A belated introduction of our newest addition to the garage - Dawn's 1970 Camaro that we picked up a few weeks ago. Through a co-worker, she learned that his sister's husband wanted to sell the car. He sent us a couple of pictures and a professional appraisal that had been recently completed. We scheduled a time on a Saturday to drive up to the Rochester, NY, area to look at the car. In hindsight, I should have simply trailered up with a cashier's check in hand as upon seeing the car parked in front of their house I knew that Dawn was going to want to add it to the collection.
http://i667.photobucket.com/albums/v...ps6ksae1ia.jpg
We drove the car twice that afternoon and looked everything over real well. As best I can tell, the car was originally a base model Camaro equipped with a 307 cubic inch engine, probably a 2 bbl carburetor, and a two-speed Powerglide putting it to the ground through a 2.83 equipped open rear. The car was essentially complete and solid with a nice interior. It had originally been blue and the repaint was most likely completed by a prior owner. There is a bit of rust in the lower rear right quarter and the panel beneath the rear bumper. The 307 is long gone and in its place is a semi-built 350 sporting an Edelbrock intake and carburetor, RHS Pro Torker heads, a decent cam, Hooker 1-5/8" long tube headers, and dual exhaust with an H-pipe and what sound like turbo style mufflers. Both the engine and transmission had been rebuilt during his period of ownership and he had receipts for everything.
http://i667.photobucket.com/albums/v...psu43tnhkq.jpg
http://i667.photobucket.com/albums/v...psbtax46nl.jpg
http://i667.photobucket.com/albums/v...psjehfwgct.jpg
Some modifications do appear on the car, it has later model seats, a Hurst Vmatic2 ratchet style shifter (you get one bang of the gears), it has a Z-28 grille, later model 14" wheels, an aftermarket Custom Autosound stereo and speakers, the shroud was removed and it has a flex style fan, it was converted over to Accel HEI ignition, a tach was mounted to the steering column, and there are gauges under the dash. It has the AC vents in the center of the dash, but no other indication of being an AC equipped car. An additional leaf is in place on the rear springs and it is equipped with air shocks. Fortunately, the owner had the original fan shroud, the fan that was on the car when he purchased it, and a good supply of additional parts and literature. There was no jack or lug wrench, however, it did come with a full size spare tire. The car is clean and although it does have some surface rust underneath, it is nothing that cannot be dealt with and other than the panels mentioned above I do not envision any further replacements as being necessary.
http://i667.photobucket.com/albums/v...psv0def2fi.jpg
http://i667.photobucket.com/albums/v...psv3bxr8re.jpg
http://i667.photobucket.com/albums/v...psvbo2s87b.jpg
We struck a deal that day and made arrangements to go up a few weeks later with the trailer to pick up the car. Upon arriving home, we unloaded her and ran her into the garage to give everything a once over. Our local Notary was away on vacation, so we ended up tripping to another town to register the car and obtain a plate. I have already added the car to our Hagerty policy so it was insured for the trip home, just in case. Everything looked good, so we hopped in to go for our first ride. We made it about 3 miles before the engine sputtered and died... running out of gas on a back road. Fortunately, my daughter and her boyfriend came to the rescue with a gas can and we were back on the road within about 45 minutes. It was then that we learned that when the fuel gauge reads "1/2" that the tank is empty. I called the prior owner later that weekend and he confirmed that this was in fact the case. It certainly made for a memorable first drive and we'll laugh about this one for years.
Since acquiring the car, I have further inspected everything and made a few tweaks. The first thing that had to go were the stock seat belts which were mismatched and not much fun to use. In '70, although the car came with a shoulder belt, it was simply another lap style belt mounted to the roof with no retractor. Instead, there are two buckles bolted to the center hump, one for the lap belt and one for the shoulder belt. Through NPD, and from reading on the NastyZ28 website, I found replacement belts from Morris Concepts that include a retractor, install in the stock mounting locations and work like a modern seatbelt. They were pricey, especially with the "GM logo" on the buckles, but were well worth it imo. I also picked up a new washer bottle as the original was missing from the car. I found out why soon after receiving it - the front left fender had been replaced and there is a section missing at the front corner where the bottle mounts. I will fab up a replacement panel that will attach behind the bottle and be essentially invisible.
The car will be a driving restoration and we will just do a bit here and there. I will be reinstalling the fan shroud after I source an 18" fan (the other fan that came with the car is about 1" too big), the tach will be removed, and I will be swapping over to a dual snorkel air cleaner in place of the chrome one. I may also revert back to a Q-jet as that is what I am most familiar with and have all the parts and tools to work on. I will need to drop the fuel tank as I am measuring 200 ohms of resistance on the sender wire when the tank is full. I tried re-grounding it but that did not alter the reading so something is amiss. I did source a scissors style jack (stock it came with a bumper jack) and a lug wrench from a Ford F-150 that fits the 13/16" acorn lug nuts (stock would have been 3/4"). Unfortunately, the rear speaker precludes mounting the spare in the correct location so I will have to remedy that at some point.
Now for some more pics from the cruise in on Thursday:
http://i667.photobucket.com/albums/v...psygvoka5z.jpg
http://i667.photobucket.com/albums/v...psvndusjsn.jpg
http://i667.photobucket.com/albums/v...pspahdcneo.jpg
http://i667.photobucket.com/albums/v...ps4ybnx4ee.jpg