1970 Z-28 Camaro-Completed-Glamour Shots 09/13

I have been told that this is a difficult kit to build, but I know that you will do this kit justice.  Get to it my friend!

I've been told that too ol' buddy and thank you for the vote of confidence. Been doing alot of research on the construction pitfalls and problems with the kit. I've got a friend on another forum that built one.....just gotta find his thread because there was a BUNCH of useful information in regards to building it.

Good to hear there is another Mustang Joe build to look forward to!

Greg

Good to hear there is another Mustang Joe build to look forward to!

 

Updates to build.....

I'll be hanging around too!

Jim 

Stay Safe.

Two!  Wow this should be fun.  Great subjects

Oh SWEET!!! 2nd Gen Camaros. I'm all in on this one. My fave Camaros by far. Split bumpers are #1, full bumpers a close 2nd. I have both kits, so I'm excited to see what you do with them, then I can throw my away.

BK

Glad to have you guys on board and thanks for the comments.

Brandon: Throw 'em away????....oh HELL no!!! 

Starting on the engine build for the Z-28. Here's the base engine completed. I'll be going with a MAD pre-wired distributor on this to cut down on time spent drilling the distributor and putting the wires in and will be ordering that tomorrow when I get paid.

Base chassis all laid out ready for painting. Actually this aint a bad chassis having quite a number of parts. Per some of the reviews that I've read on these kits , I'll be attaching the front subframe assy at a later stage in the build for ease of assembly.

I've now got the wheels and tires selected for the Z-28 build. The rear tires will have those big ass GOODYEAR scripts shaved off and some BF Goodrich T/A ones will take their place. This'll be the stance/ look that I'll be going for.

Looking good so far.  This is a pretty nice kit and should come out really nicely.

I used some of the interior, front frame, and inner fenders/engine compartment of this kit along with the outer shell of the old (and very basic) MPC '77 Camaro kit. I also added a couple PE/resin sets for the finer details…

MPC 77 Camaro1280×720 178 KB

To get this...

With fully detailed and plumbed engine compartment as well.

More pics of the model here: https://app.photobucket.com/u/HeavyArty/a/c4d7edbe-b4ad-4ea0-8c8c-fe2f1453e919

It is a scale model of my daughter's 1:1 version.

That also went through a few mods (OK, a complete rebuild) along the way.

Great turn out Gino...on BOTH fronts. I do love my 1:1 builds but man are they expensive. 

The rear part of the chassis is about 70% finished. Still have to install the rear sway bar, shock mounts and shocks but we're getting there. I had to take a break in the progress and narrow the rear end and arch the springs just a tad to achieve the stance I was looking for in the rear. I merely cut off the axle ends, shaved each end of the axle back about 3/16" , drilled holes in the axle and in the axle mounting ends and pinned them back to the axle. I've already done a test run and the wheel/ tire assemblies are right where I want em now. 

One of the shortcomings of this kit is in the exhaust area. First off, there's LOTS of clean up to do, more so on this kit than most any other of the models I've built in the past.

After that is the issue of the position of the tail pipe when it's all installed onto the vehicle and the fact that I'm not a big fan of square cut exhaust pipes exiting any give car. 

OOB exhaust: (Note: the tires will be re-positioned in the wheel opening so I'm still working on that) This crazy right?? 

After tweaking the exhaust mounting points and bending the pipes to where I wanted them to exit the car (and adding my bevel cuts to the tail pipes and hollowing them out). That's MUCH better.

I still have some adjustments I'll make later on in regards to the final locations of each pipe but this is the preliminary result:

Sounds like this one is a bit of a bear.  Great work though - all these little details is what makes your builds so great.

Looks great, Joe. Back in the day we would cut off the exhaust and slap some glasspacks on the headers and call it done. They sound so good like that, as long as you don't mind a little CO2 in your life.

