I was in the same boat, so hired the shell built, but just the pure pole & girt structure, with trussed roof and doors. Then, at my leisure, I did the 2X4 'truss' reinforcement on all girts, placed a 200 amp service panel, and wired away. God bless a state where a homeowner can do his own wiring as long as he conforms to code and survives inspections. Once it was insulated and wired, I vapor-barriered it and sheet-rocked away. My only regret was that I didn't use 2X6's instead and then, thicker insulation. Oh well, not my problem any more, darn. One cool thing I did was to zig-zag the wiring, so a floor receptacle was wired to bench-height receptacles on either side, and I allocated two 20-amp breakers to each of the four walls. Each string began with a ground-fault receptacle to protect all of that string. My shop was duplex-receptacle RICH! Plus appropriate 220 receptacles as needed for radial arm saw, thickness planer, wire welder, air compressor, etc. The zig-zag wiring was so no two adjacent plugs at the same height were on the same breaker. This worked very well at the construction phase, as I wasn't yet sure where I would build work benches. At 32 X 42, this was my smallest workshop in my personal history, but proved to be an ideal size for my particular hobbies. Once again, and over and over, "fully equipped with a complete line of extras, designed with your mind in mind."

 

Getting back to the true subject of this thread, the rebirth of Ricky Camaro into a non-original but original-like '68 SS396 Camaro. (at some point I want to wrap around to that 'SS396' subject, but not tonight) Talking about pickups and workshops is truly fun for many Chevy lovers who like to work on their cars, but reality of this forum calls me back to report on progress on the subject car. If you've followed this story from its start in "General - New Members" to "1st Generation sticky 'Let's see those 1st Gen pics' page 63 and finally to this "Ricky Camaro Rebirth" thread, you might recall our intent to coat the non-painted portions of the interior with Lizard Skin's 3 components, rather than use a more traditonal product like Dynamat. The Lizard Skin product is sprayed on, and uses a first layer that is a sound deadener, then a second layer that is a ceramic heat insulation, and finally a top layer that is a sealer with a surface similar to a truck bed liner. We finally arrived there this last week, and have pics to show the current status. This first group includes 2 interior shots, a shot of the bottom covering the recently-installed frame extensions, and a shot of the compartment side.of the engine hood, with a single layer of the sound deadener:




The last group of 3 are end of day Friday, and show all but the hood with 3 coats of sound deadener and 3 coats of ceramic insulation. These will cure over the weekend and the 3rd layer (sealer) will be applied Monday. We continue to move in a forwardly direction:

 

Great progress and your also making me jealous. Your doing it right and you'll be very proud when its done.

I'll have to talk with my painter on the interior. Like the idea of the paintable sound deadener instead of the mats. The package tray and trunk area was always an awful noise maker in my car. The back seats were never enough to hide the sounds when driving on California roads. Also never thought of doing the hood with sound deadener. I'll be following your lead on this. Thanks for your prepress updates, keep them coming.

 

Just to be clear, no Lizard Skin will be used on any interior surfaces that remain exposed to vision. The dash and upper portions of the door insides, for instance, will only be painted as in any interior restoration. In one of the pictures, you can see the dash is under plastic wrap. The Lizard Skin is being used on non-visible surfaces; i.e. the floor under carpet, under the seats, the firewall, insides of doors and side panels, under the headliner, etc. Also, all three layers are being sprayed on the inside of the hood, not just sound deadener. Our theory is: if some's good, more's better.

So, you mention road noise, most probably tire noise. Acoustic science would say you are actually hearing your body panels serving as crude speakers, with vibrations induced by the sound pressure waves traveling outward from the tire/road interface. Whether using traditional solutions such as Dynamat, or current alternatives such as Lizard Skin, the idea is to make those body panels not vibrate. The ideal solution, of course, is sheet lead, and in small but noisy areas, that is actually a great solution. I have personally witnessed its use on an engine hood in a 1-ton Class C motorhome we built, where the hood sits right between the front seats. Anyway, you mentioned that a great deal of sound came through the back seat, and a look at the picture above of the back seat support metal shows why, given the large amount of open area without any metal at all. So, here is how I intend to solve the problem. First, understand that I have made a decision to install a very high-end audio system in the car. This might not be wise, given the 396 with Hooker steel-tube headers, 3" exhaust, passing through Flowmaster 40-series cans. It is my hope that 3 coats of Lizard Skin sound deadener, along with truck bed-liner underneath will help, and my theory is that if I want to hear conventional music, I roll up the windows, and if I want to hear Big Block music, I roll them down. So, given two 6X9's in the rear deck, and two 6 1/2" in the doors, along with separate tweeters in the doors, the question in my head when this restoration was still early-on, was "where will I find room to mount a sub-woofer?"

