67 Camaro - Dad and Son build
#222
TECH Apprentice
Car came out great! I actually like the primer look! Reminds me of street races in high school. Fast cars were ALWAYS primer! Congratulations on getting her on the road. Can't wait to see future updates/progress.
#223
Thanks everyone.
So Timmy came over today being that the fenders where finished for now. I wanted to try to get over to the tuner soon to fix this check engine light that keeps coming up for the tps. Dale has to calibrate the parameters for the throttle body and that should fix the issue. I planned to drive the car over there and put some miles on the car too. Its about a half an hour from me so this would be the cars longest drive to date. So being that we blew the front end apart we reassembled it all again. The gaps and panels go together a bit easier now it seems or maybe I'm just getting good at it.. They have all been massaged in some way so I'm hoping that is the reason. The whole reason for this was to clean up the lines a bit and Timmy has came through again. It looks like it came from the factory like this. Actually when I showed some people they asked me what was done numerous times.. So I'm guessing the job looks good.
In the time I have been waiting for Timmy Ive been busy cleaning up some wiring, installed the parking brake set up, and I also finished installing the DSE wiper kit that I bought used for a good deal. Which went in awesome and works so much better that the stocker. Plus cleans it up a good bit too.
After all that I finished installing the new ididit steering column and getting that where I like it. Again a huge difference over stock, looks great and the adjustable was a must in my opinion. Next stop is back to the tuner for a quick fix and maybe even a colder weather tune... Well see..
Here is some pictures showing the stock position of the column and leg room or lack there of in 1st and 2nd..my right leg is touching the steering wheel
And now tilted all the way up. Hard to see but the steering wheel is no longer on my right leg when I'm on the gas pedal. I have about 2-3 inch of room between now. Same thing 1st and 2nd..
Overall view:
So Timmy came over today being that the fenders where finished for now. I wanted to try to get over to the tuner soon to fix this check engine light that keeps coming up for the tps. Dale has to calibrate the parameters for the throttle body and that should fix the issue. I planned to drive the car over there and put some miles on the car too. Its about a half an hour from me so this would be the cars longest drive to date. So being that we blew the front end apart we reassembled it all again. The gaps and panels go together a bit easier now it seems or maybe I'm just getting good at it.. They have all been massaged in some way so I'm hoping that is the reason. The whole reason for this was to clean up the lines a bit and Timmy has came through again. It looks like it came from the factory like this. Actually when I showed some people they asked me what was done numerous times.. So I'm guessing the job looks good.
In the time I have been waiting for Timmy Ive been busy cleaning up some wiring, installed the parking brake set up, and I also finished installing the DSE wiper kit that I bought used for a good deal. Which went in awesome and works so much better that the stocker. Plus cleans it up a good bit too.
After all that I finished installing the new ididit steering column and getting that where I like it. Again a huge difference over stock, looks great and the adjustable was a must in my opinion. Next stop is back to the tuner for a quick fix and maybe even a colder weather tune... Well see..
Here is some pictures showing the stock position of the column and leg room or lack there of in 1st and 2nd..my right leg is touching the steering wheel
And now tilted all the way up. Hard to see but the steering wheel is no longer on my right leg when I'm on the gas pedal. I have about 2-3 inch of room between now. Same thing 1st and 2nd..
Overall view:
#225
Thanks Guys..
Got to work on the car last week some. The few times I have took the car out it has thrown a check engine light for tps. After getting the voltage readout I figured it just needed to be adjusted in the computer. Talked to Dale about it and he says he'll take care of it for free to just bring it in. Before this weekend the farthest the car has been is about 5 miles round trip and always in town. I have not had too much time and honestly been a bit nervous due to the check engine light. Then the cold weather cane and with no heat/side windows it was just adding fuel to my fire. Well last week I sat down and started figuring out the windows. The are all in which made my itch start to get the cel fixed. Being that I wanted to take the car over a half an hour away I didn't want my expensive fuel modual rattling around in the trunk anymore. I talked to Timmy about it and he did a great job as always.
