Long Overdue Build Progress [Main Thread]

[BatmaroBeauty]

Not much progress has been made with the build since the NYIAS last year. I brought it to my good friend Cisco in June 2022 to address a few minor problems on my to-do list. He swapped out my catalytic converter pipe elbows from the American Racing Headers straight pipe to ARH High Flow Cats I got with hopes to clear the CEL of my sensors so I can pass NYS emissions. This attempt proved to be without any luck.




Since the fueling issue is something still needing attention, I wanted to install a panel door located by the rear passenger seat for easier access to the fuel pump in order to avoid having to drop the rear cradle anytime in the future. I purchased an 8x8 Aluminum Access Panel Kit from Jegs.









The Airlift trunk display I have makes it very inconvenient to access the battery in the spare compartment, so I also asked him if he was able to hard wire a 5AMP 12V battery tender with a traditional prong plug accessible that I got from Amazon so I can more easily store my vehicle long term.

I've had to shift my financial priorities to cost of living so this build project has been placed on hold. Eventually when I have spending money, I plan to get it transported down to Tracy Lewis Performance in FL with hopes to finally try and figure out the hiccups with performance once and for all.

[chevy pilot]

[DRC69]

Nice job on the fuel pump door.

To bad the factory didn't do it. Sure would have been nice.
Great job.

[GodsRambo]

Did you ever get your Shirokai Widebody? I was really hoping to see it installed . Was considering for my own car.

[Merc]

Originally Posted by BatmaroBeauty

Went with Bespoke Elite-X Series Diamond Edition Racing Seats and a 5 PT Harness Belt from Braum. Everyone does a bloody red interior so I wanted to be different and went with blue instead. My second reason for choosing this color was to reinforce my theme of the aggressive Batmaro exterior by incorporating the concept of the “Thin Blue Line” to the interior by doing all the stitching and subtle accents throughout. I didn’t want to go overboard with the Batman emblems or designs etc.; I believe less is more and I wanted to keep a clean appearance and minimalist aesthetic to let the idea work for itself.

Attachment 1070616
PSA: Before removing the stock seats and brackets! These seats come with their own brackets you need to install. They MUST be fabricated by cutting an access point in the identified area (see above photo) to create an opening to be able to insert the rear bolts to tighten down. IMO they should just come precut but I believe Braum is sourcing the brackets from another company called Planted Seat Bracket Technology (SKU: SB137DR and SB137PA).

Attachment 1070617
PSA2: I also purchased the harness bar from Braum which snapped (with my bare hands) at this joint while I was installing it. It made me question the quality of the material construction and if it would really be able to save my life in a risky scenario. I opted to sell the harness bar and get a custom 6 PT Roll Cage fabbed by the same person who did the cage weld work for my fathers racecar.

Attachment 1070618
Before VS After.
PSA3: As you are probably familiar with already, seeing over the dash in the Camaro’s is very difficult as is from the stock adjustable seats. Be aware, having fixed seats like these makes you sit a little lower without the ability to change height. I’ve seen people add spacers with the brackets while installing. I meant to do it and forgot, now I just don’t want to disassemble everything again to add them.

I very much hated the stock shifter and wanted a more old school look. I ordered P/N 24261473 a manual leather shift boot for a '13-15 SS/ZL1 off eBay. Reason I got this one in particular is because the knob base to shift boot adaptor plastic ring is circular for these years as shown below in the left photo, whereas it’s more squared off in the boots for the '10-12 manuals shown below in the right photo. Most people have just removed this plastic ring completely and attached the boot to the knob by zip tying them together from the underside and folding over.
Attachment 1074749
After that, I also ordered a custom perforated leather shift boot with blue diamond stitching from Redline Goods that matched my Braum seats. Then I just removed the leather boot that came with the one I ordered from eBay and replaced it with the custom one I had made. The shift plate is a direct swap once you remove the plastic PRNDM stock bezel piece. Some members have noted that they dislike the appearance of a small gap between the shift boot and center console created by doing this swap and discussed many different solutions to make it flush like using washers, sponge weather strips for material filler, or slightly modifying the mounting brackets with a dremel to adjust more forward. Check out this thorough DIY thread if this shift boot swap is something you’re also interested in doing.

I was having some issues with my ignition column not surrendering my key when shifted into park position and ignition switched to off. Of course every tech/mechanic that I brought this up to blamed the fact I changed out the shift knob as the reason, but it started happening when the shifter was still stock and after doing a little digging in the forums I see I’m not the only one! We changed out the shifter assembly with P/N 22894722 but that didn’t fix it. Going to try a new solenoid P/N 22891588 to see if that does the trick. If not, then last hope would be adjusting the linkage. Quite the annoyance to constantly restart the car and fuss with the shifter until it releases the key which can take multiple attempts and feels embarrassing at times.

The next set of photos were from Marc of MD Interiors who retrimmed my dash and door panel inserts to match the rest. Beautiful work, amazing quality, quick turnaround …couldn’t have been a happier customer.
Attachment 1070620

Attachment 1070621

Attachment 1070632
Before VS After

Attachment 1070623

Attachment 1070624

Attachment 1070625
^This is a Luxury Car Mar Set I also ordered from Diamond Car Mats. Super thick, good quality material, great fitment.

