THE CAMARO STORY

It's kinda hard to tell in this recent photo, but this car was going to the boneyard the next day if I didn't buy it! That was back in 1982, and my friend John had bought the car from a kid in his neighborhood. John had pulled the built six (Clifford stuff, unreal engine) and tranny out of the car to use in another project, and his parents were getting tired of looking at the wreck that was left over!

And it WAS a wreck. The story behind the car goes back five owners or so, and every one of them screwed up something! Somebody had put side pipes on it at one time, as there are holes under the rocker panels that indicate whoever it was couldn't measure! Whoever had painted it last (it was originally sick-baby-shit green) must have used an old roll of masking tape to put the hood and decklid stripes on it (not a sharp, straight line ANYWHERE).

When I first saw the car I really wasn't sure if I wanted it or not. In fact, knowing what I know now about the car I probably shouldn't have bought it, because: 1) It was too far gone to economically repair, and 2) I had (at that point) ZERO experience with bodywork. Due to 2), I didn't know 1), so I fixed it anyway!

Here's a list of the damage: No engine, tranny, or shifter, front half of the right front fender was missing, right headlamp assembly missing, grille missing. No carpet, one brown seat, brown wheel, driveshaft laying in the back seat. All mirrors missing, windshield broken all across (4 or 5 good baseball bat hits). Left front fender dented to hell, including a pickaxe punchmark. No radio or speakers. Front rotors rusted. Dents in every other panel, INCLUDING the roof!

The reason for all the dents was; during one of the ice storms around that time, the kid had slid into another neighbor's car and didn't tell him about it. He didn't know that there was red paint from the neighbor's car on the white Camaro, and white paint from the Camaro on the neighbor's car! The neighbor got revenge, but with all the damage he inflicted, he spares the fiberglass rear spoiler (must have been a "car guy").

It had a clear title, and John only wanted $100.00 for it, and it IS my all-time favorite Camaro body style, so I bought it. John's wife Julie said it "had potential". I said; "So does a big rock on top of a steep hill".

Did I mention that I already had an engine for it? A few months before finding the Camaro, I had bought a wrecked 1967 Impala from a (then) friend to get the 327 out of it! It had "double-hump" heads, and a quadrabog, and (get this) a Powerglide!

We towed the Camaro home behind my brother's '70 Chevelle Malibu (305) and parked it in the back yard. Of course MY parents were thrilled!

The first thing I did was replace the brakes (at least it had disk brakes!). They were gone. Then I got a new right fender ($100.00 from the dealership!), painted it with a spray can (or three) and bolted it on. I scrounged the local junkyards and got a headlamp assemby to replace the missing one, and got a new grille (same dealer). I found a piece of blue shag carpeting (long since replaced with black carpet from J.C.W.), another brown seat, and after a few cans of black vinyl dye, and a few other bits and pieces from U-wrench-it, it had an interior.

The 327 had been running when the Impala was wrecked (running at about 60 mph or so if I remember), and I wanted to get the Camaro running, so I just cleaned it up, sprayed it Chevy Orange, and went to drop it in the car. That's when I started to learn about the differences between smallblock Chevy engines. As we were lowering the engine into the bay, we noticed two things. The car had six-cylinder engine mounts on the frame, and the oil pan hit the frame LONG before they lined up anyway (oops!).

Another trip to Nalley Chevrolet for motor mounts, and a "Camaro oil pan" and I was in business. I got a B and M "Quicksilver"ratchet-shifter and it was ready to go (almost, remember the windshield?).

At the time I was working in downtown Atlanta and driving the Monza in about 20 miles or so to work (then another 20 or so to night school, but that's an entirely different story). I VERY carefully drove the Camaro to work one day (just waiting for the glass to fall in my lap) and dropped it off at a glass shop for the windshield.

Now the car was beginning to shape up a little. I wanted to put split-bumpers on it but couldn't find any that weren't an arm and BOTH legs. After seeing "Cannonball Run" or "Gumball Rally" (I forget which) I decided to put a pair of 55 Watt Cibie' long beams on the bumper like the Camaro in the movie. I think they almost look like they belong there!

I got a plastic two-piece front spoiler from J.C. Whitney (got a new catalog last week BTW), whipped out another spray can and instant (almost) Z -28 lookalike! (remember, this car was originally a plain-jane with a six and a three-speed on the column (I put a tilt column in it when I put power steering in), so there was no point in spending the bucks for "real" Z-28 parts. I WON'T represent it as a "real" Z, and there's not one emblem of any kind on the car (except the " 327 " on the glovebox door, just to see who's paying attention, 327s not being offerred in that year).

The car ran like the proverbial striped-ape in spite of the fact I never learned how to make quadrajets work (and still don't). The 'Glide made for interesting launches (pre-slapper bars). The car would launch like out of a cannon, and then break the back tires loose upshifting at about 60 mph! The sound was wonderfull!

I drove it like that for a year or so, until the old 327 started burning oil (had over 100,000 on it...). I hate oil-burners, so I yanked the 327 out and went through it. I had the block bored .030 over on all eight, put in new pistons, rod main and cam bearings, had the crank turned .010 on the rods and mains, installed a " 350 Horsepower 327 " cam (Crane copy of the GM grind, same one lotsa people like). I swapped the intake for a Holley Street Dominator (mistake, shoulda used a dual-plane) and a Holley 600 cfm carb (those, I can work on!).

I sold the 'Glide (wish now I'd kept it) for $100.00 and bought a used Saginaw 4-Speed from a guy that claimed it came out of a 1967 Olds 442 (it looked brand-new inside BTW, and has worked fine for ten years now). Of course the problem now was coming up with a Hurst shifter to mate 1967 drivetrain to 1970 frame and body. in the end, after a whole weekend of trips back and forth to Super-Shops for parts (really patient guys there at the time) I wound up with the mounting kit for a '67, a shifter for a '70, and a shift lever from the '76 Monza kit (I use a short stick in the Monza). Hurst shifters work great, and an interesting side effect is the shifter is offset to the left about three inches on the tunnel (the Hurst Super-boot actually wraps down the drivers side of the transmission tunnel about 2 inches!). Since the shifter assembly is canted forward about 10 degrees to fit, it looks like a short stick from inside the car.

Now it was time to tackle the big job: Bodywork... As I mentioned earlier , this puppy was ROUGH! I must have used gallons of bondo and a case or two of primer over the summer I did that project. After I got it the way I wanted it (read: finally gave up!) I stripped all the trim off and had the base coat shot in #10 white Centari (knew the car would/will have to be gone over again at some point). I had the painter really lay on the coats to try to cover up as many of my mistakes (or the ones I missed) as possible, and it turned out looking great (to anybody but a bodyman that is).

I drove the car like that for a few years, but I always liked the factory hood stripes the Z's had, so I decided to stripe it. Like everything else I do, I had to do something a little different. Rather than get the vinyl decals I'd heard about and stripe it in black, I ordered the stencil (from Year One I think, BTW they're about 2 miles from my house) and striped it in Dark Sapphire Metallic. I'm really proud of the job I did, even if I DID drag the air hose through the driver's side hood stripe (@#$%!). I flooded it and blocked it after it dried and from 10 feet or so away it doesn't look too bad (Memo to me: NEVER do that again!).

I'll probably never try to restore one that is so far gone again, but I can say I own my favorite body style of Camaro...

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