly, though, I most likely shot it with my #potatocam phone or my old Nikon DSLR.

New Direction + Inspection

There were a number of significant changes in this build when it came to Vorshlag, many of which entailed removing previous work and starting over. We quoted the hours to re-do the frame, floor, cage and more, and we have stayed on our time budget so far.



We noted a lot of things that needed to be changed to comply with safety, classing and engineering standards for what the customer had in mind, which was serious HPDE and Time Trial use. I won't go into all of that, other than the list was detailed, extensive, and we re-used as many parts that were applicable.

continued below

Last edited by Fair; 12-31-2015 at 08:49 AM.
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Old 12-31-2015, 08:24 AM
Fair Fair is offline
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continued from above



We all liked what he had in mind, and were eager to get started. We had to finish another project first, but that was soon done and we began on this '69 Camaro in May of 2015.



The car rolled into our shop as a semi-built rolling chassis. The amount of tear down shown below may seem excessive, but there wasn't a single piece of the old car cut out that wasn't done for a good reason. I'm not going to get mired in knocking down the work done to this car before it got to our shop - I'm just showing what we did - but I might mention our reasoning here or there.

Beginning of Tear Down

We had agreed upon a course of action with our client and he had signed off on all of the changes we had in mind. We told the owner that to get the car back to a rolling chassis that was safe/competitive/reliable would likely take a certain number of hours of tear down and rework, which was approved. When Ryan was freed up from another cage build, he was ready to tear into the Camaro and he jumped right into action. Tear down is chronicled in the short 24 second time lapse video below, taken on 5/11/15.


Time Lapse Video of Day 1 of Tear Down

The engine and trans were removed and the existing roll cage was cut out. Its painful to remove parts and work that has been completed, but a necessary step in order to move forward. We really "ripped the Baind-Aid off" on day 1, heh.



The front subframe was removed, with an eye towards possibly re-using this section. It was a name brand 1st gen F-body subframe designed for C6 Corvette control arms, hubs and uprights, then modified heavily for this car. We see them on lots of Pro Touring builds and assumed it probably had decent geometry (which we would later check).



This car had a custom floor and frame built to replace the OEM floor and unibody structure, but for various reasons it all had to go. Ryan used plasma cutter, saws-all, and other tools to get these pieces out over the course of a few days.



Once he started on this Camaro we couldn't get him to stop - he was having too much fun. Of course we cannot work on one car non-stop for months, and Ryan split his time on other customer work here and there, but a lot of time was logged on the '69 from May through July.



The rear frame rails and trunk floor were also removed, all of which was off-the-shelf kits adapted to this car previously. The deconstruction totaled only 16 billable hours for the steps shown above. The 2x4" rear frame rails that were previously installed on the car were only 1/4" thick (see below) in long horizontal sections near the inboard sections of the rear tires. With 345mm Hoosiers and their cornering loads transferred to the frame in these narrowed sections, we had concerns, so all of that came out.



The solid rear axle housing was a big beefy custom Ford 9" unit with lots of extras, and we would end up re-using that for the build. It had no "guts" (bearings, seals, axles, gears, or diff) so we would be ordering all of that later. The front and rear shocks were only "mock-up" shocks, made for eye-to-eye mounts and with a pin to change the length during chassis setup. Handy things to have when you are building a car from scratch. After a few days of loud cutting and flying sparks later it was ready to begin reconstruction - all of this happened very fast.

continued below

Last edited by Fair; 12-31-2015 at 08:51 AM.
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Old 12-31-2015, 08:34 AM
Fair Fair is offline
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continued from above

New Frame

To stick with the same frame section sizes used in the bolt-on front subframe (that had been welded to the center frame section) we stuck with the 2x3" rectangular tubing for the center section of the new frame we would be building. This would make it possible to mate it all up at the firewall. Its a good size of tubing to use in any case.



We ordered up more of the 2x3" tubing as well as several other sizes of square and round tube for various fixtures or frame pieces that needed to be constructed. At the same time a pair of mandrel bent "over the axle" 2x4" tubing rear frame sections were ordered. Then the tedious work of fitting the side frame rails into the Camaro rockers was undertaken, which meant more cutting, but with more refinement and measuring involved...



