'69 Camaro build thread

Ok so to get everyone up to speed quick fast I quit my job at Chevy in San Antonio and moved to The Woodlands and went back to Cadillac which is part of why there haven't been much of an update. The only thing that sucks is the shop is 8-3 instead of 8-5 so I lose some time to be able to work on the car. Better then no progress though. I've also been wiring and thats kinda hard to show progress on since its adding a circuit here and there, not that exciting.

So lets start at the last update. To make my harness as much as one bundle as factory would be I went ahead and ran the door speaker wires and put a connector at the console so if I needed to remove stuff I don't have to completely take the car apart.




Then I moved onto the fuse blocks and getting them mounted. The interior block I mounted where the C6 keyfob pocket used to be since its useless oin my car. The underhood fuse block I used a block from a 2000 Astro van. Its the same block that GM uses is their crate engine harness.





One of the guys on here built me a vacuum pump control module and I mounted that inside the car after wiring it up.




Then it was just some odds and ends stuff like adding a third brake lamp flasher for extra safety, the ignition switch connector, and finishing up the power window switch harness.





After that I moved onto wiring the under hood fuse block with as much as I already had from the ECM and misc. sensors. The nice thing about working at a dealer is we normally have all the right terminals in stock so I don't have to order them or scab cut wires together.





Which brings me to this past weekend. I mounted the HVAC Dakota digital controller and harness, started wiring the Infinity Box inDash unit and more Master cell inputs like the brake and clutch. Also again, nice to have access to the right terminals to keep as much OEM as possible.

These old cars are a death trap no matter if its stock or modified. They didn't have the know how back in the day with designing crumple zones or much in the way of safety. Seat belts were optional and in my can it was standard, but the shoulder belt was an option. So did I make things safer or more dangerous? I don't know. I did make the car stiffer which would help and I have a collapsible steering column which my car didn't originally have. I do plan on adding a cage and belts so that will also help.

Here is a good video that shows how far we've come in terms of crash safety design.

So far the Ring brothers have done a Mustang and a ‘69 Camaro in carbon. Crazy amount of money and time in all of those cars. There is a guy on another board selling a front clip for a challenger or a charger all in carbon and he wants like $25,000 so I could only imagine what a full car in carbon would be. With all the structure and stuff inside I’d put money on $100k just in the body.

Been a min since I updated this. Basically more wiring happened then I didn't feel like working on the car for a bit, some other random things instead and a trip out of state for a wedding. I decided to take a break from wiring because I'm tired of it and I need some more parts and to fab some more mounts before I can go any farther with it. Lets skip to the fun stuff now.

I wasn't super excited with the Borla muffler. I wanted a real 3" duel in and out X pipe muffler. The problem was the one I wanted that would work for my setup only came in a kit Holley sells for 6th gen Camaros. Luck would have it that a buddy of mine got a job with them and was able to get one for me. The plan here is in on one half the muffler with a vacuum cut out that will me module controlled like Camaros and Vettes are for a mild to wild tune ability.



So with that checked out I went to the front of the car to slice up some expensive carbon fiber. I need more room up front to fit the tires with ZR1 brakes and the vette suspension. I gained enough room I hope. I need to find tires to check the fitment. Planning on getting this side done before moving onto the driver side.

OK so here are some updates on whats going on with the car since its been a while. While I was working on it the last time I learned that I wasn't actually aloud to be doing so as its against company policy and my manager was misinformed when she said it was cool (because I asked before I even came to work here). So I haven't been able to work on the car in about a month now. What I was working on last was the splitter and the wide body front fenders. Here are the pics so far. I'm not happy with the splitter as its 7" off the ground at ride height. I think I'm going to build a taller spoiler and drop it down 2" more.










With not being able to get the car into the shop I have to find other ways to get things done and keep some kind of progress going. I started with the transmission tunnel plate. I went with 6 layers on 11oz carbon and a 2mm core in a wet lay up then vacuum bagged it. After trimming to the right size you can see how much stiffer it is from the 1/8" aluminum plate. I saved 2lbs with this as well.







Even with 12" of over hang the carbon is still stiffer then the aluminum


In the days off that I have nothing to do I started working on my trailer. Full clay bar and polishing. Cleans up nice for never have even washed this thing since I got it in 2016.




Moving forward from here I've decided to go work for my buddy that is opening a hot rod shop and will be moving back to San Antonio at the end of January. So with the new job I will also have shop space to work on the car again so look for updates to start again in February.