So Saturday my brother cane over early and we made the maiden voyage. The car was great.. Seemed to track very well on the road. Felt good at 60-65 on the highway. There are defiantly some things to be addressed but overall I was very impressed and it seems a lot of others on the road where too. It felt great to get some actual seat time and get to know the car some. Got to the shop and was in and out within a half an hour for free as promised. Drove her home and no check engine light whatsoever. As I was about to pull into the drive way(now note that I had babied the car the WHOLE way there and back as I want to break it in correctly) I gave it a little more than half throttle and my brother looked like he was going to need a diaper. The wheels spun a bit and the rear started to slid.. Just enought to get his eyes big and make him get off his phone.. Good times.. All in all it went great.. Now I just wish it was warm out and with more day light. More to come.. Here are some pictures..
Got to work on the car last week some. The few times I have took the car out it has thrown a check engine light for tps. After getting the voltage readout I figured it just needed to be adjusted in the computer. Talked to Dale about it and he says he'll take care of it for free to just bring it in. Before this weekend the farthest the car has been is about 5 miles round trip and always in town. I have not had too much time and honestly been a bit nervous due to the check engine light. Then the cold weather cane and with no heat/side windows it was just adding fuel to my fire. Well last week I sat down and started figuring out the windows. The are all in which made my itch start to get the cel fixed. Being that I wanted to take the car over a half an hour away I didn't want my expensive fuel modual rattling around in the trunk anymore. I talked to Timmy about it and he did a great job as always.
So Saturday my brother cane over early and we made the maiden voyage. The car was great.. Seemed to track very well on the road. Felt good at 60-65 on the highway. There are defiantly some things to be addressed but overall I was very impressed and it seems a lot of others on the road where too. It felt great to get some actual seat time and get to know the car some. Got to the shop and was in and out within a half an hour for free as promised. Drove her home and no check engine light whatsoever. As I was about to pull into the drive way(now note that I had babied the car the WHOLE way there and back as I want to break it in correctly) I gave it a little more than half throttle and my brother looked like he was going to need a diaper. The wheels spun a bit and the rear started to slid.. Just enought to get his eyes big and make him get off his phone.. Good times.. All in all it went great.. Now I just wish it was warm out and with more day light. More to come.. Here are some pictures..
#229
Thank you,
Been busy lately. Got sick of scrapping on the headers and rubbing the tires. So after some though I decided to just go air. Ridetech says that a car can be just as competitive on air as coils. With that being said I started looking. Well new kits are pretty expensive.. 4/5k -/+ I need to have the better of most things and this is no exception. I had a few bucks from Christmas and decided to try to find a used kit for less. Maybe something that will get me on air and then I can upgrade little by little. I found an older system that was made by Ridetech. Guy wanted 2k and after a few email with pictures to Danny over at Ridetech I purchased the whole system for 1500. Thanks for all the help Danny! The big downfall to the system is the management system is very old but I plan to upgrade to the E3 when I get some money saved up again.
While all this was going on I took advantage of MCB Ridetech deal and purchased the tru-turn. So in the past week me and some friends installed it all. The tru turn original did not clear the drives tie rod with my dynatech headers. I did some digging and Chev67 has the same exact setup. After some talking to Jason (Chev67) he let me know that I need to put a 1/4" spacer under the pedestal mounts. After that was done everything cleared fine. Big thanks to Jason.
After all this work I was motivated to get my front wheels on. After some searching I found a very nice set of 275 KDW's for the fronts. Had them mounted and balanced and slapped them on. I still need to order the 1.5 " spacers which will be done this week.. Enough talk onto some pictures..
And Daddy's little helper..
Im thinking for this spring/summer Im going to do a semi-black or flat on the outside..cheap and easy and it will look badass.. Mr. Vengeance what do you think? Wanna come up and help me?