The previous 2x3" frame sections were placed several inches inboard of the outer rocker panels. This meant the old roll cage tubes didn't line up with the frame rails. Our new goal was to "pocket" the inner structure of the exterior lower rockers and move the new 2x3" frame tubing outboard. This would allow the new frame rails to "nest" inside the outer portion of the lower rocker panels. The new frame would be several inches wider and would allow the new roll cage to move outboard and land on these 2x3" frame members directly, which would make for a safer roll cage and a more efficient overall structure.



As the work to fit for the new frame to the body progressed, more and more of the previous fabrication work was removed. I could write a book about the missing welds, poor engineering, and shoddy fab work we have seen on many cars that enter our little shop, but it isn't worth the down sides. It seems if I say anything negative about anything ever built, I end up being the bad guy, so I'll just say "lots of stuff was removed", and that we "only removed what was inappropriate for this type of build."



Before the entire frame and some interior chassis structures were cut away, temporary bracing was added to keep the outer body panels square. These tack welded tubes (shown above) will be removed as the new frame structure is added.



There were some hours spent making room for the 2x3" frame rails out in the rocker sections (tack welded in place, above), but it was worth it to be able to get the cage mounted more outboard than it was before. This work gained several valuable inches, room needed to keep the tubes from being where the seat needed to be, to keep cage away from the driver's head.



Once the frame rails were mocked-up on the chassis, measurements were taken and a flat and sturdy structure was built onto our 4x8 foot heavy duty welding table. Its not really a "frame table" that I'd like, but for our limited shop space, it works. Then the frame rails were removed from the Camaro tub and placed onto the table structure at the right width... then the body was lifted onto the frame rails, set onto those, and re-tack welded in place.

More Next Time

This work shown above was completed by about May 20th, and this tear-down is as good a time as any to stop this project thread installment. I'll show more of the frame table work next time.

Thanks for reading,
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Last edited by Fair; 12-31-2015 at 08:53 AM.
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Old 12-31-2015, 08:36 AM
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HotRod68Camaro HotRod68Camaro is offline
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next time meaning... later today?! Really like the detail and explanations so far!
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Old 12-31-2015, 08:54 AM
Schwartz Perf Schwartz Perf is offline
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Nice work guys. I've been following some of your stuff on Facebook, and Heller is a friend of mine, we went to college together. Looks like he's doing some great work!

-Dale
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Old 12-31-2015, 08:55 AM
Fair Fair is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by HotRod68Camaro View Post
next time meaning... later today?! Really like the detail and explanations so far!
Yes, I will be porting over dozens of posts today. We're technically closed today (Dec 31, 2015) for year end inventory, but I will sneak away to reformat and post here until I'm caught up with our latest entries. Over the weekend I will try to post what we've been up to lately which is getting pretty crazy...



Quote:
Originally Posted by Schwartz Perf View Post
Nice work guys. I've been following some of your stuff on Facebook, and Heller is a friend of mine, we went to college together. Looks like he's doing some great work!

-Dale
Small world! Ryan is the man and heavily involved with all of our big customer builds. He made some custom long tube headers for a V8 swapped Miata we're working on earlier this week (below), which moved that build forward.



We see Schwartz goodies on Optima and Goodguys cars all the time. Good stuff.

More soon,
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Last edited by Fair; 12-31-2015 at 08:58 AM.
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Old 12-31-2015, 09:05 AM
will69camaro will69camaro is offline
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Small world indeed I remember seeing you around the car club in college station and at auto crosses.

I seem to remember there is a turn named after you on the way to Caldwell.

Glad to see you on here and amazing build so far! I can't wait to see more!!
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Old 12-31-2015, 09:43 AM
nicks67ca nicks67ca is offline
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Nice work!
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Old 12-31-2015, 10:01 AM
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I'm loving these serious track car builds. Looking forward to seeing this one come together.
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Old 12-31-2015, 10:48 AM
Fair Fair is offline
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Project Update August 20th 2015: This forum post update covers much of the work we did from late May through mid June of 2015 on our customer's tube framed 69 Camaro "Pro Touring" track car. A little more deconstruction was needed, but for the most part that was all wrapped up and the real fabrication work really got underway in this period.

Before we get started I wanted to list the forums we're posting this build thread on. Note: The pictures in all of my build threads can be clicked for higher rez images or sometimes videos, but for some reason clickable images do NOT work over at S197forums.

