This just keeps getting more awesome.
This just keeps getting more awesome.
This project is awesome! Keep up the great work!
Some interesting things have developed over the past 24 hours. Unfortunately nothing related to housing yet, but still good news for the build. I'll share more later.
I know... I know... another picture of roll cage tubing, BUT I SWEAR THIS TIME IT'S DIFFERENT.
What makes these door bars special (other than the fact that they were a pain in the ass to fit and I hate them)? They just happen to be the last cage bars to be cut and fit.
Kate and I went up this holiday weekend and made a big push on the car to get it ready to have everything finish welded by my buddy, Larry.
(not Larry)
This is a pretty significant turn in the progress of this car. In addition to finishing up all the welding on the chassis and suspension, Larry and I will be mounting the seats, pedals, finalizing the steering, and then building the exhaust off of the mock up motor. All of that, if you ask me, is rather exciting. We are going to try to complete all of that in a month, so I can move on to painting the tub and then mounting stuff up for good.
(What mandatory bumper heights?)
So with that work done, we rolled the old girl back out into the sun to await her ride to Larry's.
I'm happy to say that the car made it there safely, along with all the extra bits needed for the next phase. I should have some more exciting progress shots soon for everyone!
Thanks for looking.
Looking good, you are getting there. Getting everything welded up is a big step in the right direction.
81cpcamaro wrote: Looking good, you are getting there. Getting everything welded up is a big step in the right direction.
Agreed. Once that is done, and the seats/controls are in, it's going to feel like I'm finally on the other side of a hill.
Thanks to GRM for featuring the build on Facebook this week. Quite awesome of you guys! I maintain this thread over on the second gen message board, where I'm also a moderator, and they don't seem to "get it" as well as you folks do.
They never did. Im glad you turned me on to GRM way back when.
So carli commented that you don't look like you anymore with the beard. Next day Colin frowns and goes "mommy said uncle paul isn't uncle paul anymore". Had to explain that one.
Im getting better painting if you need help. Going to order a real gun soon to do my nice stuff
That front end is pretty killer. I love wide fives.
Where do the springs mount to in the front suspension?
patgizz wrote: They never did. Im glad you turned me on to GRM way back when. So carli commented that you don't look like you anymore with the beard. Next day Colin frowns and goes "mommy said uncle paul isn't uncle paul anymore". Had to explain that one. Im getting better painting if you need help. Going to order a real gun soon to do my nice stuff
Poor Colin. I'll shave for him, but not for anyone else!
ssswitch wrote: That front end is pretty killer. I love wide fives. Where do the springs mount to in the front suspension?
Thanks! I love the wide fives too.
The front springs are coil overs. The upper bit mounts to the forward bars of the cage, and the lowers mount to the control arm.
You can kinda see what's going on here:
What upper control arms are those? The inner bushings look perfect. ..
Dusterbd13 wrote: What upper control arms are those? The inner bushings look perfect. ..
They are SPC upper control arms. They are the "race-type" arms with steel bushings. I got them from Specialty Products (specprod.com) many moons ago.
I never took pictures of the car after the move because, quite frankly, we were exhausted.
At the new doctor's office
So I took a trip to Larry's garage to check out the progress he was making and help out on a few things. I was excited to see he's got about 60% of the cage welded and done.
Door bars welded up
When I arrived, we decided to wrap up the welding on the front suspension. He TIG'd the upper shock mounts, fully welded the A-arm mounts, and then braced them. I did my part by cutting metal and grinding things.
You can see in the picture of the door bars that we also mounted up the seat bracket. We decided to go with a slider so that multiple drivers are easy to accommodate.
We also reinstalled the mock engine and real trans. Larry is going to modify the transmission crossmember to get the driveline angle correct. It sits a little too high on the stock automatic crossmember with the poly mount. It appears Ron ran this trans solidly mounted before, but I'm playing it safe and going with a poly mount since I have solid motor mounts.
I head out of town this coming Thursday to pick up something very exciting. I look forward to that update.
no seat slider needed, we're roughly the same size. 
patgizz wrote: no seat slider needed, we're roughly the same size.
True, but Kate sits further back than I do.
This is awesome! The progress is really getting a move on! Keep up the work!
