Catbox

I have chronicled this on another forum and wanted to share it here as well.
So this story starts back in June of 2024.

June 6th:
So my daughter has been all over me for the last year and a half for us to purchase her a first car.
She has been all over the place with what she wants, but one that remained in play over that time was a 3rd gen Camaro.

We found this one in the local area on Marketplace and set up a time to go and see it.

Catbox

I had made her make all the connections and phone calls to the gentleman that was selling the car.
He is a 70 year old guy that over the phone wanted to make sure she knew what she was getting into as he knew she is an 18 year old girl.
So I put Max on the phone and he let him know we are better than novice with mechanical things.

The car is by no means perfect, it is far from it.
But it has good bones and seems to start right up after a few weeks of not being run.
There is a musty old car smell to it as well, but pulling up the carpet in the footwell shows NO rust.
Same pulling up the spare tire well carpet, no rust back there either.


It was originally green, but the PO to the PO has used plasti dip on it.
So that will be an adventure to figure out how to remove and then get it done.
The guy that did it, sprayed over everything but the glass, head, and tail lights.
Genius.


It is missing the headliner parts between the T-tops and some time in its past somebody broke in and stole the sub woofer out of it.
So the trunk is accessed via screwdriver.
The trim that goes over the rear speakers is also gone on both sides for some reason.

Catbox

Tony told us over the phone he bought it for the wheels that were on it.
They were the stock ones that went on his 1986 Vette.
He paid $4,000 for it and then told us that he was set on $2,600 and no lower.

After it started right up and idled like a sewing machine I was good with his price.

It is actually a TBI car.
He wasn't super phone savvy so he didn't get us the engine bay shot before we went to see it.
It was a surprise that way.

So I sent Max and Der Burger on the test drive while I talked with Tony.
He was surprised to hear that we are a hot rod family and that the car will be in good hands.
I explained that I have made both the kids engage in the research for their own cars by making contact and asking questions.

Her is Elizabeth aka Burger with her new to her machine.


We stopped for a snacks and bathroom at a nearby Fred Meyers where she got to drive it for the first time.

She loves it.

On the way home...


This is the bridge going over the Columbia river that separates Washington and Oregon.


And this is the Fremont Bridge in Portland that crosses over the Willamette (Will-am-ette) river the city is based around.
Portland has 12 bridges that cross the Willamette River.


We also know that it will peel those little 14 inch tires with no real issue and Max made sure it was not a time machine on the freeway ride home.
He made sure by taking it up to 90 mph...

Catbox

Here is the RPO list...

I decoded the whole RPO list and my favorite one is the F41 suspension package that is on it....

I am going to go and pick this up as well...

Catbox

The car also has the Bose option on it, but the head unit is long gone.

The remaining Bose components for viewing.
Front kick panels and rear deck.




Underside of rear deck shows it is missing one of the speaker boxes.


Front kick closer up...

Catbox

We did find this bolted to the bottom of the heater box cover, I wonder if it still works.
This car has been wired (poorly) for a full stereo system....

More work will be needed to remove it for testing of the amp.
If it works it will go back into the car in a far better location.

Catbox

June 6th:
We have some Phuckin yikes stuff going on down here.

Magnaflow muffler doesn't really seem all that growly of a muffler, so I looked a bit deeper.
Been smashed a bit and I spy some booger welding...


Ohhh good lawd!


Then I looked forward to the front.
Smash-o!
And they WTH is going on there?
Yup.
A soda'r can has been clamped on to cover some sort of hole thing.
We will get into that when we purchase a fresh exhaust set up for it....


This whole system seems to hang way to low, so we will see what we can do about getting it sucked up closer to the underside.

Catbox

June 6th:
It does have some nice Magnaflow tips under it for sure.


Stock trailing arms with actual new looking bushings, links, and shocks like the ad stated.


Stock torque arm as well, I wonder why the dampness around the diff cover and tube...


What wheels are lurking beneath the hub caps....


And here it is now, waiting for paperwork to be done...

Catbox

June 18th:
It has been a busy week of looking stuff up and reading a bunch of ancient threads on the internets and old forums.

With that, ROC Auto got a handful of my money.
Locally the same Wix filters are $13 each, on Roc they were less than $5 a pop so 4 of those are coming from warehouse A.
Picked up a trans filter kit, fuel filter, new door pin kits, and some cheap relay rod guides as well.


From warehouse B we are getting a new set of valve springs as I figure they are old and tired.
At $1.80 each we could have a set to throw in there while we do the valve seals that come with the head gasket kit I picked up.
The heads might need a trip through the machine shop to clear up the smoking issue.
I don't want to have to do that to a measly 305, but we have to pass the DEQ testing here.
Hopefully the seals and springs do us right, otherwise we will soon be elbow deep in engine.
Who knows when the headlights had been changed out on it last, so for just for doing it we purchased a set of low beam's and some 1156 that were on closeout.
Before we do all the exhaust, I wanted to change the engine and transmission mounts to make sure things were up where they are supposed to be.
And last from warehouse B we are getting a TBI rebuild kit.


Since I purchased the low beams I was out at the car looking at the lights.
One of the high beam bulbs has a BB gun hole in it, so I picked up a set of matching brand bulbs.


I did find a 5% off code online and at least that takes a big chunk out of the shipping costs.
That will all be showing up later this week.

Catbox

June 18th:

The search for a catalytic convertor has been long and many threads have been read.
Were they at all helpful, no.

I strayed and started looking at the offerings of the interwebs.
So I looked at 2-1/2 inch options out there as we are flying with a stock Y pipe currently and those have a 2-1/2 inch tail on them.
Again my price range is from $19.99 all the way to over $1000 for one.
I started looking at name brands and settled upon a Magnaflow for $126.
It should pass the visual inspection perfectly and I have faith that it will do its job well enough.


From the Ebay, I have ordered a set of indexed V-Band clamps.
These will be used on the above cat for installation between the Y pipe and tailpipe we are going to build for it.
One will also be used in the rear before the muffler for a simple removal operation.


