Taking our '69 Camaro into the Modern Era - Detroit Muscle S7, E12

i'm mark crist thanks for watching detroit muscle we know you don't want to miss a single episode so click that subscribe button don't make me call your mom today we take our 69 seafoam camaro into the modern era getting the engine out so the guys down in engine power can freshen up the small block plus we add a better handling suspension so it'll ride like it's on rails [Music] hey y'all welcome to detroit muscle we've got our camaro all ripped apart but it's all good we got the answer right there to solve all our problems so the question is how long did it take you to get all that out of there man it didn't take me that long cause if you shake a camaro hard enough stuff basically fall right out from under it let's hope that stuff falls in just as easily maybe add a couple of tubes of elbow grease and a few quarts of labor we're going to need something cause we just plumb out with what i got done today so let me hook the forks under there and just tow all that stuff to the scrap bin no we got to get that engine down to engine power so them boys can work their magic so if you'll get us a stand i'll go ahead and get the bolts out all right i'm on it all right got an engine stand and i got this handy little thing heck yeah put that on there and make it a whole lot easier to get that engine out [Music] all right you ready for this yes sir come on in here a little more a little more a little more a little more a little more all right back up come on up [Music] all right tell me when all right boss all right here we go what was the firing order on that again uh one two six nine four seven three keep going keep going [Music] give me a win win all i do is win tom go on up all right let it down buddy there you go [Music] very nice i'm sure you guys recognize these two old fellas to say mike and pat know their way around an engine is a huge understatement they definitely know what it takes to make power these boys eat sleep live the combustion engine they're always porting torquing tweaking things to get every drop of horsepower out of every one of their fire breathing creations worked their magic on every make and style of engine under the sun like what's known as the leaning tower of power in the mopar world a 225 slant 6. we all know to make one of these perform they had their work cut out for them [Music] so after a few go fast parts and a good bit of their handiwork they almost doubled its power we've used them a few times and they never disappoint like this 557 cubic inch big block ford that made 700 horse then add a squirt of nitrous and you're well over a thousand ponies 1080 on power 1119 pound-feet oh and how could i not bring this one up our hellcat killer challenger they took the stock 6-2 third-gen hemi boarded stroked it to 426 cubic inches and when it was all said and done we had four digits of power that would shred the tires at any given moment you could call mike and pat a shoe-in for this bill fellas i hope you all like this beauty i was very excited to see that i am which is good it's all complete and you say that now when it's complete like this we're going to run it just like this with the ram's horns on it we're gonna stick exhaust on it uh we're gonna run this stuff too as well and see what it makes because we know what it made on the chassis dyno we'll see what it makes on the engine night how'd it run in the car didn't run bad it kind of could have used the tune-up but you know with it being a four-speed you can just about make it do what it you know whatever you want it to do in a way but it wasn't no powerhouse by any means all right well that being said what do you want us to do with it well we want to make it this is going to be a resto mod so we definitely want to modernize it we decided not to go with ls like mike and i talked about before but we need to at least add efi to this and might as well bolt on some power while you're in there well i think we have a good plan we're you know obviously very familiar with this kind of setup and uh we'll put some spiffier heads on it and a better manifold and uh you know a you know a carburetor style efi perfect it's not going to set any national records but it's going to run very very nicely reliable easy to start that's what's happening that's kind of what we're looking for we don't need anything making jobs and gobs of power just better than it is and reliable it'll be a nice straightforward little deal and longevity somebody can get in and just cruise exactly and you don't have to have an ls to do that and we want to show that exactly nice i guess we'll let you all edit it we'll go we'll get it on the dock get the exhaust for you yes we need the exhaust if you have it looks like you didn't break anything off it so uh everything came apart nice but we're gonna take that exhaust we're gonna hack it up sounds good we take handling to a new level ditching the 50zera technology with an adjustable suspension capable of anything from the street to the track now i can't wait to the engine power guys finish up our engine for our seafoam camaro that we're going to be giving away now when we were out driving this thing well we did notice one thing that we did not really like about it and that was that it kind of handled like a school bus and i almost want to think that i just about made mark a little seasick a time or two but we've got the cure for all that right over here well it might have been the fact that i ate too many beef sticks or i had a belly full of those root beers or it could have been that you were driving either way to be safe i'll drive next time all right actually the real solution is this pro g sub frame that we got from heights other than the fact of the obvious that it's brand new and painted up shiny there's a lot of benefits and features that this thing has that make it better than that stock piece