Bee’s 2010 SS/RS Rally Yellow Build

[Bee]

Originally Posted by Joe.G

Nice Job, I am on the NY/PA border I googled the area in your Profile and it appears you are a hike from me, I'd have really liked to see your car in person.

Thanks Joe! Definitely shoot me a PM if you are ever in this corner of PA. Although I haven't registered yet, I am going to try to head out to the Camaro Nationals this July.

[Bee]

After hitting up a lot of local shows this year, I’ve come to realize that unless the person looking at my car is a fellow 5th gen enthusiast, most do not realize the extent of the modifications that were done. In fact, I had some people tell me they thought I ordered it with some type of appearance package (which is actually a really nice compliment). Although I am not usually a big fan of elaborate displays, I thought it was time to put together a show board.

The sign itself is 20x30 and I created it in Photoshop Elements. A couple photo shoots and a bunch of post-editing hours later, I sent the image to Shutterfly and had it printed on a metal sign with a glossy finish. I also bought an artwork bag to store/transport it in, but once I finish remodeling the garage it will definitely have to go on the wall.

When it came to the stand, I wanted something that the wind couldn’t blow over, wouldn’t need to touch/lean against the car, and something that I could easily fit into the trunk. After scouring the internet for ideas, I found a person who was selling these (he also would make show boards). I did attempt to reach out to him, but never received a response and noticed his Facebook page wasn’t updated in years. So I ended up taking a stab at replicating it by using a rotor (it’s actually for a 91-92 Camaro) and 1” PVC pipe. The show board attaches to a backing plate via heavy duty Velcro, so the whole thing can be setup/taken down within a minute. I was able to debut it at the last show of the season, which was actually a Halloween themed car show.

Here are some pictures from when I was test fitting the parts before painting the PVC and base in bright red.

[Bee]

I thought it was time to give the interior a little love. I’m still not sure which direction or how far I want to go. Back in September, I ordered a set of Drake pedal cover but they ended up being on backorder. By November, I was about to give up and cancel the order when all of a sudden I received a shipment notice. The clutch and brake pedals were super easy to install, as the metal plates had notches where the bolts go. However, the gas pedal required drilling but was doable with a 90 degree drill. I really like how they look and can’t wait to see how they feel while driving. I was only able to try out the clutch and it felt solid.





While I was at it, I also threw a set of seat belt harness pads in for a splash of color. I matched the direction of “Camaro” on both sides, but I’m not sure if the velco will be comfortable on the passenger side. I guess I will find out the next time my wife wants to go for a ride.

[0stones0]

Originally Posted by Bee

While I was at it, I also threw a set of seat belt harness pads in for a splash of color. I matched the direction of “Camaro” on both sides, but I’m not sure if the velco will be comfortable on the passenger side. I guess I will find out the next time my wife wants to go for a ride.

She’ll roll her eyes at you and demand satisfaction.

[Bee]

Originally Posted by 0stones0

She’ll roll her eyes at you and demand satisfaction.

LOL...or it will end up on somewhere on the side of the road.

[Bee]

With only two months left before spring arrives, I thought I should finally get around to starting some of the projects I wanted to do this winter. I have a couple things on my list that require removing the rear bumper. Although it is straightforward (and less involved than taking off the front end), it is certainly one slippery little sucker. I can see why it is recommended to have two people, but thankfully I some ceiling insulation placed under the rear fascia because the final tug made the whole thing jump right off the car.

Anyway, with the rear bumper off, the first order of business was to swap out the reverse lights with a set of tinted Oracle LED lights. The tint was darker than I expected, which I like because I can barely see the LED circles unless the lights are on. They definitely light up my garage a lot more. Please don’t mind the clutter…the first picture is the factory reverse lights compared to the Oracle lights in the second picture. I will have to take better pictures once I get the car out.

[Bee]

Next up was to install my rear tow hook receiver from ZL1 Addons. Back when I did some preliminary research, I wasn’t able to find a lot of info on the rear tow hook…most of the time front tow hook installs/pictures would overwhelm the results. So I took some pictures along the way and well do a mini write-up in case anyone is interested. However, I still have to finish drilling the clearance hole behind the license plate once the bumper is mounted back on the car. Tomorrow, my back-up camera should be delivered so I will get that hole cut before reinstalling the bumper.

Step 1: Remove the rear bumper and carefully set it aside.



Step 2: Find the center of the crash bar. I used the interior trunk latch as a starting point and placed a piece of painters tape.



Step 3: Center the receiver on the crash bar and set the base ¼” from the edge. Mark the position of the receiver on the painter tape. I lucked out as the tape ended up being the exact distance from the edge, so I only marked the holes. Although in hindsight, I probably should have drawn a line on each side.