As a solution, my intent is to kill multiple birds with singular stones, as follows: I have a number of sheets of 3/4" high density particle board (HDPB for short) and I propose to first create a template of the rear seat back on the trunk side out of sheet cardboard, and use that template to cut out a solid piece of HDPB. Once bolted to the back seat framework from the trunk interior, I would have an ugly but very effective solution for road noise suppression, since particle board really doesn't want to vibrate. However, Ugly doesn't cut it. Over 40 years ago, I served as a second set of hands for a friend with a Mobile Dimension sawmill, as we sawed dimension lumber from freshly felled Maple. For payment, he gave me a substantial stack of it. It's mostly in 1"X6" boards, un-planed, and has been stored, stacked and stickered, inside a shop in a very dry climate ever since. So, my actual solution will be to cover the 3/4" HDPB with planed and finished Maple, which is what you will see with the trunk lid open. On that Maple will be a Maple-over-HDPB enclosure covering the back of the sub-woofer, two similar enclosures over the backs of the two rear-deck mounted 6X9's, and two amplifers, one 6-channel, and the other a sub-woofer amp. In the trunk, there will be a 12-volt car battery, fed from the engine compartment via a battery-isolator, providing power to the amplifiers. Just the thought makes me smile. And I feel certain that the weight of this additive will help press the rear tires into the pavement for added traction to assist the Eaton Detroit Trutrac in its limited-slip endeavors.

 

Glad to know you still have that youthful attitude to rock and roll like a young whipper-snapper like me. I will also do something similar to your very detailed explanation above. I think I'll do some black felt or carpet to match the interior to cover the wood. I'll also put a padded divider board between the seat and the cab. Since I don't have any speakers in the back, I can do the same for the package tray. I also think the weight of the Camaros are to light in the back. I hated driving in the rain with the positraction and always helped with a little more weight in the back. I kept a small piece of carpet, tools, tire, jack and other emergency items in the back. I also wonder about the large empty space at the quarter panels. Would you block that area too or you think sound deadener at the interior quarter window panel is good enough?

 

Well, hmm. A youthful attitude is not something I've been accused of at current 72... Still, I guess when it comes to music, I do still have passion! Otherwise, why am I spending such an absurd amount of money on a car audio system???

In my younger days (daze) I was hot-rodding around the country as a Field Service Engineer in that "Chevrolet" motorhome you liked the looks of, with my Camaro on the car trailer behind me, and Targus the Wonder Dog at my side, and back then, I looked like this:



That is NOT Targus behind me. Not much wolf left in that Irish Setter... Now, over 40 years later, I don't look like this. But yeah, Rock and Roll and I have history, along with digital electronics...

Regarding noise bleed through side panels, I am going to be content with the Lizard Skin behind the windows. I would love to stuff the cavity with Rock Wool, and it might be possible, once I get down to the shop and look, but those pesky windows have to come down so I can listen to Big Block Music when the sun shines...
The Lizard Skin sound deadening component (layer 1) does a very good job at convincing body panels to not vibrate as much.

Just as an FYI, the restoration is taking place about 180 miles from me, and I only visit on occasion, because I doubt that even angels from heaven like to drive through Seattle on I-5...

 

No doubt in my mind!

 

Earlier in this thread, on December 12 at 12:39 am, I mentioned I wanted to revisit the subject of "when is an SS 396 truly an SS 396?", particularly as it relates to my 1st-gen Camaro and my history with him. Think of the following as just my opinion about attitudes toward restorers I have noted here and there on these forums. It deals with the subject of self-righteousness, of 'my way or the highway', of whether there is more than one correct way to renew or talk about an old car. It is more about what is an acceptable attitude and how we should treat each other in these modern times than it is about this restoration. I won't blame you if you roll your eyes and skip it. I also won't have a problem if you have a problem with what I say. That's why we have these forums.

