'67 Camaro down deep in the rabbit hole

I bought this Camaro in the early 2000's when I lived in CT from a boat guy. He'd owned it for a couple decades and worked on it during winter months but never got it registered & driving. He'd do a project each winter like pull transmission, send out for rebuild, reinstall and then boating season would arrive. He only had one garage and eventually his wife wanted it out IIRC. After purchase I did a few things so I could get it registered and drove it a bit putting maybe a thousand miles on it. Then I bought a house in FL to move to, took the car there and registered it, then things started going really bad with house stuff so the registration lapsed and the car mostly just sat in storage.

When I bought the car the rear leaf spring eyes were badly rotted from age and the whole rear could wiggle so I knew they'd need replacement once I started really driving the car again. A set of Global West Cat 5 springs popped up for sale on one of the Pro-touring forums being sold cheap by a guy on Long Island. So I took the ferry from Bridgeport to Port Jefferson with a hand truck. Wouldn't do that again! hahaha. It's quite a walk from the ferry to parking on the CT side on a hot summer day with a heavily loaded small hand truck.

Fast forward 10 years to 2016, I want an old car to drive since I'd sold my '70 Buick Wildcat and am waist deep in my '70 bird project called "The 14 Car" which I'd spent 6 years on already with no quick end in sight. I'd done a few small projects on the Camaro over the years but not the springs so I decide I'm going to put the springs in the Camaro and put it back on the road. The Camaro had gotten put outside under a car cover for a couple years so I'd have more working room in the garage. I buy a new battery, move the Firebird over to one side and plan a quick spring swap thinking then I'll have a cool old car to drive again while I finish the big bird project.

Having sat for a long time the car was not happy with me. The master cylinder went as soon as I applied the brakes and the Holley carb decided to leak fuel but the car ran, so I ordered up a carb kit and fixed that problem before carefully putting the car in the garage figuring I'd do the master cylinder while it's in there.

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looks sweet!

This is gonna be fun!

oh man, 67 SS/RS and a ragtop to boot. following this for sure.

Wow, that’s a great looking car!

Rally wheels with trim rings .......OHY!!!! sweet ride good on you!!!! 

Thanks guys! It looks better in pics than real life. The PO had it painted in a tri stage, candy apple red over gold over black. Unfortunately it wasn't very high quality body or paint work and the paint is checked and the whole car really needs to be stripped & repainted even though it was barely ever outside or driven over the past 40 years. I am not doing that.

I got the car up in the air and crawled underneath for the first time in at least 10 years. I was shocked by the rust in the spring pocket area. It was nothing like that before and although it's humid and warm here year round, the rust was far more than I'd expected to see. So I figured I'd remove all the parts & wheels I was storing in the trunk. Very little storage space in FL houses on a slab.  Emptying the trunk would make it lighter since I'd be under the back of the car with wood cribs holding the body and didn't want extra weight in the trunk cantilevered in a convertible. Upon emptying the trunk I was horrified !

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So I thought "This sucks, that's going to need some work!" and figured I'd get the springs swapped then fix wherever it was leaking and deal with the trunk repair in the future. I busted out the sawzall, death wheel, and other rusty spring extraction tools and jumped on the job at hand. With the rust in spring pocket area I knew the spring clip nuts would all break (which they did) and I'd need to cut the bolt heads off to get the spring pockets out.As you can see in pics below the spring eyes were beyond worn and were cracked/ovalized. They were like this when I bought the car and I knew about the need to replace them.  You can see why I didn't want to drive the car much until I put new springs in.

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With the spring pocket out of the way I inspected the torque box area where the spring pocket mounts in. It was looking bad, so I decided to get up inside the car and pop the rear seat out and have a look. It was bad under the rear seat!.... How could this all rust so bad so quickly? I'd had the rear seat out a couple years prior and everything was fine. I did some investigation, then light dawned on Marblehead. CONVERTIBLE! I looked for the vert drainage channel expecting cracks or something in the plastic but as it turned out the previous owner had broken out most of the convertible rain gutter channel and didn't tell me. The car was in his garage the whole time he owned it and indoor most of the time I'd owned it till I stuck it outside with a cover on it for a couple years. The water that soaked through the cover just poured into the cor rusting out the torque box area and trunk. We get a LOT of rainfall here in S FL that arrives mostly in thunderstorms where we get a lot of rain during a short period of time. Since it's warm year round the chemical reaction of oxidation isn't slowed by freezing or cooler temps.

At this point I knew I was screwed. It would cost thousands of dollars and take a lot of time.  There was no way to put springs back in without new metal or they'd just pop through the floor in the rear seat area. So I made a list, checked it twice, and ordered a big box of new sheet metal. Full trunk pan, trunk drop offs, frame rails, outer wheel wells, inner tail pan, etc.  And to add to my workload the torque boxes, and frame rails also weld to the main interior floor, and I did not want to replace the full floor. So I figured I'd fabricate something to fix the part of the main floor that needed fixing.