Step 4: Remove the crash bar. There are three bolts on each side, with one recessed in the larger hole. GM was kind enough to install hooks between the two outer bolts, so the crash bar won’t fall down and take out your exhaust tips.



Step 5: Use a punch to mark the center. I drilled a 1/8” pilot hole through the top and then drilled the final 3/8” hole through the top and bottom. I did one entire hole, place the bolt in, and then repeated for the second.



Step 6: I was still slightly off so I had to break out the step drill bits to make the top holes a little bigger to get the bolts to line up. Once they are in, tight down the bolts using the supplied washers and lock nuts.



Step 7: Reinstall the crash bar.



Step 8: On the rear bumper, pull the wire harness out of the two center holders along with the grey zip tie/plug.



Step 9: According to the ZL1 Add-ons instructions, they said to zip the wire harness up out of the way. However, maybe because my car was built prior to back-up sensors, I didn’t have anything above it to zip tie the harness to. Also, the tab where the grey plug was in is exactly where the receiver sits on the crash bar. So I cut the tab off completely and remounted with double sided tape.



Step 10: Reinstall the bumper to make sure everything is lined up correctly. Just a quick note, there are tabs on the bumper where it mounts along the wheel well. These tabs should go in front of the bracket on the car but behind the wheel well liner.



Step 11: Place a piece of painters tape in the area where the receiver is located. This is the trickiest part as you just have to eyeball the center of the receiver. I started with a 1/8” pilot hole, switched to a 3/8” bit, and finished off with a step bit to get to a 3/4" hole.



Step 12: Verify the tow hook can properly thread into the receiver.



Step 13: Reinstall the license plate and enjoy all the hard work to install something that hopefully no one will ever see (unless you’re at the track).

[Bee]

I’ve been slowly working on installing the Gen5DIY Front/Rear camera kit. The kit included a new mirror with a built-in screen, a front camera with its own switch, a backup camera, and of course all the necessary wiring harnesses.



My first thought on the mirror was, “darn, that looks huge”. But now that it’s mounted, I don’t even notice it anymore. I haven’t decided where I am going to mount the front camera yet. It will need to be grounded near its location, so I’ll probably wait until after my car is out of hibernation so I can pull the front bumper off and find a good spot for the camera. However, I wasn’t too keen with the idea of drilling a hole to mount the front camera switch. So for the first modification to the kit, I isolated the wire that sends power to the front camera and tapped that into my Line Lock arming switch in my cupholder switch plate. This is the switch that energizes the Line Lock momentary switch. Here's a shot testing out the front camera (note that I haven't removed the blue film yet so the picture isn't as clear as it should be)



The back-up camera has been giving me the most trouble so far. The camera provided in the kit (shown below) is designed to mount above the license plate.



Although it appears to be a lot smaller than what was included in previous kits, I just couldn’t bring myself to have it hanging down in front of my plate. So I decided I would mount it on the bottom of the rear crash bar and have it peer through a small hole in the diffuser.



I got it all wired up and removed most of the interior to run the wires up to the driver’s side fuse box. Luckily, it was a warm enough day that I could open the garage door up to fire up the car and put it in reverse. To my dismay, no video appeared in the mirror. After doing some more research, I tried connecting the camera to a different wire on the harness…but that did not work either.

One thing I did learn is that I cannot test power at the harness to confirm which wire gets power while the car is running and in reverse...at least not by myself. At one point, I thought maybe my reverse lights weren’t working so I setup my camera to record while I started it up. It was a pretty cool video of a very slow start as my battery wasn’t hooked up to the tender and I was playing around a lot with the lights…but I was able to confirm the reverse lights are working.

Fast forward a couple more weeks, I ended up getting a new/different backup camera off of Amazon.



This one is designed to be flush mounted, so it will be a lot more secure than how I had the original one mounted. Since I had to remove my center console to tap into my Line Lock switch and have my interior ripped apart, I also decided to run a new wire to expand my exterior lights. With this, I was able to successfully test the new backup camera. I’ll just have to pull the back bumper off again, as I think I will tap this camera directly into the wires at the reverse lights.




Here's how it looks from the outside. Unfortunately, the drill that came with the camera chewed a little bit of the diffuser, so I'll have to try and sand that down to it doesn't look so crazy.

[Bee]

I fell a little behind on my updates but with two car shows this week, I spent the past weekend finishing up the open projects so I could get everything put back together and clean up the car.

For power to the rear backup camera, I ended up tapping directly into the wires at the reverse light. The positive is the teal wire and ground is black. Since the camera will stay mounted to the bumper, I used a Deutsch plug to connect the power/trigger wire (in the same RCA cable that goes up to the mirror). I left both the RCA and plug behind the licenses plate so if I ever need to remove the rear bumper again, I can just disconnect them.