For the new center section of exhaust, I have chosen a 3" single pipe kit.
It is just mild steel and once it is all fit and finish welded it will get a coat of BBQ black paint for some corrosion protection.
I thought about using one of the stainless kits offered, but I have already spent a bunch on this car and this stuff is easier to cut and assemble.


For the muffler, there are several options out there.
The car has a Magnaflow on it currently and it is just not the right sound.
My brother had a Camaro long ago that had the Flowmaster on it and it made that little V-6 sound good.
So I started looking at all the counterflow chambered muffler options out there.
I was originally just going to purchase the same Flowmaster 80 series for its $165 price tag.
But then I thought of SpinTech and if they had one.
Sure enough they do and it was about the same price as the Flowmaster, so I hit the add to cart button.
They wanted $38 in shipping, so that was aborted.

YouTube allowed me to hear that most of the chambered offerings out there sound fairly the same.
I looked over the Flowmaster, SpinTech, Hooker, Jones, and a few others that I could find.
I settled upon the Thrush variant as it was fully welded and with shipping it was $78 to the front door.
We will chop the inlet pipe off as it is cone shaped and fit it to the 3 inch inlet pipe set we are using.


The existing tail pipes will be reused as they are from Magnaflow and much nicer than a little short tip.

Catbox

Max told me that I should buy him a carpet cleaner so he could clean interior stuff.
I asked why I should buy it and he said he would clean the interior of the Suburban with it, so I am going to hold him to that.
He watches a detail guy on YouTube University that uses a Bissell 3624 and it pulls the nastiest stuff out of cars.
I hopped on the interwebs and low and behold it was on sale for $40 off.
So for $125 it was shipped to the door.


So I put her to work with the new machine.
She pulled the seats out of the car with a touch of assistance and this is what we have found.
Years of ick.

Get out of my way with that camera...


Nasty nasties on the drives side...


And the passenger side...

Catbox

After some hard work to clean it all up this is about how good it will be for now.
She can get a job and replace the carpet some other time.

Burger is running the cleaner on the door panel, whilst Gwen is working to peel the plasti-dip off the hood with WD-40.


After an afternoon of vacuuming and cleaning with the Bissell it looks better.
She has since these were taken hit the whole thing again, especially the hump where it looks like drinks have been spilled.






Looking under the carpet reveals nice clean painted floor pans. No rust.

Buddy

This is a terrific story and posts right here!! Great to read that your family loves this and will bring it up and enjoy it. And to hear of a younger person that loves the car, and isn't longing for something over priced or such. Keep up the posts.

Catbox

June 18th:

This car is missing some interior pieces and I started looking in the junkyards around the area.
There happened to only be one 3rd gen in a yard within 50 miles and it was put into the yard almost 2 weeks before I saw it.

Two Saturdays ago we went to the yard and pulled every little interior thing we could out of it that would be useful to us.
I didn't need the bumper cover, but they are expensive to purchase a new one, so I took it as well.
The spare tire was mounted on the car, so I know it fits the bolt pattern.
After I pulled it off the axle, I tossed it into the spare tire well and sure enough it was correct.



Pulled the complete gauge cluster.


Front plate holders and just a bunch of other parts and pieces...


One of the most important things I wanted was the headliner part as her car does not have it at all.
Now we do and it needs to be cleaned as well.
Since it is fragile, we will be gluing in some thing cardboard where it is flimsy or broken.
We were also missing the rear trunk piece that is shown below.
I haven't tried to see if the speakers work or not, they were in the car and ended up in the pile.
It was also a good thing that I swipered the wipers as her passenger side one is bent and does not put pressure on the center of the window.



Just how do you loose all these pieces?

We use a garden cart for junkyard crawling that holds all the tools and what ever we want to take home.
At the end of the pull a thon we piled all this stuff onto the tools that were already on the cart.
Multiple bungee cords were used to hold it into place on the cart.
We pulled it from the very back of the yard up to the checkout.

They lady there was looking at it like where do I even start.
I explained that it was a pile of many small pieces of interior stuff, a spare tire, and a bumper cover.
She just kept staring at it.
I said how about you just charge me $100 for the random stuff and whatever the other stuff costs.
She agreed and I was out the door for $200.

Catbox

Max had some time the other day and went out and fiddled with the stereo that came in the car.
Bad picture as I moved when it took it.
But it is a Pioneer that is around $100 new and they still sell it.
The two of them got it hooked up to some speakers and Burger connected her phone to it with the Bluetooth.
Win! As now I don't have to buy her one of those.


This is the amp that was screwed to the bottom of the heater box.
All the wires were disconnected when we bought it so it was a question mark.
Hook the wires back up and it seems to operate the stock dash speakers.
It is a Rockford Fosgate 50 watts X 4 channel amp and will serve her just fine to power the mids/highs in her car.



The PO had a subwoofer in the trunk that was not hidden or covered and the car was broken into with only that being stolen.
We will address subs in the future when other stuff is sorted.

That is all for the updates on this one until parts start arriving later this week.
She still loves her car.

Her current boyfriend said "I don't understand why people want an old car for a dream car."
I feel his days may be numbered...
(He was removed from the scene not long after this)

Catbox

June 19th:

I found the missing sail panel covers on marketplace the other day.
We went out to the middle of the boonies where a feller named Steve parts them and saves the savable ones in his retirement.
He has a wicked '90 with a super charged small block in it.

Here are the correct color and year even sail panel covers.


They will be cleaned with the Bissell first and if that does not work they can be recovered pretty simply.

Steve has loads of parts hanging around as well as cars that are in various stages of assembly.
I asked if he had any wheels he would be selling.
He showed me these Z28 wheels that are 15 x 7 and said for the set of four he usually gets $200.
I just so happened to have pack my "swap meet" envelope with me and it magically could cover that amount.
So Der Burger now has a set of far better wheels to roll around on.



I wonder if the Grand National center caps would fit on these....

If not, she can find a set and use her own money for them.

The car now just needs a set of tires and I am nearly done with the major expenditures unless something random pops up for this car.
Outlay to this point is $3900.
I still need to register the thing as well....

