1970 Camaro Coupe
350 4 speed
A buddy of mine was well into a Camaro project and as much as I liked the cars I wanted something different. In a wild goose chase of chasing parts with my buddy for his car I stumbled onto this, a 1970 Camaro Coupe 350 4 speed car, ok it was actually a shell of a car but nonetheless this is what it could be with the right guy leading the way and I thought I was that guy!
The $800.00 asking price seemed extremely steep back in those days, this thing had no interior at all, no motor, no tranny, no wiring and some jack ass painted flames on the side of it with a brush! Dead Air Shocks, dents here and there, missing lights and so on and so forth BUT the body was in pretty good shape rust wise, I bought it for the $800.00 asking price, it's mine. Now what?
The car basically sat collecting dust as I tried to find parts for it on a budget, this wasn't easy but was far from impossible, in fact next to some of my previous attempts at far more rare cars this was fairly easy!
Sometimes fate is a funny thing and I thought she had smiled down on me, in the local pick your part I located a special edition Trans Am with the black velour interior, nice shape! One problem, not enough dough! I sent my buddy off to go get a few bucks from his wife back at home while I stood guard on the car making certain that nobody touched it, this was my interior and nobody was going to get it! I was like a rabid dog defending my turf whenever anyone even thought about taking a peek inside this thing, I may have even growled at a few, this was a great find! He finally returned in what seemed like hours with the cash and we proceeded to rape this old bird for everything and anything of value! I installed it, looked good, was very functional, it wasn't original by any standards but what the hell, it was dirt cheap. In another wrecking yard I located a four speed console, $10.00 and it fit, it was for a 73-81 style but so what? It fit and it was functional right? It would have to do for the time being. (more on this nightmare later)
There was a 400 pound woman that used to live across the ally and when her 73 Impala smacked a light pole I suddenly had my 350 motor, but what about the four speed? I was still tranny-less! Fate is really funny sometimes, right about this time a friend of mine had his 79 Camaro stolen, after a few days of searching he decided it wasn't coming home so opted to buy another one, a 79 Z/28 350 4 speed and he wanted the four speed out of there to make room for an automatic, score for me! I was a service manager for a small chain doing wheel alignments, tune ups, struts, shocks, blah, blah, blah and the guys in the shop were chomping at the bit to assemble the works! I got the parts I still needed at cost from the counter and bingo, I had a running 1970 350 4 speed Camaro, but it looked like crap!
It was about this time I seen an ad in the local bargain finder for a 4 speed console for a 1970 and a half Camaro, I bolted down to the guys house and graciously offered up the $250.00 asking price, having never seen one before I took his word on it that it was what it was, but it wasn't. Turns out it was for a 67 Camaro and not the 70-72 style I needed, I finally broke down and paid David T's $500.00 for the correct console, the car was coming together but I still needed paint and body work!
I ran into an old friend of mine who used to do $500.00 paint jobs for me, nothing fancy just good enough to flip the car, make it look good so to speak and now he had his own shop! My luck couldn't possibly be any better than this!! We talked, we argued, we struck a deal, $1,300.00 for all the body work plus a white pearl paint job, this was going to look sweet! Turns out the paint from the factory reacted with the stuff he was using, big problem and wrinkles everywhere, more money and he fixed it. Then the original green started to bleed through the white pearl, again more money and he fixed it, the weld broke on one of the repairs, you know what happened, more money and he fixed it.
I ran the car in a few local shows after swapping almost straight across this velour interior for an original 70 interior and while the car did look good parked it was still pretty much a heap. The old 350 was a mutt, the tranny was a bitch to shift, the gears didn't help and the rust was making a comeback for the sequel! I sold this thing off and never regretted it for a minute! This car was nothing but shortcuts and every last one of them came back to bite me in the ass! I spent all my money in the wrong places and when it was all said and done I had a nice looking car that ran like a 73 Impala beater and shifted like a Camaro that had lived a rough life, even the looks were on it's way out with the return of the rust so I bailed, I didn't lose my shirt or anything I did make about 75% of my money back but lost out on a ton of labor and a wasted six months or so, live and learn.
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