🔧 BUILD LAME Turbo V6 Camaro

[sktchy]

Man idk you could probably just about get new price for the legendary welder that built the upside down m90 Pontiac couldn't you? Might have to put that thing in a museum if you hold on to it much longer.

 

[v6buicks]

I'm pretty set on at least getting the digital version.

 

[GTPpower]

Yeah these have really dated themselves compared to digital displays.

 

[Turbocharged400sbc]

Analog>digital

 

[GTPpower]

It's nice that they now come with the upgraded pedal. I had to spend over $100 to get that thing iirc. The pedal mine came with was barely better than the trigger switch on the torch.

My buddy bought one of these. And his car is faster than mine.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B076BSD6PG/?tag=tcg21-20

 

[v6buicks]

It's nice that they now come with the upgraded pedal. I had to spend over $100 to get that thing iirc. The pedal mine came with was barely better than the trigger switch on the torch.

My buddy bought one of these. And his car is faster than mine.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B076BSD6PG/?tag=tcg21-20

Damn! That's cheap. I haven't heard of that one, but the reviews look good. I'm going to have to do some googling.

 

[GTPpower]

It used to be pretty high on the list for recommended welders on sloppy mechanics.

 

[v6buicks]

You all don't have to hear me be all indecisive or bitchy about valvetrain at least until this thing is started. I'm very unconfident in the results, but I decided that in spec is in spec. Some preloads are on the high side and others on the low side, but this is as good as it gets without adjustable rockers.

I think I'm going to start playing with the rear end next since I still haven't bought a welder. I don't really want to tear more stuff apart, but it would be nice to sell that rear end and find out if that housing I bought actually fits or if I got screwed. Adapting Mustang brakes is going to be an interesting challenge.

 

[v6buicks]

I had a moment of weakness, but I can also construe this into my strong patience paying off.

I had no idea what I was going to do about my intercooler until it was right in front of me, but I knew that I didn't want to reconstruct the whole front end around a chinese air restriction. A local guy was selling a Huron Speed 4" intercooler with 3" openings and it was made to fit an F-body. The owner actually won his class at War in the Woods while pushing 1000hp with this intercooler so it must be good enough for my POS! At $200 I'd say this was a decent buy. They're usually $300 without shipping brand new.

THICCC

I'm excited to get going on this car again, but I'm also very interested in my moolah. I've got most of my savings tied up in pretty generous CDs so I'm doing well, but I need to be careful. The GN is going to remain my main focus until all the parts I bought for that are finally installed. I also need to get that mofo on the road to get some data. I'm not spending, but work is not stalled!

 

[Mr_Roboto]

Have fun integrating it. I know I had fun integrating mine into the Eagle.

 

[v6buicks]

Have fun integrating it. I know I had fun integrating mine into the Eagle.

Hoping to get it actually upright this time. I thought the tilt wouldn't bother me, but it really does.

 

[brokenratchet]

This is gonna be sweet when you get it going again. Maybe I did come to the right place for these things.

 

[v6buicks]

This car's very existence was giving me anxiety, and I needed to come up with a new plan of attack. Although part of the anxiety was the mess I had made, I realized that it needed to get worse before it could get better.

Now that the nose is naked, I can finally make my decision on the rust situation. I will not be installing a tubular front end. It's too invasive, and I'm not sure that I have the ability to get it done. Plus, it's like $800 for the kit.

There will be some small ugly patches with my plan, but I can get rid of the rot without scrapping the entire car. As satisfying as it would be to cut everything off and rebuild, I think I'm just going to cut small sections out and rebuild as I go. This way locating everything should be a lot easier to manage.

Tho only original metal that I'll be using from the wheel wells forward will be the fender supports, frame horns, four short stubs of the core support and anything that bolts on like the hood latch and support. The rest will be cut out, and the bare minimum will be replaced with 1x1 square tubing.

I may also get extra fancy and bolt parts of it in instead of welding it. I hated rememovo g this kmember and undoing brake lines to remove the engine. F that. I'd rather remove everything in front of it. To be honest I'm not even sure how I'm going to get the engine in from the bottom with this sloppy kmember anyway.

Off I go. I'll plan to keep playing with this until more parts show up for the GN.

 

[v6buicks]

I had a bunch of time to play in the garage, and the GN was at a good stopping point, so I tried to figure out where to start with the rust on this thing.

After some thinking I decided I would start here. At first I thought this would mostly just go away, but the fender and headlight share a bracket that mounts here. I'll have to rebuild the top and bottom sections.

I wanted to knock the bottom out first but before cutting, I removed the fender/headlight bracket and tacked a placeholder in so that I would know exactly where the new piece would need to sit.

Once I had a new piece made, I broke the placeholder out, cleaned everything up, and welded the new piece on.

The bracket seems to fit where it needs to be, we'll find out when the car has to go fully back together I guess.

Sprayed some paint so that the car can survive a couple months without being touched again.