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This is like when I bought my Capri and when I got home and took the trash out of the trunk I saw more garage floor than trunk floor.  Well and your car looks nice in photos.  Otherwise identical.

Isn't it every CT resident's dream to move to Florida?  It seemed like that's all I heard about when I lived there a few years ago.

pres589 (djronnebaum) said:

This is like when I bought my Capri and when I got home and took the trash out of the trunk I saw more garage floor than trunk floor.  Well and your car looks nice in photos.  Otherwise identical.

Isn't it every CT resident's dream to move to Florida?  It seemed like that's all I heard about when I lived there a few years ago.

It was mine for many many years . I'm a plant guy and car guy so I moved to the part of FL with the best of both worlds.  Back in '88 I was married with a couple step kids. Took them to Fl and asked them all if they wanted to live there. They all thought it was a great Idea so I sold my businesses and put my house on the market. Then they changed their minds.....   I was like "What???? I sold my jobs. None of you work!!!!!  Grrrrrrr". Started over & built a new business. Kids grew up & I fired the wife for unrelated reasons.  I'd always promised myself I'd stop working 7 days a week by the time I was 50 so I bought the house in FL to force myself to get out of CT.   Financially moving was a disaster due to criminals and a really bad bank with a stagecoach but it's beautiful here.

When the parts shipment arrived I set the car up so I could keep it straight and level by making a couple of legs for the rear of the car. This way the car would be supported mostly on cribs but there would be additional support to keep the rear from sagging knowing I'd lose a lot of the strength of the unibody once the floor pan was cut out and the extra convertible structures and braces in the back section of the car were removed. The legs look kinda redneck but they were positioned and screwed in place with everything perfectly level so unless the concrete floor moved they'd work.

Removed everything from the transmission back knowing this was going to be a big job and might as well get everything out of the way since I had hardly any room trying to do this in just 1/2 the garage because I hadn't planned on such a big project. Did I mention slab houses in FL have no cellar? Wheels in dining room, gas tank, & rear seat in living room etc. Then I busted out the tools of destruction! And yes, there's more than one screw holding the 2X in place, I put one shiny one on the outside just to mess with people.

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NOT A TA said:

Then I busted out the tools of destruction!
 

Looks like a party to me!  I approve...

I had the five speed for my PU up in the bar/game room while doing a rebuild.....and no I'll not being doing that again ....ever.....SWMBO has spoken..........wink

759NRNG (Forum Partidario) said:

I had the five speed for my PU up in the bar/game room while doing a rebuild.....and no I'll not being doing that again ....ever.....SWMBO has spoken..........wink

Currently my home is FULL of car parts & tools to the point of looking like I'm a crazy old car part hoarder. They're everywhere in every room, closet, etc. You'd never believe me if you saw my old home where there were no car, motorcycle, or bike parts or tools anywhere in the living areas. Hell, Just in my livingroom I have a welding table, leaf springs, traction bars, rear Camaro seat, Nova bumper, Camaro bumper, carbon fiber rear wing, rear window for Firebird, Firebird rear spoiler parts, Camaro trunk mat, Firebird rear shelf, Malibu wheel covers, Wildcat wheel center caps,Firebird hood hinges, Camaro cocktail shakers, Firebird wheel flares and piles of tools. The bedrooms dining room, kitchen etc. all have similar parts & tool piles. I gotta get projects done!

This thread may look like I'm moving at fast and indeed I was moving right along because I needed the car mobile again so I could use the garage for income producing work pace but what I've shown so far was all done in the fall of '16. You'll note there was an early 2nd gen bumper in some of the previous pics which was a customer bumper I was working on, not the bumper for the bird in the garage. I should have been working on that in the garage so I wanted the Camaro back together!.

I cut, drilled, ground, wire wheeled and removed all the rusty metal back to the point where I could have clean metal to weld new pieces to. Because this is a Convertible there's extra work involved because of additional braces, a triangulation panel, and the cocktail shakers and their mounting brackets.

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Man, when you get after it you GET. AFTER. IT. 

In reply to NOT A TA :

Is car engine okay by now? btw your car is wonderful

Thanks folks! Yes, engine ran fine after I rebuilt the carb.

In the last pics above I'd already wire wheeled the inside of the trunk area sheet metal (that was left) and inside of the quarters and then taped off areas where welding would need to be done then shot it with black epoxy primer. The quarters had been replaced 30+ years prior but the outer wheel wells (which should have been replaced then) weren't so I'd decided to section those in. No way to weld in full outer wheelhouse without removing the quarters and I didn't want to go down that road since this project had turned into a deep rabbit hole considering I'd started expecting just a leaf spring swap.