Just curious what Braum said in regards to the brace bar that failed? Harness bar from Braum is on my agenda for Pumpkin in 2024. Looks like it might be a welding issue.

[BatmaroBeauty]

Originally Posted by DRC69

Nice job on the fuel pump door.

To bad the factory didn't do it. Sure would have been nice.
Great job.

Agreed!! Several aspects of the vehicle could’ve been improved to make a world of difference in accessibility, but to be fair my trim model is generally intended for daily use by a regular driver and not to be heavily modified. Should’ve definitely been included factory on the ZL1 though!

Originally Posted by GodsRambo

Did you ever get your Shirokai Widebody? I was really hoping to see it installed . Was considering for my own car.

Unfortunately, I’m STILL WAITING for the Shirokai widebody kit (order date was September 17, 2021). The company faced a few hardships: the war in Russia/Ukraine affecting exports, customs refusals, relocation of company and manufacturing facility, lack of funds/products, delivery issues, shipment reroutes, debt, and avalanches/earthquakes effecting production. The owner of Shirokai has maintained communication about ongoing status with costumers pending fulfillment or refunds in a group chat, so I haven’t entirely given up hope on receiving it yet. The latest update was kits in stock available for purchase are S197 13-14, S550 15-17, Camaro 6 Gen, and Charger 11-14. The next groups up for production pending clearing outstanding debt and generating funds for shipping are the Camaro 5 Gen and M2.

Originally Posted by Merc

Just curious what Braum said in regards to the brace bar that failed? Harness bar from Braum is on my agenda for Pumpkin in 2024. Looks like it might be a welding issue.

Braum replied “It looks like a defective piece. For the support bar, they are there to hold the main bar in place. All the stress is supposed to be handled by the main bar. If you run a full cage they are built to handle stress from all points, I hope that made sense.” They also shipped me a replacement for the one that got damaged (awesome customer service, shoutout to Peter!) but I just sold it because I’ve decided instead to eventually do a full cage since I also intend to do a full rear seat delete now that I have no use for extra seating.

[GodsRambo]

Jeez-us that's a long wait on the Shirokai kit. I know they were in hot waters on instagram for failure to deliver, but had supposedly been "getting all outstanding orders out ASAP". Did you put down a deposit or the full amount becaue I cannot imagine having thousands oustanding for a "maybe one day".

Glad to see itthe camaro is still kicking! I might finally post my own Batmobile. Been lurking these forums for years.

I miss how lively they used to be, though I still love how after almost 2 years you can reply to my comment

[BatmaroBeauty]

Originally Posted by GodsRambo

Jeez-us that's a long wait on the Shirokai kit. I know they were in hot waters on instagram for failure to deliver, but had supposedly been "getting all outstanding orders out ASAP". Did you put down a deposit or the full amount becaue I cannot imagine having thousands oustanding for a "maybe one day".

Glad to see itthe camaro is still kicking! I might finally post my own Batmobile. Been lurking these forums for years.

I miss how lively they used to be, though I still love how after almost 2 years you can reply to my comment

Unfortunately, paid in full amount of $3,920 USC to Shirokai on 09/17/2021 so at this point there’s little I could do since the purchase is too old to file a claim with my creditor in order to get refunded that amount unless I fully sued the company through small claims court which IMHO isn’t worth the lengthy toll of time, money, and mostly stress/headaches the process would take to go through. At this point, it’s either money lost or Shirokai will come through on his word and I’ll receive the kit some day before I die (hopefully).

The last update we got from the owner in the chat was on November 18 saying “Flying back tomorrow, just finished paperworks and got tickets yesterday. Plan to be at the production on Friday or Monday, crossing my fingers to see raw Camaro parts waiting for finish cutting and cleaning. M2 is still in my personnel to do list, but realistically its very hard to invest another $35K into it having 2 kits sold for all the time, and one of them ended up asking a refund(we agreed on replacing his kit with other products to cover the refund amount) And it is very hard for me to say as I know how long and how hard you are waiting for it and how supportive you’ve been through everything.”

Needless to say the following Friday/Monday has come and gone without him providing any new information. He had several builds with kits featured in SEMA hoping that would drive some online sales so he would have funds for production and shipping of outstanding orders. Communication is very sparse and we constantly beg for weeks on end to get updates.

Been waiting 1,536 days since I placed the order … but who’s counting…

[GodsRambo]

I am curious how many Camaro kits were sold because I know a lot of people liked the design, me included. I felt it really kept the body lines and "identity" of the Camaro.

I never pulled the trigger because I knew people were interested but I could never find anyone who actually had it. Now it makes sense why.

What I feel bad for you (besides the money) is that even if the kit does eventually come... how much will you still like it after all of this hassle? I feel it might taint everything, but I still hope you go through with installing it

[BatmaroBeauty]

After years of waiting, turns out Shirokai informed me he only had six Camaro 5th Gen kits ordered which was not enough for him to go to production for fulfillment. He claims he will at least refund total payment. Hopefully that’s actually the case of what happens.

The last correspondence I had after over a month of requesting an update was yesterday (12/27/2025) when he messaged me saying:

“Hi mate! We can’t provide 5gen Camaros yet, as there is still not enough orders in it.. