Year One Crate Camaro Project Revisited

Don't you wish you'd bought and stored away a brand new Camaro back in 69. Not many did, but now you can build one with all new parts and we're gonna show you how,

hey, welcome to the shop.

If you're a regular viewer, you probably know that we do a lot of projects on this show. You probably also realize that we have a tendency to jump around a lot. We've been getting a lot of emails from you guys wanting us to show a complete job in one show. So we decided to roll in the very first project, the crate Camaro

this year one Camaro was a challenge to say the least

and a lot of hours went into it. Now, I know it's been a while since you guys have seen me turn a wrench on this thing. But I can remember when it rolled in as a crate.

On the very first episode of Muscle Car, we rolled the crate Camaro in from dyno

Corn on two forks.

At first glance, it looked as if we would need the entire GM factory to get this thing rolling straight.

You can't look at a project like this as a big job,

you have to break it down. It's a little small ones.

This car proved to be a lesson in everything from paint and bodywork

to wiring,

plumbing,

engine tuning, even upholstery. Now, a lot of you guys have been sending me emails asking for a show hitting all the major high points of this bill.

Well, asking he shall receive,

man. Lou, you guys logged a bunch of hours in this thing, didn't you? Oh, yeah. And it all started with the front clip.

Chris Alston chassis works provided this one. It's a direct bolt in for 67 through 69 Camaros. It's laser cut welded out a seven gauge steel and it keeps the tires in their stock location

with that in place. The body panels were pre ft before sending the clip out for powder, coating,

grinding marks and powder coat don't mix. So everything had to fit just right.

Pre fit is a word I can't say enough when it comes to putting the Camaro together,

all the front suspension parts were tried off his size before any paint or powder was sprayed.

These parts not only look cool, but they give this project all the modern conveniences and space saving technology that today's cars have to offer like this rack and pinion. How slick is that?

And it saved us a lot of space that was tied up by that old steering box.

Now, it's really important that the top fit just right on these drop tops and checking that fit before the paint is sprayed will save you a whole lot of headache in the future.

This is the time that you want to make any needed adjustments, whether it be grinding, banging or any other type of modification to ensure you have a tight fit.

This fit is just right and the windshield frame is true as well. If this does not line up, you have to fix it or glass will never fit.

It's also really important to install your engine and transmission

during the test spinning stage, that extra 600 pounds can cause the body parts to shift and that weight needs to be factored in. When you test fit.

We pulled off the front fenders in order to get the doors on. Once we had those lined up, we reinstall, the fenders added some shins and slapped on the hood and the rear trunk deck

with all the body lines straight and gaps set. This project could take another step towards perfection.

The whole car was sanded down with D A Sanders armed with 180 grid paper.

The spots that would need some filler were hit with 80 grid.

The roughed up surface gives the primer and body filler something to bite into.

There were a lot of small discs between panels on project Camaro. So they were filled in with a little bit of plastic filler and sanded flat

we wanted a complete paint job on our Camaro

even getting those places where the sun won't shine.

That meant we had to undo all our hard work getting the body panels to line up.

No biggie though.

Drilling some eight inch holes through the body

will ensure that we get everything lined up just the way it was before we sprayed it.

After some more prep work and taping everything off. We were finally ready to spray our jams.

After laying down some sealer, we're ready to mix our paint

auto body color and supply hooked us up with everything needed to color our crate Camaro.

We decided our Porsche Guard red and crystal ball silver.

After some seal was applied, we sprayed our jams with two coats of red, let them dry, then put everything back together using our alignment holes.

Next, we retake the car and sprayed more of that white sealer.

The white will act like a light underneath the red, making it really pop with our sealer in place. We sprayed the whole car with Porsche guard red and applied silver stripes.

After it dried, we buried it under two coats of clear, then wet, sanded it and buffed out the shine

man. Look the paint job on this thing killer. The body lines are gorgeous. The stripes are perfect. You know what it's missing. Now, what's that? Some flames? No,

that would be acceptable behavior if this was a pro mod car, but it's not, so we're not going down that road.

Now, you guys have seen the show after the break, we're going to show you the go

coming up on muscle car. This Camaro may look like it rolled off the showroom floor in 1969 but it's about to get a dose of modern muscle under the hood.

