1981 Camaro - C-Prepared Build

Dusterbd13 wrote: white glue may be a little more structurally sound than blue tape. good job on weight saving!! every ounce counts....

I think you're right. I'm not happy with the penetration on the blue tape.

I love setting up the rear end in the living room, I am guessing you're not married?

Looks great, either way.

tuna55 wrote: I love setting up the rear end in the living room, I am guessing you're not married? Looks great, either way.

Even better - my wife is my codriver.

Gimp wrote:

tuna55 wrote: I love setting up the rear end in the living room, I am guessing you're not married? Looks great, either way.

Even better - my wife is my codriver.

Forget what 38 special said, hold on tight to that!

I drag Tunawife out into the garage sometimes to give me aesthetic opinions, but she's not a fan...

tuna55 wrote:

Gimp wrote:

tuna55 wrote: I love setting up the rear end in the living room, I am guessing you're not married? Looks great, either way.

Even better - my wife is my codriver.

Forget what 38 special said, hold on tight to that! I drag Tunawife out into the garage sometimes to give me aesthetic opinions, but she's not a fan...

No free rides here...

soooooo jealous.......

This week is a good week for visits from the brown truck.

Got the following bits for the panhard bar. The chassis mount is from Summit, and the axle side mount is a stock car part that I got off eBay. I will have to remove the brace from the axle mount and fab up a new one once I have the location, but otherwise it's great. I think I should be able to set the panhard up to 4 inches below the axle centerline.

UPS showed up with another delivery (brake disks) before I head to the airport for a wedding this weekend. So, instead of packing, I did some assembling.

I love seeing these parts come together.

Next weekend I'll throw the tires and rims on this rear, confirm my measurements, and then build some brackets. I've mapped out my suspension in an analyzer and everything looks good. I had to guess my link lengths for now, but I'll get those confirmed when I'm up there next.

Updated my lower bracket design based on feedback. I also incorporated the lower shock mount. Each side will have a pair, and we will box in where we can. A friend of mine is making them in CAD right now so I can send out to have them cut.

I welcome any and all feedback.

I'll probably make my upper by hand, as it's less precise.

<--- front of car

Is the radius on the top side of the shock mount part limited by the size of the shock/coil spring size? If not, consider increasing the radius to reduce stress there. Probably not a critical issue, just a "bombproof" suggestion.

Apexcarver wrote: Is the radius on the top side of the shock mount part limited by the size of the shock/coil spring size? If not, consider increasing the radius to reduce stress there. Probably not a critical issue, just a "bombproof" suggestion.

It is limited, but I'm not sure by how much. I'll email you something...

Another quick preview (I know, you'd rather see finished metal - I'm getting there). My good friend Larry Casey drew up the lower brackets so we can send them off to be cut on a water jet. He added in some of the boxing plates to the design so we can bend them and weld it up. We will add others after things start coming together.

If you have a minute, check out his site. He makes all sorts of cool stuff - https://www.caseydesignproducts.com

I'm waiting for brackets to show up, so in the meantime I've been getting other little stuff done. I got the correct brake disks for the rear (see pics below) and some inner axle seals.

The axle tubes are coated with some sort of oil on the inside, and there is a bit of dirt and welding slag in there. I want to clean them out before I put the seals in.

Does anyone have any good advice on how to clean out the tubes? I've tried pushing paper towels through the tube, but the opening in the snout is much smaller than the tube, so the paper towel stays compressed and doesn't do a great job.

Inner seal:

Scalloped rotor:

Toilet brush taped to a stick.

What Duster said, but also take it to a coin-op carwash and blast out the inside with engine degreaser. (Re-oil as soon as finished! Perhaps just heavily fog with WD-40 for now.)

Not much to see, but a bit of an update. After living 2.5 hours away, the car made a slight move to my buddy Mikey's house, which is only 1.5 hours away form me. The good news is that it's only about a half hour from my buddy who will be doing my suspension welding, so that's a plus.

Here are some quick photos of the car after we dumped it into the garage and before we started drinking beer... okay, maybe a few were had. You can see Mikey getting into character with the new project in his garage.

The rear suspension brackets arrived yesterday. Some more real progress photos soon.

That's a Subaru next to it, yes? I forget how small these cars really are. Any chance you're going to drive it this season?

That Subaru is up on some really tall jackstands, the camaro has been altered to have a lower ride height than normal (fenders cut, etc)

Its a perspective trick, the camaro is HUGE. It might be low now, but its still really wide and long. (thats what she said)

mazdeuce wrote: That's a Subaru next to it, yes? I forget how small these cars really are. Any chance you're going to drive it this season?

Probably not this season, but the hope is that it starts before the year is up. If I hit the lottery before then, absolutely.

Bent up brackets tonight. You also get to see my new countertops, which are part of the master plan of selling this place so I can finally have my own garage.

The upper has to be modified quite a bit, both to narrow it (my mistake on measuring), open up the holes to the right size, and to get the contours to fit on the pumpkin since it is for the offset upper link.

The lowers went pretty well once I cut a connection to keep it from twisting the thinner bits. I'll insert a space to the correct width and slide them over the axle before I tack them together to keep things in the right shape.

sweeeet

Are those brackets for your lower trailing arms and shocks?

Sky_Render wrote: Are those brackets for your lower trailing arms and shocks?

The ones that are bent are, yes. The shock mounts to the single smaller hole towards the back, the three holes are for various positions for the lower links.

Took a little time this morning to assemble the brackets and position them with heavy tacks. I'll verify the location a few times before we burn them in for good, but it's looking rad so far.

The holes still need to be opened up to the real size, but I wanted to get things in place before I ran a drill bit through to keep things level. As it sits, the brackets are perfectly square and level with the housing and each other. Measuring more than a few times seems to have paid off.

I'm going to be ordering the third member for my birthday in a few weeks.

Can anyone recommend a vendor? I'm going with an aluminum 9" housing, 4.86 gears with a 31 spline TrueTrac set up for a 1310 U joint.

I've found a few online (looking at Strange right now), but I have no real experience with them.