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?

 

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.

 

That really needs to be fixed even if not perfect. Invitation for serious rust. Doesn't have to be perfect just protected.

 

Welcome to the posting side! I also have a '67 convertible I'm working on.

 

Thank you! The welcome is much appreciated. Hopefully everyone enjoys my build thread. If you have any questions for me feel free to ask.

 

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

 

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.....

 

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:

After

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.

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.

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?

 

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.

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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.

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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?

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

 

I just had my factory AM radio converted to AM/FM with Bluetooth and USB connection. I don't have it back yet, but have a friend that had his done by the same guy and it works and sounds great.

 

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.

 

I got the new stainless steel exhaust installed, I went with Pypes after some communication with them. There was no aftermarket off the shelf system to work with my 4 link system as the upper bars get in the way. The Pypes system turned out to be pretty close but will require some modification to fit. I also bought down pipes from Pypes per recommendation of the representative that I talked to. The down pipes are made to work with manifolds, I however am running mid length headers. I knew that the pipes would require some modification they ended up working very good as did the whole system. I also was able to modify the cross member on convertibles and install the extension brackets that are also from Pypes. Overall very happy with the system. At some point I may come up with a more substantial cross member but for now this will work.

 

Continued working on the weather stripping replacement today. Going into the day the only parts that I had left to complete were both vent windows and the rear window verticals. This is a painful and exhausting installation. I installed removed the vent window and installed the weather stripping then put the vent window back into place without removing the window glass. There are 2 nuts, 1 bolt, and 2 screws that hold the regulator in. As I said in an earlier post the wiring and some other work in this car was not very good. Here are some pictures showing that work.

The outer window felt had to be removed. Unfortunately, I did the weather stripping in the wrong order as I have already installed my new window felts. Luckily, I was able to remove this without messing it up.
I removed the 2 screws from the window glass that hold it to the regulator, this allow me to move the glass toward the latch enough to lift the vent glass out.

Once removed I removed the two screws as well as the nut and spring on the bottom of the window glass this allows the vent window to be removed. To allow the trim to separate the screw at the top of the channel (where the window would raise up to) must be removed this also has to be removed to install the long straight piece of weather stripping that acts as a seal for the window.

Here is a picture of the clips that hold the angled part of the weather stripping in, these are a pain to install.

The driver side turned out pretty good. I still have to do the passenger side but I will get that done in time when I can move the car to the center of my garage for an extended period of time.

 

Nice work and great documentation Austin. A couple of suggestions on the exhaust would be to use band clamps instead of the u-bolt style. Also use exhaust paste/cement on the joints regardless of the clamp style used. This reduces the amount of torque required to seal the joints on the u-bolt style clamps. If you ever have to remove/disassemble the system it will come apart much easier and without damage. Keep up the good work.

 

Thank you for the kind works, I am trying to document as much as possible! I have never heard about that for the exhaust I will do that. Additionally, I see your in Waterloo that is only a little over an hour from me. I went to a car show at the fairgrounds there last year actually (didn't have the Camaro there). Hopefully they can resume the car show next year.

 

Austin, I now see you're in Dubuque. I was at the Waterloo show. Hopefully this coming year will be better for shows. Fingers crossed.

 

If they end up having that show or any other shows you will have to let me know. Hopefully I will be able to bring the car!

 

I decided with my plans for this car, occasional road trips, that I should upgrade the cooling system. For this I turned to cold case radiators. The kits showed up packaged very well, all fins were in good condition. You can see in the picture below of the first test fit that the radiator was in very good condition.

I decided to purchase their kit which included a fan and shroud. These comes not attached and need to be mounted as seen in the picture. Not to difficult to do and turned out very good.

Using the GM serpentine setup and a stock inlet/outlet radiator made it necessary to make a custom upper radiator hose. I just used a simple rubber 90 and straight piece with a piece of pipe in between the two. This works just fine but lacks a little rigidity so I will be making a custom bracket on a CNC mill at work once I am able to get some time on it. Once this is made, I will include some pictures of the bracket. I used the closest two available holes and the bracket is only supporting a hose so it should work fine.

 

Earlier I had moved the battery to the truck, using a box from summit racing. I also ran some wiring along the front of the floor for my EFI. To clean up the truck (and keep rust dust down) I threw a quick couple coats of POR-15 on it. By no means is this a professional paint job of new trunk pan but my pan is still in very good shape. I didn’t get in every inch of the truck but I will, I just wanted to get the majority covered while the weather is still decent.

Before:

After:

I also replaced the trunk seal, this was probably the easiest piece of weather stripping on the entire car to replace. When I removed the old one it basically disintegrated. Now the truck lead needs to be adjusted as it does not want to close down far enough to line up with the rear of the quarter panels.

 

A little update I have installed new stainless transmission lines. I would highly recommend these, they were bought from Camaro central. Shipping cost was high due to the fact that these need to be shipped in a very large box but these lines worked perfect.

I also want to document some of the things that have been going on with me EFI. As stated earlier I am running a FAST EZ EFI 2.0, FAST dual sync distributor, MSD 6al, and MSD Blaster 2 ignition coil. FAST worked with me on the leaking injector bore and sent me a new throttle body, I did have to call a couple times and speak with a manager as the unit was no long in warranty. The most recent issue was that I would start the car and the handheld would display a "comm error" then shut off and restart right away. This would just continue to happen. I emailed FAST but didn't get a reply the next day so I called, spoke with someone in tech who gave me three things that might fix the issue. First was to check the switched 12v source, I did this and it was a clean source. Second was to remove the extension cable for the handheld and plug the unit directly into the ECU, tried with no luck. The third thing was to send the handheld to FAST for a reset. After trying the first two I called and spoke with a different tech who offered another possible solution, to reset the handheld without sending the unit back. I tried this while on the phone with the tech and it seemed to work although I could only run the car for a couple mins as I had a transmission leak. This evening I fixed the transmission leak and ran the car for a little longer, the ECU/Handheld did not display a "comm error". I am cautiously optimistic, hopefully this problem is resolved but I am not going to get too excited yet. Hopefully the weather this weekend is decent, if so I will get the car out and drive it around. There is still a ton of work that I would like to complete on this car but it will be nice to get the car running and not have to worry about the fuel injection system.

Yes I know that my overflow tank is very ugly, I will be replacing this eventually but right now getting the car running is much more of a priority. Also the under hood wiring shown in this picture is the current situation, its a little messy but I will clean that up once I know everything is correct.

 

Please tell me that battery box is bolted down or AGM.

 

Oh yes it is most definitely bolted down to the truck floor. I am happy with the battery box to this point, it is just a Summit brand box. I routed both cables and the vent through the truck floor (with grommets). I grounded the battery to the frame in the rear and routed the positive to the starter.

 

Small update/tip for anyone doing weather stripping. I ordered a complete OER weather stripping kit from Classic industries it came with the black little push clips used to hold the weather stripping in place. The push pins included in kit suck! The leading tip is larger diameter than the pin. Getting them to push in is near impossible. I struggled through getting them to fit by smashing the end I ended up using them all and breaking a few. I ordered more push pins from Camaro Central, they showed up and worked 100x better the tip is not larger than the pin like the ones included in the OER kit from Classis industries. See the picture below, these are the pins from Camaro Central unfortunately I do not have any pictures of the ones included in the kit.

More in depth updates to come this weekend when I get some work done on the car. I am hoping to test the fuel injection more this weekend as well so hopefully I will have good news about that.