Catbox

I am over spending on this one now.
Since the earlier post was made, I have been online tire shopping.
Max pointed me at Simpletire.com and I used them to buy a set of Mastercraft Avenger's for the car just now.
They are the 235/60/15 variety and should work very well for her in the years to come.


In a few days they will be dropping off a set of 4 to my door step and I will have one of Max's friends that works for beer mount them up for us at his work.


I found them on simple tire for $131 a piece and Walmart had them for $119 each.
I got them to price match and the to my door price each is $119.

Catbox

June 25th:

We worked on the car on Sunday.
I had her finish cleaning the seats as she totally missed the sides of them.
After that we oiled up the adjuster wheels and pivot points so they moved freely.

Then I confirmed that the neutral safety switch is a pile of crap.
I loosened the mounting bolts and moved it around until the car started cranking again.
So looking around the net seems to turn up few options on the switch.

I will improvise.

I just bought her this little button that will be mounted under the headlight switch.
There is already a hole there where something had been mounted and removed, so it will be perfect.
She will now have a push button NSS while cranking the ignition.
I will simply splice into the wires without disconnecting them, kind of an anti theft thing as the OG switch will still kill the starter.

While on the Billet Automotive Buttons web page, I found this one for my truck.
Max has yet to actually fix my horn, so this will work like a champ in the meantime...

Catbox

July 1st:


How it came to us on brand new Generals on 14 inch wheels with Autozone hubcaps installed....


Without the hub caps is nearly as hideous on this car...


Here we have the Camaro on its fresh Z28 wheels and tires.
It looks so very much better with them on...


The 205's on the left and the new 235's on the right.
I thought about getting wider tires for the rear, but its not mine and I wanted the tires to able to be rotated.

Catbox

Since I paid for them, I got to drive them first.
I tested them in front of the house and even though it is only a 305, it still does V-8 things.
Some day we will make it able to spin both tires by swapping in a Gen 4 rear-end with limited slip and disc brakes.


I parked the car in the driveway and Burger hopped into the seat for a test drive.
She backed out and jumped on the gas a bit hard and left her own black mark in the street...

Catbox

July 1st:

Yesterday we put the car up in the air to start on the fresh exhaust for it.
What came on the car is just a pile of crap.
I knew this after getting it home and looking under the car the first time myself.

Here we are behind the front passenger tire.
The Y pipe looks to be in decent enough condition, so we are going to be removing everything from there back as it is all crap.


You can see the spot where they attempted to weld onto the OG exhaust pipe and the random cut they made and abandoned.
It was welded so well that all it took to remove the cat off the pipe was a bit of wiggling and a solid pull.
Popped right off...


This is just after the cat that had been installed by a PO.
On the right you see it has a reducer from the cat to the exhaust pipe.
Under the soda can and hose clamps is some fine JB Weld plugging a hole where it looks like a hanger broke away.
The center dark pipe is some random piece that was put in to connect to the parts store crinkle bend pipe that goes to the rear.
That connection was very poorly welded and it was covered in exhaust wrap, but the gasses still blew out of all the pinholes...



That fine crinkle cut French fry pipe looks to have been installed quite low by the finely qualified installer.
It seems to have met many speed bumps to help it fit the shape of the bottom of the car just that much better.
Note the lack of rusted parts on the bottom of this 32 year old car...

Catbox

More of the first connection to the Y pipe.
They used lots of different pieces to get all this contraption all connected up, poorly.


We are going to use this as sort of a template to follow-ish and improve upon for the new 3 inch that we are going to put back in place.
There will be every consideration made to get the piping up tighter to the bottom of the car, speed bump friendly like...




The old muffler was a Magnaflow and it was booger welded on as well.
A sawzall made quick work of it.
Now you can see it has been bashed on something as well and more of that fancy JB Weld booger hole patch.


Here we have the new "muffler".
I wanted a new Flowmaster 80 series for it as that is what my brothers car had and it was only a 2.8 V-6 car.
They are still fairly proud of that one at $165.
Then I thought that a Spintech would be sweet as well and they were similarly priced at $165, but with a $39 shipping fee attached.
Nope.
I looked at many different brands and listened to them through YouTube videos and whelp, they all sound the same ish.
I didn't want a straight up Amazon brand, so I picked the Thrush variant at its $65 and $11 shipping from Summit.
Dumb part though is that it only comes with 2-1/2 inch inlets and outlets.
We will address this when we get to the rear of the car exhaust work....

Catbox

Here is one of the tailpipes that came on the car, a nice piece from Magnaflow.
There is a matching one on the other side as well and they are both 2-1/2" inlets that expand up to 3 inch all the way out to the slash cut.
They like the rest of the car, are partially coated in that stupid plasti dip crap.


New muffler inlet at 2-1/2 inch and the 3 inch that we will be connecting to the muffler.
We will be cutting the inlet pipe off at the pipe size and the exhaust pipe will be welded on there.


She was changing all of the headlights out for new ones.
I caught her taking a pic for the 'gram...


Those cleaned up quite well.
At least good enough for a driver quality car for a teenager...


When we get to this point, that is the idea of what the tail pipes will look like even though I have it pointed the wrong way.
The necked down portion of the tip will be cut off and they will be welded to the 3 inch.
The pipe will be painted in BBQ black to keep it from rusting and the chrome tips will be allowed to shine.

Catbox

So, we are building the cat up to connect to the existing Y pipe.
The one I purchased is this Magnaflow one and it is 2-1/2 inch in and out.

Not the 3 inch the rest of the exhaust will be.
So the other day I purchased 4 V-bands of the 2-1/2 inch variety to make this happen with purpose.
I drew out what I wanted on cardboard and sent the boys on a mission to find stuff.

The Y pipe is something like 2-1/8 inch so we need a increase to get up to 2-1/2 inch for the cat.
After that first increase in size there will be a 2-1/2 inch V-band, then the cat itself, and a short piece of pipe to match what came off the car.
Then there will be another 2-1/2 inch V-band that connects the cat to the rest of the exhaust.
Similarly there will be a test pipe with V-band fittings made up that matches that can be swapped in and out for "test" purposes.

