alan91z28

on the "wing", just drilled out the 8-10 spotwelds from both the original and donor and then rewelded it back in the same area, pretty straightforward

for the passenger side rocker, we got the back joint welded in well, just need to clean it up... on the front we were messing with the door and didn't get that completely lined up right (it has bad pins / bushings / sags) so i am going to fix that first to make sure we have everything lined up right

89blackformula

What an awesome project!!
Wow I totally admire you and your son for tackling such a project!
I wish I had a third of your talent!
I will definenatly keep watching this thread!

alan91z28

thanks guys for the nice words, hopefully this thread will help someone out in the future on their big restoration...

so this week to make sure the passenger door was going to line up correctly i went and got another good condition door at the nearby salvage yard as the original passenger one had at least taken a little bit of a swipe at some point and i didn't want us fitting up the whole side based on a door that really doesn't fit...

so saturday morning we had some good family fun getting the doors on. we put the drivers side back on first just to make sure everything fit well... it did and we are good to go on that side. then we put the new passenger door on. these doors are heavy so make sure you have some help. the good news / bad news is there is no adjustment of the two alignment bolts so once they are in you know they are in right, but it is a pretty good challenge.

once the passenger door was on it was obvious that the inner front pillar must have been pushed in a little as the top of the door at the back b pillar wasn't flush correctly and also it was rubbing on the sill

used a bar at an angle across the front inside of the car with a little adjustable screw jack to get things lined up better

alan91z28

similar to the drivers side, once everything was lined up / clamped up, go everything welded in place for the rocker replacement. also on the bottom of the front pillar i added a re-enforcement around where the original computer harness wiring entered to re-enforce while the floor is out

alan91z28

in addition to pushing out the bottom pillar a little bit, i need to slightly adjust the door and used the typical door adjustment tool that fits into the door latch and levers off the door pin... a little leverage and we had the door opening and closing nice and tight just like new. once the floor is in the rod i have holding the pillar should be able to be removed and know the door will open and shut correctly

so now it is starting to prep for the floor install. still have a couple more things to clean up, get the GFX side channels welded to the rockers, etc, but i started to prep the subframe with good eastwood sealant primer

Drkhrse89

iTrader: (1)

Fantastic work you have going on here. One question, having taken the car down to basically nothing, do you see many spots that could use further reinforcement? Eventually my car will be a weekend track warrior and I cannot help but think there are plenty of areas that could use, more welding, more reinforcement, removed material, etc.

alan91z28

all in all the factory did a pretty good job welding and fabricating these cars... the biggest weakness by far is the lack of stiffness / rigidity between the front and rear subframes and subframe connectors are a must in my opinion

also to this point since i was replacing the rockers, as you can see in the pics i did a lot more welding of the rockers on the front and back vs the spotwelds... in the end though that is a drop in the bucket compared to adding a good set of welded in subframes

also of course adding any form of roll cage will really stiffening the whole thing up

if you are going to run coil overs it also would be worth considering full welding of the shock towers and making sure you are using a coil over with the additional re-enforcement plate

Drkhrse89

iTrader: (1)

In this iteration of build for my car it will be getting SFCs and possibly a roll cage. I was just curious whether or not the panel mating areas could use more welding. Thanks.

alan91z28

so this weekend we worked on trying to finish up the things required prior to getting the floor actually in. since the inside of the rockers will be hidden, needed to get the ground effects mounting strip welded on to the exterior of the rocker so i could make sure the rocker had good paint

you can see in the second pic want the back of the rocker will look like once you get done welding the strip on the outside... while i have some plans in the end once everything is assembled to use a final Eastwood fog type nozzle, i wanted as much coverage as possible prior to closing these up...

alan91z28

the most time was spent on getting the drivers side upper left firewall pocket repaired. this had rust repair needed on where the floor attaches plus had a hole starting where the sheets come together in the "groove" from the wheel well to the firewall. this involved a couple of pieces.

fortunately Hawks was able to help me out once more with Bruce quickly turning around a good cut out from a donor that i used as a splice to get this fixed up right... it took most of the day to get the donor cut out actually cut down to the piece i needed, fab a piece for the wheel well sheet and then the same on getting the bad panels removed and then new pieces welded in

in some of the earlier posts you can see what it looked like with the rot, the attached pics are with it in and finished

now i what to do some final in channel painting and then it pretty much is time to do some detailed measuring to make the clean cut on the portion of the back of the car floor and then cut the donor car floor to mate up with it

alan91z28

so this weekend was spent on getting prepped to get the floor in. i was hoping to actually get the floor in, but there just is a lot of prep that has to be done and i didn't want to rush it.

