The Camaro Club (UK)

Hello, so i'm just starting the interior restoration on my '79 ( i know that my user is '78 camaro - i just decoded the vin and realised it's a '79).
It all needs replacing or updating. I'm wondering if anyone can offer any help or advice in where to get parts/how to restore. I'm in the South of the UK if that helps in terms of getting hold of parts.

1) Seats - still original but in a bad state. Does anyone know where i can either recover or where i can replacement ones? If i can get new ones that look like the originals or similar, would be great. Otherwise where could i get after market ones that still will look decent. (thinking bucket type seats?)

2) Dash - It could do with recovering/spraying but i really would like to get the 76 style dash as i like the curves better. Anyone know if they can be swapped and where to get one from?

3) gauges - They're knackered and the tach is about 20-25 mph out. Plus the dash lights turn on and off as you drive around, making night driving real fun I would like to replace them with aftermarket gauges - again, anyone knows which ones would work and where to get them from? I'm happy to cut and shape stuff so doesn't have to be exact mathching, just nicer looking ones with lights

4) Heat - There's not a lot of it. Anyway i can test the heater matrix is working and if the blower is working without running the engine?

5) headliner - previous owner put some black cloth up and it sags and well, needs a proper job. I'm totally not familiar with this part of the work, any advice out there on how to do it?

Thanks and will post pics as i start to take it all apart

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as far as seats go, i fitted a pair of RS turbo seats to my 76 trans am, they bolted up to the pontiac runners with only a small amount of filing to the seat bases.

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I KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE......



I'M JUST TOO DAMNED TIRED TO BOTHER CHASING YOU !

Thanks, wouldn't have thought they would fit! going to check out ebay...

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To be honest the likelyhood of finding the parts you need in the UK are pretty slim. I've sourced most of the parts for my 1st gen from NPD in Ocala Florida here's a link


http://www.npdlink.com/

The guy you need to speak to is JT he's really helpful. I found it cheaper to import direct than to go through suppliers in this country who would import to order. There are seat covers available for your car from NPD if you want to keep it original looking, but as Biff says, other seats will fit if originality isn't a priority.

For the dash you can buy a "dash cap" which is injection moulded plastic which fits over the top of you cars dash. They're not very expensive & look very convincing when fitted. I think I paid around £60.00 for mine including taxes imported in the from the US for my '72 Trans Am. Just do a Google search for dash caps. Alternatively, NPD do a dash top which might be suitable for you.

The heater blower should work on the car without the engine running, turn on the ignition & the fan switch & you should hear it whirring away under the dash & be able to feel air coming out of the vents. Check that the piping under the dash going to the vents is connected to the vents if no air is present witht he fan running.

Headliners are available from NPD or if you have one as a pattern maybe a local trimmer could make one up for you. Remove the old headliner taking note of which metal rods fits in which parts of the headliner ( the rods are spring loaded into the sides of the roof). Slide the rods into your new headliner & then clip the rods back into their corresponding holes. Get a hopt air gun or hairdryer & then warm up the vinyl headliner (this will allow it to stretch). Pull the liner to the front of the screen as tightly as possible & secure it to the body (I use those big Bulldog clips) pulling it either way to get it as taught as possible. Then go to the rear of the car & pull the liner as tightly as possible & secure to the rear of the body again with clips. warm the headliner again & this time pull each section of the liner to the side of the car working a panel at a time, clipping it to the body as you go. Repeat all of the above procedures until the creases disappear. Warm the liner again & this time get some spray adhesive in an aerosol specifically for upholstery. Un clip the headliner at the front & spray adhesive to the body & the part of the headliner that will bond to the body. Allow the glue to go tacky for a few minutes. This time pull the liner as taught as possible & glue in place, using the same procedure for the rest of the headliner. Even once it's glued, you're still able to unstick it to an extent if you feel you want to pull it a bit tighter anywhere.

You say the tach is 20-25 mph out, do you mean the speedo as the tach doesn't give mph? The most common problem for speedos being out is that the car may be running oversize dia tyres which will throw the speedo out. if this is the case, it's a simple matter of fitting the correct speedo drive to the gearbox. There a numerous gears that you can buy to fit to the speedo cable to get the mph correct. The flashing lights are probably down to a bad earth, or the connection of the lights to the dash. Real Steel probably hold the biggest supply of aftermarket gauges, thoug from a personal point of view I'd rather have the originals working correctly than having aftermarket stuff fitted

hope that helps,

cheers....Nige

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Too much power...not enough hands!!

Hey Nige,

Thanks for your feedback, big help yes!