Just after the last V-band of the cat there will be another increaser to get us up to the 3 inch tubing we are going to make the rest of the exhaust out of.

Now young Max has had no real training other than YouTube University videos and getting out there and pulling the trigger on the welder.
With that said, I would say that his welding is pretty decent and exhaust is a great place to learn as it is thick enough to be semi forgiving.
Our welder is from Harbor Freight and does not use gas at this time, so he does quite well in mine own eyes.

Here is the cat and on the right is where it will connect to the Y pipe then the first band.


Three pretty decent welds going on here.
All welds were made with the V-band cage fully tightened down to mitigate any warping of the mating surfaces during the heating cycles.


V-band cage removed after cooling.


Pretty good penetration.

Catbox

While doing the wheels and tires we noticed that one of the brake hoses was well worn through the outer rubber.


Once I was told, I hopped on the interwebs and found a set of braided stainless hoses from Edelbrock that were on Amazon.
They were available next day, so they were ordered right up.
(Sent the wrong ones and they were returned. Stock hoses were installed.)




The car came with a set of wheel bearings, so we will be looking into changing those out as well, because why not?


I pulled these out of the junkyard car, we shall see if they work.
If not, no big deal as they were super cheap from they yard as they may have been buried and not real visible...

Catbox

July 1st:

So that is where we are today, in the middle of creating a new complete exhaust for it.
We have some brake and bearing work as well.

The kids out on the tire test drive...


Burger had Max take a glamour shot...

Catbox

July 16th:
Under the hood there were a couple of busted panels.
I never even thought as to why they were busted, I just knew I wanted to change them out.
The core support cover was cracked nasty as well as the radiator cover with the right bolt busted off of the plastic cover.


After I pulled both of the covers off the car, I looked down to see if there was anything on the radiator blocking its efforts.
Yup, a hay field.
So I checked the fluid and it was just water, so it was bucket drained and this is what we have on the face of the radiator.
The AC condenser didn't look this bad at all though...


Hmmm.
There appears to be an odd bump on the drivers side bottom of the radiator.


Most likely this is the OG radiator to the car as it still has a Made In The USA tag on it.


Now looking down at the bottom of the core support I can see why the rad is bent.
Somebody went ham and tried to pull some Duke Boys stuff with the car and smashed something into the bottom of the support bending it up on the drivers side (photo right).


I cleaned all the hay out of the radiator.
We then used a 2x4 and 4 pound sledge hammer to will things down there back into a flatter shape.
This would also explain why the top radiator cover was missing the drivers side rubber mount support.
With that support under the cover, it would have been 1/2 inch to high to even look right.
So they just pulled that side and called it good enough.

Catbox

Junkyard fresh covers in place as well as all rubber supports.

Catbox

Back on July 1st boss man told us that if we got our poop in a group and finished our project for the most part on Tuesday, that then we could take Wednesday the 3rd off as well as the 4th and 5th.
We busted buns and made that happen.
So we took our off day and went to the junkyard where a 1992 car had been deposited a week or so earlier.

I had a list of stuff I wanted:
- Auto trunk monkey (one year only part)
- radiator cover (installed last post)
-cover in front of rad cover (installed last post)
-neutral safety switch
-brake line bracket on strut
-T tops
-headliner
-coat hanger hooks
-air dam under nose
-blinker stick
-driver side mirror glass
-nose cone
-rear hatch

I was able to pick up all but the trunk monkey and T tops.
Trunk monkey was already gone and the T tops were crappy crappy plastic ones.
She will just have to keep looking for the trunk pull down unit as they are $300 on eBay for a complete one.
Hers was damaged due to break in and PO stupidity.

I am just going to put this into a safe place for now.
Better to just have a relatively inexpensive one hanging around waiting for the time we need it.
Than to have to pay out the azz for one if it were to get broken....


This nose cone and spoiler are ridiculously priced as well when just shopping for good used parts.
Plus since we pulled it, we now have all of the fasteners to reinstall this one later on when we feel like putting paint on it.
It is in pretty dang good condition and mostly just dirty here.
No visible rips or issues with it at all.


This cart has so much interior plastic and what ever else we wanted piled upon it.
It has been the best thing we have done to make Pick N Pull days far simpler to deal with.
With the nose cone on top of it all, the counter guy just came around the counter and stared at it for a minute.
Not asking any questions, just figuring.


A master stacker, there may be things that are hard to see on the cart....


Dudes at the junkyard are always asking about my truck.
That is one of the reasons why Max is under the hood plugging the wires back into things that make it run.
But here we are all packed up from a 94* day in the junkyard about to hit the nearest McDonalds for a Diet Coke and ice cream cone.


The day in the yard cost me $284 out the door.
I spent a few minutes looking up prices of good used stuff on the internets that were the same condition.

I have around $2200 in resale parts and pieces for this car now going by the online parts I found.
I would have thought that there were more reasonable parts availability as this is a GM product and a Camaro.
They made bunches of them...

Catbox

We were just looking at random stuff as we were packing all the Camaro stuff up.
Max spots this one ton truck with a rack in the bed and thought about trying to make it work on our truck for camping activities.
As we gave up on that thought, he noticed it was a 2 wheel drive as there were coil springs.

His '49 Chevy has a turbo 350 transmission and a set of 4:10 gears in the rear end.
3500 rpm on the freeway is not uncommon to sustain speeds.

He crawled under the truck and it certainly has the 4L80 he has been wanting.
So instead of leaving the yard at 2pm, he got to work pulling the thing out of under the truck.


We forgot the sawzall and that made the exhaust enter the problem of wiggling the heavy transmission out from under the truck.
The rear crossmember was unbolted and pounded out of the way, while we placed a random tire and wheel under the trans on the stands crossmember.
That way it would fall on that and be supported, instead of simply falling to the ground and or on us.
Then it was tilted back and allowed to come to rest on the ground.


