A very very old gearhead!

[Last Indian]

I’ve done cars in just about every configuration you can think of. Grew up in the Muscle car era! Owed a “69” Z/28 for 35 years. Owed a “74” Z/28 for 30 years among others. Drag raced, slalom raced, road course as well. Have built many over the years, both for racing as well as street. My favorite will always be my “69” Z! Was just an unbelievable car! The last Indian came out of selling the Z! So it became a new passion to see just how much I could build a ground pounder mentality of the old muscle car era into a modern FWD.
The picture of the Z is from 2003 one year before I sold it.

 

PierreNotPear's super awesome intro

hello all forum members!

[Robert]

Man, your story is super relatable for anyone who grew up in the muscle car scene! The way you’ve taken your love for that raw power and brought it into modern FWD builds is seriously impressive. I have a few questions for you that might spark a good discussion here:

That ’69 Z/28 Sounds like the perfect ride! What made it your favorite after all those years? Was it the way it handled, the engine, or just the overall experience? Bet you’ve got some stories about that one.

35 years with a car is a long time. What made you decide to let it go?

Now that you’ve shifted gears to modern builds, has any of them hit you the same way the Z/28 did? Do you have a favorite project that stands out besides the GTX?

I’m sure everyone here would love to hear more about your journey and any tips you’ve got for keeping that muscle car mentality in modern builds!

 

[RebelRacer99]

That 69 Camaro looks sweet

 

[gs_geoff]

I’ve done cars in just about every configuration you can think of. Grew up in the Muscle car era! Owed a “69” Z/28 for 35 years. Owed a “74” Z/28 for 30 years among others. Drag raced, slalom raced, road course as well. Have built many over the years, both for racing as well as street. My favorite will always be my “69” Z! Was just an unbelievable car! The last Indian came out of selling the Z! So it became a new passion to see just how much I could build a ground pounder mentality of the old muscle car era into a modern FWD.
The picture of the Z is from 2003 one year before I sold it.

Nice! Always wanted an old school muscle car but when I could afford it, it just didn't make sense. And now I can't afford it lol. I do have a 63 Falcon that I need to get fully streetworthy again. Added an old pic of my GP

 

[Last Indian]

Man, your story is super relatable for anyone who grew up in the muscle car scene! The way you’ve taken your love for that raw power and brought it into modern FWD builds is seriously impressive. I have a few questions for you that might spark a good discussion here:

That ’69 Z/28 Sounds like the perfect ride! What made it your favorite after all those years? Was it the way it handled, the engine, or just the overall experience? Bet you’ve got some stories about that one.

35 years with a car is a long time. What made you decide to let it go?

Now that you’ve shifted gears to modern builds, has any of them hit you the same way the Z/28 did? Do you have a favorite project that stands out besides the GTX?

I’m sure everyone here would love to hear more about your journey and any tips you’ve got for keeping that muscle car mentality in modern builds!

Being born at the very beginning of the “50” I was already 11 when the GTO came out, but before that the neighborhood I grew up in was a township outside a small city. So at that time sports & cars where what we lived for! Now being to young for actually cars we all built model cars like their were real cars. We would chop em, custom paint work on them, detail the inside & the engines, even the underneath + work on the wheels to make them roll as fast as possible. Then setup plywood tracks & race them like pinewood derby cars. A couple dads in the neighborhood had old car projects & my best friend’s dad was one, so by 10 years old I was already working on cars be it minimal by mechanic standards. Needless to say I loved cars almost from birth & as time moved on, while I wasn’t aware of it, but people made me aware of it that I had a talent for it.
So 16 I bought a used “64” GTO, but in “69” when that Z came out I had to have one!
Why I loved that car?! That car I drag raced at Thompson drag way at 18! I had raced other cars, but that brought a new meaning to power for an 18 year old kid. After that, over the next 35 years that car literally became a legend in the area. That car took me through 35 years of my life. That car drove through the hottest summers, no air in a Z, the coldest winters & trust me northeast Ohio’s winters in that time frame were not friendly. In the 9th year of its life the Z was totaled on Christmas Day night coming home from my parents. I was sick my wife was driving & 600 hp cars are not friendly in snowstorms. That just could not be the end I thought! So one I got out of the hospital I went & found a donor car, bought my totaled car back from the insurance company & rebuilt a pretty extensively damaged, even structurally car. I’ll stop here for now. Here are some pictures of it.

 

[gs_geoff]

Oh damn. I'm glad I grew up in the last few years before computers dominated cars. My first car was a 1988 Buick Skylark, Quad4 with FE3 suspension and Y56 grand touring package. There was no GS that year but that's pretty much what it would have been. My 63 Falcon was my dad's first car in 1967. The Skylark had something break in the suspension when I was driving home in a snowy day and I totaled it.

 

[Last Indian]

So what made it my favorite? I use to explain the Z this way after I rebuilt it after the accident it became something I could not have imagined! I knew it would be better, but not like it became. Because of the damage sustained I decided to build a custom full frame that housed an original leaf spring suspension. A full stainless steel floor pan, more powerful engine & a custom built transmission. As well as custom designed 4 wheel disc brakes. The results were a car that drove like an extension of one’s self. The car had an incredible 1.13 g force on a 300 foot skid pad test.