The front camera wiring is more straightforward since that is controlled by a switch. I mounted the camera under the splitter. I’ll see how well it holds up there, but for now it is pretty much well hidden. Similar to the rear, I made sure I kept the RCA and power plugs accessible so if I need to remove the front bumper, I can just unplug them and leave the camera attached. The biggest pain was running the wires through the firewall. GM left a plug about 3 or 4 inches above the battery cable, but trying to get to it from the inside (so I didn’t lose it into the great abyss) took a lot of contorting. Once I got the plug out, it was pretty easy to feed the wires from the engine bay into the car. However, I’d rather not have to go through all that again, so I also decided to run the wires for the line lock…which will be next on my list.



To my dismay, after powering up the front camera I immediately discovered the image was upside down. Unfortunately, the camera cannot be rotated…since the new rear camera I got is more versatile, I went ahead and ordered another one. It will be easy enough to swap out, and if the location works then I’ll go back and drill a hole through the bottom of the bumper to route the wires better.



While I had the interior apart, I thought it would also be a good time to get a dash cam installed. My wife and I both have VanTrue dash cams in our daily drivers, and they have worked great. Although I will occasionally mount a GoPro to the Camaro, I thought it would be nice to have something little more permanent. I even picked up a circular polarized filter, which should help cut down on the windshield glare. I mounted it as high as I could behind the mirror...its a pain to see the menu on the back screen, but it has built-in wifi so I can adjust any settings through my phone.

[Bee]

I was also able to finish installing underglow lights. Although, the kit included two long strips for the sides (which were perfect to go from wheel to wheel), the ones for the front and back were way too short (each about 20” long). I ended up buying a 100cm strip for the front, and used the two shorter ones in the rear. They are powered by the same switch for the ones I have under the hood and in the front grill, but they are connected to a separate Bluetooth controller so I can turn them off via their app.

For the install, I have the two small strips on the bottom of the trunk (directly below the battery/spare tire well). The sides run along the pinch rail (just behind where my ZL1 Addon lift pads are), and the front strip is towards the back (along where the air deflector used to be…I left mine off when I installed the front splitter). I used a bunch of mag daddy’s to secure the wires under the car and brought the sides/rear lights into the trunk using existing holes that were plugged from the factory. The front connection is on the passenger side (right near the harness for the front bumper). I then ran the wire through the passenger side firewall, through the raceway and under the backseat to the trunk.

With everything back together, I had plenty of time to give it a quick wash and head over to a local Cruise Night. Since I hung out in the parking lot after the show had ended, it got dark enough to be able to flip on the lights and see the full effect.

[Bee]

I’m probably being a little over zealous here. Tomorrow, I will be heading down to my dad’s shop to borrow one of his lifts with this trunk full of goodies.



Not sure if I will be able to get to all of it, but in there I have the following:

Wilwood AERO Front and Rear Brake Kits
Hurst Line Lock
Ram Clutch Adjuster
BMR Motor Mounts
BMR Strut Tower Brace

My previous attempt at installing the strut tower brace didn’t go so well. I wasn’t able to get the retaining nut off of the top of the Xa coilovers to drop the front struts down. Since I will have the front brakes removed, I thought worst case scenario I could take the front struts out completely to install the brace. Of course, before I bolt it on, I will check the clearance and determine if I have enough room to lift the motor for the new mounts.

[Joe.G]

What size is the Brake kit? 2 piece front and rear rotors? Looking forward to some install and after photos.

[Bee]

I went with the AERO6 kit for the front and AERO4 kit for the rear. Both have 14.25” two-piece rotors, which are slotted and cross-drilled.

Unfortunately, I only managed to get just the rear kit installed today. I would say it took me close to 6 hours to get the passenger’s side done…compared to about an hour to do the driver’s side. Most of the time was spent trying to figure out what the directions were saying…and it didn’t help that a lot of the part numbers they referenced didn’t match any of the part numbers on the boxes.

I also wasted a lot of time trying to figure out how to either remove or modify the dust shield. The directions called for completely removing it and sending it to a machine shop to have it cut down to an 8.75” diameter. However, doing that would have been a job all on its own…as its all one piece so the entire hub/parking brake assembly would have to be removed. I roughly measured up 4 and 3/8” and noticed that was right near the lip around the parking brake. So I opted to just use a cutting wheel to trim the dust shield along the lip instead. The other modification that had to be made was to the knuckles where the OEM caliper bolts go…they had to be grinded down a little to match the new caliper bracket.

Overall, the installation wasn’t too bad once I knew what I was doing. Getting to that point took some head scratching, lots of trial and error, and a few choice words of profanity (as most installs typically go ). Hopefully, everything I learned today will make doing the front brakes that much easier next weekend.

Here are some pics I took along the way:

[Joe.G]

They look really good, I know the fronts are 6 and rear 4 piston but are the calipers the same physical size?