The lady on the intercom was yelling at everyone to pack up and leave when we got it out of there.
But a couple hours of work and $303 later, he has a presumably rebuilt 4L80 from a 2000 1 ton truck.

Catbox

Yesterday we also got the second V band and 2-1/2 to 3 inch increaser on the cat.
Now we can start to visualize how we are going to be routing the 3 inch pipe under the car.




When we all got tired of hanging out in the hot hot outside we were changing the window wiper arms.
The ones on the car were some how bent weird and would not put center pressure on the glass.

My brother says "You should just put the cowl hood on now."
I countered with "You and Max go get it and we will."

Hood came off in no time flat and so did the air cleaner and stock intake tube.


Here is the almost finished look.
The hood spring was a test of late in the hot day patience.
This hood had it located slightly different, so after trying and it being crooked.
We drilled a new hole that made the dumb spring line up correctly.
Adjusted the latch catch thingy and it opens and closes like a champ.
The body lines are pretty good all down the fenders until the nose, it is not straight at the end of the hood any longer.
But we have a new nose to fix just that....


I was waiting on the kids auto body buddy to come along and fix the small dents the hood has.
But he is slacking and not returning my texts promptly, so now he gets to work on them on the car or we just pull the hood again.

Better photos to come once the car is back on the ground and washed of all the summer dirt that magically appears.
Now we are all caught up

Catbox

July 22nd:

Small victories this weekend.
The moron PO plasti dipped everything except the headlights, tail lights, and windows.
From a junkyard car we pulled the front blinkers and then yesterday I cleaned the dirt from them as best as possible.
Also found this panel to be dented, I just didn't notice it until now.


Before on top and then after...



That feels much better, but man the paint is filthy with various schmootz we have been using on it.
It needs a good wash something fierce....

Catbox

The PO replaced all the shocks on the car.
The brake hose has a bracket that has a bracket that the hose clips into, or it is supposed too.
Here we have the next best thing, a bunch of zip ties to hold it on...


Flipping noodle head.
I got the bracket off the junkyard donor and they had cross threaded the hole that it bolts too.
So yeah, we figured that out and ran a tap through it and found a suitable bolt to hold the bracket on with.
I didn't take the finished work photo, but you get the point.
This brake hose looks to have been replaced with a stock replacement sometime in the past and looks good enough.


The car came with front wheel bearings for both sides and this peaked my interest.
Tony had mentioned one of the bearings was noisy, but still good to go for now.
I pulled the passenger side cover off and was concerned with the surprising lack of bearing grease in there.
The cotter pin came out as well as the nut cover thingy, first time I have seen those.

I was able to move the spindle nut with my fingers very easily.
This is what I was presented with when I pulled the caliper off and removed the bearings.
I did wipe some of the old grease off the big bearing, but not much...


I was taught to not skimp on the grease in this area, I think I packed it well enough.
Plus we packed more grease inside between the bearings and then a bunch in the cap as well.


The passenger side going all back together here.
We replaced the brake hose on this side as it was the one that had the cracked casing on it.
The braded hoses Amazon told me fit the car, did in fact not fit.
So I will be returning those and just rolling with the ones that are on it for now.
The box is there just to keep the brake fluid from splashing all over my legs as it was replaced...

Catbox

While taking a break, we were goofing around with the air cleaner.
Now that we have the cowl hood on the car, I wanted to see if the K&N that is on the truck would fit under the hood.
The filter is on a drop base and the Camaro needs to have a flat base filter on it.

That is one crusty TBI unit.
We have a rebuild kit for it and will be doing the mod to make the fuel pressure adjustable while it is off.
I also need to find a new set of injector plugs as they are beat with one of the wires being twisted together in there....


I forgot to take a photo of the K&N in there as we just flipped the drop base over to clear the linkages.
It fit perfectly into the hood and was able to close in this way with the 3 inch filter and lid, but no room for the stud.
So a flat base air cleaner will be perfect with room for the stud and nut to hold it down as the drop base is about an inch taller when upside down.

So with just the drop base on upside down, I did take a photo of the K&N filter top just on the base.
Super low profile....


I went to just simply swap the speakers in the B pillars with these Pioneer 6x9's from the junkyard.
They were in the pile on the cart, so they may have been real cheap.
I ohmed them out and they still read 3.5 ohms, so they are not blown and will be fine enough until she wants to upgrade them with her money...


Check out the fine examples that I pulled out of the car....

Yup.
Chrysler speakers with home made adapters soldered on.

I ended up stopping with this upgrade when I saw what the PO had used for speaker wire.
The wire used is the stuff you would use to wire a 120v machine with.
It was 12 gauge but with large stiff wires instead of the many fine strands car audio uses.
I got into my stash and pulled out a spool of 14 gauge OFC speaker wire and ordered her up a 6 plug RCA to run at the same time as we do the wiring.
Then I told Zee Burger that she is going to have to pull the seats yet again so we can do it correctly...


Here is just a photo of how my neighborhood looks when my friends show up...

Zee Burgers 1992 Camaro
Uncle Paul's 1972 truck
My 1979 Silverado and 1954 Bel Air reflection
Across the street are:
Buddy Jakes 1955 210
and Max's 1949 truck
What you can't see is the '55 Chevy I was resting on and the Jurassic Park Jeep in the front yard.

Good times.

Catbox

July 30th:

I am convinced the PO of the poor car was a pucking futz.
He had no business wiring on the poor car the haphazard way that it was done.

There was wiring running to the back of the car to power the sub amplifier that used to be there just wadded up.
The white wire, whatever it was supposed to do was pinched somewhere in the body work and fried.
No fuse in any of these lines what so ever.
Cool fire starter...


I guess that is one way to lower the ohm load the amp sees at the subwoofers.
The red butt connectors are far to small to connect these wires, I have no idea what is going on inside that black tape...


Here is the fine wiring that started me down the path of pulling all the random wires from the car.
These were simply pushed under the carpet to get to the amp in the foot well to connect the 6x9 on the passenger side.
Somehow they were smert enough to use the factory wiring on the drivers side....


