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1968 Camaro Convertible RS/SS 'Clone'

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Discussion starter · #41 ·
So I went for my test drive today & to make an offer.

The test drive went fine - though I admit, I am surprised my 08 Audi A4 seems to be 'peppier" - Both the Audi & 68 Camaro should have 200 HP. Again I am not really a huge car guy (I just drive them) & something tells me the Audi may have a 40 year advantage in technology.

I just thought that it would be a little more "blow your socks off" again, I didnt really get on it as hard as I would if I were alone.

It handled great, the braking takes a little getting used to but it was really fun to drive. I had to hide the smile on my face - I didnt want to look to eager.

So we started to discuss pricing when we got back. I wont get into the details but he said his friend who said 22K was mistaken (not a great start to a negotiation).

He told me for 22.5k I could take it as is (stripe, scuff on door, wrong emblem). He had said he wanted 23 as his lowest but would do 22.5k.

I said I didnt think many folks were likely to buy a vert in the middle of January in NY. I had 22k cash in hand (not actually on me then but close enough). We both agreed to think about it.

So though a game of telephone it sounds like he would do 22k as is. He will give me the old paint so I have it, but I would be on my own for the rest.

To be honest, I was thinking of leaving the stripe since ultimately this is a plain jane camaro with some nice upgrades & its not like the stripe makes it any less 'wrong'.

However he did say he was going to fix the exhaust (he did) fix the wheel bearings (he did), he also said he would fix the stripe & door but I guess that was at his 24k asking price?

Anyway, so I am thinking about it, looking on ebay & seeing Gen1's selling in good shape selling for 20-26. If I leave the stripe - which I was leaning towards because of the headache....

I really like the car, its in great mechanical shape, the body is really clean. I am 90% sure I want it but I figured I would speak to you guys first.

Any words of advice?

Thanks,
Rich
 
#42 · (Edited)
RichTJ99 said:
The seller has extra paint from when it was painted 6 years ago. My friend is concerned that when the front stripe is fixed, that if the clearcoat isnt pretty exact, that the clearcoat could start to chip off (he showed me his work van after a 5 year repair started to fall apart with the clear coat).

Basically my friend doesnt want the stripe fixed as he is afraid the front end could look like crap in a few years & had I left it alone (though it looks incorrect) it would look the same as it does now (with the clearcoat looking fine).
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How much basecoat does he have and what manufacturer's product line? For example; If PPG, is it DBC or Omni? A properly prepped repair will not fail, it's done every day. And that includes very expensive brand new cars.

It won't match with a quickie or a quality job if the color is not mixed right. Lower line paints do not offer the same tints and don't match well. Quality basecoats match much better but may have to be tinted nonetheless for a blendable match. Cheap paints have poor coverage, greens especially. If the owner has enough paint leftover, it can be used as the last coat when blended. The blend should be done over a wet bed. A good paint shop knows all this and should not need any instruction, it's their job. If the car owner knows this he may not want to fix the stripe problem. A quality repair takes time and money. Another buyer may not care about the stripe, the owner won't have to repaint the car for them and reduce his wallet thickness.
 
#43 ·
To be honest, I was thinking of leaving the stripe since ultimately this is a plain jane camaro with some nice upgrades & its not like the stripe makes it any less 'wrong'.
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Well, if you hang around here or on CRG very long, trust me, you will end up hating the stripe. ;) However, you do have a point that there are a lot of other things not "correct" on the car, the non-factory color being one of them. However, it does look pretty close to the British Racing Green available in 68. If it were mine, I would correct the stripe, and doing the D-90 as I described should minimize the amount of blending that would need to be done. However, it is (soon to be) your car, and the choice is yours. As Sauron67 said, a correctly done blend and clear coat repair should not cause problems down the road, especially on a car that is not exposed to the elements. Also, you will have a similar repair on the side of the car.

Good luck, and we hope to see pictures of you tooling around town in your new ride! :thumbsup:
 
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Discussion starter · #44 ·
I am a little afraid about the stripe. The facts seem to be this (according to the seller), he wanted 24, he would take 23 as his bottom line. He told his friend (the original friend of a friend) that he would take 22k. I am guessing he didnt tell his friend he had to fix the exhaust & wheel bearings, or the door, or the stripe.

He said he had to fix the door (again its minor). He said if I didnt buy it he was going to change the stripe to a D90.

So during our dicussions of all the things he was going to do, price never came up. I always thought it was based on his 22k asking price.

If I want the stripe fixed, its on my dime. Part of the reason I am thinking of leaving it alone. Also going along the lines of if I fix that, its not like now it looks like a 'real' ss/rs. The 10 bolt & other signs you guys mentioned seem to point that out.