Next time I have a few free hours, I'll probably start doing the other side. I don't want to get too crazy with the actual core support until I have a radiator.

 

[v6buicks]

Just a baby step forward, but not before taking a step back. I tried test fitting the headlight back on the side that I cut up and found that I already made a pretty big mistake.
I forgot that the head light has seven flippin fasteners holding it in and I cut out a section the held a bracket which held two very critical headlight mount studs and the bumper support plate. I also lost one of the lower bolt holes so that's three total mounting points missing per light.

I didn't panic because it's just the headlight and I'd find a way to get the other spots close enough with just four fasteners. I also got stupid lucky because I was able to bolt that bracket into its original location with a small sliver of what was left of the original hole. If I cut just a 1/4" higher up, I would have been guessing. From now on, I'm mocking everything up again before I cut anything.

Below is the headlight and inner bracket barely mounted.

I had actually mangled the other side too because it was so damn rusty over there. I just mocked up the bumper cover support so that everything would get lined up again.

Here's the bracket bolted on and just barely hanging on to a piece of rust. I'm shocked that worked.

I pondered for a while how I would redo this. The brackets are nice and thick, so they could be blasted, painted, and reused. However, I hate the design. Brackets for brackets makes no sense to me, so I ultimately decided to ditch them and integrate new ones into the non-removable section of core support.

First I would need to clean up my area a little bit. Look at this.

The bracket I came up with is amateur at best, but the headlight fits and it pretty dang solid even without the top being attached to anything. I found some bolts that worked out to be the perfect studs, hopefully I have two more for the other side.

I'm pretty excited about how much better my welding is getting. I think I finally have a handle on the machine. I'm going to skip adding a tab for the seventh headlight bolt. Seven is just ridiculous and unnecessary. The light will be plenty rigid without it.

After taking some more measurements, I was able to plan my next move and make another cut.

Cutting that top section out made all this feel real. I've been looking forward to this for a long time, and I'm finally starting to see the rust go away. I am leaving a small stub of the original support because it would be a colossal amount of extra work to rebuild it, and it's not rotted out anyway. That fender bracket goes there, but that hood stop bracket is also welded to the back side. We'll leave it be.

Cardboard Aided Design

That was pretty much it for today. I should be able to finish this side up next time I get out.

I did make myself nervous one last time though. I will be pretty stressed out over this car until the front end is all done because the amount of critical mounting points up there is nuts. The parts are all slotted which is good, but I still have a ton of room to screw up too!


I'm excited to maybe be making steady progress, but a lot of that is driven off the wishful thinking that I'm not screwing up. The new radiator should be on the way. Hopefully it fits right where I think it should. It's a Griffin with a 3" core. It's probably overkill for the V6, but I still have the illusion that I'll take this thing on a road coarse or swap in 455 or Northstar. The 2.5" core cost the same, so I'd assume that I'm only adding some water weight if anything.

 

[v6buicks]

GUYS!!!

It works! I'm going to use a stock MAF! The Audi/VW Passat/A4 MAF is apparently very similar or identical to ours. I thought there would be a slight issue with where the o-ring seals to the bore but this thing is perfect as-is.

Performance MRP sells them on eBay. They have multiple pipe sizes and they make them already welded to pipes with honeycomb too. I would have preferred that if I wasn't planning to weld this to my existing charge pipe.

This changes my plans for finishing the car a little. I might be able to do some math, scale the MAF myself for the pipe size change, and continue running my 80# injectors until I have all my major bugs figured out. THEN I'll bother Dyno Brian to get this thing dialed on 120s. That's obviously a long way away though.

My radiator is here too. I haven't exactly figured out how I want to mount it, but the stuff I've found online is either jank as hell or not going to work at all. I think I'll need to figure something out on my own once the core support is closer to being finished.

 

[Turbocharged400sbc]

Upright or layed down?
Where ya find the rad?

 

[v6buicks]

Upright or layed down?
Where ya find the rad?

Upright. It's a Griffin 1-55241-X. I got it on Summit.

 

[ASlowV6]

Very nice!

 

[v6buicks]

I cut the jagged rust off so I could mock up the radiator without scratching the hell out of it. It's going to fit right where I want it.

Welded this little cap in, and got to doing the fun stuff.

After 3 hours of fooling around I think I came up with a plan for what I want, but I'm undecided on whether I'm actually going to use this ugly mess or completely redo it the right way.

I would for sure be using this ugly fish plated as-is if I didn't feel like I needed to cut and step it down at the end. Originally I planned to just leave it all on one level and weld a whole second tube below, but that would have made it look incomplete and kinda silly.

I made some little triangular caps to at least finish it up. Maybe that will look good enough for me to send. Regardless, I'm waiting to weld this piece in so that I can use it as a template for the other side.

For the record, I'm still glad I'm not chopping the whole front off and starting from scratch with a tube kit.

 

[v6buicks]

Had a little more time to kill and didn't want to waste it.

It's still ugly but I can probably live with it if the other side doesn't look much better.

After with paint and final installation of all the other parts, I don't think the ugly welds are even going to be that noticable. I'm not changing my plan though.

I watched a couple videos on how to properly cut and bend square tube, and I think I can do much better.

 

[v6buicks]

I gained a new mindset last night. Since my wife was letting me have the day to do whatever I pleases I decided to take full advantage of it.

I got up relatively early, ate breakfast, and took my coffee to the garage.

Instead of scrapping this part, I decided to put the grinder to it instead.

It's still ugly, but good enough. It's also better than what it replaces.

I leveled the car, and figured out my placement. You like my purple mini level?

Buzzed in!

And repainted.

Finally got to use my rivnut set!

Headlight fits great and it's solid. This very utilitarian support structure looks a lot better with the whole front end together. I'm very happy with how this turned out.

At this point I thought it was time to start tearing into the other side. This was a bit stressful as it added more parts to my pile of shit to store in the basement and a couple action items to be performed later... my electrical handy work on the line lock was not my best, and the way I wired it meant cutting to remove the fuse block. Oops. I'm going to have to add a couple connectors.

I knew this area was going to be really rough, but stripping all the plastic and wires away eased my anxiety.

Before I started cutting I wanted to do a full mock up of the front end. I have to make sure that everything was still going to fit.

Omg 🥹 it's been so long since I've seen that face!

I'd say it all fits even better than before! Now I know that if it doesn't fit when I'm done, it's something I messed up on the driver side.

Here we go! Time to build a mirror image...

...except the fuse block adds another challenge. It mounts to the section that I'm fixing to cut. I have a vision that I'll try to execute tomorrow.

Luckily AutoZone sells 50 packs of M6 nuts with free spinning washers because I've lost a bunch of them, and many are rusty anyway.

 

[v6buicks]

Today will be my last opportunity to get anything done in the garage for at least a few weeks, so here I go.

Disgusting.

I really need a spot weld cutter, but my normal drill bit, pry bar, and grinder method work just fine.

Cover plate welded most of the way on. I didn't want to fully weld it because the square tubing may end up sharing part of it.

I paint stuff temporarily to avoid flash rusting since I can't predict how quickly I'll be able to come back to it. I even filled some of the craters I made to make the top of the frame rail semi-flat. Now the factory spot welds look like poop.

I'm still winging all this. The fuse block mount is an extra challenge I wasn't ready to deal with. I'll figure something out, but until then I need to get some more flat bar which is why I didn't build the new fender/bumper bracket mount today.

I hope I can get back to this thing sooner than expected because I'm really motivated all of a sudden. After 4 months of stay-at-home mom life, my wife got a text out of the blue from her bosses bosses boss asking if she wanted to further advance her career. After scrambling once again to get our son into day care we actually succeeded this time. Wife will be making the big bucks but working pretty much all hours of the day. This means that I'm the primary care giver of our son starting Tuesday. RIP cars?

Nah. I may be losing my time for a while, but at least I'll be able to afford this hobby again. Just buying that damn radiator kinda hurt me. Big garage updates will be on the way once the GN is back in storage.

 

[v6buicks]

I had some time this weekend, so I picked at the car again. Although I was very productive, I totally forgot that I hadn't made a fender bracket yet. For weeks I thought I was going to dive straight into core and headlight support, so this was a slight mood killer.

Oh well. I knocked that out in a couple hours on Saturday.

Then I built this trash on Sunday. I'm sad about the welds, but at least I used some actually geometry to make the bend this time. I'm actually using that wood broom stick as a point of reference. It's cradled on each hood stop, so that I know everything is the same from side to side.

That's I all I had time to do. Life is crazy, but I also can't blame it all on that. It's mostly the part of the project I'm at. By the time I move the GN, get dressed into shitty clothes, pull out all the fabrication tools, I need to squeeze in as much work as I can before I have to clean up and put all that away. Most of the time that I'm remotely motivated to work on this stuff during the week, it's just not worth it. Hopefully progress will pick back up again once all the painting and welding are done.

That 2025 goal of being back on the road isn't looking too good if I'm being honest, but I'm still holding hope. I have axed a couple things that will help. Once again, AC is probably getting shit canned. I made a pretty major measurement oopsie that will probably require making a pretty distasteful cut to the firewall if I use that custom HVAC box I made. It may also have sealing issues. I'm also not going to worry much about the rear end. The old one is still in one piece. It won't put up with launches, but I will have some initial tuning and debugging to do before I start doing that anyway. Axing these two items make the whole project feel more manageable.

 

[ASlowV6]

Most of the time that I'm remotely motivated to work on this stuff during the week, it's just not worth it.

This is exactly how I feel the vast majority of the time. When I get a couple spare hours, I can usually think of several other things I’d rather do than put time into getting my car no noticeably closer to being on the road.