#230
There has been lots to post so ill bring this back to the surface. The car has had some bad luck recently. The goal for this summer was to get the new wheels on the front. After some brief research into adapters I decided instead of paying 200+ for some custom adapters to make the wheels work I would talk to forgeline and see how much new lips/barrels where. I spoke to Mark over at forgeline and he has been great all the way around. I can’t say enough good things about him and his company. I had 8" barrels and 1.5" lips and we came up with me keeping a 9.5" wheel and changing them to 6" barrel and 3.5" lips bringing the backspacing to 5.6" and front spacing 4.9". Mark even sealed them together before shipping so all I would have to do it put the faces in and bolt them together. I received the assembled lips/barrels and it was just as talked about. I placed the centers in and hand tightened all the bolts down, then started going star pattern with the torque wrench. Got the first wheel done no issues and moved onto the second one. Got 3/4 of the way done and snapped one of the titanium arp bolts into the face. After talking with Steve over at forgeline he said send me the center. Well they extract the broken bolt and send it back. FOR FREE. He did just that..the wheel center was repaired and should be here today. Again thank you Mark and Steve for all the help and great customer service.
In other news I took advantage of MCB ridetechs sale in December and ordered the lower control arms to help with the clearance of the new wheels. They came in and being excited I put them on. After putting them on I could not get the wheel on. The hub was too far up into the wheel well. With the stock upper and lower control arms I had no issues getting the wheels on and off. I called ridetech and after some picture and talking we came to the conclusion that the used front bags that I bought where to short of a stroke. The new lower control arms have a 2-3" drop in the mounting pocket compared to the stock lower control arms. So basically in a nutshell I either need to order new front bags or run stock lower control arms. So for the time being I installed the stock lower control arms.
The next issue was my yellow top battery has been not holding a charge. Being that I bought it through jegs I called customer service and they said no problem. Send it back and we will send you a new one. Pulled the battery and sent it back on a saturday. On that Monday my little brother came over to help me get the tail pipes cut up and reshaped to fit around the rear bags when they are fully aired up without touching. We started around 8pm that night and we were done around 10:30. He says to me do you want to do anything else for the next half an hour. I just received the new lower control arms. So I said yea lets jack up the car and pull the wheels..ect. I always jack the car up under the center of the subframe. Well the car was a bit lower than normal because I didn’t air the front all the way up before I pulled the battery. Being tired and not thinking I went ahead and tried with the jack on the edge of the frame. Got it up almost all the way before the car rolled back a hair, slipped off the frame and the jack went right into the bottom of my radiator. A costly mistake on my part. The next day I talked to Tony at entropy radiators and he told me he would build me a new one for a lot less. Thank you Tony. I was told the lead time would be around 3-4 weeks but I didn’t have any extra cash at the moment so I was fine with the wait. A week later my wife tells me that she has a suprise for me. She went behind my back and ordered me a new radiator. Talk about an awesome woman. So this past weekend I replaced that.
Late last week I took my one good wheel and had the tire mounted to it to do some test fitting to see how much work needed to be done to the fenders to get the wheels to fit. I put the wheel on and it was close but after some rolling and talking with Timmy we decided to just make custom front fender wells. This was if I want to ride the car a little lower on the road it will work and I can take advantage of how low the car can go when parked. We will be continuing this weekend and should have them wrapped up before the spring really hits. After all that is done we will be painting all the trim and the car a flat black for this summer to roll around in. More to come soon..
In other news I took advantage of MCB ridetechs sale in December and ordered the lower control arms to help with the clearance of the new wheels. They came in and being excited I put them on. After putting them on I could not get the wheel on. The hub was too far up into the wheel well. With the stock upper and lower control arms I had no issues getting the wheels on and off. I called ridetech and after some picture and talking we came to the conclusion that the used front bags that I bought where to short of a stroke. The new lower control arms have a 2-3" drop in the mounting pocket compared to the stock lower control arms. So basically in a nutshell I either need to order new front bags or run stock lower control arms. So for the time being I installed the stock lower control arms.
