1972 DRIFT CAMARO BUILD and Some Other Stuffz

[Mike Peters]

Thought I'd post it here.

Since everyone and their sister has a LS1 240 now I completely lost interest in rebuilding my old one. I've wanted a small back window Camaro since like 2004, and randomly came across one I could afford a month or two ago while I had a broken hand. Got a 2,000 square foot shop with some friends and my cousin, and finally got crackin on the Camaro last couple days after re-oganizing the shop and stuff, thought I'd post the updates here too.

Over the last couple days and about 6-8 hours worth of work this is what has happened.

About 3-4 Days ago.


Then i dedided to glance at the rearend, remove the wheels, and gander at it. I bought a steering wheel at Game Stop from my awesome girlfriend, and it was twofer Tuesday at Double Daves, so needless to say, motivation to work on Camaro wasn't really there.



Then today. Met Derrick up at the shop early evening, and after my friend Jonathan helped clean up the other shop (it is finally all organized mostly, yay) he headed home, and I decided to start cracking on the Camaro. Removed the front clip, more body stuff, chassis harnesses (which are actually in decent shape and I like the simplicity of the connectors, may reuse) and the glass (40 year old glass is a lot easier to cut out!). Rust really isn't as bad as I thought. Still a bit sketchy but not a big deal. Was able to benchbuild and get a lot of ideas having the car down this far though, pretty stoked about it.

This is how I left it tonight after about 4 hours of on/off working on it. Most I've done so far.



I'm excited about this.

[Bebop]

looks like fun!

how much rust was on it

[Mike Peters]

Its got three decent sized holes in the floorboard, the rockers are trashed, and the rear framerails are gone in front of the tires. I'm not building the car with the intent of only doing FD in it or anything, but would like to build it to be FD legal in the future, and need to talk to FD to see if I'm allowed to "modify" (repair holes) in the floorboard/framerails etc or if I have to outright replace it, since the rules require factoryish stuff. I'm hoping they'll just let me patch it so I don't have to spend $3k buying new stamped pieces.

[Bebop]

Wouldnt this car be illegal for FD just based on the VIN#, or some crap like that (IE Dan "drift patrol" Pina)?

[Mike Peters]

I don't know why the VIN would make it illegal, this is a mass produced vehicle, not a kit car.

I don't know why Dan Pina's car would be illegal if Van Den Brinks is legal since its mostly the same chassis.

[b_hydra]

Wouldnt this car be illegal for FD just based on the VIN#, or some crap like that (IE Dan "drift patrol" Pina)?

Wouldn't he still be able to apply to have it legal by petition? I don't know the rule book as well as you do, but I remember it being mentioned before that petitioning/having the build process documented for FD can grant that driver an exemption...

[Mike Peters]

All I know is Dan's car did something this year, so who cares. Its drifting.

Little update on the Camaro, not anything huge yet, still stripping down.

Had to use the plasma cutter (which is soooo awesome) to cut an access hole to get to the subframe washer/bolt dealie, then got that off. Just been bench-building, and did a 60k service on my friends truck today.

Was tryin to shave some weight, and will be using an OEM Aluminum spindle with some custom control arms, gonna start playing with that tomorrow, as well as the rearend setup a little as well.

This rust is becoming a huge pain, finding all of it is annoying, also looking to take the tub somewhere to have it blasted, am extremely open to suggestions here.

Some pictarz, but not any huge progress.

Mostly bare tub:



Subframe, with rusted non removable bolts I have to cut out:
http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-[img]snc4/hs222.snc4/38444_10100324914171274_8356319_65644067_1484223_n .jpg[/img]

Will hopefully get some more progress made tomorrow. 'Tis coming along though.

[Slapshotnerd]

it might be worth it to give Ryan Hampton a call to chat about the 69 Camaro he competed in..... he's still around, and can probably give you some good feedback about suspension and steering modifications.

[Justin Banner]

I swear I thought I saw Hampton at Road Atlanta with black hair. The guy look suspiciously like him, anyhow.

[Slapshotnerd]

Ryan Hampton definitely was NOT in Atlanta. But he is still around.... he runs BallerBolts.com

[Bebop]

Ryan was at Vegas last year.

Might be there this year.

I heard from a couple people that the Hot Rods From Hell Camaro would not be legal for competition today due to various frame modifications.

