1. Our roller was rust-free, but gobs of Bondo hid a shoddy quarter-panel replacement. Another bummer was finding the “rebuilt 350” was really just a 305 rebuilt with a can of spray paint. On the plus side, the Camaro came with a ton of new parts. By running the numbers, we found it was an original 327 car shipped in Seafrost Green.
To the rest of the world, magazine project cars seem to lead a charmed life. They go together smoothly with none of the drama that the average gearhead seems to have to deal with. Well, we’re here to tell you that’s a big lie. The cars we build in these pages experience the same hiccups and issues as the cars you build. Such is the case with our ’68, dubbed Project Track Rat. Bought for $6,000 off eBay, it was a decent roller that we later found had more than a few hidden issues. Namely, the right rear quarter had been replaced. And not just the quarter-panel. The entire rear quarter of the car was actually from a ’67. It’s amazing what a few cans of body filler can hide. We replaced the mangled sheetmetal, added a new framerail, and soon Track Rat was looking good. In fact, it was almost ready for the paint booth at Best of Show Coach Works in Escondido, California, when a friend of ours (Cris Gonzalez of JCG Customs) had an idea to stretch the quarters. Now, he had done this before on some ’69 Camaros and it looked killer, but we found out the hard way that the body lines of the ’68 and ’69 are nowhere close to being the same. At first we thought the experiment went great, but as we worked on the quarters, the proportions were just too far off. After noodling out the problem with Cris, he came up with a new way to do the quarters for the more curvaceous ’67s and ’68s, and eventually the rear of the car was reworked and looking right. That little detour, combined with other aspects of life, cost us almost two years. We’re pretty sure more than a few of you can relate.
But we’re not here to dwell on the past. We have a Camaro to build, and once again the project is moving full speed ahead. In the end, we hope to have a Camaro that’s as fun to take to the dragstrip as it is to drive around town or on any road course.
With the body now looking good, it was time to get our project to roller status, and that meant installing our Chassisworks g-Link Canted-4-Bar suspension system. This design uses four individual arms, or links, to position the rear axle under the car. It doesn’t require a Panhard bar, which saves room and weight. The Chassisworks system is also adjustable so we’ll be able to dial in just the right geometry for whatever sort of track we happen to be blasting down. So without further delay, it's time get this Camaro built and on the road.
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2. In the first stretch, JCG sliced the quarter down the center body line and pulled the p
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3. In the process of the stretch, the body lines became a bit “lost” and undefined. They a
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4. With the back of the Camaro fixed, we could then start fitting the new NPD fenders. To
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5. After bodyworking the fenders a bit, it was time to install the Anvil carbon-fiber hood
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6. And here’s how Track Rat sits at the time of the rear suspension install. It almost loo
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7. If you don’t have a rearend housing then the most painless way to go is to order a FAB9
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8. The g-Link system’s cradle is referred to as being “self-positioning.” It pulls this of
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9. After bolting together the cradle assembly, BOS used pole jacks to hold the cradle brac
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10. Once the brackets were properly located, we traced them on the framerail, including th
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11. With the bracket removed we were able to grind off the undercoating in preparation for
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12. After grinding the zinc coating off the edges of the brackets, BOS reinstalled them un
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13. We then installed the crossbar. Once everything was in place, the bolts were all torqu
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14. The instructions said the brackets could be stitch-welded, but we opted to fully weld
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15. After some quality time with our Eastwood MIG welder, this was the result. With all th
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16. It may seem almost like overkill, but these suspension pickup points are under extreme
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17. For a clean look, we broke out our Wurth spray gun and laid down a few coats of their
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18. As the name implies, this kit utilizes four bars to locate the rearend. In the g-Bar k
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19. The lower links attach to the Camaro using the existing leaf spring mounts. Ours were
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20. The lower link was bolted to the new mount using the supplied 3/8-inch bolt and then t
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21. We secured the non-adjustable end of the upper links to the bracket under the Camaro u
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22. Using 3⁄8-inch hardware, we installed the billet lower shock mounts. Per the instructi
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23. Before raising the FAB9 housing up under the Camaro, we went ahead and installed the p
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24. For shocks, we’re running double-adjustable VariShocks. These will allow us to dial in
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25. Per the instructions, we attached the upper links to the lower hole on FAB9 bracket. I
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26. The shocks came with small stainless steel spacers to fill the gap between the shock e
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27. The lower end of the shocks used the same spacer deal. The double-shear lower shock mo
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28. The sliding-link antiroll bar system featured a 5⁄8-inch solid bar mounted to pads tha
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29. Moving to the brakes, we assembled our 14-inch Wilwood hats and rotors, then safety-wi
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30. The rotors came in Wilwood’s E-coat, which will keep the surface of the rotor not swep
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31. Lastly, we installed Wilwood’s new four-piston Superlite radial-mount calipers. The ne