Team Camaro Tech banner
Cancel
Create thread New Garage Forums

1967 Camaro Convertible Resto Mod Build

Tags
convertible disc brake conversion resto-mod camaro small block wiring harness
Jump to Latest
1 - 20 of 119 Posts

67CamaroConvertible

· Registered
Joined
·
85 Posts
Discussion starter · #1 ·
Hello everyone, this is my first time posting although I have been a member for a while. I am in the process of rebuilding my 1967 Camaro Convertible. The car was originally an inline 6 however, before I got the car someone swapped the inline 6 for a 327. I bought the car from my fathers coworker. The car had been sitting in his garage for a few years and he finally decided to get rid of it. When I purchased the car I was 20 years old in the middle of engineering school, that was 2013.
I drove the car that summer a few times, then the mechanical fuel pump failed. I made the decision that instead of fixing the fuel pump I wanted to build the car. Below are photos of the car from 2013 when I bought it and pre rebuild. I wanted to wait until I had a lot of progress on the car to begin a thread since this is my first project car and I was not sure how frequently I would be able to give substantial updates.
268141
268142


Austin
1967 Camaro Convertible
1970 Chevy C10
 
#2 ·
Welcome Austin, there are a couple of other vert builds going on here. At first glance not sure you have as much work to do as they. Is it pretty solid?
 
Save
Reply Quote Like Like
Discussion starter · #3 ·
The car is pretty solid as far as the body goes. Shown below is one of the worst areas. At the point I do not intend to do anything body exterior wise. I do really like the look of fully restored cars but thats a lot of money and I would like to be able to drive the car without worrying about things like parking.

My plans for the car include building the engine, front and rear disc brake, completely new wiring harness, swap the rear axle along with rear suspension and coil overs in all 4 corners. I have a lot of updates to post with pictures as time allows.

268149
 
#5 ·
67CamaroConvertible said:
The car is pretty solid as far as the body goes. Shown below is one of the worst areas. At the point I do not intend to do anything body exterior wise. I do really like the look of fully restored cars but thats a lot of money and I would like to be able to drive the car without worrying about things like parking.

My plans for the car include building the engine, front and rear disc brake, completely new wiring harness, swap the rear axle along with rear suspension and coil overs in all 4 corners. I have a lot of updates to post with pictures as time allows.

View attachment 268149
Click to expand...
That really needs to be fixed even if not perfect. Invitation for serious rust. Doesn't have to be perfect just protected.
 
Save
Reply Quote Like Like
Discussion starter · #6 ·
When I started working on this car funds were limited the first area of the car I wanted to address was the brakes. The car originally was 4-wheel drum brakes, I decided to replace all the brakes with disc brakes. The front brakes came from Right Stuff Detailing as did the master cylinder and proportioning valve. The rear brakes were sources from a friend who parts out SN95 mustangs, they are off a Cobra Mustang. I went this direction because I also swapped the rear axle from a 10 bolt to a Ford 9 inch. The Ford 9 inch was used because it was cheap and did not have to be cut to width as it came from a Bronco II.

While rebuilding the front end of the car I installed a heavier sway bar from BMR as well as all new bushing and ball joints in the control arms. I also decided to install coil overs in the front of the car, these were sourced from QA1
268150
268151
268152
268153
268154
 
Discussion starter · #7 ·
scblucam said:
That really needs to be fixed even if not perfect. Invitation for serious rust. Doesn't have to be perfect just protected.
Click to expand...
I most definitely will be address the bad areas. I just do not want to get into a full body restoration. You are 100% right about this being a spot for rust to spread from and I will for sure address this.
 
Discussion starter · #8 ·
NOT A TA said:
Welcome to the posting side! I also have a '67 convertible I'm working on.
Click to expand...
Thank you! The welcome is much appreciated. Hopefully everyone enjoys my build thread. If you have any questions for me feel free to ask.
 
#9 ·
Congratulations from Texas and I'm glad you started up your build thread. No matter how often you post, it is still great to get the documentation process started and I think you will be glad you did. You will get ideas and suggestions as well as be in a position to help others.

The Right Stuff line is one I like and I have the QA1 Coil-overs in front. I also opted for the 1-1/8" anti-sway bar. Are you going to 4-link the rear or do any particular lowered leaf springs? I went with Hotchkis 1-1/2" lower multi-leaf springs and I'm happy with the result.

Enjoy your journey, as the destination is ever-changing.
Brett.....
 
