Ace_Murdock

Hello all,

It has been a while since I last was on this board. Now that I have some more free time in my day I have been visiting it more and more.

Just to recap, I have a 85 Camaro z-28 with all of the goodies including TPI, and T-Tops without the Iroc package. It is somewhat of a nice car except for one dreded thing. The strut towers (inner fender wells) are rusted out.

I am also now looking for houses with big garages so hopefully end of this year I can finally start to pick up where I left off a few years ago. I will also be buying/building a car rotisserie to help me out in my restoration. I need to get at the underside to beef it up for the use of one of my 400 small blocks that I have lying around .

After doing some searching, I have come to the conclusion that I cannot find any NOS components. And instead of trying to find a nice southern car to butcher up, thus not letting some other person restore it in the future, I have been contemplating of doing a conversion to a Corvette front suspension. There are a few companies that sell kits for hotroders that I might be able to work. They use the late 80's vettes and early 90-96 vette components. And these are going for about 800 some dollars from Flat Out Engineering. I am sure the Camaro uses approximately the same frame to frame measurement as a few of the kits that are being sold there.

I also see once in a while some C5 front ends come up for auction out of totaled cars.

Has anybody attempted to do this sort of "Upgrade" to their thirdgens? I was never a big fan of the strut tower suspensions in these newer cars.

Here is a link to the Parts Wanted forum that I had going for a while.
https://www.thirdgen.org/forums/exte...ml#post4082410

Anyways, anybody have any info?

Stephen

iTrader: (12)

You'd be charting unexplored territory there.

Since 3rd gens have no frame, I dunno where you'd put the upper control arms, short of building a custom subframe under your car.

Even Corvette IRS rears in F-bodies are rare to find (i only know of 2)....

Ace_Murdock

The kit I am speaking of can be seen here, I have welded in a kit like this into a 51 for pick up, they come with a Cross member which most of the stuff bolts to.
http://www.flatout-engineering.com/products.html

Judging from the picture, the engine cross member welds into the right location and all of the bracketry appears to weld right to that.

Still want to hear from everyone, I will probably attempt this later this year early next year, as soon as I get my garage up and running.

If I do this, I will be sure to post lots of pics and hopefully start a thread that could become a sticky some day!!!

One additional question, since I don't have my car down here, does anybody have a measurement from the inside of one frame member to the inside of the other frame member along the centerline of the engine crossmember?

Ace_Murdock

I got a message from the Flat Out Engineering folks with a measurement of their cross member's width. Now I need to find out the distance between the front two frame members that bolt to the cross member. Can anybody take a measurement for me? I am hoping that it will be a bit wider than 29.5 inches. If it is, I can weld in plates and brackets to meet up with the new cross member, and it should all be good to go!

crytical point

C4 front suspension is better imo

Ace_Murdock

Why would the C4 be a better suspension than say a C5 or C6? You probably have a very valid point, I am just curious.

fast377

iTrader: (4)

I've been tossing this exact idea around for a couple years now. Me and a guy on ls1tech have been talking about it. It really wouldnt' be that hard. All you would have to do is weld plates around the stock frame rail to box it, keep the stock lower control arms, weld mounts to the top of the frame rail for the upper control arm, and weld mount tabs for a coilover. Using the C5 spindle, you would wind up .25" wider than stock.

The local street rod builders I've been talking to seem to think it will work fine. I just can't decide if I want to do it. I just dropped a fortune for paint.

crytical point

C4 is from the same era and was a very very nice handling car and not to mention the parts would be cheaper than say a C5 or C6. People have swapped the C4 suspension over to a F-body with modification. Ohh and the C4 had a pretty nice SCCA record during its production years so that should say something about it.

Stephen

iTrader: (12)

I've seen the rear IRS swapped into a 3rd gen, but never seen the dual front a--arms swapped in. Got any links to show a 3rd gen with the front end swap?

paul_huryk

Obviously a C4 front suspension is not a direct swap, but a front end conversion with a lot of fabrication and trial & error.

The question is - why would you want to (go C4)when you can just convert the front end to coil over struts; something that would be considered normal these days.

crytical point

I am in a rush today but this was done to a old nova and will give you a good idea as to what is needed to do on a third gen.

http://www.stevesnovasite.com/forums...d.php?t=114044

Ace_Murdock

Well, I am getting a measurement from my Father (where the car currently resides) of the frame rail to frame rail distance.

Does anybody know the distance from the two faces of the flanges where the wheels mount? And how much did the 80s Corvettes differ in wheel base from the Camaros? I could just ask for a kit that gives me the width of an original Corvette and modify the frame of my Camaro to make it fit.

Or can anybody give me a site that tells me the wheel base side to side and front to rear of the two cars (thirdgen Camaro and 80s vette).?