Crate Camaro Complete!

Coming up on muscle car, the crate Camaro is back. We built a brand new 69 convertible and today we turn the key

later and all original

Hammy, low miles and high performance.

Welcome to muscle car. You know, I'm really tired of pushing this thing around

and if everything goes as planned, we won't have to anymore.

It's still better than when I first brought it in here. It was in a crate year one calls it a reproduction part. I call it a challenge to build an entire car from their catalog starting with this new 69 Camaro body from dyno

Corn at

the pre

in paint. It slowly started to come together. Last time you saw it, we hung suspension and reassembled the body.

Now, there's still a gaggle of stuff that's gotta be done and there's some things that were taken care of since the last time you saw it. But by far the coolest thing is that a friend of mine, Igor came into town on some business. He did me a favor while he was here in case you haven't known

he's a pin striker.

He grew up in a family sharing two passions, fast cars and fine art.

Igor's

destiny was obvious since all of his school books were fleed.

He's been watching the show. He fell in love with the project and he just wanted to be a part of it. Well, he's part of the project now forever and I just had to show that to you guys before it got hidden behind the gas tank.

We got this thing from Rock Valley and it's almost art in itself. Stainless steel, internal baffles and they'll custom make one for anything you got.

Now that the gas tank is in, I can finally run my exhaust because what I'm gonna do is fab my own and for a couple of good reasons being at nothing under here is stock. I wanna make sure it clears everything not to mention. I like to keep it up against the body. So I don't have any clearance issues.

If you haven't done this before, it's not that difficult. You just take one piece at a time and make it go where you want it to.

I'm using what remains of this two and a quarter exhaust kit

that was left over from a previous job.

I place the flow masters where I want them. Then I make the pipe come to end.

Well. It's been pretty easy up until this point, but now it gets tough. And in my opinion, first generation Camaros and novas are the biggest pain to get it over the rear end and out the back.

If you watched me make the headers for Old Blue Hair a few weeks ago,

it's really the same process

with both sides done. Finish it off.

Last time you saw the engine, we finished up the coolant and the AC system, all that's left is the electronics not bad considering it too came in a crate.

It's a 350 ZZ four small block from GM performance. It's good for 350 horse for the Edelbrock Performer RPM manifold and their 600 CFM car

all flowing through some block hugger headers from Sanderson

and topped off with a vintage air front runner serpentine set up.

Now, I've already installed my Mallory Unite

distributor and the coil. Now it's time for my LFO 60 E transmission control module from GM. Now these overdrive transmissions have become really popular in the last few years because everybody knows you're taking it in the rump when you're at the pump.

After the engines fired up, we'll program it with our laptop.

Now that my plug wires are in place. It's time to put in my battery. Now, I'd love to hook this baby up and fire it up, but I can't because I got to take care of that Spaghetti Factory where my dashboards at

now I was gonna run a stock dash set up, but I decided to go with this one from Covan.

It's an injected plastic and it's even textured like the original ones and they sell a foot

line of auto meter gauges. I decided to go with the ultra lights because they're silver faced. So they match the stripes.

Now, all this wiring, it may look intimidating but it's really not painless, does a really good job of marking the wires all throughout the car.

And another thing, nobody's re popping these heater control switches. So I went to the junkyard and found myself a good one.

Our focus right now is to get just enough done to test fire the engine

that includes putting in the shift because we all know that guy who expanded his garage by starting one in gear. This one came from low car. It's compact, durable and easy to install.

Now, before I hook up that battery, I'm going to put butt connectors on all my loose wirings just in case any of them get hot. Then I'm going to do all my fluid levels and don't go away because when you come back from the break, we're turning the key

next on muscle car. This is what we've been waiting for.

The Great Camaro wakes up.

I'm glad to see you guys made it back. You're just as curious to see if this thing is gonna fire as I am. I got it all wired up, I'll finish up my fluids and we'll see if we got a hand grenade on our hands.