Save
Reply Quote Like Like
Discussion starter · #10 ·
Along with swapping the rear axle to a Ford 9 inch I decided to get rid of the monoleaf setup that came factory on the car in favor of a triangulated 4 link. Due to the lack of space in my garage I wanted something that was bolt in as opposed to weld in. I decided to go with Ride Tech 4 link and coil over setup in the rear. The only thing on this car that I have not done myself (due to lack of appropriate tools) was rebuild the rear axle and convert to Posi. I previously worked at a offroad shop where I aiding in building many solid axles, so I just had them build my 9 inch for me. Unfortunately, the pictures of the disassembly and installation of the 4 link are lost but I will be get some picture of the completed install.

I did decide to paint the front sub frame, firewall, and new inner fenders. I pulled the 327 out at a friends house as I do not have an engine hoist. Upon removing the engine I found many wiring issues with the car. Things like wires just twisted together, wires that were wire nutted together, old brittle wires, and exposed wires. For all these reasons I decided that I was going to rewire the entire car. I purchased a complete wiring harness from painless performance to complete this job. Bare in mind that by education I am a mechanical engineer, by not stretch of the imagination am I an electrical engineer or electrician. The rewire process was very slow going as I wanted to do everything right and make the wiring as neat as possible.

Before:

268160
268161


After

268162
268163
268164
 
Discussion starter · #11 ·
At this point I started to rebuild the engine. When I got the car it had a 327 with 1.94 intake valve double hump heads, points ignition system and a Quadrajet carburetor. This was all backed by a 2 speed Powerglide transmission. I knew I wanted more power than the car originally had but I also wanted more reliability.

The machine shop bored the engine as well as hot tanked and checked all the journals. My crankshaft (unknown to me) had the wrong size bolt tapped into the end of it. The machine shop tried to fix this by drilling and re-tapping the end of the crank, without letting me know. They called me and told me that the broke a tap off in the end of my crank shaft, but they had another on the shelf I could by for cheap. Needless to say, I was not happy and I will not be going back to that machine shop. Ironically, they are now actually out of business. I ended up getting all my parts back from the machine shop and the reassembly process began.

268166
268167
268168
 
Discussion starter · #12 ·
The bottom end of the engine is nothing special, stocked forged crankshaft, stock rods, and hypereutectic pistons. For the top end of the engine I went with a top end kit from Trick Flow. This kit included heads, intake, cam, pushrods, lifters, and rocker arms. According to the Trick Flow Dyno sheet this kit should produce around 400 hp. The engine went together well or so I thought, more on this later.

In an effort to increase the reliability of my engine I decided to go with self-tuning fuel injection. At the time I was building this engine there was not as many fuel injection systems available, I decided to go with the FAST EZ EFI 2.0.

268182
268183
268184
268185
268186
 
Discussion starter · #13 ·
With the engine built it was now time to start the wiring and install the engine in the car. In addition to rewiring the car I decided to relocate the battery to the trunk. I tried to keep the wiring as clean as possible. I had to make some modifications to the wiring that made this difficult but I think it turned out pretty good for my first complete rewire. I routed all the wires in the driver side of the car, battery cables underneath and low amperage wires in the interior. I did this because the fuel lines will all be routed on the passenger side of the vehicle.

At this point I also install also new body mount bolts and bushings. I have detroit speed sub frame connectors as well but have yet to install those.

268259
268260
268261
 
Discussion starter · #14 ·
I mentioned in an earlier post that I installed a ridetech 4 link system in the rear with coil overs. I took some pictures of the completed installation as well as the Ford 9 inch rear axle. I am happy with this rear suspension but it does make routing the exhaust out the back challenging.

268316
268317
268318
 
Discussion starter · #15 ·
I ran into a lot of issues after engine installation and in preparation for the first start up, hopefully someone out there can learn from my issues. This first issue I found was with the oil pan, one of the welds on the oil pan had cracked at some point allowing oil to leak out of the pan. I of course did not discover the crack until the engine was in the car and I was working on getting the engine ready to prime. I was able to lift the engine up a little and remove the pan. Luckily I know a pipe fitter who was able to Tig weld the crack shut for me.