I mentioned I had a Jeep wrangler. I bought it with a Dana 35 rear (weak) because I didnt think I would ever get into offroading. So with a brand new dana 44 complete rear with lockers later (about 2k) I should have sprung the extra 600 bucks for the dealer Dana 44 option. I am concerned I may feel the same way about this camaro which is why I am not anxious to dump more money into the car.

One other thing -- How hard is it to swap the 396 emblem for a 350? The seller claims its a huge job & he doesnt want to get involved (I did post in the vert section but I figure you guys would know too).

Thanks,
Rich


http://www.camaros.net/forums/showthread.php?t=203768
 
#45 ·
Some 68 owners could chime in here, but on a vert you may find that the cocktail shakers and headlight assemblies are in the way. Try posting in the Body section.

I doubt if you will break the 10 bolt with a mild 350 and automatic trans. It might be possible if the motor was much stouter or you were banging a 4-speed, but I doubt it.
 
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#46 ·
Pull the trigger and buy it already. If you had fun driving it in the winter, then you will be crazy happy in the spring.

Changing out the emblems the right way will be a pain because the "cocktail shakers" are in the way. However, you can probably break the ones that are on there and pull them off. Then put the new ones on with some 3M tape behind them.

As far as the stripe - it is not correct, but 99.9% of the people that see it will not know that.

Buy the thing already. They are not making any more new 68 Camaro convertibles.
 
#48 ·
My two cents as the owner or a 68 convertible restoration is about done on, I found out that things I did not think were that big of a deal, like the stripe on yours, became a big deal to me. I will be in mine for more than I could sell it for but I don't care its what I want. So if you want it and are not stretching yourself buy it, but plan on spending twice what you thought by doing work right you will enjoy it more. The price is more relative to what you enjoy if you aren't worried about having to sell it in the near future.
 
#49 ·
Maybe I missed it, but have you been under and confirmed with eyes ANDmagnet that the rockers are solid??

Eyes will tell you if rockers have been messed with; an OE floorboard turns down and has about a half to 3/4 inch flange meeting the inner rocker, secured with OE spotwelds at intervals. If there is no flange, or the welds are plug, bead, or "other", then at least the floors have been replaced. Verify that there is a pair of holes at the rear of the inner rocker; the upper hole holds a square rubber flap in place over the hole, to allow for the flow through to work. A lot of times if someone just band-aids the inner with metal patch panels or mud, they forget to put the holes "back".

The front of the rear wheelhouses should also have two holes about 1/2 inch diameter, one in the outer half and one in the inner. A lot of times if the inner wheelhouse is missing the hole, it has been mudded over a rotten hole and a rotted rear inner rocker.

Look at the seam where the toeboard meets the floor as well.

I keep stressing this because I got sucked in by a decent driver 68 vert, and did not notice that the floors were patch panels dropped in from above, with a huge (1/2 inch, but still) gap at the toe. The inner rockers were also mudded in, and the outers had mud too under the shiny paint. Eventually, the lack of strength in the rockers caused the front top outside rocker (visible with door open, where rocker meets the cowl/A-pillar side) on each side to start running stress fractures (I think I told you to look at this area too...), and the car needed good weld-in subframe connectors to keep it from folding into the middle.

You can also look for "sag" by checking the door gaps, and looking for the presence (and wear of) the vert specific door alignment wedges at the back of each door. If you have no idea what these are, there should be a brass plate screwed (2 screws) to the rear of each door high up and near the weatherstrip, and a matching plastic wedge on the rear door jamb, high up near the windlace. If any of these pieces are missing or really worn, look harder at the real condition/soldidity of the car.

A little rust is not a huge deal in a coupe; in a vert it can mean at some point the car will try to break in halves... been there, fixed that...
 
#51 ·
I went back and read the posts, I had assumed would assume that you have taken the car to a mechanic and body shop to check everything out. With my 68 convertible I was very fortunate that it had very little rust 4 small spots but the passenger fender and passenger quarter had to be replaced not because of rust but because of shoddy body work with more pull points that could be counted, you just cant assume that all is well, but a third party can help find things that I could not see. I was like you and was real anxious, and I got real lucky. But when I got started my eye for things got much sharper and things that I never thought would bother me did and the cost went up. I went from going to have a white car to getting a black where all the lines had to be perfect, and that always cost more than you think. I will have my car home soon and cant wait and the guy that is doing it has done a fantastic job. But its not cheap if you are not equipped to do the work.
 
#52 ·
I went back and looked at the pics on the first page, and on the one of the right rear door jamb, it looks like the plastic alignment wedge is not there (can see the two holes though).

