El Camino chassis, notched, boxed braced and re-welded

[Ace Burt]

I have been working on my pro touring el camino (Hell Camino) pretty seriously for several months now and finally got the chassis fabrication work finished last night. I have been learning at a steep rate for a couple months and thought I would share some pics and my experience with everyone. After owning some very high end German cars I decided to build my own American V8 powered hotrod for my next (and maybe last) fast car.

I started out wanting more room for tires and wheels and finally decided I wanted to do a frame notch to go with my Ford 9" set up and roll the fenders. I was trying to find out how much tire and wheel I could get with this set up and got some good feedback, but not everything I was looking for. Specifically I wanted to know what size tire in 18 or 20" I could run and what rim sizes (backspace, etc) I would need to use. I still don't know the wheel answers but I now know how to measure and get them once I get it back together.

The G body is a car built to price points and not the best built car out there by a stretch once you start taking them apart. Originally I was simply going to use the UMI frame notch kit and be done with it. Once I started looking at it the quality of the welds, they were terrible and the frame was really flimsy. The UMI kit was a bargain and fit well but it exposed (to me) some of the frames shortcomings as well. Where we cut out for the notch the frame lost a lot of material, and most importantly the rounded edge that gave it side to side strength. The frame reminded me of jello with the body off, you could grab a corner and watch it shake like jello from one end to the other. I feel we finally got it fixed and worthy of the 500rwhp LS going in it. The pics that follow chronicle what we did. Feel free to ask if you need something not in the pics, I have a 100 plus photos and will try and help

 

[Ace Burt]

The following pictures chronicle the frame notch process and how we not only made it much narrower, but much stronger as well.

 

[Ace Burt]

The first pic is with the frame cut out for the UMI kit piece. The second pic is the 1/4" steel plate that we welded to the inside of the frame for more strength. Third pic is the notch with the internal brace installed. 4th pic is the drivers side finished. Pics 5 and 6 are the upper and lower notch terminations into the frame.

 

[Ace Burt]

The following pics are the frame after we braced, boxed and moved the brake lines

 

[Ace Burt]

lastly are the shock towers. They are only spot welded from the factory (terrible welds as well) yet the springs and shocks both mount to them. What little welds were on it were terrible. I didn't get a lot of pics of this but you can see what we did to stabilize them. I am going to run QA1 pro coilovers and needed to make sure the towers were up to the task.

 

[kalidromos13]

Nice work! Should make that frame a lot more rigid.

 

[pontiacgp]

nice work but you'll need to make the access hole larger to get the body bushing and bolt through that hole, that is unless you are using something else as an alternative to a body bushing

 

[motorheadmike]

The second pic is the 1/4" steel plate that we welded to the inside of the frame for more strength.

That is total overkill, and from looking at your welds it doesn't look like you had very good penetration into that 1/4" plate. 1/8" to 3/16" material thickness is plenty.

 

[Ace Burt]

Nice work! Should make that frame a lot more rigid.

 

[Ace Burt]

Nice work! Should make that frame a lot more rigid.

Thank you, it is light years stronger than it was before we started. I feel good about putting lots of power in the frame now.