Le sigh.
On the left is what remains of the rca that went to the back and some other random wire.
I don't know what the white wire is.
He used the green 8 gauge speaker wire for power and ground duty, just pulled apart.
One unfused 8 gauge positive wire through the firewall to power the amp and one half you see in the console under a small ground screw.
No protection on any of these added circuits...


This is the majority of the wiring we have pulled out from the PO stereo install.


There was a Rockford Fosgate amplifier screwed to the bottom of the heater box in the passenger foot well.
We removed that and set it aside.
The plus side of having all this crap wire, we were able to wire the amp up to test.
We ran it off of a Milwaukie M12 battery for power and a 3.5mm plug to RCA for sound during the short test.

It was previously thought that the rear channels of the amp were fried, nope just the low pass filter turned on.
Took a second and reset all the adjustments on the amplifier and powered it up.
The fine fine Chrysler speakers were just not able to process the subsonic frequencies being sent their way with how it was.
Now it runs like a champ and will push her front four speakers once I get that all figured out.
Plus for me as I don't have to buy a head unit or a front stage amplifier.

Catbox

On the subject of the fine Chrysler speaker that were installed in the car.

These were under the dash.

Typically these cars have a maximum speaker size of 4x6 and even then some don't fit.
These are simple 6 inch round speakers.

THEY WERE NOT EVEN MOUNTED.
JUST PLACED ON THE DASH THAT WAS LEFT AND THEN HAD THE DASH PAD PUT BACK OVER THEM!!!!!!


This shitsipper took the dash off, removed the stock speakers and just started hacking away...
No flipping care for anything going on in there...



Not even tape over the top of the open vent tube he hacked away.
A view from the inside...

I guess I can now not have to worry about size or fitment issues and just devise a way to mount and support the speakers up there.
There are the two bolts that have chopped off mounts as well as the empty mount hole still there.
So I have at least three mount spots to work with.

Once we run the vacuum through the vent hole, I will be taping the top of the vent closed for better dash vent operation going forward.
At least Cowboy Dinglebobber did that on the drivers side chopped up hogwarsh...

Catbox

Now that that is behind me, we spent probably close to 18 hours in the driveway last weekend.
12 on Saturday and 6 on Sunday.

We slept in on Sunday and then went out and rounded up some deals from Marketplace for the Burger and her upcoming learning to ride a dirt bike.
Picked up a chest protector, goggles, and gloves for just $45 total from a couple people.

Max got to work on the making the exhaust complete.
First he welded the front part of the cat to the Y pipe on the car.

He said ouch a few times and I simply reminded him that he was wearing about 25% of the safety gear he was supposed too be wearing.
"Yeah yeah" came from under the car at me...

Now he reinstalled the V-band that actually holds the cat in place and figured out the length he needed on the legs of a 45 to make the turn and head down to the back.
Skip a few steps as I was busy with my own projects and we now have a fully welded exhaust pipe that runs all the way to the back of the car.
Even makes it over the axle where it is supposed to be.

Here we are looking towards the back of the car, the V-bands will be clocked properly when it is all finished...


Here we are looking forward to the front and you can see the cat and its connection to the stock Y pipe...

In the back ground you can see the cars waiting patiently for their turn at resurrections.

We have opted to install a V-band before the axle to ease any future work we will need to do back there.


Here is where we currently are with the exhaust pipe.
I do believe there will be a V-band here as well to facilitate simple removal for maintenance and upgrades.


Once the whole system is assembled, Junior will go back and install the hangers and make sure things are good.
Because if there is a rattle, he will hear about it until he gets it fixed.
It sounds much better than it did with just the Y pipe, but it will sound great with the muffler set up.

Catbox

I spent the majority of my time in the driveway under the hood it seems.

The battery is a stupid side post jobbie.
If you have read this far, I will assume that you read through the stereo wiring section above.
The PO sucks.
That is all.

So the wires at the battery are a mess and sticking out everywhere.
I can't stand that and it also makes it super hard to do any kind of clean installation of wiring.
We have put these heavy duty battery terminals on all the other cars, so why should this one be any different.
I purchased the wrong Die Hard post adapters at the first auto parts store, so I had to run to a couple others in town to find the right ones.

So AutoZone had what I wanted, plus a Camaro t-shirt for Der Burger...


For the 0 gauge wire that I salvaged out of a BMW suv in the junkyard I will make all new terminal ends out of some copper tubing I have left over from my HVAC days in the field.
Here I have stripped the wire and installed a ferrule to keep the strands neat and tidy.


I cut a 3 inch or so section of the tube and flatten one end of the tube with my old sheet metal hammer...


With my awesome hydraulic cable lug crimper from Harbor Freight, I will lock the tube onto the wire for good...


That should not be able to let go at all.
I have not had one fail on me in the last 20 years that I have been building cables for cars this way...

Catbox

I then used my new center punch and drilled a pilot hole and opened the hole using a unibit to fit my bolt.

A piece of shrink tube and then we have a complete cable end.
Just what seemed like 47 more to do.

New wire to the starter, the block ground, the 12v power lug for the fans, one for the new 4 gauge amp wire to the rear of the car, and I reused the old battery ground to be the new body ground.
With the new ground wire, seeing as it was all made from the same red cable, I wrapped the first 6-8 inches with black tape.
Thus marking it well as the sad cable.
Later it will get some black loom over the rest of it due to it will drive me nuts every time I look in there.

Some photos of my rewired and much better looking battery area cables.
Red cable on the left side is the new amp wire to the rear of the car.


Battery installed and all cables routed and managed...


Here is the new positive starter wire routed and held in place as well as the ground wire that is also...red.


Here is the whole battery area all cleaned up and purdy.
The new 4 gauge that runs to the rear of the car now has a fuse under the hood.
I did reuse the small hole that the PO drilled for his wire.
I have water tight bulkhead fittings that we drilled the hole out too.
No bare wires through sheet metal like before.
From there it has been run along side the passenger door and through the stock wiring holder that held the Bose wire...