during the week i had coated all the interior rocker, subframe etc with several coats of eastwood rust encapsulator... the areas were welding is going to occur needs to be cleaned back off and then recoated with a weld through primer

Therefore, the key thing done this weekend then was to get all the contact areas on the subframe, firewall, rockers, floor, etc completely cleaned up with the disc sander and then covered back up with a couple of coats of eastwood weld through primer, this took a basically all my time to get it done right

alan91z28

once everything was cleaned off i recovered it as i mentioned with eastwood weld through primer. eastwood makes great products and they have come in very helpful. the flexible spray nozzle shown in the pic with the eastwood cans works great to get into hard to reach places.

not that it really matters for this work, but as you can see in the second pic, the eastwood gray weld through primer matches the eastwood gray rust encapsulator making a nice finish.

also i started to figure out how to make the final floor cut on the backhalf on the car and also the donor floor... i working on making a jig so i get the cut right

alan91z28

It took all this saturday to finish the prep work for the floor install, so that will be the first thing, famous last words, for next week.

The first thing was to build a jig to get an accurate measurement on where to cut. I am making the floor splice between the inside front seat belt mounting points and the parking brake plate on the top of the tunnel

for the jig i used two known and true 3/4" holes that are in the rear sub-frame that also allowed me to clamp it in place which comes in handy on the piece on the car

to then mark the line i used a flat piece of steel against my jig and a sharpie, i made the jig plate pretty tall and stiff (1/2" thick) so it wouldn't walk all over as i was pressing on it to making the marking... it worked out well

also the reason for making the jig flat 1/2" thick is on the donor floor i put my marking bar / pen on the back of the flat and on the back floor of the camaro i put it on the front of the bar. this gives me a 1/2" overlap and i will flange the donor floor so it drops on top of the rear floor alreay in the camaro

alan91z28

here is the jig now mounted on the car itself to get its rear floor cut to proper length

alan91z28

once i got both pieces marked out, i did some final measurements to re-confirm everything looked right and then put some tape down to give me a good visual on the cuts

used a cutting wheel to make the cuts as it makes a better straight cut IMHO compared to the air saw

once we got home from church this afternoon i then cleaned the pieces up and sprayed them with some weld through paint... should be good to go for next week floor install

midias

WOW really coming together right. PLEASE keep posing pictures, you are an inspiration to everyone on this board who wants to fix a rust bucket.

alan91z28

so this weekend we worked on getting the donor front floor into the car.

good news is that putting it in an up / down angle it fits through the door way. to do this though you have to take the door off, so first thing is we took the drivers door back off to get it out of the way

my son and i then put it in with it going through the door front end down / back end up and just worked getting it slide through the drivers door opening this way

since it doesn't weigh too much at this point it really wasn't too difficult. just watch for snagging, etc as you are getting it through

actually then it pretty much dropped right down and then was ready to be pushed forward in place as once it went down we still had about an inch or so forward it needed to go

using a block of wood against the seat mounting rails we tapped it forward. the passenger side went fully set by this method. the drivers side almost got there but was about 1/8" out so we used the port a power to get the final movement and set in place

alan91z28

by doing careful measurements and thinking about how the cuts would be made, this ended up going in pretty easy all things considered.

since my back inner rocker cuts on the donor floor were right against the rear re-enforcement, that was one good reference point for example knowing we had the floor fully in place. by getting this set all the other points were visually lining up where other spot welds had been drilled out etc

alan91z28

now before anything can be welded all the flanges, floor to subframe, etc have to be nice and tight to each other. the side rocker pinch welds you will be able to use clamps on but a lot of other areas you practically cant do that and you have to make sure the parts are together before welding.

to resolve this we chose to sheet metal screw down the floor to the pieces. we started at the subframe flat sections and went all around both. this allows you to make sure you don't get warping etc as you are basically working from the middle of the floor out... ie dont screw down both the front and back of the floor first and get a bubble in it!

we have all the subframes now screwed down nice and flat and securely and will now be working on the very front and very back.

the last time i saw this car with the floor in this good of shape was the day i traded it in on my '91 z28 vert in august 1990!