I also cannot remember if I or anyone else pointed out that the rockers do not have the trim spear that should be there, so unless it is only the trim holes that have been filled, those rockers have mud, or have been patched/replaced. My 69 is the only vert I have ever seen in the NE that still had OE rocker trim holes, and it came north from Alabama in the early 1980s. I am not saying there are no others like that, but rotten rockers at least to some degree are common.

Going back to the "it is not as peppy as my Audi" that could be any of a number of things.

Did you go back and recheck the engine assembly code you posted? As you have it written, the assembly suffix would be "5HM" which is not a suffix that I can find. If you had an extra digit, and the suffix is just "HM", then that could be a 69 350/250 (2bbl) out of a full size, but you'd need the casting number and date information off the rear of the block to confirm.

I don't recall seeing that you found out the rear ratio. A large percentage of base V8 cars had the standard ratios of around 2.73 or 3.07, and that can be an issue.

I don't even know if we have confirmed the car has a 12467 VIN on dash... and that the dash VIN matches the hidden cowl VIN http://camaros.org/numbers.shtml#PartialVIN can usually read through the louvers on the vent panel. You don't want to buy a car that has one VIN on the dash and another (possibly stolen) VIN on the body. I think the cars like that which have showed up here are running about 50/50 staying with the buyer vs being returned to someone who had it stolen years ago.

Another thing which could cause lack of "pep" could be a higher than stock stall speed torque converter. If the converter is an aftermarket unit made to improve performance from a standing start, it may be that the car needs the brakes applied, the accelerator pressed until the car strains against the brake or the wheel(s) start spinning, and then the brake let off to allow the car to shoot forward. A higher stall convertor will slip (possibly a lot) around town, and will be sluggish under part throttle cruising.

A 68 Camaro is not an Audi A4, though if it is in good condition, it won't depreciate like the Audi (or any newer, non-collectible car) will. But if you wind up with a shiny rust bucket and cannot do most if not all the necessary work yourself, you can quickly have a $50K car worth in the $20Ks.

We have not even talked about whether the car once had the big block to match the 396 emblems, and whether that past BBC was mounted on BBC mounting but then correctly changed back to SBC mounting when the small block was installed. As noted above, most folks can change the displacement emblems just removing the bezel/trim around the headlight doors. Not even close to the effort required to change a wheel bearing (if he really did that...).
 
Discussion starter · #53 ·
It really sucks being as indecisive as I am. I keep watching craigslist & EBay for comparable 68 verts & this one seems to be a really OK price. The things I see in NY selling below 20 & in pretty rough shape.

As Eric mentioned, I am seeing a shiny Camaro, I might not be seeing the whole picture.

My friend & I were discussing it & his thought was in a worse case scenario if I had it for a year or two & didn’t use it or didn’t like it, I shouldn’t have a problem selling it for 18k if it stays in the same shape its in now.

I think his point is that worse case is I am out a few thousand dollars, which doesnt sound great as I am writing this but its not the end of the world either.

The more I think about it & the more I see cars on craigslist & ebay - everyone has different incorrect stripes (I always get hung up on wierd stuff).

Ultimately what I see online which I cant even inspect is pretty much more expensive than this one & either its about 8k more (low 30’s) and close to what I am looking at buying.

My question, is that in the spring/summer, I would expect prices to go up & people to be more interested in verts. If I end up at a place like Carlisle PA to look for a Camaro – am I even going to find one that’s ‘completed’ like this one?



Here are my other thoughts, is that I am buying a ‘slow’ camaro, or a camaro that doesn’t have a kickdown cable. So I am not buying a speed demon (that’s OK), so then I am buying a ‘pretty’ camaro – but then the door is slightly damaged, the stripe is wrong, the color isn’t even OEM, and it has a 396 logo when it clearly never had one (Eric – the guy has another camaro & it has the 396, he was going to swap it in & then didn’t).

I really am under the impression this car was built for his wife who never used it, I think it was a project he was never planning on selling & it was ‘probably’ repaired/built with that in mind.


Can someone help me get off the fence? In terms of the body, I had (not a professional) but three separate car fanatics, one of whom has built many classic cars over his lifetime.
 