The second issue was discovered when priming the engine. This was the first small block Chevy that I built and installed all on my own. While priming the engine via a priming tool on the oil pump drive shaft I discovered that the process was taking me an extremely long time. I checked to make sure that the plug under the rear most main cap was installed via the oil pressure sending unit hole at the top of the block. It was installed correctly. Seeing as I had already dropped the pan once I decided to drop the oil pan again to make sure that the oil pump pickup was attached and not clogged. Everything was assembled correctly there too. The only other thing I could think of was the front oil gallery plugs behind the timing set. I proceeded to tear the front of the engine apart and remove the timing cover. At this point I realized that I did not have all the plug in. I am running a double roller timing chain per the manufacture it is recommended to drill a 0.040" hole in one of the plug to allow some oil to have access to the timing chain. After drilling this hole I installed the plugs and proceeded to out the engine back together.

That brings me to the third issue I found when attempting to start the engine. At this point the engine was primed and ready to go. I had not yet tested the fuel system or the electronics to start the engine. I got through the setup of the EFI on the handheld to the point where the system wants to check fuel pressure. I proceeded to pressurize the system and the second it built pressure I had fuel leaking all over the engine out of the throttle body. I tore the throttle body done and found what is shown in the picture below. One of the injector bores seems to have had some porosity in the casting that was exposed during finish machining. After speaking with FAST they did send me a new throttle body even though it was out of the year warranty since date of purchase. I pointed out that this was a manufacturing error and there was nothing I could have done regardless of the warranty period. Thank you to FAST for working with me on this.

268412


268415


268413


268414
 

Attachments

Discussion starter · #16 ·
To allow the FAST EZ EFI 2.0 to control timing I decided to install an MSD CD box and Fast dual sync distributor. I was also able to get all the lights working on the exterior of the car. I still hsve to get the gauge lights to work. I also installed a new grill insert.

268639
268640
268641
268642
 
Discussion starter · #17 ·
I torn apart the steering column to replace the blinker switch. For anyone that has not done this, tearing the steering column apart is a fairly simply process. However feeding the ribbon through the steering column is one heck of a challenge.

268674

268671
268672


Once the new switch was installed the blinkers worked as they should. I also started to finish up the installation of the engine and accessories. I decided to go with the GM serpentine system, that was if something ever does fail components are easily sourced. I also wrapped the headers which I should have done prior to installing the engine as this was a real pain to do in the car.

268673


In the above picture you can see the wrapped shorty headers as well as the insulation of my power steering lines. The lines ended up being very close to the header and the control arm so I decided to install a protective heat shield on them.

There are also some poorly bent brake lines shown in this picture, those will be re routed a little neater later (winter project).

I plan on installing an original style Bluetooth radio in this car, does any one have any experiences with different brands of radios?
 
#18 ·
67CamaroConvertible said:
I torn apart the steering column to replace the blinker switch. For anyone that has not done this, tearing the steering column apart is a fairly simply process. However feeding the ribbon through the steering column is one heck of a challenge.

View attachment 268674
View attachment 268671 View attachment 268672

Once the new switch was installed the blinkers worked as they should. I also started to finish up the installation of the engine and accessories. I decided to go with the GM serpentine system, that was if something ever does fail components are easily sourced. I also wrapped the headers which I should have done prior to installing the engine as this was a real pain to do in the car.

View attachment 268673

In the above picture you can see the wrapped shorty headers as well as the insulation of my power steering lines. The lines ended up being very close to the header and the control arm so I decided to install a protective heat shield on them.

There are also some poorly bent brake lines shown in this picture, those will be re routed a little neater later (winter project).

I plan on installing an original style Bluetooth radio in this car, does any one have any experiences with different brands of radios?
Click to expand...
Keep up the great work! I have a converted factory am radio that has had the guts replaced with a newer radio. When the guy did mine he put a aux cable coming out the back. That was 10 years ago before Bluetooth. I can try and find the paperwork on it he may be doing Bluetooth now.
Derek
 
Save
Reply Quote Like Like
Discussion starter · #20 ·
Thats very interesting I didn't know that there were people out there that did this conversion. The only problem is that someone put in a junk aftermarket radio a long time ago (no longer worked) so I don't have the original radio. I am not in a huge rush for a radio but I intend on doing hotrod power tour 2021 (if they have it) and thats a lot of miles to be driving with no music.
 
1 - 20 of 119 Posts
About this Discussion
118 Replies
17 Participants
Last post:
67CamaroConvertible
Team Camaro Tech
posts
2.4M
members
90K
Since
1998
A forum community dedicated to 1st generation Chevy Camaros owners and enthusiasts. Come join the discussion about performance, builds, restoration, modifications, classifieds, troubleshooting, reviews, and more!
Full Forum Listing
Explore Our Forums
Bench Racing Engine Body Shop Performance Brakes, Suspension & Steering