 

[ThatSlow.W204]

So what made it my favorite? I use to explain the Z this way after I rebuilt it after the accident it became something I could not have imagined! I knew it would be better, but not like it became. Because of the damage sustained I decided to build a custom full frame that housed an original leaf spring suspension. A full stainless steel floor pan, more powerful engine & a custom built transmission. As well as custom designed 4 wheel disc brakes. The results were a car that drove like an extension of one’s self. The car had an incredible 1.13 g force on a 300 foot skid pad test.

this is awesome! welcome to the forums and hope you enjoy it here, really awesome to see all of this that you did here, and that is an amazing skidpad number!

 

[Last Indian]

You’re right that number is amazing even to me & I built the car to be that impressive, but who knew! The things that really helped make that number happen were these. That car weighed about 3500 lbs. it did not have a 50/50 weight distribution. The rear unibody that went over the rear axle was three layers thick of steel all spot welded together. This section of the floor was one of the heaviest portions of the car body & it all sat above CG. When I built the full frame & gutted the floor from the firewall to the rear valance panel & replaced it with the stainless steel floor it change the whole dynamics of the entire cars physics, including, it reduce the weight of the car to 3200 lbs. Because of the removal of the factory floor & the add of a full frame + SS floor pan, which most was below wheel centerline, It lowered the CG 11 ½ “ & the RC 9 ¾”. By the end of the build the car ended up with a 50/50 weight distribution, a 3” wider rear wheel stance & a 2” wider front wheel stance. Additionally the original type rear leaf spring suspension makes a huge difference over the coil over traction bar setups usually used when this type of modification was made! Much less work in the coil over suspension.
I never showed the car. Never looked to have it in any magazines, but many folks around the country knew of it for reasons I don’t need to go into. But a friend of a friend was hosting a foreign magazine who heard about the car & asked if they could do a piece, so I said yes. Attached is that article. Hope you can read Swedish, cause I can’t. Still don’t know what it says.

 

[Last Indian]

35 years with a car is a long time. What made you decide to let it go?

Really was a hard thing to do! I had literally every single piece of new OEM sheet metal except the roof. The plan was to rebuild the car one last time if not sooner at least when I retired. Strip right down to the frame & start from scratch. But my job got more & more demanding free time became scarce. My wife, who more than the car I wanted to spend time with developed severe allergies & could virtually never ride in the car, because as I said before Z’s had no air conditioning. So by 2004 realized I was virtually never driving the car. So did I want to put all the effort into a rebuild to let it sit or just sell all of it. Parts & car in one shot. So I located a first Gen Camaro rebuilder/dealer who came, looked & bought it all on the spot. About a year after that the Last Indian was born.

 

[Last Indian]

This is for those that think something is to far gone & for those who think I might be a bit crazy; you may be right. This was the complete transformation of my wife Z before her allergies got really bad. This car like my “69” was pretty killer, but not as much as the “69”

 

[Robert]

There's nothing like a body-off-frame restoration. I wish this was still a thing. That car turned out beautiful. I love the 70s F-body cars. My buddy has a 74 he had restored to his liking.

 

[xrwit74]

I wish my original fenders were in better shape on my 74 Camaro. The aftermarket ones don't line up at all.

 

[Last Indian]

There's nothing like a body-off-frame restoration. I wish this was still a thing. That car turned out beautiful. I love the 70s F-body cars. My buddy has a 74 he had restored to his liking.

Agreed, & that’s a load of work! This was the next level! As you know the F bodies were unibody with a front half subframe. As you can see in the following pictures, which some show both the frame build as well as her original Z before I started to cut it up! I built her a, dare I say new car only using a handful of the original car! This build was around “88” so this car had seen 14 really bad northeast Ohio winters! Lots of salt! The car was not long for the world & she loved the car. So while the car looked good on the outside, that was not the case behind the scene.
This build was a ground up full frame for a girl! That meant quite, but moderate power & very good handling, plus safety! All in all I shaved 350 pounds off the car while structurally making a brick! The floor was two layers thick, as can be somewhat determine from the pictures. 1” square tube ran from side to side welded at each frame rail. Those tubes were placed in position for seat mounting. On top side of the tube was a 22 gage sheet. Than a 1” layer of foam & on the bottom side a 22 gage sheet. There was a lot more that went into this, but I’ll leave it there at least for now.

 

[RebelRacer99]

Agreed, & that’s a load of work! This was the next level! As you know the F bodies were unibody with a front half subframe. As you can see in the following pictures, which some show both the frame build as well as her original Z before I started to cut it up! I built her a, dare I say new car only using a handful of the original car! This build was around “88” so this car had seen 14 really bad northeast Ohio winters! Lots of salt! The car was not long for the world & she loved the car. So while the car looked good on the outside, that was not the case behind the scene.
This build was a ground up full frame for a girl! That meant quite, but moderate power & very good handling, plus safety! All in all I shaved 350 pounds off the car while structurally making a brick! The floor was two layers thick, as can be somewhat determine from the pictures. 1” square tube ran from side to side welded at each frame rail. Those tubes were placed in position for seat mounting. On top side of the tube was a 22 gage sheet. Than a 1” layer of foam & on the bottom side a 22 gage sheet. There was a lot more that went into this, but I’ll leave it there at least for now.

If you believe those shows like Graveyard Carz and Gas Monkey, anything can be saved with enough time and money. Of course nowadays you could build basically that entire car from a catalog, but where's the fun in that? Great work saving a classic crom the crusher!