So in regards to seats, i have seat covers on them already, but they look tatty and the frame itself is a bit rusty so i would like to go with originals or replicas, basically something new and keeping to the original look

I found some places in the U.S that would export a dash but prices were hovering between 600-1200 dollars and no that i;ve taken the car apart i found that it just needs a good clean and going over with some SEM Landau Black aerosol dye. I'm looking at doing custom gauges (the orginals are again quite tatty and i want something that looks a bit more sporty if im going to be at it. Thinking of doing a fibreglass dash insert, keeping to the original but adding a little extra curve and some switches.

For the gauges, i'm looking at Real Steal (Steel?) as they have a good catalogue but they are also round the corner form me. But at the price of changing them all i could be looking at Dakota Digital Dash which is a fully digital dash and looks awesome, but also includes loads of functions such as calculating 1/4 mile, 1/5 mile times etc. It will also help me get over my speedo (yes i meant speedo not tach, thanks for pointing out ) problem as it is auto. It has had a Posi rear end put in and a new auto box so its definately out somewhere and im not very mechanical so im not too sure about changing the gears as you mentioned. More to come on the gauges though as its the last priority at the moment.

For heat, unfortuantely the car is in pieces now and the battery on the floor so cant test it. What concerned me most is that there are no pipes going to the dash vents. There is the plastic Y shape that goes to the top of the dash for the windows, but thats it far as i can tell. Even the Chilton Camaro book i have shows that as standard air flow so im not sure what the deal is with getting heat into the cabin. The heater box is coming out in a couple of days but at the moment i only see the one outlet for that Y pipe.

Lastly for the headliner, i found a company in the US that makes what seems to be a plastic headliner and all you do is attach material to it. They also sell Vinyl at a really good price. They also do another headliner which is already covered, but i think its cloth, couldnt tell too well from the pics. I would ideally go for vinyl! Unfortunately my web browser crashed earlier and i lost all of the websites i had open so i have to trawl through my history now to find which ones they were, so in other words, good news on the horizon!

Think thats it for now, seem to have dash sorted, gauges being sorted and only thing i need is to find more info on seats.

Cheers!!

See below for a pic taken an hour ago of how it's looking...

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Aaaah, that's in bits then not sure how the digital dash works re speedo as I've never been a fan of them, but I assume you're going to need sensors fitted somewhere to "trigger" it. The fact that the gear ratio may have changed when the posi was fitted, along with the fact that the tyres on the rear look as if they're probably a bigger diameter than stock is probably what's been making the speedo read inaccurate. If you decide to keep a standard style speedo gauge,ie not digital, the gear for the speedo merely fits on the end of the speedo cable where it fits into the gearbox & is simple to change.

The plastic headliner sounds as if it's a one piece moulded affair, if that's the case then it's likely to cost a fortune to ship it to this country as it'll be classed as "oversize". Although more time consuming to fit, I'd go for the factory style option.

Thanks for the photo, anymore? What's the final look gonna be?

cheers....Nige

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Too much power...not enough hands!!

Hi Nige,

From what i've read the digital dash requires you to go on a 2 mile drive, they recomend setting up a GPS route that's exactly this distance, then it somehow has all the info it needs to configure itself. Why aren't you a fan of them? Is it more of a look thing/fuctionaily thing? I've come across them recently in my search of a nice dash display and wonder what the hold backs to them are. Sounds like a simpe change then for the gear i thought it would be changing a main gear in the actual box!

Yes the headliner is a 1 piece job, i will have to ask them about shipping as this could very well be too costly as you mentioned. I have also thought about doing a fibreglass one as i still have the original headliner that i can use as a template, it's just a case of it being too knakered to go back in again.

Your welcome for the photo, i have plentymore I will upload them when i get home.

The final outcome is to be similar to the original (pictured below). It was originally gold colour from the factory in Ohio. It was reprayed blue (over the gold) at some stage to a decent level (they removed doors etc for a god finish). It was then painted red over the blue, but not to a great standard. There is lots of paint overspray around edges, rubber seals have paint etc. So i want to (well already have) strip it back to shell on the chasis so i can clean it, repair rust, paint strip the lot to bare metal and bring it back to the same colour. (currently there are also hints of paint run where it was laid on too thick).
The idea is to bring it back to standard but with some small touches.

The original interior was tan, so i've got SEM re dye (it's already been painted with regular plastic black but not very well and its cracked in some places) and will take it all to black.

Engine is a rebuilt 350 small block with edlebrook headers and webber 4 barrel carb with some engine detailing as you can see in the pic. It's got a 3 speed auto box which i will probably change at the end of the year to a manual. It's got a straight through dual exhaust with a cherry bomb on each pipe. Gearbox is new and rear end is a new posi rear, not sure what the ratio is yet.
Carpets will also be black (already got the roll of it). Probably gona go with a CD player with mp3 connection, nothing too crazy in terms of in car entertainment.
It's really a resto project of how it is at the moment. Keeping the wheels etc, they just need touching up with chrome restorer. Rear still has leaf spring but has air adjustable shocks set to about 44-48 psi.