Now, it's been a long time coming almost a year as a matter of fact, and there's still a lot of cosmetics that have to be done on this thing, but we want to fire it up so you can hear it today. Hit it, Tommy.

All.

Remember this is a new engine. It's never been fired. So it's going to take a little bit of priming

and a little bit of timing to wake it up. Go.

It's a life

underneath. I found no leaks.

All the gauges are working

and to top it off the engine sounds solid,

man. That's some good news. The mechanical end of this thing is done so I can put all my attention to the rest of the project so we can get it on the road. Let's finish off the dash starting with the pad and the vents

and the remaining switches like the seats. Some things are not rep popped. We got the ashtray and the glove box from Rick's first generation Camaro and finally this trim panel and yo shoot handle because you never know when the shoot might hit the fan.

Now, last week we pre ft all the mechanical stuff for the convertible top. Now it's not that it's a difficult job. It's just really time consuming. So I'm not gonna tear it out to show you how to put it all in, but I will show you how it works. A small electric motor turns a hydraulic pump which creates flow

that activates both the cylinders to raise and lower the top.

Now it just felt right in a place. No major alignment issues. But the cover, that's a whole different story. It's gotta be on there nice and tight. So there's no wrinkles. So you gotta push and pull just to get it to look right. So you might wanna do what I'm gonna do and go find an upholstery guy

and you're gonna have to have them do something else for you because nobody's re

popping seats. So you're gonna have to go out, get yourself a good set of used ones and then you just can't have them covered. Let me show you why

because they don't fit. So that only means one thing. It's time for some modifications. Now, all I gotta do because these tubs take up so much room is measure out where I want my seat to go

and it's time for some fun.

So I'm gonna have to take a full six inches out of this seat and these corners here are really hard to recreate. And so is this middle part? So what I'm gonna have to do is I'm gonna have to take some out of here and I'm gonna have to take some out of here

with the end pieces in place. I can confirm how big the center should be.

This is some thin metal you're working with here. I prefer a tig welder because I can control the heat a little bit better.

We

Now, how's that for flying by the seat of your pants?

Let's see if this baby fits.

I knew it would. Now, it's the same thing for the back of the seat and then it's off to the upholstery shop.

Now we can finish the rest of the interior outside of a little trimming, everything is pretty much an easy fit. We had a whole bunch of options for the front seats

but we kept it stopped with new skins for some old originals

to avoid a common mistake. Door handles on before the windows, the door glasses, a breeze defined the rear quarters are a little bit more difficult. However, they're both tedious and time consuming to put in.

Now, 80% of these parts came from year one. We did, however, have to get some parts from some other vendors. Rick's first generation Camaro classic industry

covan

and auto meter

there. You have it. The interior is about 90% done. Now, I missed some stuff because there's a lot of parts here and that's ok. So keep a list as you go along. If I'm half as lucky on the exterior, you see this baby rolling down the road

coming up on muscle car, the crate Camaro hits the street and next, we're gonna see a rare mo

bar that was born to burn rubber.

Today, we're gonna look at a car that's from my neck of the woods. The Bronx New York back in the day. We had some ridiculous street racing going on and this one was right up front. 69 hemi

Super B

it was born to run

today's muscle car flashback. The 69 hemi

Super B.

This is not just any old muscle car. This one is a warrior

Colin Comer's 69 Super Beat was a street racer from day one. A stripped down predator with only one purpose in mind. The guy that bought it new, wanted to go street racing in the Bronx. And uh he was 21 years old and this was, this was his idea of the ultimate street car. All this thing did was street fight today. This rare hemi

only has 4000 miles on it and it got most of those one light at a time.

Nobody has any record of how many street fights it won. But even today,

you can make some pretty good guesses.

The

hemi option was expensive, nearly a quarter of the price of the whole car. So they didn't make too many of these only 38 4 speed hemi

hard tops were built in 69.

