Here's how I patched in the driver side quarter. Since I had to screw around with fixing the door gap on the passenger side quarter (which I don't have pictures of...) I decided to patch the drivers side. I taped out the perimeter of my cut, cut out the old rotten wheel well, removed and treated some surface rust, etch primed and sealed everything, traced out my new patch panel with the old quarter on top of the new, cut it out, punched out a lot of holes for my spot welds, and then welded it on.

 

I cut out a portion of the dash that was rotten. Forgot to take pictures of the finished product.

Then I started on the floors.

I removed all the surface rust, seam sealed and sprayed primer sealer on the floor inside and underneath. I also patched a couple spots on the passenger side but again, I forgot to take pictures.

 

On my birthday in February I drove down to Pinole, CA and bought my rear axle. I found it on craigslist the night before. It's a Chris Alston's Chassisworks Fab9 housing with their eliminator 2 4 link brackets. I got the link bars with heims, wish bone locator, brake rotors, calipers, aluminum 3rd with 3.89's, Moser 40 spline axles and spool, 11/16" wheel studs, hardware, anti roll bar, coil over shocks and a few other things. I got a really good deal and couldn't pass it up.

 

I bought my rear subframe kit from Chassisworks. It's their Eliminator 2 rear frame kit. My friend/coworker/future brother in law Bernie has helped me through this portion of the project. All of the welding on the rear subframe has been done by him.

 

 

The anti roll bar kit I got with the axle turned out to be garbage so I bought a new kit.

 

Measured 25" forward of the rear axle centerline to mark the floor for my cut for the front crossmember.

Then I got to cutting.

This is what it looked like before.

 

Here's some random pictures of some mud work and how it looked before the final prime.

I got the whole car in it's second prime, basically ready to be final blocked for paint. I wanted to get this done before we started back-halving it.

 

Here's right after I finished cutting out the rear floor. Looks like a pretty big hole to fill.

 

Here's the rear tubular crossmember tacked in place.

We made fish plates to weld to the inner rockers so there was a stronger foundation for the front crossmember to attach to. Bernie finished the spot welds after I took the pics.

 

I went to Reliable Hardware and Steel in Santa Rosa And bought a 6' long, 6" wide by 1/8th" thick piece of steel for the fish plates and this new inner rear body that Bernie fabricated. We held it in place with the bumper bolt holes, and drilled holes in the tail panel to weld them together.

Bernie notched and bent the center of the plate to clear the license plate hole, and it was the perfect amount to weld the trunk latch support to. Funny how things work out unintentionally sometimes.

 

We wanted to get a little more motivation early on so we put the wheels and tires on. I looks a little weird like this...

Here's the rear subframe with everything mocked up. Almost ready to disassemble it and get it in the car.

 

Some quick pics of when we were trying to establish the rear axle center line. The stock camaro wheel tubs left much to be desired as far as wide tires are concerned.

The drivers side didn't stick out as much because I had a DSE mini tub on that side. When I did the mini tub, I realized that the car was wrecked bad enough on the other side that we couldn't go forward with the mini tubs, which led to back halving the car 6 years later...

 

It took a lot of maneuvering and cutting, then notching the package tray and driveshaft tunnel to get the subfame in. But when we finally got it in, it fit like a glove.

 

Here's my front subframe. It's the Chassisworks G-machine front subrame. I bought it 6 years ago, primed and assembled it. It was finally ready to mount on the camaro.

We ran into a few issues getting the link bars and coil overs in. The axle I bought came out of a tube chassis '68 firebird, but their chassis was set up differently than we did my camaro. The coil overs were too short, and the link bars ended up being too long. We fiddled around with the bars and I cut a piece of angle iron to act as a shock simulator. After a couple of hours messing with it, we finally got it on the ground.

 

A couple days later I mounted the front sheet metal and the deck lid.

We made some temporary link bars to get the axle further forward. The shorter link bars are going to work as the longer lower link bars. I ordered some new link bar ends to shorten the other 2 link bars.

 

The wheels are 15x7 in the front and 15x14 in the rear. It was a great day when they showed up at my door step.

The front tires are Kumho Ecsta AST's 225/50r15 and the rears are Hoosier Pro Street Radials 29X18.50x15. One of the Kumho's showed up later from being on backorder. A 29" tall tire is the largest you can fit in the stock wheel opening for a 1st generation Camaro.

Hoosier Daddy?

 

I bought the Chassisworks bolt on subframe connectors that are designed for their g machine front subframe a few years ago. They slide onto the end of the front subframe and bolt to where the front leaf spring perch mounts. Obviously, I no longer have leaf springs.

The rear subframe came with 2 2x3 rectangular tubing subframe connectors that you use to tie into your existing frame.

What we did was cut off the portion of the g machine subframe connectors that bolt to the leaf spring mounts. We then made up the difference with the 2x3 subframe connector, cut at an angle, and then welded them together, capping off the excess 2x3 with another angled cut out of the 2x3.

We notched the floor for the connectors to fit through. The g machine connectors hung down lower than we liked so we flipped them upside down.

I finish welded the floor to the subframe connectors and capped off the main frame rails on the front crossmember. It gave me newfound faith in my own welding ability.

 

Here's the 10 point roll cage kit that I bought from Chassisworks. A very nice quality kit IMO.

The main hoop needs to be test fit first. It is supposed to be mounted on top of the rocker, but the seam for the inner and outer rocker panels was in the way.

So I cut the seam off the width of the floor plate and welded it closed. Then it was ready for the new floor plate.

 

The floor plates need to be formed to the floor of the car. So I clamped the 2 main hoop floor plates in a vise and beat them to the proper shape. Then I cut off the excess and grinded a nice new round edge.

I had to cut the main hoop down a little because it was too long and tacked it in place. It needs to be even with the forward edge of the B post. It's also pretty important that everything is level.

 

Do you know how much I hate you right now):h):h):h

Mighty fine build you have going there.

When you have done, If you need a test pilot, I know JUST the man

 

great job,nice welds

:thankyou2

 

great job,nice welds

 

The cage sides were next to be installed. These took me a helluva long time to notch and fit. My buddy Ed let me borrow his tubing notcher that you clamp into a vise, but I didn't have the proper style hole saw, so I had to notch each tube free hand with my 18v dewalt drill.

The cage sides determine where the front floor plates mount. I had to keep the cage sides level, as high as possible, and close to the dash.

Decided to snap a picture of my drill after my battery went dead. Not too long after I took this I was notching that tube and the hole saw caught an edge, whipped around and smacked me in the face, giving me a minor black eye and a cut on my cheek. I felt like a friggin idiot.

 

Next was the windshield tube. It needs to be mounted high and forward enough to not obstruct vision. I want to be able to use my sun visors when the build is done so I took that into account. I mounted the gussets on the lower corner of the cage sides, and they don't get in the way of my vision anymore than the triple pod in my 12v.

When it's all tacked together, you are unable to weld the top of the tubing (the roof side), so I cut the tack welds holding the cage sides to the main hoop and folded the cage sides with the windshield bar down onto the floor, and welded up the top side of the tubing and the gussets. I'm pretty proud of those welds.