Sean's 78 Camaro Z28

Should we leave the wheels grey or paint them body color?

  • Leave grey

  • Paint blue to match the body car, the way the car was when new


Results are only viewable after voting.
we used a Longacre caster/camber qauge on our race cars and I used it on my GP until we disbanded the race team. It's not that expensive and since you guys have a number of cars it could be worthwhile to get one. We would square up the front end by making sure the distance from one end of the pitman arm the opposite end of the idler arm is the same as the measurement of the other two ends and then set the toe, camber and caster and when it was all done we would check the toe again since the caster and camber can affect the toe. Toe plates are not that expensive either and are easy to make, they make the job easier and more accurate...

showImage.ashx
 
we used a Longacre caster/camber qauge on our race cars and I used it on my GP until we disbanded the race team. It's not that expensive and since you guys have a number of cars it could be worthwhile to get one. We would square up the front end by making sure the distance from one end of the pitman arm the opposite end of the idler arm is the same as the measurement of the other two ends and then set the toe, camber and caster and when it was all done we would check the toe again since the caster and camber can affect the toe. Toe plates are not that expensive either and are easy to make, they make the job easier and more accurate...

showImage.ashx
Thanks Steve. I'm interested in that gauge but what other accessories are required to use it? What do you think of 1/4" toe in? I knew I'd read that you were aligning your car yourself.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Longroof79
Thanks Steve. I'm interested in that gauge but what other accessories are required to use it? What do you think of 1/4" toe in? I knew I'd read that you were aligning your car yourself.

For that alignment tool you don't need anything else but something the let the tires turn easier helps, two pieces of sheet metal with some oil or grease between them will work just fine. 1/4" sounds ok, if it's too much the tires will scuff on the outside and too little on the inside. More toe will give make the car travel on a straight line easier and less toe will improve steering response. You can try different toe settings to see what you and the car likes. With the front wheel straight you can use a couple of axle stands and string you can check to make sure each wheel is toed in the same. Put one axle stand on the side near the front bumper and the other near the rear bumper. Make the string tight and measure the distance from the rear side of rear rim and move the front axle stand to make the measurement on the front of the rear rim the same as the rear. Then you can measure the rear side of the front rim and then the front side of the front rim to measure the toe in on that tire. Like this....

 
Last edited:
For that alignment tool you don't need anything else but something the let the tires turn easier helps, two pieces of sheet metal with some oil or grease between them will work just fine. 1/4" sounds ok, if it's too much the tires will scuff on the outside and too little on the inside. More toe will give make the car travel on a straight line easier and less toe will improve steering response. You can try different toe settings to see what you and the car likes. With the front wheel straight you can use a couple of axle stands and string you can check to make sure each wheel is toed in the same. Put one axle stand on the side near the front bumper and the other near the rear bumper. Make the string tight and measure the distance from the rear side of rear rim and move the front axle stand to make the measurement on the front of the rear rim the same as the rear. Then you can measure the rear side of the front rim and then the front side of the front rim to measure the toe in on that tire. Like this....

Thanks Steve. We appreciate the information and the link to the video.
 
Jared, I have to back track on the 1/4" toe setting, I forgot you are using basically stock tire sizes so I would go with the factory setting of 1/8" toe in.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Texas82GP
and one other thing I remembered, shops don't do this but it's best to have the driver or the simulated weight of the driver in the driver's set when doing a wheel alignment.
 
Update time guys!

Sean and I are three days into what we are calling "The Camaro Thrash". We've planned this for most of this year. Sean and I both took vacation this week and we are working on the punch list on the Camaro. We both believe these cars are never technically 'done' but we want to get the Camaro a lot closer.

We started out Saturday morning. I started on replacing the horns and Sean started on the passenger front park/turn signal. When we put the car together, we put new AC Delco horns on it. It had one horn when we took it apart, and it didn't work. The horn(s) are mounted to the hood latch on these cars. The Delco horns were China and evidently no good because they didn't last very long. The car has been 'alive' since late 2013 I guess and has right at 4,000 miles on it right now.

We replaced the defective horns with another pair of AC Delco horns, that cost substantially more than the initial pair of horns. The new horns were made in India. :blam: Still, I'm much happier with the new horns. The old set were plastic and stamped sheet metal. This new set is partly cast metal, is lager in size and just seems to be of better quality. We'll see how they hold up. Here is a look at a new horn (right) up against an old one (left)....
20180324_100823-2016x1512.jpg


When we put the car back together, we mounted the horns similar to how the stock one was mounted, which was horizontal. I decided I wanted the horns mounted vertical so the opening was pointed down. I came up with this arrangement using the brackets that came with each horn 'kit'....
20180324_105234-2016x1512.jpg


And here is a look at the horns in place. I'm really pleased with how it turned out....

20180324_121240-2016x1512.jpg


Story on the front right park/turn signal....

When we got the car back from paint, we were having trouble with the right front park/turn signal not working. It turned out we had a problem in a connector in the front (Painless) harness where the park/turn bulb socket plugs in. It took awhile to figure out where the problem was though. Unfortunately, in the process, we ended up with the bulb installed in the socket backwards, which I didn't know was possible. Sean drove the car to work a few times like that (in the early morning dark, running the park lights) and having the bulb run all the time on the 'high side' resulted in melting of the plastic park/turn signal housing. Sean had bought a good used housing in the past few months to fix it with. He took the old housing apart and cleaned it up. He sprayed the inside of it with some 'chrome' spray paint we had on hand from a previous non-automotive project. It turned out looking great....

20180324_105205-1512x2016.jpg


He cleaned up and reused the lens and bezel from the assembly that we melted the housing to. It had been a brand new assembly. It sucked that we burned up that new housing. Here's a glance at his cleaned up parts...

