The Camaro Club (UK)

I decided to make a fan shroud for the radiator yesterday as the electric fan only covered the centre (obviously) of the rad. I started with some flat sheet, took width & depth measurements from the rad & folded the sides to a depth of 30mm to fit the perimeter of the rad. I then placed the fan which has a small plastic shroud onto the steel shroud & marked out where the hole had to be cut, allowing 5mm extra to form a lip. I then cut out the hole with a jig saw & folded the 5mm flange over with a hammer & dolly to add strength. A couple of nuts were welded to the inside of the steel shroud to mount the fan to & a couple of nuts were welded inside the top & bottom 30mm flanges to mount up to the brackets that I'd previously welded to the top & bottom of the rad.









Todays little project is to get it painted & mount the whole lot with the fan to the rad



Here she is all painted. I etch primed the shroud first & then sprayed it matt black. Next up is to mount the fan & fit it to the car.











Here's the fan mounted to the shroud. I've also added a spun ali rad overflow container. That's posh for an "aluminium drinks holder".







cheers....Nige

_________________
Too much power...not enough hands!!

I decided to make a simple radiator closeout panel that will fill the open gap between the radiator core support & the front slam panel. here you can see the gap.







I made a cardboard template first









Then transfered this to some sheet steel. I then cut out the shape, trial fitted it a few times to get it looking right. I folded a small 5mm lip to the trailing edge to give it some strength.







I then gave it a couple of coats of satin black & screwed it into place. I was originally going to make it so that none of the screws/fixings were visible, but I figured that by doing it this way it'd make for an easier life if I ever needed to remove the panel for access to the front panels.





Cheers...Nige

_________________
Too much power...not enough hands!!

I've been asked umpteen times by people as to why I bothered repairing all of the original sheetmetal when I could have bought new repro parts. Well, one is that I'm a cheapskate & secondly the repro parts don't fit very well, needing a lot of remedial cutting/welding to make fit. So I thought I'd post up some of the problems that I encountered with repro parts.

The car came with a repro radiator support panel & inner fenders. When I was originally lining up all of the panels I found that I couldn't get a good gap between the bottom of the doors & the front fenders, it was as if the fenders needed to "drop down" at the front. The problem was that the fenders were bolted to the radiator support panel, so there was no up/down adjustment. The car had all new aluminium bushes to mount the body to the front subframe, so I assumed that the bushes must be the wrong thickness, which would cause the rad support to be too tall. On checking I found that the bushes were correct. I then remembered reading on a US forum that someone had a problem with alignment after fitting a new rad support. It turns out that the early ones weren't dimensionally correct & were too tall from the point where it mounts to the front bush/subframe to the point where the fenders mount on. Yep, sure enough I had an early rad support.:tdown: Even by removing the ali bushes it was still too tall, so I ended up cutting the mounting brackets off & re positioning them. Sorted, or so it seemed.

The front fenders fitted perfectly, that was until I tried to fit the inner fenders. In fitting them to the fenders, they seemed too small, as if the radius of the inner fender didn't match the wheel arch opening. Yep, sure enough they were different. So I ended up cutting/repairing the inner fenders to fit the arch openings. Once the fender/inner fender were mounted to the car I found that the mounting brackets that hold the inner fenders to the cars body didn't line up with the holes in the inner fenders. Not only were the brackets skewed sideways, but the brackets also stood around 20mm proud of the inner fender. I ended up having to cut out a pie shaped piece, re weld it & bend the brackets to fit the inner fenders. I can't remember the number of times I had to remove those brackets to get them fitting "just so", but lets just say I could do it blindfolded now.

Here's how the brackets fitted at first







You can see the square tabs that are threaded here, they're supposed to line up with the holes in the inner fender











This is how much metal had to be removed (this is the opposite side though, it seems I didn't photograph the piece cut out of the other side) This is shown ground down after welding







Here's the bracket after welding







Here's one of the brackets after painting







So what should have been a simple bolt together part became a lot of hard work to fit. All in all it took approximately two days just trying to get it all fitting as it should. Aaaargh!!!! I hate repro shit. I'm just really glad I didn't use any other repro crap on my car, so for those that have asked, that's why I repair things,..... that way I can guarantee they'll fit :pmsl:.