Not sure which paint manufacturer to go with, i've only started looking into these recently. I've worked with House of Kolor before and am looking at sticking to the same colour as on the body, but just a bit shinier and more solid. Have been tempted by some of the range of colours they offer such as pearl and metallic, but i want to stick with the classic muscle car look.

I don't think im gonna paint the stripe, i think i will do vinyl decal as i may fancy going for twin black stripes with a small yellow border, so this way i would have future choices.

I think that's the most of it, feel free to ask away if i've left anything out!

Cheers,

Ray

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How to post pics: When writing a message, scroll down and use the "attach file" option. Where possible, a photo sharing service can be used such as Flickr, Imgur etc. The image location (usually ending in .jpg) can be copy and pasted between the ][ brackets that appear when you click the 'Img' button (you can find this button at the top of the message box).

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Hi Ray, call me a boring old fart, but the digital thing doesn't do it for me at all I'm afraid, a muscle car is a muscle car & fitting electronic do-dahs & bling stuff really just makes the car lose it's appeal to me . each to their own though. I like mine to look as GM intended, that's not to say I don't like them modified, far from it, but I like the stealth approach as I've done with mine. It looks like it's just rolled off the factory floor, but all of the performance mods are hidden & doesn't shout "look at me". Electronic stuff just adds to the list of things to go wrong at some point IMHO.

House of Kolor is a really good product, but if you're not going with one of their pearls, candies or effect paints I'd go for one of the traditional manufacturers like PPG, Sikkens,Glasurit etc as it'll work out far cheaper in the long run with the amount of materials you'll need. Are you gonna strip it to bare metal?? Red with black stripes sounds familiar , actually I'm looking at one right now, albeit a 1st gen

To make a one off headliner in fibreglass is gonna be a nightmare to be honest. I used to own a 'glass laminating shop & it would amount to a shed load of work to make & fit, I'd certainly think twice about this if I were you

Not a great fan of air shocks to be honest (here I go again ) they don't give the best ride or handling I'm afraid. Better to go with Konis or Spax . I had Spax adjustables on my old 2nd gen Trans Am & they worked very well & weren't overly expensive. They were streets ahead of the old air shocks I took off it.

cheers.....Nige

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Too much power...not enough hands!!

Hi Nige,

Always full of tips you are, thank you for sharing I will look at PPG's catalog alongside a couple of others you mentioned. I keep trying to convince myself that's its only going to be slightly more incremental to step up to a House of Kolor pearl but i somehow don't see it happening
I'm actually just waiting on a new air compressor to arrive, should be coming tomorrow. thinking of changing the spray gun too, it's a devilbliss i've used before but it's suction fed so looking at gravity fed ones instead. Red and black stripes.. wonder what on earth you could be looking at

So for those digital dashes, i've included a pic below incase anyone wonders what i'm on about. After looking through real steel's catalog i'm more tempted by regular gauges that fly around the dash. You're right as you said about the muscle car look, wouldn't make too much sense having one in there.

I'm pretty sure i want to strip it to bare metal. I think that if there are already 3 coats of paint on there, there's an improved chance of a weak chain when it comes to chemical reactions. Plus there are a few small dings here and there, very unnoticable but might aswel smooth them out. I found some discs that go straight onto an angle grinder that will do the trick, however they recomend putting some paint stripper on there otherwise you run the risk of heating up the panels. I'm trying to find paint stripper but there's a lot of choice out there, none that i've found specifically for cars (in the UK anyways). Halfords do one, can't remember it's name but it said it's for most metals and woods. My search continues for that also.

The air shocks actually came with the car adn the ride was pretty decent when i drove it home (120 odd miles) but the more and more people i speak to, the more i hear they aren't great. I probably will do a suspension overhall at the end of the year when the weather starts to turn and the shows die down, still leafs on the rear so would be nice to get an all round adjustable set. Then after that will be the brakes, depending how close to zero my bank account is by then

Good thought on the headliner, i'm gonna have to give this one more thought. It's a the bottom of the list right now. Actually, thinking about the to do list, i will need to do some welding to make some minor repairs (few small holes will be made as you will see in the pic below). I already have a mig welder but am not sure what type (thickness) of metal to use and where i could get hold of some from. Have you any ideas?

And here, apologies for posting later than originally menioned, are the pics of the car:

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that's all i have for now!

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How to post pics: When writing a message, scroll down and use the "attach file" option. Where possible, a photo sharing service can be used such as Flickr, Imgur etc. The image location (usually ending in .jpg) can be copy and pasted between the ][ brackets that appear when you click the 'Img' button (you can find this button at the top of the message box).

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