The Monster Cable 4 gauge wire I used was a part of the wire set up that I had purchased for my first truck back when I was 19.
It is old but I checked the very end for voltage drop and there was zero voltage drop to .01v, so it will be just fine.
She can replace it with her money when it comes time to upgrade from the starter set up she is getting...

Catbox

We were all out there enjoying the less than super hot day out there this weekend.
Here is a shot of the kids in the car after Elizabeth took the seats out.




Max took a break from welding and helped her pull the console apart to get all the extra wire garbage out of it as well.


Everybody will have a great knowledge of the intimate parts of this car, including the owner / driver.

Catbox

August 12th:

Loads of time have been spent on the car over the last couple of weekends.
Since we needed a new to us dash, we went back to the carcass of the white '92 in the Pick N Pull.

It gave up a pretty clean dash panel in factory fresh condition, not the hackery that happened to the poor thing...




A 1986 Firebird ended up in the yard near the white Camaro and the crack team that makes sure we don't take any jacks into the yard, left the factory jack in the car.


Pretty fancy and pinkie up to be running a factory jack in the car now.
But of course, the way this one mounted in the earlier chassis is not the same as in our 92.
It will just live in the trunk well instead of behind the spare tire like the Firebird it came from.


The Firebird also had a Flowmaster 80 series muffler on it, so for the $25 they wanted it came home with us.
Not bad for a decent shape $160 muffler.
However after testing, we are going to still use the Thrush version as it is a bit louder.
I will probably just sell this one off....

Catbox

While in the yard, the Firebird also gave up its little factory wing.
I like the spoiler that is on the car much better and this again will probably just be sold off.


It was 98* out there one of the days and I took refuge in the shade.
I had 3 or 4 different containers that had all the random hardware we have pulled from the junkyard cars.
That bugged me as it was just a pain to find stuff, so I found one of the containers I bought from the thrift store and sat down and organized all those things.
So much easier to deal with now.


From the 'bird I also swiped the spare tire from it as it still had nubs on the tread.
Barely used and should be just fine for temporary use in the event of a flat tire....


Hmmm these seem to have a very similar look to each other.
I would bet the baffles inside are just a bit different therefore slight difference in the sound.


When digging around for speaker wires we noticed that we could see daylight while on the inside of the car.
What now.
So this car has one door that is different, I suspect the car was hit in the rear of the door / below the B pillar.
This chopped out support was most likely a part of that repair.
But looking in the pillar there is no wavy sheet metal to support this idea.
The white car gave up the full piece of the support so that we can graft it to the car and make it hole again.

People do whacky **** to cars and then bury it under trim panels for somebody who cares to find it and wonder "What the bubblegum?"

Catbox

Last Saturday, we ended up pulling the whole interior out of the car as I had new wiring to run.
It really needed to be cleaned underneath the carpet and plastic panels something fierce.

Here is the spare tire well after we pulled all the panels and carpet.
Just dingy and dirty with a touch of smell...

Wet rag and some Chlorox with bleach to clean all those surfaces and it looks much better even though nobody will ever see it...


Here is the shelf behind the rear seats that the gas tank resides under.
I am happy to see that nobody has cut the floor out to change the fuel pump.


More previous owner wizardry.
I have no idea what they were trying to accomplish with these random cuts and drill holes.
We tried to hit them with the welder, but they were not having any of that.
So I drown them in paint and taped over them with some HVAC mastic tape to seal them shut.
Somebody else can deal with them later on....


The front of the car is all pulled apart as well for various reasons, but now it is to be cleaned as it was dingy...

This car has been beat in its previous life, you can see some wrinkles in the floor pan where the exhaust was pile driven up into the pan.
Plus there seems to be a damage line from the passenger door frame across the floor and on the side of the tunnel.
The car is straight and tracks straight as far as we know, so it will all just be fine and hidden under the carpet and seats.

Catbox

More on the cleaning of the inside.
There are only a couple little areas where water has given itself to a couple little quarter sized areas of surface rust only.


Clean and grunge free.
Under the passenger rear seat you can clearly see the exhaust dent.


Noice and clean.
Well good enough for me and if she wants it any cleaner, she can do it herself.

Catbox

So the trunk well is where the stereo amplifiers will live.
The is looking straight down into the trunk well.
There are those two ragged holes again after I had flattened and painted them, then taped them shut.
I have also applied the mastic tape to the side walls and floor of the well as it will kill some of the noise these panels will just naturally make.
I was going to purchase a whole thing of sound deadener, but I have spent enough so far and need to leave something for the future to do.
You can also see the 4 speaker wires and 6 line RCA in the photo that have all been run forward to under the dash where they will be then run to appropriate locations.


Here we have 4 of the 6 speaker wires running to the front of the car as well as the RCA.
The speaker wires going to the 6x9's were run separate to keep them from having to cross close the power wire.
So those run through the body panels down the sides to where the speakers mount.

On the top of the fuel tank hump we covered it with an inexpensive self adhesive foam with aluminum backer from Frost King.
It helps with road noise and heat from under the car.
I try to only place this on parts that will not get wet as the foam can absorb water.
The Frost King was also placed into the body cavities where the 6x9 speakers mount, those panels now have a decent amount of the tin can noise removed from them when you tap on them.
To maintain the clean wire club kind of install I wanted to achieve with this budget install, I used Gaff tape or Tessa tape to hold all my wiring in place when running through the car.


We kept all 4 wires flat as we taped them into the car.
I don't want any rattles from loose wires, so they were taped quite extensively from the rear to the front.
The RCA's were run down the other side of the tunnel just like these were.


For the grounds needed in the trunk well, I had Max weld a nut to the car where I had drilled a hole through it.
Works like a champ as we have 12.11v when the car is off and 14.24v with it running.
I tested voltage at all points in the rear and they are good to go.

Catbox

Just after August 12th:
JamesSam said:
Wow. That's gotta feel great! Awesome. That's money dude.She is getting irritated that it is taking so long for us to wade through the projects this car has presented to us.
My wife and I had a "chat" about the car not supposed to have been a summer project.