90camaro355rs

I just read this entire build, WOW! is the only word that comes to mind, I am so impressed with your patience and eye for detail, This does make things come together
much easier and look way awesome when done. I look forward to seeing the end result, please keep the updates/pics coming. Such a great build!

alan91z28

so this Saturday was more work on the floor

finished getting everything screwed down and then started the welding

got the subframe sections pretty much welded down and then also the top pinch welds on both rockers. on the pinch welds we used a lot of clamping including a clamp i got from eastwood that is a fork that allows you to clamp on both sides right next to the hole you are welding up. you need to make sure the pieces are tight to each other through screws or clamping

my friend Rich is a good welder and it worked out well to have him welding on the inside with me under the car with a copper chiller spoon. this made welding any areas that were open holes pretty easy. also we just welded right over the sheet metal screws and then i will trim them off underneath and give them a light tack also. the objective here of course is you want nice very strong welds

90camaro355rs

nice job!

alan91z28

this weekend we worked on getting a lot of the rest of the welds on the floor welded in.

on a job like this there ends up being a lot of places where either there is through holes from the spot weld drilling or other places where a good chill bar can help with the welding. to do the welding this week, I was on one side with the chiller copper plate and my friend rich was with the welder on the other side. we filled in hundreds of spot welds this way this weekend.

as you can see the spoon got so hot at one point we melted through the red insulation... it got hot even with the welding glove on we were doing so many welds

alan91z28

here are some of the rocker sides and bottom pinch welds

alan91z28

and here are some of the front and back of the floor welds

all in all we got a lot done... still need to do some welding on the bottom but the floor is getting into good shape... need to do some clean up on these but you can see the idea

once all this was done I removed the support bar I had in and the doors were in good shape opening and closing

starting to turn the corner on the body rust repair now!

alan91z28

over the past two weeks, continued working on the welding and moving towards the front.

last weekend before Easter we finished welding up the roof pillars as they had just been tacked in pretty good last year, but needed fully welded and the braces back in etc.

after finishing the outer skin welding full length on both outside and inside we but the bracing back in and then inner plate... as you can imagine lots of clamping to get these braces / plate held correctly while getting it welded

once finished covered everything up with chassis black for now

alan91z28

i then decided to work on the front a little bit before finishing the underfloor to do something a little different since the floor has been the point of work over the past many weeks.

the radiator core and passenger battery tray where in need of repairs. originally i was going to just cut off the bottom of the radiator core a splice a donor one on, but after looking at the donor it seemed not too bad to take the whole radiator core out

the battery tray also had some joining sheet metal that was bad so i decided to cut the piece needed out of the donor front and go from there

here is the donor cut out, pretty much just taking your time and taking out the spot welds!

alan91z28

focused this weekend on getting the battery tray back in. since the sheet going to it on the inner wheel well was starting to flake i cut the bottom out of that as well.

my donor piece did not have the back section so i needed to make that myself out of sheet

also the tray from the donor wasn't fully complete (missing the very back "triangle piece") so again i made that section out of sheet.

after good prep cleaning and fitting, put the inner wheel well piece in then the battery tray itself

alan91z28

cleaned up all the welds then covered it up and the battery tray is now in good shape.

i had hoped to get the radiator core also back in, but ran out of time, everything takes longer than you originally think!

90camaro355rs

its looking good!

1bad91Z

iTrader: (1)

Are you going to media blast the car before you add more metal back to the body?

alan91z28

ok been a little slow on the updates, but yes that is pretty much the plan and actually that is where it is right now, but first some updates over the past 6 weeks or so to catch the thread up...

alan91z28

so before off to media blast and final body work / primer / paint i wanted to clean up a couple more things

one of these was the inner most passenger side captive nut housing area for the k member... this was a little weak and the nut itself had lost its captivity... so in the end i had bruce send me a donor piece and basically i cut out that section and fully replaced it

on the back bumper support, the underside had a little rust so i made quick work of that by cutting out the bad section and welding it back up and drilling new holes for the bumper mounting, etc

alan91z28

also since i did all this rust repair and don't want to see any of it back again, i decided to make sure all the inner frame rails front and back as well as rocker panels etc were all liberally covered with eastwood rust preventer...

