Part XI

1989 RS Camaro

The car continues to make progress, even with the continual setbacks that plague us at every turn of the wrench. This week we thought that once again we would be finishing up the engine and getting it into the car along with the transmission. Well, so much for what we thought. While putting piston/rod assemblies into the block, we ran into a minor issue where the top piston ring groove on two of our pistons was not completely machined. This caused the piston ring to "sit up" in the groove and prevented it from even going into our piston ring compressor. We have since taken the pistons to our local machine shop and they will be fixing that little problem for us. In the meantime, we turned our attention to the car itself working to make sure we had plenty of clearance on the rear slicks, doing some work on the brake lines and other piece work that needs to be done.

One such item was wrapping up the installation of the batteries, checking out our wiring and finishing any left over wiring items that we need to do. The first order of business was to make the hold down brackets for the batteries. A length of 1" inch steel, a couple of drilled holes, paint and what do you know - we have hold down brackets. We used washers and nylon locknuts to complete the installation. The next thing was the battery cables. The positive cables were a simple bolt in, connecting both to one side of the battery cutoff switch. The negative or ground cables took a bit more work. First, we drilled holes in the rear bulkhead, cleaned off the surrounding paint and using 2" long bolts fastened them securely. Underneath, we connected two more cables, one to each of those bolts and then over to the rear frame member on each side of the car. Yes, a bit of overkill on grounds, but when you are dealing with electronic packages, good solid grounds can go a long way to ward off potential problems.

Except for the rear partition that we need to build to seal off the batteries and fuel cell, this portion of the project can be marked as "Completed".

The next focus of our attention went to the torque arm assembly. In a previous installment I mentioned that we had started on this and then decided that we might not be getting the crossmember in the correct spot. Well, what we aren't showing any pictures of is the fact that we put the car on the ground, then marked the location of the crossmember which should be correct as it is coming off of the rear end assembly and that's not moving. Once we had it chalked where we wanted it, we put the car back up in the air and proceeded to compete the installation of the torque arm. Quite a bit of work was required on the crossmember to get it in place, level front to rear and side to side, but once we were satisfied that we couldn't do any better we fired up the welder.

Back inside the car, we installed the dash and finished connecting the wiring from it to the connector block on our electronics panel. Oh by the way, when welding on the car - ALWAYS disconnect the ground leads going to any electronic equipment. The voltage arc can damage that type of equipment very easily. With everything all wired up now, we turned on the power to the car and proceeded to check out our wiring job. Guess what? It all worked, no problems at all.

Here's the scoop that we will be running on the car. The back edge of the scoop will be trimmed to fit the angle of the windshield and mounting studs will be installed inside the scoop to facilitate the installation. This scoop was part of my dragster package, but it was really too large and actually fits the flowing lines of the Camaro much better. Once everything is painted, it will be interesting to see how it looks.

One of the things that we did while the car was on it's wheels was to roll it outside and then clean up the garage floor. We also decided to move some things around and provide ourselves with a bit more space to work on the car. (geez - wish we had thought of that one a few months ago!) Another thing that this does is it revitalizes your own brain. I have had previous projects that just stalled out on me before and by simply pulling the car out and then putting it back in place reversed, have found that I enjoyed working on it again. Not sure what this means, but I have a funny feeling it's similar to moving furniture around in your living room. You don't have any additional space, nothing is new, but it has a new look and it feels better, and you like it more. Guess we just get bored seeing the same thing over and over.

We should have another new update this coming weekend and no, the motor will not be part of that. But we do have some body work to do, filling in some holes and throwing bondo at this thing. We also need to put in some additional Dzus fasteners for the hood front and rear along with coming up with a method to secure the rear hatch. Plenty to do - so check us out next time.

Click here to go to chapter XII of the Camaro Project