So we're back with work on the Camaro. Well, except this weekend because it was too cold in the shop. The new shop I'm working for is D Built Hotrods. Give us a follow on Facebook or Instagram. Dbuilt.hotrods on Insta and I think its the same on Facebook. CamaroAJ is my personal one where I post the car up.

Anyways I got the car racked up and to work. Last time I worked on the car I made temp brackets because I didn't have any steel to make solid enough brackets to hold things where they needed to be.



With the new brackets made the wheel clears at full lock at ride height. I still have offset upper control arm bushings to install to move the wheel in and get a bit more clearance. Then I use zip screws to hold everything together and sanded the fender to get everything bonded back together.





With the passenger fender ready to bond I test fit the carbon fiber trans tunnel plate that I made and it fit perfectly. Then I pulled the chassis harness out and got it all zip tied up and put away until I'm ready for some more wiring now that I have most of it roughed in.

Long overdue post. Sorry to neglect the updates, but I promise I've been busy on the car. I'll start with the "list". I was feeling overwhelmed by the amount of stuff I have to do still and made a list of things just off the top of my head that needed to be done so I can focus on a task, well try to anyways until I get to a point I need parts or I'm bored with it for the time being.



Next lets tackle the little tasks I've been working on. Anvil stepped up to help me with my project so I was able to mount my mirrors finally. So big thank you to them for sure. I had to do a little sanding to get the trim rings to fit like they should since these are older mirrors before the rings were even a though. After that they were bonded in as well as the base plate using 3M panel bond.









I also started on the frame work for the package tray waterfall since I have no back seats and the fuel tanks are now in that position. This will get more work later as I have to deiced on what size speaker to use and then incorporate a sub box into it.






I did decide to mount my hood release handle when I could get to it pretty easy since I'll have a cage that would block it if I put it in the kick panel.




The accessory drive, the horns, the underhood fuse block, the brake booster vacuum line have all been mounted, and the extension of the center console has been started.








One of my smaller projects has been working on bucks for the tail lamp molds as I plan on making them out of carbon fiber. I don't spend much time on them, just every so often mess with them for a few minuets.





I also started mounting the supercharger cooler, oil cooler, and power steering cooler. I was really happy with their location, but I might end up moving the power steering cooler. As I had some scrap carbon fiber pieces laying around I used them as part of the cooler mounting brackets.






The engine made its way to the machine shop so I had access to the engine bay again. I decided to move my ECM into the car because of a couple other changes I have planned. That gave me room to cut the hole for the grommet I'm using for the pass through. And before you ask, I don't remember what car I pulled it out of. There is no part number on it and it just says Delphi on it. It was one of the many chassis harnesses I replaced at the dealer throughout the years. I also mounted the positive battery cable bulkhead while I was there and did some weld clean up.



I don't like the idea of all the water getting into my engine bay when I wash the car or it rains, so I did some arts and crafts and made a fiberglass rain tray thats removable with a few nuts on the 5th gen hood vent.

Time for part 2.

Some small stuff I forgot in the last post. The drip rail delete I've started to fully weld. The "body guy" that helped me years ago was wrong on how they should be done so I'm fixing that before it becomes a problem down the road. I metal worked the tubs and got them ready for epoxy and I welded in the edge of the trunk drop to match the wider quarter panel like the other side.







A semi big project I wanted to do was a hood rib delete because of the 5th gen Camaro hood vent. Doing so also required the front valance also be deleted. I needed to do this in stages so that the hood maintained it shape. I supported with clear plexi under the cut out places and laid fresh carbon in a wet layup like you would do with fiberglass and then put a overlapping piece top and bottom to add strength to the joint.








Getting that done I was able to bond the hood vents in. On the side vents after bonding them in I modified the back part so they sat smooth with the hood with some minor fiberglass work. That pretty much wraps up my hood, so it it now ready for body work and paint when I get to that point.





The front lower spoiler is a work in progress. I dabble here and there with it when I'm doing other carbon fiber work. I needed it to be about 3/4" taller, so with pretty much everything else I have from Anvil, I cut it up.





I have been wanting to have a brake cooler duct and another duct to run to the rear for the trans and diff. coolers. My original plan was a set of C7 quarter ducts, but I wasn't able to get the lines right without reall changing the Camaro body lines and I really didn't want to do that. So plan B was to modify the NACA duct in the door/quarter to do both. The wheel well side will duct around and into the brakes kinda like a C6 Corvette did, just with better ducting. The top of the duct will go over the wheel well and through the trunk drop to the diff. cooler on the passenger side. I still need to build the driver side, but it will cooler the trans cooler.

