Going to paint the frame. Was afraid that powder coating would fill the "forming marks" on the frame. Same goes for the A-arms.

BE is bare naked no more....
 

Finally got the BE rear painted and back together. Still need to mount up the brake lines. The yellow stripes on the bottom of the differential were found when stripping the paint as were the white inspection drips and number. I also saw those similar yellow stripes on a 9,000 mile unrestored COPO from Columbus at GoodGuys last summer. I changed the white number from a "6" to a "3" during resto as my car's assembly sequence was "3". Can't say for sure that's what the 6 was for, but I went with it.

Jim...thank you for sharing your build. We are all anxious to see your progress.

That there is a beautiful rear end!!!!!

Found a couple more "toddler" photos from back in the day (71-72 timeframe) at Edgewater. I think the Daily's we're from Dayton and were big Mopar guys that ran some factory light-weight hemi cars in the area.
Posted on Facebook, now adding here. Still searching for a "baby" photo!

Jerry and Ray Daily from Dayton had some of the fastest hemi cars around. It was something to see back in the day with COPO's and Hemi car going at it in SS/D and A and B/MP.

Turned the ratchet......
 

Finally in a phase of doing more tightening than loosening:smile: Restored my original cowl induction frame and flapper. Started putting the front subframe back together. Car should get painted later next week, going to stop in and check it out in a few days before they shoot it.

Car update....
 

Went to visit the car today and took some pics of some previously unseen areas. One important part of the mission was to document the hidden VIN's on the car so for you guys that are keeping track, there's a few shots for you - BTW they both match the dash VIN plate:biggthumpup:. Also included a pic of the trim tag after a rag and lacquer thinner took several heavy layers of paint off. Removed the original package tray for the first time since the guys at Norwood put it in - nice shot of original body color underneath. Floors are pretty well stripped down to good virgin metal. There's still a punch list of things to do yet before paint so it might be another week or so before she gets some party color on her.

Nice photos,thanks for sharing this with us.

I haven't checked in to this site for a while.

Looks like the CopoCamaro has you completely under its spell now.
Glad it's turning out to be such a really clean body.
Great Work you are putting into it.

It's going to be an extremely righteous car :headbang:

Made some more progress today. Started cleaning up my original disc brake valve. It had remnants of "ice blue" paint that was applied in 1970. Dated 155th day of '69. Also finished up the rear end by mounting the leaf springs - pretty happy with how that all turned out. Cleaned up my original parking brake cable hook - any idea if this was originally natural metal or phosphate? Guy I met at a local car show told me he had an original jack assembly from his car sitting on a shelf. Now it's going to be part of this car, it cleaned up really nice!

Well, got the front subframe pretty much completed today. Let me know if you see anything wrong, now's the time to fix it. Most everything you see is original to the car including brake lines/clips, all steering components, 2 pc. rotors. Ball joints, and bushings replaced with OE quality stuff. Brake calipers are originals and dated correct, just not original to this car. Natural metal stuff is all cleaned and coated in Baoshield.

I don't know enough about it to know if it's correct or not, but it sure looks good!

This is really looking nice, Jim. Thanks for sharing!

I agree with BGH, not a purist but looks good. Especially with mostly original stuff.

/Rich

Looks beautiful!

Can't tell, but if you didn't "blue" your draglink: Brownells Oxpho-blue. Very simple to do, a little goes a long way, and adds a nice touch to welds on driveshaft.

I also thought it brought back a nice raw cast finish to the yokes, opinions probably vary on that.

I believe engine frame mounts more of a gloss, double check, I'm at work, notes at home.

Very enjoyable thread.

Nice work!

Yenko member Edgemontvillage is doing one of the most definitive restorations on a '69 Camaro ever, over on Team Camaro - this is page 23 where he gets into the blue-ing process for drag-links. Following anything he is doing is a good call for your resto.

https://www.camaros.net/forums/133-b...roject-23.html

Thanks for the comments guys. I actually had the engine stands painted a 60% gloss originally and thought they looked too shiny so I re-painted them. Maybe they should be closer to 45% instead of 30% like the subframe?
I've seen Loyd's thread and you are correct, that is an "over the top" resto! I'm not saying the drag link shouldn't be that dark gray finish, I'm just wondering then should the outer tie rod pcs. that hook to them also be that way? I'm assuming same supplier would have used the same process on all those parts?

