| 14 Apr 07 1980 Camaro Dragster |
| Not much to look at.... I have not really decided what we are going to to do with it, street racer, hot rod, bracket racer? | 
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| BEFORE | AFTER |
Not a kit car either. |
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| 5 July 07 Camaro Interior |
| Still not much to look at, but we are finally getting started on it. We gutted the interior. |  |
| The floor pans are worse than I hoped but better than I expected. A few holes on both sides. |   |
| Removing the dash is next. I wanted to get the car under cover, but there was no way its going into the shop until its cleaned up a little. |  |
And you thought the car was a total beater. Supposedly, the engine was just rebuilt. It’s a 385 (bored and stroked 350) with a polished "Hurricane" intake made by Professional Products with a 750 Speed Demon mechanical secondary carb fed by a Holly mechanical fuel pump. It has the Chevy “Double hump" cast heads (great in their day) with 2.02 int. 1.60 exh. Valves, Comp screw in studs & guide plates, Comp push rods, .550 lift springs with Comp retainers and locks with Proform 1.5 ratio roller rocker arms. The cam is a Lunati Bracket Master II hydraulic flat tappet cam .515 lift- 246 duration. The bottom end consists of a 1969 2 bolt block, Eagle "SIR" rods, Keith Black Silv-o-lite dish pistons (9:7:1), Melling High Volume oil pump and a Moroso 6 qt oil pan. Some dress up goodies include billet aluminum pulleys and a chrome Power Master alternator It has a performance HEI distributor w/ 65,000 volt coil and clear cap & rotor. The wires are 8mm Taylor wires. The trans is a 350 turbo with a Boss Hog "STREET BANDIT" 2800-3200 rpm stall converter, # 47013. |  While these particular engine parts would not have been my first choice, they will do for now. |
| Out it comes, gonna take off the intake, oil pan, and maybe the heads to give it a visual inspection. Will probably have the trans rebuilt while its out. Gotta get rid of the Home Depot bolts too. |  |  | Well it looks like a torque converter. If you look closely you can see the number 47013. |
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| Some more rust under the radiator, but really the engine compartment does not look bad at all. Top |    |
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| 21 July 07 Camaro Disassembly |
| I removed the front clip and radiator core support. I need find a core support to replace the crunchy one. |  |
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| 5 Aug 07 Radiator Support |
| After calling half the junk yards in the United States, I located a core support that was in reasonably decent shape. It had been hit, but the bottom half was still in good shape, so I proceeded to graft them together to make one good one. |    Rather than drill out each spot weld and take it apart in sections, I just loped off the bad area and welded on the good sections. |
| The bottom end is in good shape, the bores looked good and if you look closely you can see where it was clearanced for the stroker. |  |
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| 18 Aug 07 Dash |
| Disassembly continues. Here the dash has been removed, not too much more to take apart before we can actually start doing something constructive. |  |
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| 26 Aug 07 Oil Pan |
| I replaced the beat up Moroso oil pan with an eBay Special. Here the clearance from the bottom of the pan to pickup is checked. Its about 1/2" with the gasket and the pan tightened down. |  |
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| 28 Oct 07 Drivers Side Floor |
| The old rusty pan is cut out, carefully going around the cross brace. |  | You want to make sure the care is somewhat level and supported properly before cutting out the old pan -- its not too critical here as we are only removing a small portion of the floor. |
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| The spot welds that hold the pan to cross brace are drilled out, and remaining welds are ground flat. Here the inside of the brace has been cleaned and painted with a rust converter paint. |  |
| The replacement pan is fit and tack welded in place. The seams are lap joints, not butt welds. |  | Note the replacement pans does not come with drain covers, seat brackets, etc, you must reuse the existing brackets. It also lacks the holes for mounting the seat. |
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| Before and after. The welds on the new pan will be knocked down before painting. The joints in the underside of the pan still have to be welded, I'll do that later. |  |
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| 10 Nov 07 Engine and Floor |
| Engine has been cleaned up and painted. All the aluminum bits have been polished, ditto for the chrome ones. |   |
| The headers were sandblasted and painted with POR hi-heat paint. |   |
| New valve covers, oil pan, distributor cap, and air filter add to its looks. Top |   |
| Replacing the passenger floor, this side is a little tricky, in addition to the floor pan, part of the firewall is rusted away. The area around the torque box is solid though - thankfully. I have not been able to find a patch panel, so it will have to be fabricated. |  |
| The old rusty pan is cut out, carefully going around the frame mounting brace. The spot welds are removed with a spot weld cutter. | | The rusty pieces have been cut out and the remaining areas cleaned up before painting. |  |  |
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| Everything tack welded in place. I still have to make a curved piece for the front inside of the toe board. I used a seam roller to roll the beads in the toe board patch. They closely match the factory beads. |   |
| The completed toe board along with a "before" picture. |   |
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| 20 Nov 07 More Rust | |
| Another hole in the rear quarter panel. Older Camaros are notorious for rusting in this area because the window channel traps moisture and dirt. | |
| The patch is not overlapped as the floor pans, here the idea is to get the filler metal to lay flat and match the original body contour as close as possible. | |
| A minimum amount of body filler will be required to shape the channel and smooth the area around the patch. |  |
| More patches around the heater core and ductwork. Top |   |
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| 2 Dec 07 Off to the Media Blaster |
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| 3 Feb 08 Media Blaster |
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Beating on the body for an hour with a rubber mallet to knock
out the loose sand also knocked out other things, such as 3 old shotgun
shells! Just my luck -- too bad it wasn't a long forgotten stash of
cash. |
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Tools of the trade. The Rust Converter was poured into holes
drilled into the rocker panels. It was also poured into the quarter panels
along side the trunk. The seam sealer was used on all the new welds. |
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It toke two full days to clean out all of the sand from the
various nooks and crannies.
Top |
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