Pete's Camaro

Post by **Stuart** » Sat Jan 12, 2013 11:11 pm

Good effort that Pete and nice to see a bit of lateral thinking too. Switching to stuff that is more readily available is a great idea, and the quality of BMW stuff is generally very good too.

pjs65 · Post by **pjs65** » Wed Jan 30, 2013 9:25 pm

I have been a bit slow getting stuff done on the chevy as iam still stuck doing diy jobs in the house , hopefully this weekend i should get that finished and be back in the garage . I have managed to put the axle back together after i had stripped it so that i could narrow it a bit . The back wheels would occasionally rub so when i add some discs the track would have been wider by 5mm per side , not much but enough to cause more rubbing . I had some other half shafts that are 20 mm shorter so i cut 20mm from each side of the axle and welded it back up , a bit of a pain but needed doing . The axle is back under the car and i have bolted the new brake adapter plates to the axle and done a test fit with the 540 BMW brakes on , and iam happy with the fit . The chevy has a staggered rear shock setup with the drivers side shock behind the axle and the passenger side in front of it , this is meant to stop wheel bounce under heavy acceleration . So what i have is two BMW drivers side brake setups with one caliper in front of the axle and the other side behind it , handy because the adapter plates are the same instead of having to be LH/RH .

can't to get the calipers cleaned up and fitted with braided hoses ,together with some disc's . Pete:Chevy_anim:

pablo · Post by **pablo** » Thu Jan 31, 2013 7:42 am

Nice work Pete. You make it sound so simple, 'I have managed to put the axle back together after i had stripped it so that i could narrow it a bit'.

pjs65 · Post by **pjs65** » Thu Jan 31, 2013 9:08 pm

pablo wrote:Nice work Pete. You make it sound so simple, 'I have managed to put the axle back together after i had stripped it so that i could narrow it a bit'.

It does sound like iam being a bit blase about it but i don't mean to be , 25+ years an engineer and access to some useful machinary helps alot . Mind you despite that iam making right a pigs ear of changing the back disc's on my Octavia , wrong bits , buy other bits , wrong tools , buy some more tools , can't get piston back in the caliper and then get another tool for that , i still haven't done them yet

. Pete:Chevy_anim:

Post by **Ben** » Thu Jan 31, 2013 9:21 pm

Lol, you do make it sound simple

pjs65 · Post by **pjs65** » Thu Jan 31, 2013 9:31 pm

Ben wrote:Lol, you do make it sound simple

Ok i wont lie as i did find it easy to do

pjs65 · Post by **pjs65** » Sun Mar 03, 2013 12:56 am

I've fitted a bias bar brake pedal as i have been wanting to get rid of the chevy servo and heavy cast iron master cylinder for a while , its all heavy and i want to muck about with the front/rear bias. I don't generally like powered stuff on cars and much prefer manual steering and brakes ,i used to swop the power steering to manual on the old Granada's i owned because i never liked to feel of the powered one .
The Camaro rear drums aren't too bad but only last 3 laps before overheating and the heavy Camaro braked quite well with a bit more rear brake . So with the new BMW rear disc's i decided to change to manual brakes as well .

I spent ages on various different calculators to work out what size master cylinders i needed and ended up getting a .625 and a .75 , hopefully iam not too far out with those .

This is my first go at making a template for fitting the cylinders to the old pedal mount , the cylinders needed to be 15mm lower than where the sevro mounts .

The second go at the cylinder mount which was better and i also had to lower the pedal pivot also by 15mm so that the pushrods weren't at an angle . Chopped a big piece out of the pedal bracket to get the cylinders to fit and to make room for the bias bar .

This is more or less the finished pedal box as i had to grind clearance in a few places and also put a kink in the clutch pedal because it was hitting the bias bar .

Here's the finished pedal bar mounted back up with the cylinders fitted , i put an extra plate on the outside of the baulkhead behind the cylinders to add some strenght . Next is to put on some fluid pots and i can either mount them remote or just plonk them on the cylinders , will decide later . Iam also going to run in some new 3/16 brake pipe to the rear as the old one is 1/4 diameter for some reason .

I noticed that people on here change the titles of their build threads and i want to change mine , and as iam to daft on the PC to work out how to do it could someone tell me how to do it . Thanks Pete

pjs65 · Post by **pjs65** » Sun Mar 03, 2013 1:13 am

While iam trying to turn the chevy into a BMW i found this picture of a Camaro with some lovely BBS rims

. Pete

Monster · Post by **Monster** » Sun Mar 03, 2013 1:30 am

Great work on the brakes Pete, so looking forward to seeing the camero out this season. It should be a much different beast, what with a manwell 'box and new brakes etc.

However, I refuse to comment on the last pic (fingers in ears (or over eyes))

pablo · Post by **pablo** » Sun Mar 03, 2013 1:31 am

Nice work as ever Pete. I'm not sure on those BBS alloys would need to see a full picture of the car.

Changing project title - If you go to your first post and click edit you then get a box / button at the bottom marked ' Go Advanced', or something like that. If you click that you will then be able to change the title. I'm not if there is a time limit on this though.
Hope that helps.