The car was typical for a 36 year old car when I found it. Now, everything is NEW from top to bottom. I see it this way, Spend $15K on new car or spend $15K on the car of your dreams!
It houses a 1995 GM 7.4 litre 454 ci. motor and a 4L80E overdrive 4-speed auto trans. out of a '95 GMC truck. We have also taken the dash, steering wheel, wiper motor and cruise control from that truck and incorporated it into this old Camaro. It is a cruiser not a racer. It has the combination that makes a real nice daily driver/cruiser with some punch when needed. Here is a picture of the new engine cleaned and painted. I couldn’t get it to fit properly with the stock exhaust manifolds, so I ordered up a set of headers. The Hooker 2475 headers, fit terrible on the drivers side, so I had to dent cylinders 3,5 and 7 to clear! There was a good 1.5" of clearance between the header and the block, so they could of turned the tubes in closer to the block to clear the power steering box. Poor quality or a bad set? If this was a performance application, I would have just sent them back. Passenger side cleared just fine. I removed the oil pan to clearance it for the center link and I was surprised to find it was a 4 Bolt main block! The engine is painted Kandy Yellow, the same as the body color.
The front has all new brakes, brake lines (hard and soft), brake springs, wheel cylinders, and master cylinder. The new KYB Shocks, upper & lower bushings, upper & lower ball joints, inner & outer tie rod ends, pitman and idler arm - ALL new, everything. I sprayed the engine compartment, frame and all components POR-15 semi-gloss paint.
The underside, every nut, bolt, cable, pin, hose etc. - is all replaced with new parts. In order to ge the 4L80E overdrive transmission to bolt in, I used a 700R4 crossmember from Bowtie Overdrives and modified it. The first thing I did was to cut the welds for the center mount, then turned it upside down and reversed it to the other side of the bar. The crossmember utilized the rear frame hole only, so I welded a plate to extend to the forward hole.
The hood was a real mess! There was rust and bondo everywhere, dents and hacked up really bad. You have to wonder what was on the previous owner's mind when they had their hands on this! They even drilled holes in the back of the hood for rear hood pins! I stripped both sides, then prepped with Metal Ready and sprayed with POR-15 semi-gloss paint. The entire car was painted the same and has 5 coats of clear. The picture just doesn’t capture the true kandy look of the paint and the pearl in the back stripe. The car is buffed in 3 stages: 1. Diamond cut with wool pad 2. Diamond cut with cutting pad 3. Zano polish (The world's best!) with polishing pad. I really like the black paint from House of Kolor. I’m thinking I might paint the next Camaro with it!
www.1967Camaro.net
Click here to check out my web page for more pictures!
Back to the Camaro GalleryPrint this page