20180324_105220-2016x1512.jpg


While we waited for the paint inside the new/used housing to dry, we turned our attention to the next issue: a coolant leak that had sprung up in the past few weeks. Unfortunately the radiator we put in the car has failed. When we put the car back together, we went with a Griffin aluminum radiator specifically for LS swaps in second gen Camaros. It has both the inlet and outlet on the passenger side. It has two rows of 1-1/4" tubes. It was made in the USA. I was pretty proud of it until this failure. I was even less proud when I realized it only has a two year warranty. I realize it has had coolant in it for about four years, but it only has 4,000 miles on it and it has not been abused. It still looks new....

20180324_160336-1512x2016.jpg


Unfortunately, it has failed where the tubes meet the bulkhead for the core. I looked on Summit's website and other folks are having the same trouble. Some are even saying they have had these radiators fixed, only to have them spring leaks on other tubes. I also saw a guy on Summit who had gone through three units during the warranty period. My advice to folks considering buying a Griffin radiator: don't.

Saturday evening I did a lot of research on what to replace this expensive piece of scrap metal with. We wanted to stay with a swap radiator because we didn't want to re-engineer our air intake. In the end we went with a Champion 3-row aluminum LS swap radiator. Neither of us is crazy about the fact that it is made in China, but it comes with a Lifetime warranty. It was about $100 more expensive than the Griffin. We're hoping to have it towards the end of the week. Here's a look at the engine bay with no radiator and fans...

20180325_090223-2016x1512.jpg


Saturday morning we jumped on the next item on the list: un-metered air. We've been experiencing a tuning issue where if you start the car cold and drive it, it acts one way but if you cut it off hot, like when you go into a store and come back out, it runs a different way. After a lot of work logging data, our tuner notified us that when we are restarting hot, there is significantly less air flow. In other words, the theory is that we are leaking vacuum on a cold start and after the engine warms up and everything under the hood takes a good heat soak, something is swelling up and sealing itself and we are getting less airflow.

Based on this theory, we attacked the problem head on. We pulled the intake to replace the intake gaskets. While it was out Sean replaced all of the injector O-rings. I pulled the throttle body and inspected its O-ring. I also pulled the idle air control valve and looked at its O-ring. Sean worked on tightening up our plumbing for the PCV. I looked at how our LS1 map sensor was sealing in our LS3 intake and replaced our first solution with a short length of 1/4" fuel hose which seems to fit really nice and tight. Here is a look at the engine without the intake...

20180325_100609-2016x1512.jpg


We got the intake installed back on the car yesterday afternoon. We pulled the battery and the alternator for testing. More on that later. Next we moved on to front end alignment. In one of the last posts in this thread, Sean and I were working on getting the steering wheel straight and setting the toe. The last time we worked on it, we got the wheel a lot straighter, but it still wasn't quite straight. Inspired by the YouTube video Steve posted above, we set up string lines on jack stands and took another stab at getting the wheel straight...

20180325_171132-2016x1512.jpg

A look at way too much human being jammed under a low slung car...

20180325_171143-2016x1512.jpg


The trash bags are a tip from a YouTube video. They make getting the wheels to move much easier. Anyways, by the end of Saturday, I felt good about the toe setting and I felt like the steering wheel was straight. Sean was able to get the passenger side park/turn signal buttoned up and crossed off the list.

To be continued ==>
 
We got up this morning and went into town with Sean's alternator. I've suspected the alternator since we have had trouble with whine in the stereo system and the battery seems to bleed down slowly over time. I suspected a bad diode. We took the alternator to a specialist in town because I don't trust the auto parts store flunkies. The alternator tested good. Next we had the battery load tested. It's an Optima Red Top from September of 2014. It showed to only still have 600 of 800 CCA so it is a little suspect. Neither were the answer I was looking for but we'll press on. When we got back to the house, we put the battery and alternator back on the car. We put the belt back on. We spent some extra time getting the battery to fit the tray better. It was able to move around a bit even with the hold down tight. The battery just doesn't fit the tray that well. We fabbed up a few spacers and improved it quite a bit. From there we changed the oil, rotated the tires and greased the front end. Then we got back on the alignment. We recently bought this kit...
https://www.summitracing.com/parts/tnh-3300

Before we got started, I felt pretty good about the toe adjustment we had made yesterday with the string lines. We got the kit setup and found we had the front toe'd out 5/8" based on last night's work. Now I don't feel so good about the strings. I don't know where we went wrong but we pushed hard and both of us were tired so perhaps we made a mistake. After some working with the alignment tool kit and getting used to it, we now have the toe set at 3/32" - 1/8" in. The steering wheel is straight and the wheels look straight but we didn't set the string lines back up so we won't know for sure until we drive the car again. We also used the kit to measure caster and camber. I want to run this by you guys. Here is where we're at:

Camber:
Left +0.40 degrees
Right +0.20 degrees

Caster:
Left +1.90 degrees
Right +1.50 degrees

Toe:
Total toe 3/32" - 1/8"

Looking at the Chevrolet shop manual, it looks like we are in the acceptable range on all of this. My question for those of you who are knowledgeable on this, how does this look? How would you set up this front end? It's all stock components with poly bushings. Keep in mind, we'll never autocross or drag race this car. It's a cruiser. Spirited street driving. We want good handling and good tire wear. I'd appreciate any feedback.

That's if for now guys. Bedtime. I'll post our progress as we go forward. Until then....

Best,

Jared
 

GBodyForum is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com. Amazon, the Amazon logo, AmazonSupply, and the AmazonSupply logo are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates.

Please support GBodyForum Sponsors

Classic Truck Consoles Dixie Restoration Depot UMI Performance

Contact [email protected] for info on becoming a sponsor