Part VIII

1989 RS Camaro

The Harwood glass hood is a really nice part. It took just a bit of adjustment and we were very pleased with what we have here. Of course, we get that hood scoop mounted up and this thing's going to take on a whole new look too! Right now we have Dzus fasteners running up each side of the hood, but from previous experience we know that we will need to Dzus down the front and rear of the hood. Both areas are going to take a bit of engineering on our part as there's limited metal available for attachment points. Something on the lines of how we mounted the aluminium dash is probably what we will end up with in the end. Phil did a lot of work on the flexable front end, but right now isn't too sure if he will continue or see if a replacement is available. Somewhere in the car's past, someone got a bit crazy with a grinder and did some terrible things to that front end. Right now, the white areas that show in the photo are the ones that Phil has been working on and there's still a lot left to straighten out.

And there's still some additional work to do on the damaged area at the back of the car. It's gotten a few fills of fiber reinforced putty and is now ready to start getting a few shots of liteweight bondo to level it out. Looking good, but hasn't been real high on our priority list lately.

We have the steering finished now with the installation of the upper attachment point using the original factory mounting. Shifter is mounted and we put the Painless Wiring unit next to that for quick access by the driver. What we have left here is the installation of the oil line for the oil pressure gauge, wiring connections for the water, transmission temperatures and the tachometer have to be completed and we need to install the clevis pin for the brake assembly. Not showing in the picture, but to the left of where the driver will be sitting is a Wilwood brake portioning valve. We already have it plumbed from the the master cylinder and only need to make a connection to the rear brakes once they are installed.

Another shot of the switch panel and you can see the proportioning valve mounted on the side of the rocker panel. In the previous installment I mentioned a few tips about plumbing and wiring. Well, here's the first wiring tip. Buy one of the complete wiring kits if you're doing an entire car, whether it's a race car or your hot rod! The amount of time that you save with one of these kits is well worth every dollar you have to spend for it. I wired one of these Camaros for a friend last summer doing everything from scratch and spent way too much time making too many connections. Not to mention that I had to purchase all of the wiring, switches, connectors, solder and shrink sleeve to do the job. This project will probably take me about two evenings to complete, that last car I mentioned was about a 5-6 day long project. In fact Phil and I had 98% of the wiring for this car laid out in about 15 minutes. Once we have all of the components where we want them, it will be a quick job to make the final connections, bundle up everything and call it done. It's too easy not to use one of these kits.

With an axle in place and a disc on, we did some measuring for tires and wheels. Right now it looks like a 10x 29 inch slick is going to fit on an 8" wheel with 5 1/2" back spacing. We're hoping to borrow that combination from our friends to try it out before we purchase though. It might just work out that we need to go with a 4 1/2" back space or that we can fit a wider tire. Just have to take a look and see what we come up with. Once again part of problem is not having the rear exactly mounted yet due to the missing parts for the control arms. With those in place, we should have a much better picture of things.

Update:

We borrowed the wheel and slick combination we talked about and found that we will have to go with a 4 1/2" back space on the wheel, but we will be able to fit a 29x10 slick. In the picture, there is a 1" spacer behind the wheel which gives it pretty good clearance. I wish that we could get a 30x10 on the car, but it looks pretty tight on the back wheelwell lip. The front lower edge has one protrusion coming from the rocker panel box that is going to have to be trimmed off. A minor thing, but even with the spacer and a 9" tire we are running into it.

There are a number of things done this weekend that we haven't shown you. We finished welding in a connector for the shoulder harness, the Dzus fasteners for the hood are welded in place, brake lines have been run, fuel line is run, vent line for the fuel cell is finished, the wiring for the instrument panel is done, battery cable is in but not connected yet. Our first attempt at providing a mounting for the steering column failed and we had to re-think it and came up with something much stronger and better. We have the ignition components laid out on it's mounting board, we now know how we will install the final wiring components and fuel system layout. Phil has been working on the installation of the Lexan side windows which has been a torture test in itself. Even at this point of the project, we still get held up by missing or wrong parts and have to go through the process of correcting those problems. All of this is important in getting the car completed and while we both look forward to having the car at the track, we also know that we still have a long road to go. But for 30 days, things are looking really good.

Part IX

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