[BigGameHit]

nice progress

[Mike Peters]

No offense to Ryan or the Hotrods from Hell guys, but would rather go our own route. Pretty familiar with the setup they ran on that Camaro, plus it'd be hella illegal anyways. An honest-to-God stock El Camino suspension with some drop springs, Autozone shocks, and junkyard swaybars and 22* of steering angle did mediocre, but worked. After what I learned with being the Worlds 1st to do the LS1 S13 thing, learning a lot, and having a ton of issues, I've become a HUGE fan of three things.

A) Keep it simple.
B) Stay within your limits.
C) Do it right the 1st time

I've got several people helping me on this, including Derrick Rodgers (Engine builder for Aaron Losey, Stewart Leask, and car builder/mechanic for Aaron Losey when Aaron's car is actually home to get worked on), and pretty amazing fabricator. A ton of my college buddies are also offering to help, which makes it 1000x more fun, and its pretty cool to let them see how all this stuff works. Thanks to Speed Fetish and XAT I've come a long way in terms of being able to do stuff, but having Derrick helping really takes away any fears/inhibitions I have about having anything short of an Amazingly solid and functional car. We've got a 2,000 square foot shop, between me and Derrick we have every tool we could ever need, and several redundant fabrication tools, its pretty awesome. I'd kinda like to add a Lathe and a lift to the tool collection, but there really isn't anything we can't do without a phone call. 'Tis quite amazing and I'm really blessed/lucky to have this opportunity. Plus I haven't had this much fun since staying at XAT till 3am every night with my friends when I lived in Florida working on random crap. This is wayyy fun.

The #1 thing that took the fun out of drifting for me was struggling with crappy car due to lack of time/wiring know-how, which turned into a lot of wasted $$ on band-aid'ing, which turned into a lot of wasted money, which resulted in a condemned spiral of suck and broke car. Lotta knowledge was gained in the process, but this goes back to the creation of three big key elements I will be doing on this car.

Keep it simple.
Stay within your limites
Take the time to do it right the 1st time.

We plan on keeping stock geometry on the whole car, obviously to lose weight and gain angle we'll fab control arms, and on the rear we're looking to go as simple as helper springs and cal-tracs. My logic is if you can drift a stock suspension El-Camino on drop springs 6 months after you 1st started sliding cars, then several years down the road driving a simple and well-prepped car like we're building shouldn't be a big deal. Got to drive James Evans (Owner of El Camino / Bubba Drift)'s 3rd gen a month or two ago, and it was a BLAST!!! Also a VERY VERY SIMPLE suspension setup. Iroc box, shortened knuckles, Spohn torque arm and some ground controls. Works Fan-friggin-tastic. And hella-simple.

Plus once it gets done, its a friggin' 72 Camaro...who cares it looks friggin' awesome. 'Merica.

Went to Woodlands with my friend Garrett, wound up doing this:


I got to take the controls a couple seconds after this picture, and I really wanna learn how to fly. Its friggin cool.

Spent the hour I was at the shop trying to remove 3 bolts that were stuck in the LCA's. Big hammer? Nope. Sawzall? Nope. Had to get pretty creative but eventually got the bolts out of the way and got the LCA's off. Gotta be up early in the morning so called it a night pretty early. Madman Derrick is still at the shop working on his super-overcomplicated headers for his silly little woman car.

Derrick is awesome, and had these laying around, which will wind up on the Camaro. OEM Aluminum Spindles, win. These are everything I could want designwise, and they're an OEM application. Win!


Gonna redrille the Vette hubs to 5x114 so I can fit my large quantity of Foose wheels off the 240 on here since they're awesome and free, then we're gonna start mocking up suspension stuffs. Plan is to run a 18x8 with a 225/235 up front and absolutely no smaller than a 275 out back. I'd like to run a 235/305+ stagger but theres no way I could afford tires for the thing as is, so I'll just run 275's for now.

Small progress. Not much, but progress none the less.

I also ate steak fingers at Wings N More today. +20 American points for me. STEAK FINGERS.

[sweetcarz02]

glad to see Camaro's taking over drifting! Wrecked Magazine is about to start up a Camaro drift car later this year

[Justin Banner]

Ryan Hampton definitely was NOT in Atlanta. But he is still around.... he runs BallerBolts.com

Eh, guy looked like him, but I didn't say anything. Probably a good thing, then. It is nice to hear he's still hanging around.