I did a little more archeology on the car tonight now that I'm getting into some of the trim pcs. The 4 corner marker lights are shown in the pic below. The two on the bottom are the rears, the two on the top are the fronts. The fronts have the "ice blue" overspray from the 1970 paint job. The rears were covered in trunk spatter from when the car got painted black in 1978. I started to clean the trunk spatter off and "lo and behold" red paint!??:confused2: I called the guy that painted the car back in 1970 to ask if the rear tail panel was painted red back then. He didn't think so but wasn't sure. As I'm talking to him, I'm looking at some of the photos the 2nd owner's son gave me. I had never noticed it before, but there it was, one pic showed a red tail panel! That pic also shows the trunk lid sans spoiler and where the paint line was between the blue and white. In the conversation, the painter told me that he might still have the old paint cans in his shop - wouldn't that be cool! He said the three colors he used were "ice blue pearl metallic, silver mist pearl white, and candy apple red.

Sort of has the old Sox&Martin race team look in that picture.

Very cool carchaeology!

Weekend Update: Worked on some more small bolt on parts today. Floor pan plugs all dated H37 - same as some of the other sheetmetal on the car. ZL-2 throttle arm cleaned up good as did the rear axle snubbers and brackets. Kind of a weird group of stamping marks on the snubber brackets - more pronounced on one bracket vs the other. All these parts and original bolts will go back on the car.

Wow! Very Cool!

Now we're getting somewhere....
 

underside got some color this week. Most of you will recognize the photos taped to the firewall....I told the shop to duplicate the color and overspray patterns of Grady's car as I really liked how that one turned out and it was very close to what I found when I hand-stripped mine. Should get body paint next week.

That is one heck of a nice restoration....wow.

more work completed this weekend.....
 

Got some parts back from the plater so I went to work correcting some of the brake line clips per Lloyd's suggestion and also "gun-blued" the drag link per 32KZ's suggestion. Also buttoned up the brake hoses going to the calipers. Started disassembling the steering column, documenting a few of the date codes along the way. Also got back my Hurst 3138 shifter parts - just need to put it back together:biggthumpup:

weekly update....
 

Some more detail stuff.....Cleaned up the door hinge bolts and strikers, uncovered the original LB paint on them. Original floor pan plugs have been re-finished, and got the shifter reassembled. Many thanks to Eric D. (Crash) on this site for posting the YouTube video on shifter re-assembly! Also dunked the original parking brake assembly in evaporust and shot it with Boeshield. The black paint has a few scratches but decided to leave it original.

Those parts turned out great! Do you have a link to Crash's YouTube shifter rebuild video?

Nice work. What type of plating did you use on the shifter?

Silver zinc is what they told me they used.

https://youtu.be/tNN10cxa9yg

Rags to riches.....
 

More detail stuff. Restored the original rag joint, before/after pics, pretty happy with the results.

WOW, great looking rag joint.

The floor drain plates look great. Is that finish actual spangle galvanize?

Now we're jammin'!
 

Fresh Lemans Blue is a sharp color. We're getting there....

Awesome! What paint system did you go with?

No. The cost to get the real spangle galv was prohibitive for such a part that is rarely seen once installed. My brother came up with a home-grown method to reproduce the look. Took a few trials but happy with the result.

Jim the other short block that I have is cast dated G 9 9 with T0911 on the front pad

The story of my original engine.....maybe?
 

So the racing partner of the guy that raced my car BITD had told me that the original engine was sold to a local guy who put it in his "pulling tractor". I was finally able to track the guy down (Tom P.), he now lives in Texas. Here's the engine story he relayed to me:
Doug had rebuilt the engine with an 1/8" overbore to sell to another guy. That guy never came through with the money so he bought the engine off Doug. It was a 427 with 4 bolt mains. He then put a tunnel ram and 2x4's on it and dropped it in his pulling tractor. Ran it for two seasons - it was a great running motor....Doug had a reputation as being a great engine builder, particularly Chevys. Tom then sold his pulling tractor with the engine in it to a guy who lived in Georgetown. The guy took the tractor to his first pull in Eaton, Ohio. Tom was their also and watched the guy make his first run with it. On the 1st run, the guy started in the wrong gear (he was a rookie). When he mashed the throttle the engine revved to 9,200 rpm and came apart throwing a couple of rods out the side of the block.
With that said, Tom told me that he wasn't positive that 427 was out of Doug's car. He knew he bought an engine out of Doug's car, but he thought it was a DZ 302 out of his Lemans Blue Z28. Doug's wife had a Z28, but it was Cortez silver, so who knows if this story is about my original motor or not, but thought I would share it here.
Tom also told me that Doug was a very good drag racer. He never used the clutch with that Rockcrusher, shifting under WOT the whole way.