Arick's Franken-maro

[arick793]

Progress will be slow and/ or nonexisting most of the time, but here's what I have so far! I inherited a 79 Berlinetta with a junk interior, junk motor and junk paint from my dad when I was 13 (10 years ago). In the last ten years I took out the junk motor, stripped the junk paint and stripped the junk interior! haha. I took it all apart at once and got overwhelmed, so I put it in storage until I had the resources (time, experience and $) to put it back together. I've messed around with a handful of other Camaros since then, but I finally got serious about this one about a year ago. I ordered a lot of parts while I was deployed to Iraq, and while I was finishing up my last few months in the Army, I bought a junk second gen and rebuilt all of the parts that would swap over to my 79 so IN THEORY I could just park the two cars next to each other and have my dads old car on the road in a few weekends. But then I knocked up a local girl and nothing has been simple since. At least I got the parts car finished.

Here's my 79 Berlinetta that I'm rebuilding. It has low miles so the body is great with no holes, and it hasn't been on the road since 91.





Here's the parts car that I built for it. It has high miles and needs a drivers side quarter, but it otherwise mint with a clean title. I'll sell it cheap when I'm done. It has a flat top 350 with a big unknown cam, stock Vortecs, headers and an edelbrock performer intake with a 600 eddy carb. Stock 350 with a shift kit and manual steering box. I also bought racing seats, and the car had an original black interior, so everything that's not t-top specific is getting swapped. I also removed the subframe and painted it with POR-15, and used poly bushings throughout. The plan is to unbolt the wiring harness from the firewall, unbolt the 4 subframe bolts and slide it under the 79.

Motor:


The ugly azz car


I bought these wheels off of a member. 315/35/17's in the back and 245/45/17's in the front.



I also have stainless steel brake lines for the whole car and braided lines for the front and back to replace the rubber ones. I have a 50-200 horsepower nitrous kit too, and if I don't have to sell it to fund the rebuild then it'll get hooked up.

[KJZ28]

AWESOME!! This car should be sweet!

[olstyle]

Sounds like ya got a good plan. Keep at it.

[arick793]

Originally Posted by olstyle

Sounds like ya got a good plan. Keep at it.

Since I don't get a lot of time to work on it (clingy girlfriend, newborn baby and it's a 45+ minute drive) I NEED to have a good plan, so I can make the most of my time. I'm going out there Tuesday for a few hours to try out my new impact gun and hopefully get the subframe off of my 79, and bring back a few more extra parts to sell. Anybody want a heater box vlock off cover? I decided that after ten years of building and daydreaming about the car, when I finally DO get to drive it I'm not going to let a little bit of cold weather stop me, so I'm putting the heat back in. How's $35 plus shipping?

[arick793]

Price for the heater core cover is dropped to $20 plus shipping.

I finally got around to pulling the subframe. Three of the nuts spun in the cage so it was a little more of a pain. I was able to get the front bolts off by heating the nuts up with a torch and pounding the cages back into position. One side was even more stubborn and I had to pound a screwdriver in between the nut and the cage to keep it from spinning. I had to cut a hole in the drivers side floor to do the same thing to a rear bolt. Here's a cell phone shot



Since I'm not making the kind of progress that I'd like to, when the weather breaks I'm going to have a big BBQ at my moms and invite all of my buddies who are good with cars, and we'll spend all day wrenching on it and drinking.

[BusDriver]

Wish I was close enough to come. I love cars, and I love BBQ even more.

[loudvolvo]

looks good, im glad to see another motor the same color as mine

[arick793]

I got the subframe and front end on the 79 today. I'll get better pics and a video if I can get it running on Saturday.

[Leiuk]

Nice project! I'm really liking the wheels, I'm stuck in deciding to get for my new project. I'm in between a set just like yours, or more of a rally style similiar to what I already have.

[Blu-By-U 79Z]

love the project and keep up the good work. I have a question about the wheels. How wide are the rims? Im lookin for some rims that i can get some nice tires on the rear and they looked awesome. Thanks for the help -Matt

[arick793]

The back wheels are large by huge. I bought them used with the tires already mounted so I don't know how wide they are, but I've got 315's on the back and they're almost flush with the rim. I forsee a lot of BFH clearancing to get them to fit.

[Blu-By-U 79Z]

thanks i am pretty sure they are 17x9.5. They will look great tho. -Matt

[arick793]

I haven't done any work at all to the car in the last two months, but today I managed to sneak out for a few minutes and install the fuel line and the brake pedal. I snuck out again later and test fitted one of my wheels, just so I could feel like I made some progresss. It looks like I won't have any rubbing anywhere!

[Sonic78formulaz28]

Looks like you have a good starter car. I like the wheel and tire setup. Now you have me wondering what backspace I need to get 315s to fit on mine.

[V8TEC]

Sounds like a great plan!

Thanks for your service to our country.