Thanks for following the build thread, I'll post up some more stuff after Xmas.

Happy Xmas everyone & have a great New Year

cheers.....Nige

_________________
Too much power...not enough hands!!

Finally managed to get the rear spoiler painted & striped. I ended up having to remove the threaded studs that are bonded to the spoiler as they were too rusty to thread the nuts on. I bonded in some new studs & it was then it was just a simple matter of putting some silicone around the holes in the trunk to prevent any water leaks & then bolt it in place.










You'll notice that the stripes don't actually go onto the rear lip of the trunk lid. The cars were painted this way from the factory as the spoilers were painted off the cars. The dealers however normally couldn't be arsed to remove the spoilers from single colour cars when a customer wanted Z/28 stripes sprayed on, so they normally ended up painting the stripes with the spoilers left on the cars & in doing so brought the stripes onto the trunk lid lip.
Front spoiler & bumper next

Cheers....Nige

_________________
Too much power...not enough hands!!

Aaaaargh!!! why don't things ever fit properly??? :mad: did a trail fit of the front bumper yesterday, prior to taking a mould from it in'glass. As you can see the bumper line runs perfectly parallel to the lower valance here







But at the other end it's a totally different scene altogether.










I've checked the angle of the lower front valance & it's correct, so the bumper must be out, although there doesn't appear to be any damage to it. It might be an early repro one, so if that's the case it's got no chance of fitting.

Nothing for it but to "modify" it somewhat to fit. To be continued.........

Cheers.....Nige

_________________
Too much power...not enough hands!!

I eventually decided that the best option was to cut the bumper in half, that way I can position it exactly where I want it to be. I initially left a small piece in the middle with the intention of just bending it to shape, but that didn't work too well, so I cut it into two pieces.






The two halves were then mocked up to get the angles right. I decided to cut out 15mm from the length (7.5mm off each piece) to bring the ends in closer to the front fenders. Here it is welded up






I then decided to weld up the bumper bolt holes to make it look like the Endura style. The bumper is now mounted from underneath. I cut out squares of metal to fill the holes for the mounting bolts.






They were then welded up & ground smooth







I then trial fitted it again to see how it looked. I sanded down the whole bumper to remove the chrome (very laborious ) & ground down the leading edge the whole length of the bumper to a more sharper point.










I can now get it ready for primer. Since these pics were taken I've actually managed to get the bumper to be an even more snug fit by playing with the adjustment available :tup:

Cheers.....Nige

_________________
Too much power...not enough hands!!

Managed to move the snow to open the garage doors to get a better perspective of the car with a bumper fitted







Cheers....Nige

_________________
Too much power...not enough hands!!

After having ground down the bumper & added a sharper leading edge to it as per the Endura bumpers, it was ready for etch primer & some 2K primer filler. Fortunately when repairing bumpers you're normally able to repair them without using any filler or stopper as the metal is sooooo thick. Just takes a little bit more time & effort, but it's nice to know that it could be chromed very easily if needs be in the future, cheers......Nige

_________________
Too much power...not enough hands!!

Finally managed to get some free time to paint & fit the front bumper & spoiler











Cheers.....Nige

_________________
Too much power...not enough hands!!

very impressive
well beyond me!

Bob (who is currently under Butch) tells me that all this container travelling has left Butch needing some chassis derusting?

What would you recommned as chassis paint/anit rust?

_________________
Kind Regards
TopCat
Secretary
Classic Camaro Club
Member of The Association of American Car Clubs UK
Email :tboles@strathnoon.co.uk Websites: http://www.classiccamaroclubuk.com and:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdhLJtR_ZY4