Survivor '69 Coupe with a 6-cylinder and a 3-speed manual

[MO]

I often wonder if anyone is actually reading this garbage I post...after all, it's a SIX-BANGER!

Oh my...... your posts could never be described as garbage !!! They are very informative and extremely enlightening. I, like others I'm sure, are always looking forward to the coming additional offerings of your passion to preserve your Camaro. Don't ever stop, and many, many thanks for all you've provided us up to this point.

My hat is off to you and your dedication to continuing this superbly informative (and often unobserved) side of the history of Camaro. Thank you. 

Chuck

Could not have said it better! I always look forward to reading your posts because you make it interesting, relatable and fun. It's great to read and learn about things that I have limited knowledge or experience of.

[68SixBangerRS]

Thanks MO.  Not much known about the six-bangers, and not many left to look at.  I tried to capture everything about the red Torque Drive-equipped "automatic" (that really wasn't an automatic ) a couple of years ago.  I barely saved it from being converted to a SBC by GR Classic Autos in Grand Rapids, MI (they had been trying to sell the car for months and all of the prospective buyers wanted to swap the six out).  My goal is to preserve "Charlotte" as she is.

[68SixBangerRS]

Yesterday was "Wheel Swap Day".  Lyle (original owner Charlotte's husband) swapped the original FC-coded plain steel wheels out for more-fashionable Rally wheels sometime in the early '70s (Charlotte said he was the "king of the junkyards"...always looking for interesting stuff) and the plain wheels were discarded.  I have noticed that virtually EVERY 1st Gen Camaro at shows has Rally wheels (usually repops with no valve stem codes) and that is a turn-off to me...nothing unusual about them...boring.  A 1st Gen Camaro with hubcaps really gets noticed.  Anyway, I digress...

I have been collecting parts for six-banger 1st Gens for about 30 years and had a complete set of them sitting in my basement car parts room.  Unfortunately, after months of trying to sell them on Craigslist I finally gave up and stupidly scrapped them, figuring I would never need them as I was keeping my one-of-one '70 six-banger Camaro (and preparing for a move to Florida...on hold for another year...didn't want to move the heavy wheels).  Then my current six-banger showed up and needed a set...figure the odds! 

Back on CL and Fleabay for yet another round of searching for rare six-banger parts that no one else really gives 2 s**ts about...this time FC-coded wheels.  I found a guy in Northern Calif with 3 that had been powder-coated gloss black.  He had bought them from an older guy who was putting them on a 1st Gen Firebird, then decided to install disk brakes and the drum-brake FC wheels wouldn't work.  The wheels and shipping cost me $500, but I was happy with their condition.  I had oddly enough saved a single Butternut Yellow FC wheel in the garage that was still in good condition, and I painted it with gloss black to match the rest.  One wheel was dated for June 24th of '69, and the other 3 had '68 dates...the date codes are not important to me as this is a street driver, not a trailer queen.  Note the '69's "FC" is smaller than the '68's stamping...again, I don't care.

I made an appointment with Goodyear in nearby Marysville to do the job, but arrived on time to find out that someone else had jumped in front of me and I would have to wait 45 mins...I left for Malwart.  I generally do not like going to Malwart because it's usually kids doing the tire busting, but this one has some older guys who use a torque wrench to tighten the lug nuts.  I arrived and no other customers were there...bingo!

New wheels really look great and take the car back to nearly original.  I'm happy.

 

[68SixBangerRS]

I'm 100% certain that this car still has its original lug nuts.  Of the 20 lugs, 15 were stamped "RBW", and 5 had triangle-shaped marks.  Note that the nuts have virtually no wear and are in great shape.

[68SixBangerRS]

The tire buster at Walmart tried to clean the sidewalls of the Uniroyal Tiger Paws that Lyle had installed 3 years ago when the car was moved from a farm in Minden, NE to his house in rural Arkansas.  Lyle had never cleaned off the blue protective spray from the whitewalls, and it had transmogrified into a dark brown...the stuff the tire buster was using didn't make a dent in the dried mess.  I took some Brillo pads and Soft Scrub to them and got decent results. 

This car was originally built with dog-dish hubcaps, but original owner Charlotte had them swapped for more-fashionable mag-style hubcaps at Misle Chevrolet.  I was not a big fan of this style of hubcap, but they have grown on me and I will leave them alone.  These hubcaps were $70 a set and were available either factory-ordered or as a dealer add-on.  I have only seen a couple of sets of them on 1st Gen Camaros at shows.  Two different styles of these caps were used, and they can be differentiated by the size of the cooling holes.  The first style was used from '64-'66 and has smaller holes, and the 2nd style from '67-'70.  They are heavy as hell!

The Uniroyal Tiger Paws are P195-75-14 and are excellent for a daily driver (and the closest currently-made size to the original E78-14 bias-ply tires).  I like them better than Chinese or Korean tires...US made tires are more correct in my opinion, and Uniroyal was an OEM tire supplier to GM when this car was built.

[x66 714]

Looks good...Joe

[GMAD_Van Nuys]

Back in the 1970s, I bought new 15 x 7 inch Kelsey Hayes steel wheels for my 1966 Mustang for $27.50 each and mounted Pirelli CN36 235/15 tires.  After making the Shelby 1 inch modification, I took the Mustang to my local Goodyear dealer and it took them some time to align the suspension!

