Camaro gets boxing clever!

OK, new update.

That test fit with the seat was fun, but a proper fit was needed. Cue these:

Got them welded in but I still need to sort out a rear bracket.

In other news I finally got my rebuilt Getrag 290 back. Well, not rebuilt exactly, but fudged up as best it could be. Time to wrestle it in!

Believe it or not its actually perfectly balanced on the jack like that. Strange weight distribution... Anyway, I don't have any more pictures of the instal, but it went in fairly event free. I did have to drop the car back on the deck and push it half a foot back into the garage to get the doors sut though! Must have shuffled a bit what with going up and down so often. Took the opportunity to prove that it does live on 4 wheels from time to time!!

So now the box is in, I can crack on with all the other things that have been holding me up! First off, get the manifolds torqued now the engine is properly level:

...and now that it is level I can see for sure that this bulge I put in the bonnet is neccesary!

..ahh, looking good now its all level! Getting close now!

Next up, need to grease some UJs:

So I can get the prop back on:

Yes... That is an exhaust in front of it. Another knock on effect of having the box back on is I can now properly fit the second hand true duals I got for the car a while ago!

Thats looking from the front to the rear. Just held in place with cable ties for the moment till I get some new hangers welded in...

...but it does hug the underside reasonably well. Got a H pipe just at the rear axle, and picked up a pair of these for the back:

The unfortunately named Thrush Welded box. Basically a Flowmaster style rep. Look pretty decent but will soon find out how they sound (i hope).

One thing I did find during my under car travels is this:

Great big missing bolt! This is one of the subframe mounting bolts too, so I reckon it should be there! Will need to dig about and see in I can find a replacement.... The joys.

One last progress shot:

Yay, a functioning gear stick again!

Camaro gets a heap of work!

The box issue has dragged on. At present it is still at Neils Engineering in Glengarnock having a mild rebuild. I've had no luck whatsoever sourcing new shafts for it, so they are polishing up the teeth and are going to put it back together as best they can. What I have managed to conjour up though is a Muncie NV3500 box:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Venture_Gear_3500_transmission

Not quite on par with the 290, but it is a lot stronger than the traditional T5, and should bolt in with little trauma. Not seen the box yet so cannot say if it will be perfect or not, but it is a potential solution! Fella is selling me it for £350 though, which is a massive saving over the thousands a Getrag was starting to look like! Will have it paid and up here next month... fingers crossed.

Other than that, another development has been the purchase of a pair of 265/50R15 Cooper Cobra radials for the new wheels. Heres a pic:

Tires fitted....

Test fitted. I stuck the other front one on the rear just to get an idea of how they will look...

The tire fitting fun has gave me a wee mojo boost. Decided to pop down the other day and have a quick wrench on it before I go away on work...

Need to get some serious coinage back to continue on this. Gearbox will be paid and delivered for the return from this job. Thats £300 outstanding. Then? Fit it and sort out an invariable clutch hurdle (Hydro to cable I bet)

after that.... Welding this:

Coin sized rust hole I managed to find in the drivers floor. Quite clearly from wet boot syndrome due to its location. Took the decision to cut it out the other day. Well..... kind of:

Those eagle eyed amongst us may notice that I have cut out the entire floorpan. Those with keener eyes may notice I have missed the rust hole altogether. Thats due to the rust hole sitting within the underside chassis leg. Time to get a bit extreme, and drop some floor height in the process....

First step was to tidy up the cut out I made:

...and the area around the sill on the opposite side:

Now that space-intruding chassis leg needed re-profiled:

Job done!

Time for a bit of strength to be added. With this bar I can kill 2 birds with one stone...

Welded in place above...

...and below.

With that basic frame in I could now move on to adding metal back in. Time for some folding fun, starting with the rear "seat" section. Plain sheet:

Foldy...

More foldy...

...and tacked in place. Starting to come together a bit now.

Same story for the front "feet" section

...and that gets tacked in too. Note the penetrating burn marks along the middle., Thats the chassis leg now re-welded to the new floor.

A few more welds, this time seamed and with the rear section dressed back...

...and the front seamed too. Job done!

And with the new floor in I couldnt resist a wee tester with the replacement seat. Much lower! Magic.

Midweek musings...

So after a rather frantic month or two, chasing my tail and stressing about a car situation, i seem to have reached a place whereby i can relax a bit. As those who know me will testify, i was at 3 cars for a while. These were as follows:

MR2:

..running quite well, no issues here. Primarily a backup/fiances car, or "something for the weekend" if you prefer. There was also:

Camaro:

...which has been discussed in great detail previously, so we wont dwell on that. Lastly there was:

Mercedes C180

This was the "reliable" sensible daily plugger. Purchased as a rather unfortunate and if im being honest, misjudged eBay splurge, it needed a full respray, radiator, wings and a wealth of other stuff before it even reached a road. The £500 budet for a cheap car soon doubled, but it went well for a period of time and gave me little grief. At least, it felt that way. It was a hurried resto to get it running and i probably overlooked a few things i shouldnt have. As such, last month a front wheel bearing collapsed on me 100 miles from home. Not ideal, and to be honest put me right off the car. The solution was painful, arduous, and reminded me where my panic mechanic skills were honed from: Cars like these...