I have owned "Ricky Camaro" since late 1978/early 1979. I bought him for $3000.00 and he looked like this at the time:


I drove Ricky every day for a number of years before storing him for an eventual restoration, but in my mind, he was always what I was told he was when I bought him: originally an SS 396 that had been in a collision and whose front end and engine-compartment components were substantially rebuilt. Drive train, radiator and other engine-compartment items had been replaced. He had no front bumper. There were multiple holes in the firewall from the violence of the collision. During the tear-down for this restoration, we found areas of the front fenders with more than 1/2" of bondo. My planning for this restoration was to put Ricky back closer to the way he was built. For instance, I wanted to restore a front bumper, put a 396 back in, replace the Saginaw transmission with a true-to-the-original Muncie, etc. Also, there was cancer around the rear wheel-wells and rust holes in the pan that needed to be eliminated. Years went by the way years do, and I finally started this restoration earlier this year. At that time, I also joined this group of forums. There was nothing like this community forum in the world that existed when I was driving Ricky full-time, spanning from 1979 to 1984/85. In that earlier world, there was in fact no generally-available internet, no cell phones beyond IMTS, just the sheer pleasure of driving a class act known as a Chevy Camaro. Nobody then was screaming "that's not authentic!!!" We grinned at each other, maybe flashed our lights as we passed, just simply belonged. That was a simpler time, and the smoke in the air inspired "mellow". Now, joining this forum of Camaro-lovers, I find a different atmosphere in some entries, confrontational in nature, perhaps wrapped around adrenaline-rush love of conflict, maybe a bit of holier-than-thou, occasionally apparent "young-bull syndrome", possibly just a sign of the times.

I have been reading this collection of forums now and then since January of 2021 and finally, in mid-October, decided to participate to some small degree. I introduced myself in the new members area, and was greeted by a few regulars, quite warmly. I was asked for pictures, so I migrated to the 1st Gen section. There I found a sticky titled "Let's see those 1st Gen Pics" so I obliged. I created a thread titled "Riding in Style" with a picture of Ricky Camaro taken shortly after I bought him. The very first response, asking if I actually was sure he was an SS 396, startled me. The questioner turned out to be a really great guy, but it was just an alien concept to me that a car I had owned for 42 years, unaltered from the way I bought it, might be thought to be a fake. NOBODY was creating "fake" SS 396's back then, as far as I know, and I just didn't realize two things as a neophyte to this on-line fraternity: 1) people ARE creating 'fakes' now, and 2) this appears to matter to a number of others.

Restorations come in many flavors. At the 'purist' end of the scale are those who want their car to be EXACTLY like it would have been at original purchase time, ideally with numbers that are correct to the car. I am TRULY filled with respect for these people, this philosophy, and their cars. The far end of the restoration spectrum is occupied by those whose 1st Gen Camaro perhaps looks like an original Camaro visually, but is revealed upon close inspection to be, to an extent, a modern automobile in terms of re-designed suspension, drive train, amenities like Recaro seats, imaginative dashes and fuel-injected current motors of huge HP. I am as comfortable with these people as I am with the Originalist, and in fact, with everyone in between (where I live). I really don't care about accuracy of badging or representation. These wonderful cars are THEIR TOYS, and they are free in my mind to do with and talk about their toys in whatever way they want. If they make a statement that I am pretty sure is wrong, I might verbally disagree, but without passion or desire to argue. It doesn't impact me in any negative way. However, I have NO respect for anyone sneering or talking ill of those who choose a different path for restoration from theirs, NO MATTER WHAT IT MAY BE. So, at 72 years of age, I read rants and raves that throw stones at 'cloners', just shake my head, and remember the words of Bob Dylan, who in one of his early songs chants "while one who sings with his tongue on fire, gargles in the rat-race choir; bent out of shape by Society's pliers, cares not to come up any higher, but rather get you down in the hole that he's in."

In the late '70's when Ricky came into my life, Camaro's of the first generation were common, not particularly taking huge dollars to buy. I don't remember anybody manufacturing 'restoration' parts for them; we just went to junk yards, and the cars were what they were. When I bought Ricky, he had a 12-bolt rear end, staggered shocks, heavy-duty multi-leaf rear springs, rear wing, SS gas cap, big block hood, Tik-Tok-Tach, console with gauges and all of this at least looked like it had been there for his 10 years of life. The seller said that he had been in a front-end collision (which was obvious) and had been substantially rebuilt below his hood, but was originally an SS 396. I had (and have) no reason to doubt what he was saying about this Camaro. However, there is no way now, lacking a build-sheet or other original documentation, to know if it was so. Maybe some owner back in the 1970's, pre-me, might have gone to a junk yard and bought a 396 engine, an SS gas cap, SS hood, converted the car to multi-leaf rear springs, found a 12-bolt rear end, found a Tik-Tok-Tach with 396 red-line, etc. and told everyone it was an SS 396. A lot of work. Or, for a little bit of money and no trouble, he could instead have just gone and bought one that was complete. They weren't hard to find in the big cities of the west coast in the early and mid-70's. I have no idea in this case, but I can say that Ricky and I both lived in Southern Oregon, which was, in terms of economy, a working definition of Regional Poverty. There was a minimal population of Camaros to find in junk yards (or yards at all for that matter). Personally, I find a conversion scenario as described above to be unlikely, so I have no problem with saying that I believe my Camaro was originally an SS 396. It's just missing some of the original parts. Since I bought him, this is the first time that I am changing any core part. I'm not trying to impress anyone, not beating my chest and yodeling like Tarzan. It just seems likely that, equipped with virtually every Super Sport part, and many other options, it most likely started life as a Super Sport. Until I joined this set of forums, I didn't even know there were people who would question me saying I have an SS 396 if I couldn't prove it with original documentation.

