1967 RS Duramax Camaro

This is my first day back on Compd in a long time and thought this would be a good time to share what I've been up to.

I bought my Camaro from my mom when I was 18 and built it as a high school "senior project" which was required for graduation. After I graduated, I drove it around town and to work all summer, until it started raining in October of '06. Since it had quite a bit of rot (or at least what I considered quite a bit) I decided it was time to tear it all apart and restore the body.

I had the body dipped to remove all the rust, bondo, etc. and got to see what I was up against. It became clear that it was wrecked a couple times in the early to mid 70's before my mom owned it and was "repaired" very poorly. It needed a lot of work.

As time went on, money became scarce, family became divided, and my car sat for 6 years. So in January of '12, I decided it's now or never. I made a deal with my boss to keep my Camaro at the body shop I work at so I could work on it and fix it the way it should be fixed. I've tried my best to take as many pictures as I could along the way. All of the body work was done by me.

Day 1 right after my lunch break from trailering to the shop and mounting it on my rotisserie.

Super Bowl Sunday morning started cutting out the old sheet metal. The rest of these were taken over about a 6 week period working on Saturdays.




I had attempted to replace a crumpled frame rail a few years back and realized it was a lost cause. You can see the end of it through a cut out in the trunk floor.


A shot of the new rocker panel spliced in.

New right quarter test fit.

New tail panel test fit.

Here's how I patched in the driver side quarter. Since I had to screw around with fixing the door gap on the passenger side quarter (which I don't have pictures of...) I decided to patch the drivers side. I taped out the perimeter of my cut, cut out the old rotten wheel well, removed and treated some surface rust, etch primed and sealed everything, traced out my new patch panel with the old quarter on top of the new, cut it out, punched out a lot of holes for my spot welds, and then welded it on.

Beofre pics? Does it have a dmax now or its going to?

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I cut out a portion of the dash that was rotten. Forgot to take pictures of the finished product.:nail:





Then I started on the floors.








I removed all the surface rust, seam sealed and sprayed primer sealer on the floor inside and underneath. I also patched a couple spots on the passenger side but again, I forgot to take pictures.

On my birthday in February I drove down to Pinole, CA and bought my rear axle. I found it on craigslist the night before. It's a Chris Alston's Chassisworks Fab9 housing with their eliminator 2 4 link brackets. I got the link bars with heims, wish bone locator, brake rotors, calipers, aluminum 3rd with 3.89's, Moser 40 spline axles and spool, 11/16" wheel studs, hardware, anti roll bar, coil over shocks and a few other things. I got a really good deal and couldn't pass it up.

I bought my rear subframe kit from Chassisworks. It's their Eliminator 2 rear frame kit. My friend/coworker/future brother in law Bernie has helped me through this portion of the project. All of the welding on the rear subframe has been done by him.

The anti roll bar kit I got with the axle turned out to be garbage so I bought a new kit.

Measured 25" forward of the rear axle centerline to mark the floor for my cut for the front crossmember.





Then I got to cutting.





This is what it looked like before.

madmikeismad said:

Beofre pics? Does it have a dmax now or its going to?

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Click to expand...

I don't have any before pics on my computer or my phone. If I can get my hands on any I'll post them up. I've had the dmax sitting in it before, but in about a month it will find it's permanent home under the hood.

Here's a couple from when I first set it in there.

Oh my bad, you still had A LOT to post LOL

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Looking very good! Awesome job on fixing the cancer and the rear end!

Yeah its definitely gonna be sexy. Hell, i'd throw a motor in it and drive it as is lol

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Nice. Can't wait to see the rest. Looks real good now.

Wow!! Attention to detail. I very much like!!

Nice work!!!!

Thanks for the compliments guys. I uploaded so many pictures on my photobucket account and the order of them all got mixed up. I'll post some more pictures of my progress when I get home from work tonight. I realized that I missed some of when I was finishing the body work and reprimed the whole car.

Very nice work. I have a '72 GMC truck that belonged to my grandfather that I want to do a frame off resto on. I've been considering a duramax swap in it as well.

Wow! That's amazing! I would be happy to own a first gen let alone a duramax first gen!!

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looks great!