Brought Home The Dream: '69 RS Z/28

[Dave Rifkin]

Beautiful car

[cruiserofland]

Originally Posted by Dave Rifkin

Beautiful car

Thank you

[cruiserofland]

Been busy with work and life but finally finished some Camaro interior projects. Cleaned up the Delco AM/FM radio, checked the harness, and installed, but with 12V and a new speaker and antenna it doesn't yet work. At least it looks good! Until I can have a pro figure out what it needs fixed internally.

Also finally finished the woodgrain install on the passenger side with new grab handle, ashtray, and glovebox, all made by OER. Still going to tweak fitment a bit but it's pretty close, and man it just transforms the interior along with the radio woodgrain. Glad to have finally finished the deluxe interior transformation that the restoring owner started over twenty years ago. This combo in my mind is one of the great American interior designs of all time

[rlw68]

Originally Posted by cruiserofland

Also finally finished the woodgrain install on the passenger side with new grab handle, ashtray, and glovebox, all made by OER. Still going to tweak fitment a bit but it's pretty close, and man it just transforms the interior along with the radio woodgrain. Glad to have finally finished the deluxe interior transformation that the restoring owner started over twenty years ago.

Looks great Matt. Some deluxe seatbelts would really 'finish' off the interior. Whenever my wife asks when the car will be finished, I tell her that it will never be finished.

[cruiserofland]

Thanks Rob! Only took me four months to respond Work and life keep me busy but this month marks one year with the car!

Since my last post I've had a steady stream of little projects. The car came without much documentation from its restoration (~2000-2010), so in part I've been "baselining" the car bumper to bumper and documenting everything, correcting little bits as I go (and with regular reading of this forum, CRG, and TC, I learn more every day about the nut-and-bolt details of how an 02D RS Z would have rolled off the assembly line).


I'm eventually hoping to document more or less every nut and bolt, with a list of what's correct, what's not, and whether what's not correct will be replaced or left alone. Two examples: I plan to keep it desmogged and I don't mind leaving the shiny valve covers with drippers since it's a CE block. Biggest ticket item to fix in the engine bay: swap the repro booster & MC with the originals that I've got in a box and need to send out for restoration.

First fun project from this summer was to pull the diff cover to check the gears. As I suspected after counting driveshaft revolutions with the wheels up, sure enough this is a 4.56:1 gearset inside the original BV (4.10) housing Looks like "Zoom" gears from the stamping "41 x 9 PHT 3093" (which I believe is Perfection Hy-Test). This Z was originally bought in Harvard, Il, and later restored in Chicago, so I wonder if the owner went with Zoom gears since they were local (Harvey, Il, at the time) or just because they're awesome







Looks like the original "4-series" gear carrier, the heaviest-duty from GM which would have carried the original 4:10 set. Assembly stamp is A 23 J so Jan 23rd '69 - seems right for 02D?



I also added a posi lube tag to the diff fill plug, adding the period after "diff" to make the repro look more correct (a slight touch from a center drill to deboss then a drop of white paint). While under there I went for 2 qts of fresh Lucas 80W-90 for the posi with a new Fel-Pro gasket and 1.5 qts of fresh Sta-Lube 85W90 GL-4 for the M20.

[napa68]

Great to see you enjoying the car and the process the way that you are

Beautiful car!
Tim

[L_e_e]

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[cruiserofland]

Originally Posted by L_e_e

....

Lee, I spoke to the folks at Lucas when I could not find anything definitive online about whether additive was required with this oil. They suggested over the phone that additive was not necessary with this formulation for use with mechanical limited-slips, and I have not had any chattering so far. That said, I don't have experience in this area so happy to hear recommendations.

[cruiserofland]

It has been too long since I posted so time for an update! Since October it’s been a combo of enjoying the car around town, meeting great folks at cars & coffees, and working on a whole lot of projects, mostly in the engine bay. I’ll post the latest project first - I had the original 9204 booster and 309 master cylinder in a box from when I bought the car, and so I finally sent it out to Mike Gibbons and Brake Boosters. I also had them restore my original metering valve and replate its bracket, plus I sourced some restored hardware from Rich Pasqualone. This is no surprise to folks who have worked with Mike but everything came out beautifully!

Installed everything and got the brakes bled this weekend, now taking a moment to enjoy the view. I’ve still got a few little projects left to go but this engine bay has come a long way in the last year and a half

[olredalert]

----It's so nice to see a correctly done master cylinder. Yours may be a tad too nice, but I love it and the fact that you left the machined areas bare. So often guys just paint the whole master black and that just didn't happen!.....Bill S