One of these I own (vorshlag), two of them I sponsor (sccaforums + S197forums), and corner carvers puts up with my shenanigans (mostly). Later in 2015 a moderator from Lateral-G asked me to share it there, too. If there's another forum that would welcome this build thread (even with...gasp... watermarked pictures), and it has approval from an admin or moderator to post as-is, please PM me and I can port it over. Not that this is a ground breaking build or some unknown tech going into it, but its a fun Pro Touring / track build that not a lot of shops are willing to share the behind the scenes work on, to this level.

New Rear Suspension + Frame Section = Thoughts About IRS?



Once we had the new '69 Camaro frame rails laid out on the "frame table" we started looking at the rear suspension. It came here with a custom 9" Ford axle with a semi-finished 3-link (fore-aft control arms) and a Watts Link (lateral location), but it didn't look right. Sure enough, after Ryan measured the arm lengths, pickup points, and positions, then input the numbers into 3D suspension software, the the geometry was "less than ideal" for track use.



So by now we knew we would be massively changing everything out back - adding all new rear frame rails, altering the geometry and mounting points on the rear control arms, and making a new Watts using some of the old parts. And the solid axle housing was bare - it had no differential or axles installed. So a thought occurred to me... would now be a good time to discuss an Independent Rear Suspension?


We proposed both a C5/C6 rear transaxle and rear subframe/suspension for the 69 Camaro IRS

We pitched the idea to the customer, first showing him a C5/C6 rear transaxle and suspension, using the OEM aluminum rear cradle, arms, halfshafts, and transaxle. But he was invested in the custom ford 9" axle that was already in the build and didn't want to give that up. Plus after we measured a C5 in the shop we realized that an unmodified C5/C6 rear subframe and halfshafts would push the track width wider by at least 4 inches, which meant rear flares, and that would disrupt the original bodylines too much.


Custom IRS we built for a 99 Miata with an LS V8 swap = costly + time consuming

There are some aftermarket rear IRS setups but they aren't very.... good. Sorry, they are generally "Not appropriate for this application" - again, with massive Hoosiers making big grip numbers, and serious track performance as the end goal. So doing a completely scratch built IRS was an option, and we've done that before (on the Miata, above) but it would be a lot of custom work and added costs. We discussed the pros and cons with the customer and in the end we scrubbed the IRS idea, as this build was already too far along and LOTS more perfectly good parts would get chucked. So we got back on track and started diving into the new rear suspension geometry and frame rails.

Getting The New Frame Started

As I mentioned at the end of my last entry, the center of the chassis was built from 2x4" tubular frame sections, which were first fitted into the gutted unibody tub. These were then transferred to our frame table at the same width.



The existing aftermarket front suspension was added at the right location and tubing was made to join the "center" frame we built to the "front" frame sections from someone else. We don't know where this front frame clip came from, but it doesn't really matter. There are dozens of "bolt in" front suspensions for the 1st gen F-bodies and they span back over a decade, with lots of revisions along the way.



We had some serious reservations about some of the material used in the major suspension mounting point load paths, but the customer really wanted to use what he had. So we moved forward and mounted it to the frame table at the correct height, so we could do more mock-up and measurements.



Two things became obvious once it was joined to the center section and tack welded together. First, the maximum amount of negative camber we could get with this setup was -1.0° up front. Which is nowhere near enough, as these Hoosiers would probably generate enough cornering power to need closer to -2.5 to -3.5° up front. So we'd have to cut off the main upper control arm mounting plates, move them inboard, and figure out how to reinforce those plates to counter cornering loads.



Second, there were some surprising side-to-side suspension geometry inconsistencies in the lower control arm brackets of this production built front clip. These were going to already have to be heavily modified and beefed up anyway, but its just odd that the CNC laser-cut brackets could be assembled and be off by 5/8" from side to side. Again, we don't know who originally built this subframe kit, or if it was modified after it was installed, but it was a big hot mess.

So we now knew we had to remove the upper mounting plates and move them for more negative camber travel, then reinforce the flimsy plates heavily. Not to mention all of the control arm pick-up points were thin, poorly supported steel plate - everything needed to be heavily beefed up. The geometry wasn't good, the alignment capability was poor, and the engineering wasn't up the grip levels planned for this car.

continued below

Last edited by Fair; 12-31-2015 at 10:54 AM.
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