I will confess, for this ungodly expensive restoration, I am having things done to Ricky that are expressly NOT 'SS 396' things. Products such as truck bed-liner undercoating, Lizard Skin interior coats, and High-Energy Ignition Systems did not exist in 1968, as far as I know, but I am at peace with their use on my car. If others find this offensive, I refer you back to my Bob Dylan quote. It should be no skin off your back if I restore and modify my Camaro to please me, and if I describe it any way I want. It doesn't impact you in any real way if I state it started life as an SS 396 but can't prove it. My description doesn't benefit me financially since this car will pass on to my son after I lose the light, if it survives my driving abilities and fortunes. In dollars, it will not be worth what I am investing in it, at least initially. This is just my present to me, with my wonderful wife's consent (plus, she too plans to drive it). I suggest that instead of finding other people's claims offensive, you meditate on the beauty of a rose-colored sky at sunrise or sunset. And thank whatever gods may be for the gift of life.

If you mike my engine, you will find it displaces 396 cubic inches, and if you examine my transmission, you will find it is an authentic and original M20 (wide ratio) Muncie, although with a Hurst shifter that didn't come along until the next year. I like Hurst shifters, and that is reason enough. The front sub-frame, suspension and ride, while mostly new (thanks to the collision) will be very much unaltered 1st gen in design, the rear end and springs are original, 12-bolt and multi-leaf, and the rear shocks are staggered.

Here's where the rubber meets the road, for me: As the debate about what is a valid restoration rages, people with red faces shouting at each other, you will find me with a HUGE smile on my face when I fire Ricky's 396 and listen to that magnificent big-block Chevy rumble, augmented by his Stage 4 cam, Hooker headers, 3" tubes and Magnaflow 'mufflers'. The huge smile will turn into a righteous grin when I put the Muncie in gear, let out the clutch, feel the 'good grip' of pavement provided by my Eaton Detroit Truetrac differential, and ride off into the sunset. "Hi-Yo Silver, away!" The sounds of spirited debate will fade. God bless steel-tube headers.!

 

I couldn't read it all tonight but yes those were simpler times,what you need to remember is back then it was just a muscle car and they were a dime a dozen.
In today's world these cars are coveted collectors items and bring big money so provenance is a big deal especially with so many fakes out there posing as the real deal.
Some are so well done it's hard even for the experts to sort them out, if you aren't planning to sell it as a true SS and just want to restore and drive it does it really matter?
Not in my book,it'll be a great car either way.

 

OK, point well taken. I will concede I wasn't thinking about those who play the game of buy low/sell high as a source of income. For them, provenance is indeed a big deal, since it ties directly to their wallet. For everyone else, it seems to me to be pretty much like rooting for your favorite sports team: a way to generate our favorite drug, adrenaline.

Lately, with refreshed interest, I have been cruising the forums, mostly outside of 1st Gen, mostly for the first time. I was finding posts and entire threads here and there that seemed to me to be a little mean-spirited. You might recall Bobby D said "don't hate nothing 'cept hatred." When I read that a Camaro-lover "hates" another Camaro-lover because of the way they talk about their car, or their choice of how to perform a restoration, I just cringe. There is too much hatred in this crazy world. When we gather around a common love and yet talk about hating each other, I react. So, the above "essay" was really only meant for that minimal number of members who feel and talk ill of others.

I realize Ricky can no longer be considered 'a dime a dozen'. The cost of this restoration makes that clear. For that matter, so does just going out and buying one. But for me (and perhaps only for me) he's still "just a muscle car". A very, very cool muscle car. I was only trying to say "Relax, there is no wrong way to restore your Toy. All ways are the right way. Please mellow out and use your nice words."

By the way, a brief status report on said restoration: today, finally, after an incredible number of minor roadblocks, Ricky turned Cordovan Maroon, and here and there, black. Four coats of base, four coats of Matrix clear. Pictures will follow soon.