now it's definitely easy to see that they did something with the appearance this thing looks great but there's also a whole lot of engineering that went into this thing to improve from that old school unit and an added benefit is to swap one of these things out is a breeze it's only six bolts well when you're taking a look at this stock piece there's a bunch of problems that are built in that's because well this is all 1950s technology here one of the most obvious is going to be the steering box and all the linkage that goes along with it it's big and it's heavy and it makes this thing drive like a dump truck not to mention where this steering box is mounted it's difficult to get long tube headers in there especially if you're doing a big block big block guys know what i'm talking about so heights built in the solution to all those problems and that is rack and pinion steering it eliminated the need for all of those steering links and the box it's a lot lighter weight easier to package provides better steering geometry and way more responsive and they didn't stop there you've probably noticed that these side rails are quite a bit smaller than that stock unit these are made of one continuous piece of tubing it's 120 wall thickness plus it's significantly stronger than the stock setup and having those rails smaller that's going to leave you room for those long tube headers and big blocks like we were talking about depending on which engine you want to go with well they've got mounts to accommodate small block big block ls and they've even got an adjustable transmission crossmember here so you can run just about any engine and transmission combo you can think of now let's talk about the meat and potatoes of this front end heights has pulled back all the stops to develop one trick piece this setup has tubular control arms with an adjustable upper drop spindles adjustable coilovers and one beefy sway bar and with all of those additions they actually managed to shed about 80 pounds off the weight you ready to put this thing up under there boss yep let's go you got that side um let me grab a jack all right i'll get the mounts in the bolts i can't believe this looks good right there all right about two more inches tommy back one on this side it's touching yeah i'm touching in the back i'm gonna go ahead and get those in sure [Music] thank you sir all right they're tight i'm going up with it all right dude [Music] nice [Music] man that thing looks sweet up under there and i tell you i can't hardly wait to take you for another ride in this thing i bet i can slosh you up real good now no i'm gonna be driving yeah but we still got to do the rear i'm gonna go get the parts as soon as i get my mood all good you wanna talk about more work coming up we tackle the rear suspension adding a popular rear end and a four link setup well we're making some pretty good progress on our seafoam giveaway camaro the next thing i'm going to do is assemble this rear axle we got all these goodies from summit racing and all this setup is designed to work with our heights rear suspension now with what we're going to be doing is this is a 9-inch up that's got 31 spline axles a pause unit and all that good gravy but once i get this thing assembled well it'll bolt right up under that car but if you didn't want to buy a rear axle well heights has you covered there as well all you got to do is buy a set of these brackets skin down your housing weld these in place and you're good to go now the next thing i got to do is drop in this big chunk of metal so i need to grab a gasket real quick [Music] it's a good idea to add a little gasket maker to the housing and to your gasket before dropping in the chunk it doesn't take much just a little bead doing this will make sure our differential is sealed tight the reason these things are strong called the heavy [Music] with the diff dropped in we can add our fasteners and get them tight and then torque them down to 45 foot-pounds now we switch that front end over to that pro g suspension and we could leave that alone but we want the rear to complement it so we're going to do that with this four link kit that also came from heights now it comes with the links lower and upper control arms also a panhard rod coilovers and then all the bracketry to get it installed that's what tommy was talking about the brackets on the rear end that's to attach all these mounting points now you think it would be pretty invasive but it's not as bad as you think it's actually some brackets that are going to attach to the factory frame rails we do have to drill some holes but there's no cutting or welding required i'm going to start with this one right here [Music] okay that's gotta be 18 and three quarter inches from that mounting hole for the shackle to the back of this bracket it's right on it once the rear bolt is holding that in place we can install the upper link bracket now it's time to drill some holes [Music] got him well the next thing we're going to do is install this little piece right here this does several things one it's a cross member that bolts between the two frame rails and those holes that i just drilled second thing it does is it's going to provide us with the frame mount of our panhard rod third thing these tabs right here to mount our anti-roll bar or sway bar so this is a handy little piece and it's super lightweight just need to get it bolted in and i can move on to drilling some more holes [Music] well now that we have those holes drilled we need to get this bracket bolted through here to the floor but that's just one piece of sheet metal so we need to sandwich it and that's what these brackets are for these need to go inside the car under the rear seat but i'm gonna need a hand to get that done so let's see if i can find tommy tommy give me a second juice you don't have to yell i'm just standing right over there i need to get in the car so