I explained that perhaps I should have just replaced the busted stuff with simple stock stuff and sent her on the way.
But instead I wanted to take the opportunity to build with her a cool car that she could be proud of as well as myself.
That is something I wanted to do for my kids as my dad was not so receptive of the thought of doing a project car.
At 16 or 17 I told him we should do a project car together.
To which he replied "You just want me for my money."

So now that I have been told that I am taking to long, I am going to slam it all home and stop making things better.
Just to let her get in and going.
I will be finishing all the things I have started and still have a good time with the kids in the driveway while working on this one or any other that happens along.

Catbox

We had finished running the wiring forward on Saturday and so yesterday, Sunday, I spent most of my time building an amp rack.
A couple years ago we upgraded our living room and the old entertainment center was dismantled and set a side to be used for just such projects.
This was when wood was super expensive, plus this stuff has the cool wood grain on it.
Perfect for a budget build such as this one.

I did spend the good coin for quality speaker wire and the RCA as those will be in place for most likely the life of the car.
So the speaker wire is oxygen free copper 14 gauge from Amazon and a decent enough 6 lead RCA so if and when a new head is installed, there are plenty of connectors to go around.

The Rockford Fosgate came with the car and is a 4 channel amp that will power the dash speakers and the 6x9's.
(Insert Monster Garage sound effect ~Freebie!~)

The Kicker is for the sub woofer or woofers, I have not decided if I will be buying more than the one that I have in the stash.
Max has the Kicker that would have been here in his VW currently, so I borrowed this one from him as it was purchased to go back in the VW.
The Kicker that should be here was another ~Freebie!~ from a garage sale that was raining right on it. I sent it out to be repaired and it cost me $20 plus shipping.
Doesn't get much more budgetier than that and it hits hard.

The Blaupunkt unit restores bass frequencies lost during MP3 file compression giving back the lows that are missing.
It is a budget unit and I wanted to know if it worked as well as all the reviews say it does, so she is the guinea pig for this one.
I just bought it off Amazon for $40.

The fuse block came from a Goodwill score a few years back for $3.99, add $8 for fuses and we are good to go.

But the sub box is built to hold three 8 inch subs, my brother is quite good with the wood work and he built the box for them.
Those subs are just about the cheapest thing I could find, they are by Pyle.
The subs are so budget, they have plastic baskets.
But they work and sound alright for what they are as long as you don't over power them.

All the wire used to wire this stuff up is reclaimed wire from the car and the main power wire was purchased by a 19 year old me that never used it.


Test fitting the unit in the car.
That is when I noticed that I had forgotten to lay the wires in for the remote turn to each unit...


After I put the remote wires in.
I used the classic David Freiburger spark plug wire separator method with zip ties.
For this rendition I used little pyramid risers with double sided tape on them to keep them in position.
The zip ties connect directly to them and make for a solid mount.
Next time I build one of these, I may do the mount the wires directly to the board by drilling through it and running the zippy ties through the holes in the board.


Plugged it all in and connected the battery.
I checked the voltage and it was there and 0.01v less than at the battery, I would say that should do just fine.
Max hit the key and triggered the remote wire and all three units came to life with power lights.

I have also perused the junk pile to find a couple of pieces to use as brackets to hold the board in the car from the top and the bottom.

Next up is to run the individual wires to the amps in the proper places.
Then the new 6x9's will be installed and tested.
We have to change out the whole dash board before we install the 4x6's in the new dash locations.
I will be making a baffle for the backs of those before everything is installed to block off the noise from the rear of the speakers.

Until next time yo!

Catbox

I almost forgot!
The sub box that Paul built.
It is going to sit atop the fuel cell hump.
We figured it all out a couple weekends ago.
The little subs want 0.5cuft each for air space, we came up with a box size with a total of 1.6cuft.
So three of the Pyle subs at their $30 each price would be swell for a budget starter system.
When she has a job and her own money, this box can then be converted to hold two subs in the box that each will have the 0.8cuft for the fancier subs I will tell her to buy.



I just have to wanna spend the extra money on the car.
She may just get one sub for now.....

Catbox

August 21st:

It never stops.
I should not be looking at the heater core here....

I sent a kid to the yard to pull the one from the white 92 that has given us so much already.
So we have a non broken unit to put back when we get to that point.

5 screws.
That is all that was holding the dash in the car...


This is the deepest we have ever gone in a vehicle.
She came out and had a look, she was less than impressed at what has transpired.
Then she was put to work cleaning off all that dirt and grime from the PO's.
Max found a fishing lure inside the duct hole there in the center.
All the Bose speaker wiring has been pulled from the car as we don't need any of it...


Here is the old headliner from my truck.
It has not been in the truck for a couple few years now as Max pulled it and just never did put it back.
I am going to use it to cover the speaker box after I paint it black.
It should be close enough to the color inside the car and it will be a good way to repurpose the headliner...

Catbox

The fresh dash is being cleaned up now and soon we will get to putting it back into the car.
It will be nice to stop taking things apart and to start simply just putting them together for the final time.

We got let out of work early yesterday, so after a nice nap I got up and went out to continue picking at the long list of items I have for the car.
I still needed to run the speaker wires to the amps, so I went to work on getting those all installed cleanly.

I used a piece of tape to make a straight line in the center of the two units.
Between each set of wires I drilled a hole in the board for the wire to pass through from the back.


I got smart and marked what the holes go to for simplicity as all the wires have tape markers on them that will stay in place.
You can also see the RCA cables that now pass through the board as well.
One end of the board has the Blaupunkt unit too close to the edge, so the wire simply wraps around the edge of the board.
All the other places will be pushed through the holes.


Soon this will all be installed for the last time as well.
The board is finished as far as I am concerned, she can when she wants too take it apart for paint or to carpet the board.
Now I need to simply drill the holes for the board mounts on the bottom.
Then I will remove it all and put the carpet back in the car and make all the holes in it for the wires and bolts to pass through.


Once all that is done, I will be making a mount for the jack to sit on the floor just in front of the board.
It will be held in with a couple of wing nuts for easy removal when needed.