With everything cleaned up and epoxy primed I wrestled the new trunk pan and other sheet metal into place and clamped/screwed temporarily so I could test fit things like frame rails and what not to be sure everything would work together. Then got busy fabricating sheet metal panels to replace the sections of the main floor under the rear seat area. The panels I made have to be just right because they locate the torque boxes and thus the spring pockets and frame rails.

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Concurrently while fabricating pieces and what not, I was working on other things as time, daylight, and weather conditions dictated. So I did bodywork on the inside of the deck lid & painted it to test the paint I'd had color matched by the local paint supplier. Stripped the gas tank to make it look prettier by fixing dents, and sandblasted parts like the spring pockets.

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Love this!

Thanks DJ !

At this point in the project I had a heart attack requiring stent surgery, then various other health issues, then a couple more trips via ambulance to the ER & cardiac wing with repeated angioplasty preventing me from working on the car. Man, gettin old sucks! Meanwhile hurricane Irma ripped the roof up and my home which also needed a bunch of other work I just couldn't put off any longer. It had been ugly pink since I bought it and because animals would be able to get in the attic through rot holes so three years passed with the car just sitting there. I'd just intended to do a spring swap on the car then fix the house but......   Good thing I'd shot epoxy primer on all the bare metal because it's humid here! So fast forward three years to June '20.

I get back to working on the car and put some of the new sheet metal in place screwing it in where it will get welded so I can get everything fitted and be sure my fabricated floor sections will work out well. Then I enlisted the help of my bud Jeff who was a body man for 35+ years and quit the profession last year. He's just getting old and got fed up with the way body guys are getting screwed over by the insurance industry. They just can't really earn a living like years ago. Anyway, I rent a room to him and he was way behind on rent so I put him to work helping me. We've worked together in the past at shops and on side jobs over the past 10 years or so.

Jeff's a pro at welding bodywork and can do it faster than I can so I let him run the welder while I did all the prep work making sure panels were all epoxy primed with weld through primer where panels meet. I'd keep ahead of him doing all the cutting, fitting , fabricating, paint work, materials fetching and so on so he could just weld weld weld. When I was ahead of his welding work I'd work on the gas tank or other parts like the convertible bracing and cocktail shakers sandblasting & priming etc. LOTS of welding!

Started welding in panels up in the area under the rear seat where the torque boxes are. Weld in the car then go under & weld from the bottom.

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Pic below shows patch panel for inside of wheel well where these cars got rusty. I just cut some metal and cleaned & prepped before Jeff welded similar panels on both sides of the car.

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Outer wheel wells were sectioned in by using structural adhesive on the fender lip and welding where they attached to the stock wheelhouse. When the PO had new fender skins installed they didn't attach them to the (rusted) outer fender wells. So cleaning & prepping the fender itself was pretty easy. I didn't want to weld the sectioned outer wheels to the fender because then I'd probably need to repaint the whole fender due to burnt paint and scope creep had already put this car years beyond what I'd planned.

I made some small panels for the lower area which allowed us to cut open the ends of the rockers and clean them out with my "fishing rod" you see Jeff using in the pic below and long shop vacuum hoses shoved up the rockers. The "lip" of the new outer wheel house sections will get trimmed later. This car has wheel well molding so the lip isn't seen when the car is reassembled.

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This is going to be good.  That paint might not look so hot in person but it photos very well.

BTW, I'm a "plant guy" too.  Like, is it 4:20 yet?

Very thorough, very nice. Drill bits: what brand, and are you happy with them? Recently i went through a zillion HF, Ryobi, Craftsman, ace hardware and cursed them all....

In reply to A 401 CJ :

When I was young (early '70's) I had my own greenhouses by the time I entered high school. But I grew plants in my bedroom as well. One day mom wanted to know what kind of plants were in the bedroom because she'd never seen them before,  "ketchabuz" plants mom. Then I made them disappear and said they got root rot. Mom (ran the library at Yale) came back to the subject after research.........

Agent98 said:

Very thorough, very nice. Drill bits: what brand, and are you happy with them? Recently i went through a zillion HF, Ryobi, Craftsman, ace hardware and cursed them all....

I have a lot of different brands and types of bits for different purposes. What are you trying to use them for?

NOT A TA said:

In reply to A 401 CJ :

When I was young (early '70's) I had my own greenhouses by the time I entered high school. But I grew plants in my bedroom as well. One day mom wanted to know what kind of plants were in the bedroom because she'd never seen them before,  "ketchabuz" plants mom. Then I made them disappear and said they got root rot. Mom (ran the library at Yale) came back to the subject after research.........

Are you perhaps related to the Whittingtons?......just askin'