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Catagories

Daily Driver, Classic, Drag Racing, Racing, Restoration, Street Legal

Up From The Mud

Steve Wilson didn’t buy this car from a church lady. He didn’t buy it from some hot-rod addled kid, either. In fact, he didn’t even find the car at all. His friend Ken has a penchant for searching roads that were the backbone of the nation years before the words interstate highway entered the popular lexicon. That’s back roads now, inarguably the best way to experience Americana at its seediest and most relaxed.

Ken was hard by Gainesville, Florida, perusing the landscape, searching for dented, messed up tin, a bright spot winking from the foliage. His radar detected a ’69 Camaro trying to return to the earth not far behind a local’s trailer. The lady that owned it told him that it hadn’t run in years and that she would sell if someone would take it from her yard.

Steve manages Courtesy Collision, a large commercial body shop in Kissimmee, but the Camaro’s carcass was daunting and he knew that bringing this precious metal back to life would not occur without three-dimensional vision and the resolve of a Kamikaze pilot. Suffice that if someone had brought him this car to make whole, he would have vehemently questioned their sanity and then told them to go away. But he considered that he had bodyman Felix Arrufut and painter Shawn Pagel at his side and felt a little better about the nightmare that lay ahead.

“I took it back to the shop and blew it apart, or rather, it about fell apart. The car was a rot bucket. There wasn’t a single piece of sheet metal that was usable,” he admitted. “I made a decision to take on the task of restoring a car that was not restorable.” The situation thrust Steve into a massive research and parts acquisition program.

“I started at the bottom. I replaced the cabin floor then the trunk floor, the quarter panels, wheel houses, rear body and the cowl came next. Then I moved to the roof skin and the front roof header,” huffed Steve. “My friend Felix is a fantastic bodyman and he did all the sheetmetal welding on the car. After the shell was done, we began bolting stuff on.” Here’s the kicker. “I assembled the entire car and took it apart four times to fit things and to prime and block prior to paint.”

Pal painter Shawn Pagel shot the body and all of the panels separately. He laid down DuPont single-stage Hugger Orange with black stripes and cleared it. When it came to the sanctity of the ’69 Camaro, Steve rationalized supreme. “I was working with a blank slate. The car is not an original RS, so I built it to personal taste and put it together with options I would have ordered had I bought it new in 1969.”

Since it was Steve’s desire to cruise effortlessly and simply in his Camaro, he didn’t feel the need for a lot of high-performance chassis parts he really didn’t need. Thus, the car is infused with refurbished parts with new bushings, etc., and a sprinkle or two of modern. To wit: stock frame and suspension at both ends of the car. The original 10-bolt with Eaton differential and 3.73:1 gears still wears original drum brakes. Steve converted the front drums to a Master Power disc set-up. To marry up to the bright, flawless paint, Steve collected 17x7 and 17x8 Coy’s C-5 one-piece rims and stuck them with Nexen N3000 235/45 and 255/40 W-rated rubber.

In keeping with his $30K budget, Steve concentrated on a trouble-free, low-maintenance drivetrain. That 350/290 GMPP crate engine (290hp, 332lb-ft) is enhanced by an Edelbrock intake manifold, Holley 850cfm carburetor, 1 5/8-inch primary-pipe headers, and a Proform HEI distributor. The accessory drive system is a Vintage Air Front Runner that whirrs close behind the SPAL thermostatically controlled fans. A close-ratio Super T-10 disperses torque via a Luk clutch assembly.

Steve put on the tech sheet that he drives his slippery clean car once in a while. Fact is, he rarely takes it out. Fact is, the Kissimmee-St. Cloud environs are an LA microcosm, lots of random, fast driving with complete disregard for those around you. The day we spoke he complained loudly about the latest near miss on the way to the shop that morning. “Kid in a Honda. Didn’t even see me. He was inches from carving up my front end. That’s why I don’t put it on the street very much.”