                   (yes that is the wheel bearing being changed at the roadside of the A9)

After i sorted that around a week later the NSF brake pad lining dislodged causing the brake pedal to hit the floor on a downhill stretch, and that was it for the car. Time for a better, more reliable model. Enter this:

Saab 9-3 turbo

It felt like the steal of the century. 50k, all the toys, FSH for a little over 2k. Everyone advised a Saab would be reliable. Long story short: It wasnt. In fact, i actually ended up getting my money back after 3 solid weeks of garage time with the car. I literally drove it home once in all that time, the day i bought it.

So in the 3 week downtime i was essentially down to one car. The Camaro is in no way near finished as my previous update testifies, and the Merc was still dodge after the brakes issue. The MR2 took a pounding, ferrying me to Aberdeen a good few times and performing duties it really wasnt bought for. Needless to say at breaking point i shrugged off my doubts, pulled the Merc in and assessed the brake issues. Once fixed with new pads, and a sticky caliper loosened (with the gentle persuader), it was safe for backup duties. To be fair, once i got the money back from the Saab it did much more than that, ferrying me from dodgy dealer to backstreet dump to view all manner of dross. Its safe to say that 3k is now a budget for a decent motor. I once managed to maintain the same rule for 1k. Sad times!

That said, i always rise to a challenge (eventually) so after 2 weeks of solid hunting, and thoroughly proving out the Merc in the process, i found the Saabs replacement:

BMW E46 318Ci

Located in Edinburgh, with 2 months ticket, no tax and dodgy tires and brakes, it wasnt my most confident purchase. However, unlike the Saab my gut feeling was positive with this one... and you always go with the gut feeling! If i look at the positives, it had FSH, 56k miles, full leather (unlike the Saab), cruise, AC and all the coupe toys. Everything worked, and it pulled well. I took the plunge, got it back to the garage and proceeded sort the negatives, which was to throw on new tires, a years tax and rip the offending worn brakes off...

Now when i say rip off, im not joking:

Thats the outer body of the disc after beating it off the hub. Sheared completely, with the centre section firmly welded to the hub. I would think that this set of brakes were well overdue a bloody good refurb. 

Nonetheless its all good now. BMW is so far (touch wood) performing well, and the MR2 is soon to get repaired from its stint of overuse (wheel bearing and handbrake cables have presented themselves as needing repaired... age related no doubt). This all has left me in a bit fo a quandary now. The BMW has taken the reliability reigns, the MR2 will be doing the weekend diddle rounds once again, and the Camaro is ticking along at its own pace. This sort of leaves the Merc as the third thumb... I have options on this front, such as swap it for something interesting and putting it on the back burner until the Camaro is done. I could weigh it in and sell off the nice bits to get some coin back on it, or i could keep the car itself as a back up. It has after all performed great this past few weeks, and seems to keep plugging on with the air of an indestructable squib. 

I guess i'm quite glad at the moment that i have the ability to sit back and ponder this pleasant situation, as opposed to my usual sitting back and frantically pondering how the hell to get out of my latest car nightmare. The Merc has 3 months of tax and lots of ticket still on it. Whatever happens i can see it plodding on in the background on garage duties for the rest of the year at least!

Tommy off.

Ugh...

So its been a while since there was an update on this. There is also a good reason.

Car-wise, its been tough the past few months. My daily drive Merc decided to throw all mannner of bearing and brake issues at me a while back causing me to lose all trust in it. Cue a 2.5k Saab purchase in a bid to remedy the unreliability woes. Not likely... the Saab did not once make it home without a sensor failure or engine warning light coming on in the entire 3 week period I had it. Needless to say after a long and arduous battle I got my money back on it. Now taking delivery of a BMW coupe on Monday, but as there is light at the end of the tunnel I decided to re-focus on the project that has been laid up for a while... the Camaro.

Took the box down to a gearbox specialist near Kilwinning to have them strip it and conclude once and for all how bad it is. On the plus side the fellas there commented on the utter brutality of the box - even reverse looks like it was out a truck!

The bad news though is that the gearing linking the input shaft to the layshaft is excessively worn, and was most likely the cause of the noise I have been hearing from the day I got it. Most likely this has been due to running on no oil at some point in its life. I have been told that it will run fine if re-assembled but the noise will remain. There are no spares or suppliers for spares of this box type anywhere. Worse than that the gears are integral to the input and layshaft, so both of these entire parts need to be changed to cure the problem.

As such I'm in a bit of a sticky wicket. I could persevere and put the getrag 290 back together, top up with thick oil and hope it lasts whilst enduring it sounding like a raped cat.... or source another one from the hens teeth factory down the road... or remorgage my house and source a T56 box which is frankly the only equal to what I have that will hold up to the abuse.

Not been my best month all in.