The next issue was my yellow top battery has been not holding a charge. Being that I bought it through jegs I called customer service and they said no problem. Send it back and we will send you a new one. Pulled the battery and sent it back on a saturday. On that Monday my little brother came over to help me get the tail pipes cut up and reshaped to fit around the rear bags when they are fully aired up without touching. We started around 8pm that night and we were done around 10:30. He says to me do you want to do anything else for the next half an hour. I just received the new lower control arms. So I said yea lets jack up the car and pull the wheels..ect. I always jack the car up under the center of the subframe. Well the car was a bit lower than normal because I didn’t air the front all the way up before I pulled the battery. Being tired and not thinking I went ahead and tried with the jack on the edge of the frame. Got it up almost all the way before the car rolled back a hair, slipped off the frame and the jack went right into the bottom of my radiator. A costly mistake on my part. The next day I talked to Tony at entropy radiators and he told me he would build me a new one for a lot less. Thank you Tony. I was told the lead time would be around 3-4 weeks but I didn’t have any extra cash at the moment so I was fine with the wait. A week later my wife tells me that she has a suprise for me. She went behind my back and ordered me a new radiator. Talk about an awesome woman. So this past weekend I replaced that.
Late last week I took my one good wheel and had the tire mounted to it to do some test fitting to see how much work needed to be done to the fenders to get the wheels to fit. I put the wheel on and it was close but after some rolling and talking with Timmy we decided to just make custom front fender wells. This was if I want to ride the car a little lower on the road it will work and I can take advantage of how low the car can go when parked. We will be continuing this weekend and should have them wrapped up before the spring really hits. After all that is done we will be painting all the trim and the car a flat black for this summer to roll around in. More to come soon..
#233
TECH Enthusiast
Nice build. Good to see somebody pulling out all the stops and doing right through to the end especially with everything that you want with no compromises along with doing all the work yourself.
#234
TECH Apprentice
Great updates! Love the stance, congrats on the progress. Btw, I ordered my vaporworx tank, thanks for the advice on that and the AAW kit, both are super products! Hmmm, I might have to consider air ride, I did not know we could get these first gens so low, lol
#236
Thank you. Its my honor. I hope to get you some better pictures in the near future.
I try man. I have it all in my head and I do the best to my ablility. Its not as nice as some of the shop built cars and it not perfect by an means but I can say its mine and built with my hands. I take pride in that.
No problem man. Glad I could help. Both are great compaies and I highly recommend them to all. If you are intrested in bags I am just getting ready to sell my fronts for a very reasonable price..I'll pm you with details as I dont think they will last long.
Thank you. I was jacking it up by the front of the subframe . It was almost on the slanted piece when I started. Once it moved a little and hit that spot it just slid right into the rad. A stupid move on my part, but live and learn.
So over the past two weeks we have pretty much wrapped up the custom wheel wells. These babies are big, real big. No fitment issues though which is very nice. I can go low, ride low with out any rubbing. Timmy has them now to finish the welding and then prep and paint so more pictures to come. I also am in the process of ordering new triple adjustable shockwaves from ridetech for the front..just need a bit more money. I also wanted to show everyone the work that has been done to the fender lips as I'm sure some are curious. Onto the pictures..
Custom wells:
Fenders:
All the way up:
Ride Height:
All the way down:
Hopefully some all black action soon with some new goodies..more to come.
So over the past two weeks we have pretty much wrapped up the custom wheel wells. These babies are big, real big. No fitment issues though which is very nice. I can go low, ride low with out any rubbing. Timmy has them now to finish the welding and then prep and paint so more pictures to come. I also am in the process of ordering new triple adjustable shockwaves from ridetech for the front..just need a bit more money. I also wanted to show everyone the work that has been done to the fender lips as I'm sure some are curious. Onto the pictures..
Custom wells:
Fenders:
All the way up:
Ride Height:
All the way down:
Hopefully some all black action soon with some new goodies..more to come.
#237
Thanks for all the kind words guys. Been very busy within the last couple of weeks. During the week I Started laying some sound mat on the inside and installing the carpet to enjoy the car a bit more this summer.