so another good power washing and then paint / paint / paint a couple of times using the eastwood flexible nozzle wand which gets into the places easily and really has great coverage

alan91z28

then it was pretty much getting everything together and locked down on the trailer for the trip over to the rod shop.

i got it over there right before memorial day and it has already been media blasted and epoxy primer first pass.

the body was in very good shape, a couple areas to fix but nothing too bad... i forgot to take some pics while there last week so will catch you guys up in the next week when i go over to drop off some more parts

it has been a long road to get to this point and still a lot more to do, but we are near the end of one chapter in this rebuild. the plan will be to get it back painted and ready to start on drive train as this coming winters project

90camaro355rs

I have followed this for a while now, might I say sir, you have done a great job along with your son and your friend with the welding. cant wait to see it in paint!

TP355Z

Hey Alan -

Glad to see you're sticking to the build! It's been a year since I checked in but it looks like you're plugging along pretty well. There's one thing you haven't discussed though...

ARE YOU GOING TO KEEP THE DOOR GRAPHICS?!

My IROC has been sitting in the garage collecting dust...gotta put a new 2 car garage on the house before she gets the funding. Though I'm hoping to start tearing the nose off in the next few days. Prep work is always free

TRP

alan91z28

So my camaro is making some good progress at the rod shop, final metal work is behind us, after the blasting they found a couple spots to repair... all in all though it was in good shape after what we had done

so now it is in body prep... paint not that far away!

alan91z28

Thanks, and yes that decision is upon me in regards to the door graphics!

So i did buy a copy of Digital Paint Booth since they recognize 3rd gens are where it is at obviously and have a model you can play with

For a base color i am thinking a metallic orange and have 3 colors presently in consideration...

- original '88 medium orange metallic
- 4th gen sunset orange metallic
- '05 era gm sunburst orange metallic (this to me is closer to the '88 color)

here is a rough concept also note the headlight pockets will be satin black as well, i can't get that to happen on the program right now

also not sure yet on wheels, they don't have the stock ones in the program so i just picked a decent forgeline... i probably will start off with stock irocs

opinions encouraged and welcomed!

V8SC1987

That photo reminded me of this car. http://www.superchevy.com/features/1...o/viewall.html Very nice! I love what you're doing with the car and it's great to see the progress pics.

90camaro355rs

car is coming along real nice, really like the paint scheme you put together

jbenge

iTrader: (2)

I like your concept picture, looks great. Atomic Orange is also a good color that you might consider. I've seen some Atomic Orange corvettes with silver/grey stripes that looked good. These pics aren't very good but give you an idea of what I'm talking about.

alan91z28

Making some good progress, probably begin some paint cut in and full paint at the rod shop (Bonnell's Rod Shop) where they are finishing up the body work in the next week are so

Thanks for the suggestions on the colors especially atomic orange. They did some spray samples of sunset, sunburst, and atomic orange. We are going to go with the atomic orange it looks like it will be a great color with the black striping

With the body work / paint being likely complete by end of october already now thinking on winter plans.

Bruce at Hawks is busy getting me some starting items including i will be going with one of his 8.8 based rear ends... i put one in my son's formula this summer and it worked out great so am planning on one for this one as well

Warnd

All of the work you are doing on this project is very impressive and meticulous. Its really awesome to see what it started out as and then looking at what it is already...even before paint or interior! This is going to be one mint car when its done!

alan91z28

the rod shop is making good progress, i have been out of town but here are some pics my friend rich took on Friday after they finished cutting in the atomic orange on the base frame...

he said it person it really pops... i think it will be a great color and appreciate the suggestions on it as a potential color from TGO members here

they are shooting to have it back to me by early November before they go to the SEMA show...

Citation X

Can't wait to see how this one turns out. If you ever wanna sell your other build with the tvs2300 just let me know haha. Your build has inspired my ls3 swap that I am planning. I may have a few questions in the future.

jbenge

iTrader: (2)

Looks great, I like the color. Looking forward to seeing it put together.

90camaro355rs

Love that color, cant wait to see the full car in paint and strips!

alan91z28

Paint is on and now being wet sanded

Here are a couple pics from this morning as work in progress

In person this color is really amazing i think. Thanks again to TGO members for the great suggestion on Atomic Orange

dprest68

iTrader: (1)

Looks great Alan! That's going to be sweet.