No options but the

hemi and the drive line that went in it, the heavy duty four speed, a 410 gear in the Dana

60. Nothing to make it look better.

Everything to make it go faster.

The double scoop Ram Charger hood came standing on the

hemi

and they needed it to let that massive engine breathe side scoops right behind the doors were optional, but they were just for show.

Super bees looked like two door taxi cabs and that's pretty much what they were, plane bee bodies with just a little chrome around the wheel wells, fat super be stripe across the rear quarters

dog dish hubcaps on the standard F 70 fifteens finish off that plane.

Simple look. Chrysler said the whole package was meant expressly for those interested in sanction drag racing.

Yeah. Right

running the streets was about as legal as this one ever got. Burning the tires, light to light and listening to those two cars moving some air

even big time Mopar guys like Colin gotta admit Chrysler didn't build the tightest bodies back then.

But then when those hemi

were up front, who cares? It's all about that straight line,

you accept it for what it is and when you get on the throttle and you run it through four gears, you kind of forget about the squeaks and rattles and when you hit a bump, it does the two step, it's all secondary to the performance and the image and the way the way they were

now, it is possible that this thing could operate in a less hostile environment,

not that you wanna do. So this car wasn't exactly meant for comfort. It's basically a plain Jane wrapper for the

hemi bench seat, hard springs, basic gauges. Just look at that 4000 miles on it.

Colin so

be every now and then gets a nice drive through the park,

but it's not really happy unless it's going all out. Sometimes a little street fight is just too much to resist.

But once in a while you get some kid in the Honda who wants to run and give him a good lead and then you can go by him and show

him what muscle was like 30 years ago.

You could say it was about like that

getting the Honda. You're right. I'm getting back on the Camaro.

We're taking the Camaro on a shakedown cruise next on muscle car.

Hey, come on, hurry up and sit down. We're gonna finish this thing today. But let me tell you what we've done so far.

We customized our own exhaust, finished up enough wiring to fire it up,

customized the rear seat and got the convertible top working and completed the interior.

No wonder I'm tired and I wanna drive this thing today and we're getting close, but there's still a few things that I gotta get done

with the wiping mechanisms installed, the cow can finally go on

and of course, you'll need these to wipe the drool off from those onlookers.

Since this is a year one project.

We let them choose the wing.

This one's originally for a 69 Trans Am.

I think it works

with the side markers

and tail lights in place. This shiny new rep pop bumper completes the rear

Oh, yeah,

the trunk locker and the bow tie, I forgot to order, which is on my list,

with the exception of the emblem in the back, all I'm putting on for chrome is this rearview mirror.

You know, the minimalist approach less is more.

Well, it's time to put a face on this thing. But before I do that, I gotta tell you guys something. When you get your wiring harness from painless, they don't send you any pigtails. And the reason is, is because they assume that you're rewiring your car and there's an existing wiring harness. Well, that's not the case with this. So it's what we had to do is called classic industries. And they sent us every pigtail for this application.

And let me tell you, there was a lot of them.

Now, we could have gone with the hideaway headlights that came on the RSS S package.

But here too, we decided to keep with the less is more theory. So the standard grill got the nod.

Well, the last thing left to do is dial the transmission in this four L 60 E being that it's electronically controlled will actually allow us to marry this transmission to the car. But we got to give it a little bit of information, tire size, rear end gear, size, number of cylinders, and then we're good to go

and we push it no more.

This car took a lot of time and effort and at times was a little frustrating,

you know, like any major project, but it was well worth it. It's handling. Well, it drives well, it even feels very solid.

Now, dyno

Corn will be launching a new body this fall. It's a 70 mustang fast back. So, while you mustang lover, you better start looking for a parts car.

It's time to give you one back, other parts except for now it's a car that, what they're gonna do is they're gonna take it on the show circuit so we can see it after that. They're gonna give it to one of you guys what you need to do to check our website, check their website to find out how to enter and how to win this thing. Until then I'm driving with the top down

later.