In other news I ordered triple adjustable shockwaves from ridetech. I can not say enough about Josh and Danny. Big ups to those guys going above and beyond. Started on putting it all back together on friday night with my brother and got it all done as far as the front end was concerned. Last week Timmy finished the welding, grinding, then body work and paint..He called me on saturday afternoon and said they where done. By saturday night I had a car again. This morning I finished mounting the remote reservoirs to the wheel wells and checking over the front end one more time before I went out. Took the car to the park with the family to shake it out. Now this is the first time Ive drove the car since the air, tru-turn, strong arms, forgeline front wheels w/ 275 tire. It was a whole different machine let me tell you. You can feel the grip that it has compared to before..MUCH more responsive. I have not started messing with the tuning abilities of the shocks yet as I just want to get an idea oh what is the normal. The air is another thing that is taking some getting used to. I love being able to adjust where I need it to be and I love how its so much smoother as apposed to the old qa1's. The only downfall at the moment is since I'm running an old management system there is no pre-sets for the air so dialing it in can be a pain if your adjusting a lot. So I'm driving there and I smell a bit of burning.. get there and take a look. My rear drivers wheel is rubbing on the inside of the well. Almost as if the rear has shifted a bit to the pass side. It would rub a bit on harder turns on coils but on the air it is rubbing when I try to be lower. Unless Im aired all the way up almost it doesn't rub. Which is a really hard ride aired up so much. I am going to try a 1/4" -5/16" spacer on that side to start. I took some pictures when we got back from our walk with my nice camera and my son is obsessed to say the least.
In other news I have a meeting setup with the dealership where I bought my motor this friday to hopefully correct the belt alignment issue Ive been chasing. More to come soon..enjoy.
A couple of cool shots-
I think it can go lower..
In other news I ordered triple adjustable shockwaves from ridetech. I can not say enough about Josh and Danny. Big ups to those guys going above and beyond. Started on putting it all back together on friday night with my brother and got it all done as far as the front end was concerned. Last week Timmy finished the welding, grinding, then body work and paint..He called me on saturday afternoon and said they where done. By saturday night I had a car again. This morning I finished mounting the remote reservoirs to the wheel wells and checking over the front end one more time before I went out. Took the car to the park with the family to shake it out. Now this is the first time Ive drove the car since the air, tru-turn, strong arms, forgeline front wheels w/ 275 tire. It was a whole different machine let me tell you. You can feel the grip that it has compared to before..MUCH more responsive. I have not started messing with the tuning abilities of the shocks yet as I just want to get an idea oh what is the normal. The air is another thing that is taking some getting used to. I love being able to adjust where I need it to be and I love how its so much smoother as apposed to the old qa1's. The only downfall at the moment is since I'm running an old management system there is no pre-sets for the air so dialing it in can be a pain if your adjusting a lot. So I'm driving there and I smell a bit of burning.. get there and take a look. My rear drivers wheel is rubbing on the inside of the well. Almost as if the rear has shifted a bit to the pass side. It would rub a bit on harder turns on coils but on the air it is rubbing when I try to be lower. Unless Im aired all the way up almost it doesn't rub. Which is a really hard ride aired up so much. I am going to try a 1/4" -5/16" spacer on that side to start. I took some pictures when we got back from our walk with my nice camera and my son is obsessed to say the least.
In other news I have a meeting setup with the dealership where I bought my motor this friday to hopefully correct the belt alignment issue Ive been chasing. More to come soon..enjoy.
A couple of cool shots-
I think it can go lower..
#238
Thanks for all the kind words guys its come a long way but has a long way to go. Still working through some small issues and bugs as I'm sure all others do. Timmy came over and we prepped the car for paint and took most of the big items off.. Finished the scuffing and prep work on Wednesday night and Timmy came over early on Saturday to start taping and all that good stuff.. We finished taping it out around noon, got lunch then sprayed it.. Not a perfect job but better than it was. This should hold me off for the summer untill I can get the cash to do my yellow with strips. Took the car out on Sunday and it threw two codes and was running a bit rough. After doing some digging everything was pointing to a dirty maf or vacuum leaks. Searched the intake a bit and found these jems.. You think they would make something better for this. Eventually ill pull the intake and plastic seal these holes eliminating any rubber. Enjoy the pictures..
