1.The stylishly seductive...
1.The stylishly seductive new fiberglass dash for second-gens from Greening Auto Company was taped into place for mock-up purposes to visualize where the Vintage Air evaporator unit would hang.
There comes a time in every project build where all of the heavy fabrication gets completed and it’s time to start an intermediate reassembly of the car into the mock-up phase where the piles of parts get a rebirth of sorts. It’s the time when you can step back, look deep into what you have created so far, and marvel at the progress. For Orange Krate, our ’71 Camaro, Peter Newell of Competition Specialties in Walpole, Massachusetts, decided it was time to start plugging in some key components such as air conditioning, heat and cooling, as well as dialing in the suspension and grounding the car on its new rollers for the first time.
To bring the car to this stage, there were a number of key components addressed. Newell started with the air conditioning and heating system since it would be imperative for the car’s driver to be in total comfort as he passes the competition. Vintage Air offers two packages for the second-gen Camaro as well as countless stand-alone components to make your installation a breeze. Since Orange Krate will be heavily modified, Newell decided to go with their Evaporator Kit, which includes all key components for setting up your system from inside the car as opposed to the Complete Kit, which includes everything to finish the installation from inside to under the hood. For the purposes of mock-up, Newell’s main concerns were to establish and hang the Vintage Air Gen IV six-vent evaporator sub-case with 204 ECU to the inner cowl setup where the heating and air conditioning lines would run, then mount the drier to the condenser framework. Seeing that the car will face all sorts of cooling obstacles from the race track to the streets, it was paramount that it could keep its cool in all given situations. Addressing this, a call was placed to AutoRad since their aluminum radiators have become legendary in the cooling field. Assembling their handmade aluminum radiator core and radiator/condenser with dual fans and custom shroud was a snap being all of the major cooling components came pre-assembled from their factory. Once mounted to the Detroit Speed Inc. front subframe, it was clear that the car had made significant headway.
2. Here’s a portion of the...
2. Here’s a portion of the components we received from Vintage Air for the cooling conversion on Orange Krate. Additional parts included all wiring, relays, fittings, hardware, and instruction manuals for a complete installation of their ’70-78 Camaro with factory air evaporator kit (PN 565070, and ’70-78 Camaro condenser kit (PN 021070).
Bringing the car to its mock-up completion, it was time to have the front fenders blasted clean, primed, and bolted into place with a Classic Industries RS header panel and lower valance to tie in the frontend sheetmetal. Newell then bolted on the wicked Boze Lateral-G three-piece wheels capped with BFGoodrich G-Force T/A performance rubber, and dialed in the Detroit Speed QUADRALink rear suspension to set the stance. There’s nothing like a low-down stance to show off a car’s newfound attitude.
Stay tuned for plenty of additional trick tech to come on project Orange Krate as we continue to bring the car closer to completion with each and every article.