#54 ·
Rich, if you are at all partial to 67's, I stumbled upon this 67 Mountain Green vert for sale for $22K. It is a 275 HP 327 / 4 speed car, which if original makes it a very rare piece (look up Camaro L30/M20 combo - sometimes called the "stealth SS"). It appears to be a very nice, original, highly optioned car, and I think it has most of its original metal. If I was "between cars", believe me, I would be up there looking at this one. It is in Indy, but might be worth the trip for something that will hold its value.

http://indianapolis.ebayclassifieds...yclassifieds.com/classic-cars/pendleton/1967-camaro-rs-convertible/?ad=13588182
 
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#55 ·
RSSSfanatic said:
I would be up there looking at this one. It is in Indy, but might be worth the trip for something that will hold its value.

http://indianapolis.ebayclassifieds...yclassifieds.com/classic-cars/pendleton/1967-camaro-rs-convertible/?ad=13588182
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Between the two, the 67 appears to be a better choice. But that is sight unseen. Bring a bodyman who knows these cars with you. Ad states PB, which it is not. If a buyer has second thoughts, it's better to not buy a car. Sellers love impulsiveness.
 
#56 ·
Sauron67MM said:
Between the two, the 67 appears to be a better choice. But that is sight unseen. Bring a bodyman who knows these cars with you. Ad states PB, which it is not. If a buyer has second thoughts, it's better to not buy a car. Sellers love impulsiveness.
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Yep, noticed that. Also, it looks like maybe the headlight doors are not working. It also lists the body as "original" - not sure if that means original paint. If it does, then the car appears to be in fantastic condition. I would be interested to know if it is an original 275 HP 4-speed car - L30/M20.
 
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#57 ·
IMO, if that 67 is everything it says it is, and is solid, it would be a much better choice at the same price point. If it does have real docs, that is a very highly optioned 67 vert. Power windows, power top (if cylinders need "bled" it may be more likely they need replaced, but...), tilt wheel, decent deluxe interior, tach & gauges. I really love the owner(s) did not feel the need to add the rear spoiler. Air shocks in the back probably mean the OE monoleaf springs need some attention. And you would find a good running 327/275 4-speed car quite a bit more "peppy" than the 68. Maybe you could find someone local to the area to inspect it for you, but that car looks to be one you could fly in and drive home. I'd want to check the tires out real close, as they appear to be a type not made in some time. I have done the highway cruise in my old 68 on good looking but old tires, and managed to survive a tread separation at speed. The car wasn't quite so lucky.

And did you say the 68 is missing a kickdown cable? That would be something easy and fairly inexpensive to fix, but if you say the guy with the 68 is a "mechanic" and he wasn't willing to bother adding a kickdown cable? Small details being neglected like that really make me question how the rest of the work was done on the car.

So to sum up, if that 67 is in good shape and documented, that would be a much better buy even if it costs you a plane ticket and some beers or other payment to someone local to inspect prior to flying. I would think that we are the kind of community here that if you mapped out the route ahead of time (and are not an axe-murderer or serial killer), you could probably find TC members for support and even lodging (I'd shelter and feed you if this was on the route) along the way home. Then you even get a bit of adventure to add to the story.

If my 69 was farther along and I wasn't unemployed, I would be calling about that Mountain Green 67. That looks like a great buy, and that is one of the GM greens of the era that is pretty amazing in person, and would stand out from a see of red or other common color 1st gens, many of which wear the rear spoiler. That just really looks like a nice car. Kinda wish I had not seen it... ;)
 
#58 ·
Eric Kammerer said:
If my 69 was farther along and I wasn't unemployed, I would be calling about that Mountain Green 67. That looks like a great buy, and that is one of the GM greens of the era that is pretty amazing in person, and would stand out from a see of red or other common color 1st gens, many of which wear the rear spoiler. That just really looks like a nice car. Kinda wish I had not seen it... ;)
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I know exactly what you mean, Eric. I live about two hours from Indy - it would be easy to just drive up there with someone and then drive the car back home. Problem is, I already have a 67 RS/SS vert and a 69 RS/SS vert - I might find myself in divorce court if I drove home in this one. :cool:
 
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Discussion starter · #59 ·
Eric Kammerer said:
And did you say the 68 is missing a kickdown cable? That would be something easy and fairly inexpensive to fix, but if you say the guy with the 68 is a "mechanic" and he wasn't willing to bother adding a kickdown cable? Small details being neglected like that really make me question how the rest of the work was done on the car.
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I dont know if its missing the kickdown cable, all I can say is when the throttle was pushed to the floor, it did not downshift & fling me back into my seat like I was hoping for. I dont suppose there is some known place in NY (within 30 miles from NYC) that could look at this for me? I would be happy to hire a TC member for their time & knowledge.


RSSSfanatic said:
I know exactly what you mean, Eric. I live about two hours from Indy - it would be easy to just drive up there with someone and then drive the car back home. Problem is, I already have a 67 RS/SS vert and a 69 RS/SS vert - I might find myself in divorce court if I drove home in this one. :cool:
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So tell me about your 67 & 69 :) Maybe I can buy one of yours instead! :hurray:
 
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