Some quick edited photos..
and the best for last...Dad you ready to go?? I'm driving..
Some quick edited photos..
and the best for last...Dad you ready to go?? I'm driving..
#239
Thanks for all the kind words guys..keeps me moving.
Some updates to record. I've drove the car about 200 miles up to my last update and there was idling issues and check engine lights. I was pulling my hair out checking for vacuum leaks, checking my wiring and doing a lot of reading. Turns out my suspicion was correct and the tune that was on the car was the issue. I ended up buying hp tuners willing to take the tune on myself as my previous tuner told me that a car with that motor/power cant be tuned properly on a stock ecm. I went to a local car show and was talking with some ls car guys and was given a name of a local guy you has a great reputation named KP Tuning. I gave them a call and talked to Karl about setting up a date to road tune the car. We drove around for 4 hours and he really dialed a lot of the issues away. I can’t say enough about the service and current tune on the car now. A world of difference. I would highly recommend him. I was hesitant to drive the car in the past due to the fear of issues/embarrassment and breaking down. I mean you can't roll around with a bagged 67 camaro with a ford lol plate and break down. In the past month I have put over 300 miles on the car with no issues. The 500 mile fluid change is in the very near future.
Now that the tune is correct I started moving on with the alignment and such. My buddy John has all the tools so two weeks ago he came over and we spend the most of a day seeing what we could do. Now note that I have every Ridetech item with the exception of their upper arms. After an inch of shims on each side and the stock arms hitting the header on the passenger side and the power steering pump on the driver’s side I knew what had to be done. The next day I ordered the upper arms from matts classic. Thanks Kim. The new arms arrived two days later thanks to Josh over at Ridetech and I put them on that night. Ridetech continues to step it up and give the customer the best product. These things come with all the hardware, detailed instructions and now have caster slugs to help get any car where the driver wants it to be. An A+ part. Here are some pictures..
Last weekend there was a local car show so I entered and got a lot of looks, some good, some bad but it was fun either way. Enjoy.
Next up is to redo the alignment, buy new front seats & get the rear seat recovered, and start working on the interior...
Some updates to record. I've drove the car about 200 miles up to my last update and there was idling issues and check engine lights. I was pulling my hair out checking for vacuum leaks, checking my wiring and doing a lot of reading. Turns out my suspicion was correct and the tune that was on the car was the issue. I ended up buying hp tuners willing to take the tune on myself as my previous tuner told me that a car with that motor/power cant be tuned properly on a stock ecm. I went to a local car show and was talking with some ls car guys and was given a name of a local guy you has a great reputation named KP Tuning. I gave them a call and talked to Karl about setting up a date to road tune the car. We drove around for 4 hours and he really dialed a lot of the issues away. I can’t say enough about the service and current tune on the car now. A world of difference. I would highly recommend him. I was hesitant to drive the car in the past due to the fear of issues/embarrassment and breaking down. I mean you can't roll around with a bagged 67 camaro with a ford lol plate and break down. In the past month I have put over 300 miles on the car with no issues. The 500 mile fluid change is in the very near future.
Now that the tune is correct I started moving on with the alignment and such. My buddy John has all the tools so two weeks ago he came over and we spend the most of a day seeing what we could do. Now note that I have every Ridetech item with the exception of their upper arms. After an inch of shims on each side and the stock arms hitting the header on the passenger side and the power steering pump on the driver’s side I knew what had to be done. The next day I ordered the upper arms from matts classic. Thanks Kim. The new arms arrived two days later thanks to Josh over at Ridetech and I put them on that night. Ridetech continues to step it up and give the customer the best product. These things come with all the hardware, detailed instructions and now have caster slugs to help get any car where the driver wants it to be. An A+ part. Here are some pictures..
Last weekend there was a local car show so I entered and got a lot of looks, some good, some bad but it was fun either way. Enjoy.
Next up is to redo the alignment, buy new front seats & get the rear seat recovered, and start working on the interior...