i need to let it down will you hold that and that and that see if you can juggle them i ain't holding these under the car jeez [Music] all right let's do the other side oh yeah with those in place i can finish drilling the holes and installing the upper control arm brackets these bolt through the frame rail with a backing plate for strength [Music] well now it's time to install the lower control arms and we've got them bolted to the leaf spring front mount here we just had to drill them out to 5 8 and install them with the spacers that came with the kit now we get these up into place and we can get that rear end housing in [Music] foreign oh yeah see how that fourth bar lined up perfectly on its own i didn't have to fight it that's how you know you got everything lined up perfectly if that didn't go in you had to try to manhandle it you know something's wrong [Music] well that's it for the suspension at least getting it in the car we'll have to do some adjustments later once we get the brakes wheels and tires on it we'll get the weight of the car down set ride height pinion angle then we'll be able to tighten all those bolts we've told you guys before how we use rockauto.com on our projects whether we're looking for budget minded components or oem parts but did you know that they have high performance parts this is bill stein's b12 pro kit for s-197 mustangs it's a significant upgrade over stock with performance plus dampeners and eibach pro kit springs they're tuned for each specific application and will lower your ride an inch or two depending on your application to find out what rock auto has for your ride just go to the website and enter your year make and model brakes wheels and tars and the seafoam camaro will look ready to hit the road well we're making some pretty good progress upgrading our first gen camaro we got the suspension all up under it and the next thing we're going to be doing is tackling the brakes now if old mark thought he was shook up a lot on that first ride well he hasn't seen anything yet the kit we got is from summit racing and it's really going to do the trick whenever we throw out the anchor it's basically got a 13-inch rotor for the front and rear these are 12.88 in diameter we've got a six piston caliper on the front and a four piston for the back side now i've been asking in the past like do i really need to upgrade my brake system well if you think of it this way people always put more power up under the hood they put an overdrive in it to get better fuel mileage and you put sticky tires on the back to get plenty of traction why in the world wouldn't you put better brakes under your ride and doing a kit like this has a lot of benefits whenever you apply the brakes the caliper clamps the pad down onto the rotor thus generating heat having a larger rotor gives you more service area to absorb that heat after applying the brake several times or with a good bit of force things can really heat up with a smaller rotor the temp goes up at a much faster rate also larger the brake system the bigger the components water pads and multi-piston calipers cover more surface area this creates better braking with less effort another benefit is when the caliper and brake surface is further away from the center of the wheel this gives you a mechanical advantage this added leverage to the brakes makes them not have to work as hard to slow things down [Music] well while tommy's getting the brakes buttoned up i figured i'd go ahead and get our tires mounted on our wheels now when we picked out a wheel and tire combo we wanted to do something modern because this is a resto mod but the problem with a lot of modern wheels is it could date your build you want something that's going to hang around in another 5 10 or 20 years and still be cool and those weld rts's right here do the trick because of the five spoke design we got these from summit racing we did a staggered setup with 18 by eight in the front 20 by nine and a half in the rear now as for tires we went with continental extreme contact sports we've used these on other builds it's a great looking tire but it also provides great traction both wet and dry conditions now whoever's going to get this car will probably be driving it more than leaving it parked so this would be the perfect setup for them [Music] with that big old goofy grin on your face and a twinkle in your eye i think we did something right yeah i think it looks amazing man the wheel selection on this thing that you did man you knocked it out of the park on this one i thought you ordered the wheel so you know i technically placed the order and all that but you know you said order those okay well i'll take credit for the tires then well it was that's good too man it's like compliment after compliment you're making me give you i was worried about the red calipers on the red paint because they're not the same color but i think it looks good oh man yeah the stance of this thing the wheel tire combo the big gnarly brakes sticking through yep i hope i can win it first glance this car needs business there's no question that we've done everything we needed to do to bring it into the modern era um yeah you know when we started on it it kind of looked like your granddad's right but now that old man is a whole lot more hip yes he is he's gonna handle a lot better and probably go a lot faster but we need an engine to do that man after we were talking about what we accomplished today in a transmission and a fuel system drink cooling system electrical system

Channel: POWERNATION

Views: 271,858

Keywords: Car, PowerNation, howto, how-to, diy, automotive, cars, trucks, automobile, do it yourself, automobiles, auto, detroit muscle, camaro, chevy camaro, suspension, suspension systemandling, performance, performance chipuscle car

Id: w57brmEwO_4

Length: 21min 43sec (1303 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 09 2020