Finally starting to make some progress on the car i purchased close to a year ago.
Really hasnt been much done to it through the summer. Been rocking the LS swapped third gen having a blast.
But we are right at the edge of the cliff right now. The point where things have the potential to go wrong real quick
We started by cutting the bottom of the door hinge pillar on the passenger side. Looked pretty rough, but fixable.
Then pulled the cowl off. Upon cleaning the flanges up, the complete piece I bought didnt fit quite nice, typical of the china junk. No biggie
We are deciding what to do next. The rocker panels on these cars are the main structure. The car is braced up good, but with nothing to attach new pieces to,
its hard to decide where to go from here. We are thinking of removing the cowl and the lower door pillar pieces off of the drivers side, and then from there, removing
the complete fire wall. We would be putting multiple locating points to flat points, bolt holes etc on the old metal. This part is crucial in the alignment of fenders, upper cowl panel, subframe, hood etc.
The experiance we have is more piece by piece style, not remove the whole front of the car at once and hope it goes back properly. We havent decided 100% what to do yet.
Ill post the pics of the mess...ill update on our decision and whatever work we get done in the future. Hopefully we can roll along a little better now that the winter time is coming.
Pieces just temporarily clamped in. not sure if you can see the space between the cowl assembly and the door hinge area flange or not, but its about 1/2'' out at the top
We have been off the job on this project lately due to many reasons but we also had to try and come up with a good way to hold this rust bucket while we rip into it. The car cradle and even the jack stands are not going to work because there is literally nothing under the car to hold it up. We have to take out some major structure to start repairing the car. Our idea is to make an adjustable rack that will hook to the frame rails in the middle of the wheel wells and the front will be bolted to the upper door hinge area. Front and back will be tied in together. I will be making adaptors to mount dolly wheel to the rack as well. I machined the feet to have a fine adjustment to level all four corners. This is all new to me and Ben but I hope we are on the right track.
If you want to borrow a rotisserie at some point .. I have a very well built heavy duty one I would lone you..Keep up the good work slow and steady and measure three times before the welds are too hard to cut apart.. Great looking work so far ..
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There is no elevator to success — you have to take the stairs.
Thanks for the offer on the rotisserie. Dad has one here that he welded up a few years back.
We managed to get the upper firewall and the upper dash fitted. We will be getting the lower firewall fit next. Upper dash was taken back out at time of picture. We also had the passenger side cowl assembly fit on.
HI RICHARD : You definitely RE-INVENTED the word courage -- GREAT looking work -- Stay with it , and good luck along the way . LATER --- DON / FLEET 51
I know it's been a while since we posted anything new on this project but the kid bought a 1 ton diesel truck to drive and it needed a restoration as well. Pictures of that will probably be going up soon as he is hoping to get it safetied this week. It (as usual) turned into a way bigger project than expected. Thanks for the positive comments. This Camaro is a long term project and we are hoping it will be done around the same time as Ben is done his Millwrighting apprenticeship.
Cheers
Well after finishing a dually, getting a new truck, doing exhaust and some other bolt on stuff for the 87 Camaro, fixing the new truck, ls swapping the new truck........
Finally did something to this car. If youve followed my dads "New Project" thread, youve seen the camaro more recently as well, since photobucket decided to be a jerk...
Ill essentially start over, post some pictures where its at right now. Finally made the patch i was grieving over, where the pillar attaches to the cowl structure. Ill post pics after from my phone, but it will clean up nice.
Rockers got cut off too. We mounted datum lines under our rack, found the front of the car to be about 1" twisted or tweaked somehow. They werent exactly holding anything anyways...
Regardless, hopefully sandblasting the inner structure this weekend so I can weld the patch on and epoxy the back of the dash and inside of cowl areas.
If all goes south, and I fail at getting it straight, ill think of something. The "Nascarlo" episode of roadkill comes to mind... drop it on a full frame hack it up and drive the snot out of it.
Things have been slow, but should be back on the car soon. Got the inside of some panels painted before I go to weld them on for good. Closed in some gaps on the rocker panels. Little details count more than I would have thought.
Front and rockers all welded up. Test fit the floor and looks like things line up reasonably well so looks like we did our job well. Fitment conclusions are based on the new firewall lip which was located with the trans tunnel, and i cleaned the truck seam and framerails and it lines up real nice.
So again everything is flipped on its side, if anyone knows how to fix lemme know
-- Edited by ThatChevyGuy on Tuesday 10th of April 2018 07:23:08 PM
Just awesome work Ben! She is really starting to take shape now, I hope you are feeling good about the progress!
Question, who is the manufacturer of the floor pan?
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