Update: Heart Transplant
That's not my car. That car belongs to Randy (81cpcamaro). He allowed me to co-drive with him at the 2014 SCCA Solo Nationals in the car above. I had an absolute blast and it was huge motivation to get my car finished.
Randy has once again helped me get this car closer to finished, and this time in a major way. He has decided to step away from this Camaro, at least for a while, and picked up a newer one that he's racing down in Georgia. A few weeks ago he emailed me and made me an offer I couldn't refuse, and this weekend I drove down to the Atlanta area to pick up this:
Not pictured - a ton of extra stuff to make the motor run, cooling system components, and 200lbs of lead.
The motor is a 377ci SBC. For those that don't know, that is a destroked 400 block. It has Edelbrock Victor Jr heads, and just about every trick lightweight rotating part that Scat makes. When I drove the car in 2014 I was really impressed with the motor, especially how quickly it revved.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/QoEupZGMz9k My 2014 Nationals
The only thing he wasn't including was the awesome crossram intake and carbs. As cool as that setup is, I'd be terrified to try to tune it, so I picked up a Holley Strip Dominator. After a little bit of "adjustment" and five attempts, we got it bolted down.
We loaded everything up, and after finishing a visit with family down there, I took the motor up to it's new temporary home, this time at my buddy's Joe's (Apexcarver) new home shop. He' going to hold on to it until I have my own garage. Hopefully more on that soon.
I also got a text from my friend Larry, who has the chassis in his shop right now. Looks like he's making some awesome progress. I should have some updates on that later this week.
So that's where we are. I now have all the major components ready and waiting, and the chassis is coming together. Fingers crossed I'll be making some noise soon.
I think you are going to need more lead. 
Based on the numbers, there is going to be a comical amount of lead in the backseat area, so yay for a low polar moment!
Which means your car will spin much faster than Randy's!
Glad to see you made it home okay. It looks so different without the crossram setup.
I recently moved down to middle Georgia and was just on Craigslist when I saw 81cpcamaro car for sale and I was like I have to ask him on this thread. As soon as I pulled up the thread y'all already beat me to it haha. Glad to see he could help your motor choice.
81cpcamaro wrote: Glad to see you made it home okay.
It's just not as cool.
Doing my best to not bury the lead here. After what I guess is about 12 years, this happened:
The car has a seat, that I can sit in, that is attached to the car. I don't know how many people haven't sat in their car for 12 years, but those of you that have been there might have an idea of how big this was for me.
Speaking of big, the seat is way too big. It's a 18" seat, so we'll be moving that to the passenger side. I have a better fitting one on order.
The slider worked out great, and the seat height for where I will drive the car is really good. We could cheat it a little lower, but I think the height is right were it needs to be for good visibility. The good news is that, as you slide it forward, it moves up a little bit, maintaining the visibility for shorter drivers.
We still need to work on the steering wheel position, but we wanted to get the seat mounted so we could start on the pedal box. I am moving the seat and pedals back as far as I can legally for weight issues.
While I was away, Larry has been busy welding and strengthening the structure of the car. He braced up the watts link pivot after we saw stuff moving around after a ride on the trailer.
You can also see where he's been adding in gussets, etc.
We also installed the third member and the driveshaft, temporarily. It looks like the yoke I have might be shorter than the one that was in the car I got the driveshaft from, because the shaft is a little short. No big deal - just have to order a new shaft when the time is right.
We'll also have to raise the tunnel a bit for driveshaft clearance, but that will happen a little later. We put all this in now so we can start exhaust mock up.
Moving right along!
Great progress. I was chatting with "Mustang Boy" over the weekend and this build was brought up-and I was trying to remember what 318ti parts we exchanged years ago.
familytruckster wrote: Great progress. I was chatting with "Mustang Boy" over the weekend and this build was brought up-and I was trying to remember what 318ti parts we exchanged years ago.
Jeeeze... my memory is too shot to recall that. That said, I think I still have a few BMW parts laying around if you are in need!
In reply to Gimp:
Yeah, it's a tad fuzzy for me too. No need for BMW parts, I put it in a tree a few winters ago. I remember discussing the camaro build though, that was back when I was debating the full floater or IRS on my racecar. Had to be like 6-7 years ago.
I also applaud your determination. My wagon is a rotting storage space now. I'm hoping to get it in a garage soon and get it rebuilt.
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