BK

Great to see you move on to your next build(s). Very cool subjects indeed. Although I'm not the biggest Camaro fan I do very much fancy the '70 model. Always loved the look. I especially like the Baldwin Camaro. That one is completely boss. This will be fun as always to follow along with you. Despite any predicted hassles with this kit I am quite assured you will handle them in your constant ingenious ways. Sharp work so far my friend. I am officially on board.

BrandonK

....... as long as you don't mind a little CO2 in your life.

BK

 

Hi!

      That second photo near the bottom Almost had me saying, "Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire!"You did a bang up job duplicating that Camaro! Fooled me for a moment!!

Hey:

     Looks like you have a handle on it! I too, dislike the Square exhaust openings. I think they look weird. I would always shorten the pipes, bend the opening, downward and out, The Glasspacs in pairs after the Complete rebuild from a crossover system to real Dual exhausts.

     The car seemed to like breathing better. Much more so that all that factory engineered Back-Pressure from the stock setup!

That is looking good. I like what you have done so far. I redone a 1 to 1 when I was in highschool. Had to sell it when I joined the Navy in 1982. The person that bought it totaly destroyed it 3 months later. 2  1/2  years worth of work went down the tubes. Man I miss that car.

John: Dude....thanks. There's alot I wish I could go back and change in past builds but hey.....It's all part of the modeling growth. Yeah this kit is no picnic.

Brandon: Do I ever miss the good ol' simple days. Glass packs and duals were the ticket back then. Thanks friend.

Joe!!! : Good to see you back in these parts and on board brother!! 

disastermaster: A 69 GTX??? You lucky dog !! 

TB: Thanks potna!! 

lurch: I know the felling. I rebuilt my brothers 67 Mustang. He drove it for a few years and sold it to a fella who did the "telephone pole wrap" remodel to it. Sad. Thanks for following along and for the comments.

Completed subframe with modified spindles to drop the front end a little bit along with the mostly completed bare engine:

I purchased my first two MAD prewired distributors. I've gotta say that I am definitely impressed. This cut my time in like 1/10th of the time from drilling the OOB distributors and inserting the ignition wire myself. They come in all kinds of cap and wire colors.

Howdy 'Stang, been lurking around an watch'n.  I have owned about 4 of this gen Camaro but don't shoot me, I cut em all up and used em on those circle tracks.  I'm gonna watch this and see how I SHOULD have built em back then.  We sure do some odd things in our youth!   Gloo on bro. 

rommelkiste

Howdy 'Stang, been lurking around an watch'n.  I have owned about 4 of this gen Camaro but don't shoot me, I cut em all up and used em on those circle tracks.  I'm gonna watch this and see how I SHOULD have built em back then.  We sure do some odd things in our youth!   Gloo on bro. 

 

Managed to get the engine mostly done on this rascal. I'm about 90% happy with this but that goofy looking fan clutch I'm glad to say will be hidden in the fan shroud.

Positively stunning Joe. You have some righteous realism going there.

Looking great, Joe. As always! 

The engine looks great! I like the prewired distributor. 

Thanks Joe, Steve and Johnny! I managed to shoot a coat of semi-gloss black on the chassis followed by a light over coat of super thinned out gray which helped to tone things down some and bring out some of the details. I also installed an engine oil dipstick on the drivers side of the engine. Here's everything all fitted up and ready to go now.

This is not the easiest of dashes to negotate in terms of modeling. I feel that I've turned out alot better ones than this, but you'll see what I have to work with.

I ended up cleaning a BUNCH of flash off of this thing and drilled through all of the gauge impressions.

I had some gauges from Goffer Racing that I used for the smaller gauges but used the OOB ones for the speedo and the tach to stay as close to OEM look as possible. I then cut them down to squares and glued them in from the back side. The swing pedal levers were then thinned out to a truer to scale thickness and the whole dash was pained up and detailed. The "Camaro" emblem on the glove box was a PE offering from Model Car Garage and the radio face station tuning decal was from the spares box.

I made a couple of changes and a few upgreades to what was already there OOB. I didn't like the fake looking OOB shifter so I made my own from a bobby pin. PE adorns areas of the dash and a set of keys now hang from the ignition switch.