In the meantime I have been tinkering away with the engine itself:

...which is re-timed, cam installed and re-assembled. Would have been ready for a test fire too had I not bought Mr Gaskets finest sh1te intake gaskets which leave blatant vacuum gaps between the heads and the manifold...

Also, the cage I bought a while back has been test fitted:

So I reckon it needs some mild shoogling to get in as close as possible, but otherwise its s fairly good fit. Thats been about it for the moment. Waiting on a solution for the gearbox situation to fall from the sky and save my ass... but turning blue from holding my breath waiting for it to happen...

:(

Mojo replenished...

Had a bit of time away from the big yank recently. The garage itself was waaay overdue a bit of TLC, and as summer is here things were dry enough in there to actually deal with it effectively. I am of course talking about the cursed leaking roof. A trip to good old ebay netted me some ultra thick PVC sheeting, so one sunny weekend Simon and myself hammered into getting the waterproofing up:

...starting at Simons side. With that half up we worked over the camaro and did the other side:

...which left us with this! Nice dry floor!

 While we were at it i wired up another few striplights, giving us 6 in total. So its now drier AND brighter in there. Winter is prepped for now!

Been a bit of a downer since the gearbox came out. There was finding the B&M shifter is duff, then I found the manifolds foul every edge and protrusion available within the engine bay, so its been a dour month. Nonetheless, some dusting of the shoulder has taken place, and i'm back on the up. I should cover how i came to the conclusion the tubulars are no use though.... The only way to really know was to pull the engine out:

Yes, thats my brother hijacking the pic in the background.

...and the empty bay. Surprisingly littly room in there considering the size of the car. This seems to be down to a chunky subframe and a sizeable pair of wheel tubs. Anyway, the end result was this:

Engine out and inlet manifold off. Trial fitted the exhausts and they come down at almost 90 degree angles rather than hug the block. Little doubt that they will foul just about every surface in the bay, so unless i am to get drastic with the angle grinder and welder, they really aint going on. Solution to this coming up! Moving onto the inlet, and we see more proof that this is the smog spec engine:

EGR casting (Exhaust Gas Recirculation). There is also evidence of this system on the manifolds, although all EGR ports have been blocked off. Not sure if this was done aftermarket or from factory but its clear this must be the most restrictive manifold known to man. 

The inlet route is a fairly convoluted affair. From the pic above, gas flow goes up, down, around, and with plenty of right angles...Time for a change:

Enter the Edelbrock Performer dual plane manifold. Purchased 7 weeks ago from the most useless tool of a Californian, it finally arrived via Australia with all the studs for carb mounting bent. Not to worry though as these studs are for holley mounting (which will eventuall happen with this big badboy):

...but the manifold also accepts Rochester carbs. Out with the studs and on with the existing carb for now. But not before a touch of BLING y0!

A touch of silver to clean things up, and if you look closely, a subtle bit of detailing too. Can you see it? Let me help...

I highlighted the Edelbrock and PERFORMER casting in gold. To be honest its a touch that will probably never be seen once the big carb and air cleaner go on, but i know its there...

Why the gold paint though? Well i decided on a paint theme for the engine.

GOLD!!! The big problem about painting and making things look nice though, is that other parts end up looking even scabbier. Check out that timing cover. Not something i was gonna bother with but after painting the engine i feel it needs to be chrome. So having bathed the crank pulley in WD40 for a couple of days and asked it politely to come off, i had to bite the bullet and order a pulley removal tool. Its in the post as i type. I may also drill out the 3 bolt pulley wheel mounts to a larger diameter hole and a metric thread for remounting as the current imperial pulley wheel bolts are pitifully short, and i reckon i will need a meaty thread to take out the crank wheel when the removal tool arrives.

That said, the timing cover is not just a cosmetic change over, i hope to get the cam installed while the engine is out too. Look at the pic above again and you will notice the rockers are loosened in prep for this. It really is the crank pulley thats holding me back at the moment. And what do you do when things hold you back? Paint more....

Thats the engine mounts in high temp black next to the pulley belt drive (not the part thats holding me back i should point out, but one half of the crank pulley).

So in the meantime heres a wee teaser of the engine painted and the covers back on:

Weeks done, time for a pizza to celebrate:

Nomnomnom.....

So back offshore and time to spend a bit of cash to get things up to speed. I'm not really looking at the box for now as im fairly certain that it needs the shaft bearings changed out now. Thast can wait, but i did need to address the exhaust manifolds. I found a fella in Coventry selling proper third gen manifolds from a firebird which should fit. Won them for 40 quid, but it appeared he was breaking the whole car too. Had a rummage through his other auctions and couldnt really find anything of interest apart from what follows. Needless to say i won it for a song, but didnt consider the ramifications of postage (or that postage is nigh on impossible for an item this size). Long story short i'm off to coventry on Saturday with a roof rack to collect a rather chunky adult climbing frame:

Yes, its a Camaro specific rollcage. Yes, its a rather substantial one. Yes, its a weld in model. Oh, and yes, it will most definitely be going in my Camaro.

Getting this home though will be a blog update in itself.... Stay tuned!