Me.

Hey, welcome back to Muscle Car. For those of you just joining us today is Cliff Notes Day on the crate Camaro and we got all the sheet metal down, everything's lined up and the paint work's done.

Now, I've said it 100 times. I'm no body guy. So with all that stuff added away, it's time for me to have some fun

for the go fast part of our crate. Camaro. We went with what else? A crate motor

A ZZ four from GM performance parts

and we married it up to a four L 60 E computer control, four speed, automatic overdrive, nothing special here. Everything bolted right up, but to avoid any firewall modifications, we did change out our A T I distributor to this low profile one for Mallory.

We installed this trick front runner, serpentine belt drive set up from vintage air

and to keep it breathing,

Edelbrock hooked us up with their endura

shine carburetor.

We went with an

A radiator to keep our ZZ four running cool and to keep the driver from overheating, we decided to install this sure fit AC unit from vintage air.

It comes with everything you need from the obvious stuff like the compressor

all the way down to the hoses and the clamps.

This adjustable steering column from Flaming River gave plenty of room to work with and some simple linking, got it connected to the rack and pinion system.

A set of vas

shocks, six way adjustable coil overs were hooked up for the front end and out back stock shocks kept it simple.

13 inch rotors and calipers from bear. Take the spin out of those wheel of antiques billet rally wheels wrapped in BFGG Force KDWS.

Now we all know the best brakes in the world are no good without the proper plumbing. So we hand bent some brake lines covered them in rubber where they would touch the frame, clamped everything down with cushion clamps, installed a stock brake booster and master cylinder. Then connected the whole system together with A N fittings.

The fuel system went in pretty easy starting with a Rock Valley stainless steel fuel tank,

then running some cotton

jacketed Teflon fuel line to this hard line from Russell,

a

balance steel drive shaft from Denny ties our tranny to the rear end

and with the drive line put together it was time for the exhaust.

We used a set of sentences and block hugger headed and a pair of flow master super for

the rest was custom fed by yours. Truly inside. We installed a COVID injection molded plastic dash, complete with a full set of auto meter, ultra light gauges and connected everything up with a wiring harness of painless

with everything wired up the shift that was installed, the fluids topped off. It was time for the moment of truth.

It's a lie.

There's nothing like hearing a year's worth of work come to life for the first time.

It inspired me to finish out everything else.

Year one supplies the vast majority of parts used in this build, but a small percentage are just not being made like these buckets,

the skins are new but the seats are not.

And since this new version is slightly tugged, the rear seats needed some modification.

Oh, yeah.

So there you have it a bumper to bumper build all done in one show. And if you're ever up in Grand Rapids, Michigan, you should stop in and say what's up to Ron Christiansen. He was the lucky viewer who won the keys to this ride.

Now, if you're ever ambitious enough or crazy enough to attempt one of these builds on your own, you gotta get one of these catalogs from year one. It'll show you step by step how to take one of these babies from the crate to the cruising

after the break. We're gonna go to where it all got started,

worried about the future of muscle cars, meet a team of experts who have a passion for keeping that rubber on the road after the break

on my way to

Michigan.

This is the headquarters of year one. The country's number one supplier of parts for muscle cars

with a footprint of nearly a quarter of a million square feet. It has a museum like retail showroom and a warehouse operation that picks packs and ships up to 2500 orders a day

for the past 27 years. Kevin King has presided over this mail order empire for muscle car builders. Yeah, there's no question that you build these cars for two reasons. Of course, there's one is the love and the passion and the second one is investment purposes. Customers wanting both can choose from over 400,000 different parts, everything from body panels, trim

upholstery

speed parts, even brand new steel bodies. But for King and his team of muscle car specialists, the place where creativity becomes reality is the shot.

This is our Ford crate engine from Ford racing. 347 has uh 450 horsepower and 400 ft pounds of torque. It'd be great for a race car. Perfect for a track day car

here. We just installed the new engine in the Burt rentals trans am the uh Stroker motor here.

Wait,

you bust it off Mike.

We

Oh,

that's awesome.