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Something that has bothered me since the day I welded then in was the finger pockets for the door handles. I made the pockets in a flat piece and then welded in a flat section into a door that is curved. Because there is some support structor in the door no matter what I did I was never able to correct the metal and get the shape it needed to be. So I cut them out and made new panels with the english wheel to add the needed curve.








That brings up to todays update. After a few different designs for the finger pocket for the door handles I just wasn't happy with the shapes. So instead of wasting even more time on them I decided to go with C6 door handles. I made pockets for them to go in the door and then welded them in before metal working them out. Ignore the door edge, it will get finished up when the quarters get welded back on and I can adjust the gaps.

Ok lets get up to speed on the last few weeks. I finished up the driver side brake and trans cooler duct.







The engine came back from the machine shop and I'm ready to assemble it once I get a few more bolts and bearings ordered. I still don't know what cam I want to go with either. I started working on the supercharger cover by grinding down the Corvette letters and back filing them with panel bond. On the center console I stared to fiberglass the gap until I ran out of glass. The cover and console are coming along nicely tho.






Most importantly I finally got some epoxy shot on the inner structure and have started the final fitment and welding of the quarters. It took a lot longer then I figured it would to get everything fit and mostly welded up. I still have more welding to do across the top and back before I can grind the welds and start the hammer and dolly process. Big step forward to having a whole car again tho.

If someone offers enough everything is for sale.

Builds of this level are in the $300k range currently.

I built it for me because they told me it couldn’t be done and it’s how I want it. Now if someone does come along and make a good offer I’d let it go and build an even better one with what I learned from this one. Always a prototype for the next.

I’ve had this car since 2010 I think. This is version 2.0 that I started in 2016 and then it sat in storage for a few years because I didn’t have anywhere to work on it. If I remember right it sat all of 2017-2018 and I started back on it in early 2019 3 Saturday’s a month before getting stored again at the end of 2020 for a few months. Work started back up February of this year.

Ok guys, I kinda slack with the updated on the car on the message boards. Its just kinda a hassle since I don't have the internet and I have to pair to my phone and transfer all the pics to the computer, resize, and convert them to a format I can upload. Anyways I've been busy so lets hop in.

Picking up where I left off last time I got the car stripped down with the craptastic epoxy that the blaster applied that was flaking off and then into sealer. Also the bare metal was sealed to stop the surface rust.







With that out of the way I was able to get the driver quarter metal finished by pick and file and with the stud gun on areas with no back access.











The passenger side was the same process. Final fit, zip screw, trim, weld, metal finish, seal.














With the quarters in place I needed to finish up retucking the bumper. Since I did the wide body on the car I needed to modify the pockets to be a little deeper and trim the bumper ends accordingly. I didn't get great pictures when I did the driver side so I'll run down the passenger side. With the bumper bolted in place I tapped off the metal around to make a template. Transferring that to some sheet metal I got everything cut out and clamped into place before welding and metal finishing everything.












Now with the bumper squared away I moved onto the door handles. I'm running C6 style release buttons so I needed a pocket to get my fingers into. Starting with a shape the same angle as the stock gills and not the NACA duct I made a tape pattern to get me in the ball park. It took some work and time, but I like how they came out.











In between all of this work I've been doing some body work on the hood, upper valance and roof getting it pretty close so when its ready for a real body guy it won't be too far off and should help move things along quicker from paint jail. For not being a body guy I'm really happy with how it came out so far.











That brings us to this weekend. I've been going back and forth on where to put my fuel filler since the Vette tanks are kinda high behind the driver seat. I didn't want to have an external filler, but thats what worked the best for me. I had an EMI filler, but I wanted a locking one so I ordered the RideTech unit. Safe to call it a unit as its huge and heavy. On the scale it was over a pound and twice as much as the EMI that I ended up using, because of the weight and size. Mostly the weight lol. With a modification to my bead roller a few years ago I made a perfect circle to recess the filler cap. I cut that up from version 1.0 and welded it into the driver quarter. And as with the rest of the metal if was pick and filed to fix the warping.








I also received my LED headlamps, so I got those test fit then boxed back up.



I also found a place for my ABS module and BPMV. I made a bracket to mount the modified stock bracket to and then mounted the whole assembly behind the passenger fender in the wasted space.