[MO]

Looks great! I am a big fan of the mag style wheel covers. Great that Walmart would do the tires for you. Discount Tire in CA would not even check the tire pressure on a set I had that had reached the ten year old mark.

[68SixBangerRS]

"Charlotte" has some interesting stickers scattered throughout.  On the left outside of the windshield is a 1982 Nebraska State Vehicle Inspection sticker.  Back then, Nebraska had yearly safety inspections.  The car's inspections stopped then when the car began 39 years of storage in '83 (35 of them in a machine shed in Milford, NE).  The lower right outside has a 1974 Omaha City Resident sticker.  Inside the glovebox is a satin sticker commemorating the 1970 Nebraska Cornhuskers football team and head coach Bob Devaney.  The Huskers won the NCAA National Football Championship back-to-back in '70 and '71.  Charlotte is a big Nebraska fan to this day.

[68SixBangerRS]

The weather here yesterday was beautiful...clear and mild for most of the afternoon.  I took Charlotte on a 20 mile-long loop of backroads in Delaware County (north of Columbus...rapidly being developed as the metro area expands northward).  There are 2 scenic rivers that flow through the county, the Olentangy and Scioto Rivers, and there are some very nice twisty roads to drive along the rivers and through several untouched villages...with virtually no traffic on weekdays.

A good bit of Fall colors still hanging around (literally and figuratively).  Enjoy...

[70L34]

Beautiful, love the fall days in the Midwest.

[roadster]

Hope you were able to obtain the incredibly rare part , anxious to see what it is . Rare parts are the icing on the cake ! You are perfect caretaker for this car from what I’ve seen .

[68SixBangerRS]

Roadster, many thanks. 

As you may know from following this thread, I recently found a complete set of late-'67 dated Goodyear E78-14 bias-ply whitewalls on '68 Camaro FC-coded wheels and bought them immediately.  Now the only thing I needed was an original Delco battery for Charlotte.  I started looking as soon as I bought the car (Labor Day weekend) and found several that might have been suitable, but they weren't "assembly line" batteries.  I was at Hershey about 10 years ago and chanced upon a silver '69 Chevelle 300 4-door with a 250 six and Powerglide, a barn-find car with quite a bit of surface rust, but complete with 18k original miles and its original P-O-P.  It needed paint and a small amount of bodywork, but was otherwise in excellent condition.  I could've bought it for $2,500 and foolishly decided to buy it right after another guy bought it.  In the engine compartment was a Delco R59 battery with the same sticker that this battery has, "Recommend Replacement With Energizer R59".  I was looking for an original R59 battery with that sticker, which I was sure indicated an assembly line-installed battery.

About 3 weeks ago I saw that same battery on Ebay and bought it for $399.  The seller wanted me to pick it up in metro KC...and it just so happened that I was going to visit my sister in KC within 2 weeks.  I picked it up this weekend and it is in absolutely beautiful condition.

I asked the seller ("Oliver") if he knew anything about the battery's history.  He buys and sells classic GM parts...most are found on Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace.  He found the battery sitting off to the side of a garage in Missouri where he was buying another part and was told it was from a Nova of unknown year...all I know about it.  It appears to me that it is an original assembly line, and probably rare.

[68SixBangerRS]

The original battery cables are still in the car, although they are missing their original spring ring ends.  The negative cable has GM number 6297646 and was coded "AP" on the buildsheet.  The positive cable has number 6297653 and was coded "EB" on the buildsheet (note...I do not have the buildsheet for this car).  I will keep the original cables despite the lack of the original ends.

[68SixBangerRS]

I haven't posted anything on here for a while due to nothing to post, but I haven't been asleep at the switch, so-to-speak. Charlotte (my '69 Camaro for the uninitiated) has had a continuing annoying issue of a miss at idle. I traced the problem to the number 5 cylinder and tried everything electrical with no luck. The miss would clear up above 2k rpm which I thought was unusual (I tried to set the idle at 2k, but it proved too temperamental for everyday driving...insert sarcasm here). I knew the problem was either a bent pushrod, bent valve, or a bad cam lobe. All pushrods were removed and all were in beautiful straight condition. The next logical thing to replace was the cam. I was shocked to learn that NAPA, Advance Auto, and Autozone no longer carry cams for 194-230-250 six bangers...dammit! My next source was Fleabay. On there I found a guy selling an OEM Wolverine stock replacement for $60...SOLD! I bought a set of Sealed Power lifters from NAPA. I also bought a replacement timing gear set, but that would have required pulling the crank gear which would have probably necessitated either pulling the engine or raising it up considerably to access the gear (the Chilton's manual said to pull the engine), so I decided to reuse the original fiber gear (which was in great shape). I tried to find an NOS fiber timing gear on Fleabay with no luck. The engine has only 45k original miles, so I don't think there will be any issues with reusing the original gear.

After pulling the cam I could see the problem immediately...a wiped-out number 5 exhaust lobe (you can plainly see it in the first photo). Charlotte's husband Lyle had used a mechanic in Arkansas who employed the time-honored hillbilly method of towing the car behind a pickup and dumping the clutch to get the engine running (hey, it seemed like a good idea at the time), so I think I know why the cam lobe got wiped out. 

Anyway, I now know what the issue is and will get the new cam and lifters installed ASAP...full report when the project is completed.