The Hallmark of year one design cars is that the application of technology is always subtle. This is like the ultimate resto mod. You take something that's iconic

uh from a visual standpoint and infuse it with a lot of 21st century power and handling,

building better. Muscle cars is a balancing act

and that's what we're always trying to do. So every time you get into a situation where we're doing a car is dreaming of something that no one's done yet. But at the same time

trying to leave the heritage in place. Example, the 69 Trans AM tribute car, you one designed it and we're going to build it this year on muscle car. This was inspiring other people to

uh to do their car and taking some cues from us. So it's really enhancing, not, not only our cars but the hobby as a whole. And that hobby is growing. Year one employs 160 specialists in all including a marketing department that cranks out over 20 paper and online

catalogs,

a massive research archive with records on virtually every muscle car component ever built.

Order desks manned by technical specialists.

Year one.

This is Jim. May I help you and a group dedicated to specking thousands of components along with building new tooling for obsolete parts.

Morale. Here is high.

The average employee has 10 years on the job and those with 20 get a custom Rolex watch

one also rewards its customers hosting car shows like the annual year one experience at Road Atlanta,

huge family reunion of the muscle car faithful. Three days of men and machines, celebrating restoring and driving the greatest cars in American history.

You know, they're like living the dream they show up and, oh man, there's that car and the guy gets out of, if he pulls it up and, you know, his chest a little bit bigger and he's, you know, his hair is perfect and

you know, they're, they're, they really think it, it gives you the feeling of being special.

Don't let that car leave without a year one sticker on the window

on our way to Michigan.

Sweet.

Take a look at a true classic that helped kick off the muscle car craze. The legendary of

Hall

Ss flashback after the break.

Today's muscle car flashback, the 61 Chevy Impala Ss

over the last 50 years, Chevy has taken Impala and turned it into a household name

first released in 1958. The Impala had style class and plenty of curves. By 1959 GM was built in Impalas that were cruising off dealer lots with huge wings and teardrop taillights. By 1960 the styling was mellowed out quite a bit

and in 61 Chevrolet was using a new marketing strategy to make them follow us fly

off dealer lots and down the drag strips.

The first time double S's appeared on a car was in 1961 and Chevy thought the Impala was the best fit for the now famous super sport logo.

Less than 500 Super Sport Impalas were built in 61.

But they were such a hit that by 1962 GM pumped out about 100,000 of them.

The 409 was also debuted in 61. However, less than 150 Super Sports were lucky enough to have the iconic motor dropped in

Dale Nunnery is a lucky guy. Well, not 409 lucky but nonetheless, this 61 Impala is a gem.

Dale is the owner of classic cars Southeast in Lebanon, Tennessee.

And the 61 Impala is the car that started Dale's love affair with muscle cars. I was a sophomore in high school when it came out

and I thought

man, if I could only have something like that

and can you blame him? This numbers matching Ss is loaded with style inside and out.

Four big lamps up front are planted in a chrome grill body lines on the front fenders blend back into the long sleek Impala profile. A little bit of chrome trim filled in with some racing red complemented by the unmistakable Impala logo turned just as many heads today as they did back in 61.

A

set of six brake lights announced the Impala's presence from the rear. Now top the whole thing off with chrome bumpers and you've got one sexy car,

air conditioning was optional for the Impala,

but with a bubble top and no window pillars, why would you get it?

These cars have so much glass and open room. It feels like a convertible. More than a hard top

348 Chevy coupled with a power glide transmission makes for a great cruiser.

Now, admittedly, these Impalas were not the fastest or the highest performing cars the Chevy put out during the days of the muscle car, but they were an instant hit and they paved the way for some amazing SS cars later on down the road,

the pricey $54 super sport package consisted of a generous application of ss badging

sporty red interior

attack on the steering column

and of course a passenger grab bar just in case you were lucky enough to have one with the 409

power steering and brakes were standard on the SS along with a beefed up LPO 111 suspension package

and the whole thing rides on a set of 14 inch wheels that are topped off by a set of three blade spinners.

These SSS were stunners right off the showroom floor.

We hope you've learned a lot from today's. Look back at the 69 crate Camaro build

next week. The complete lowdown on project El Camino.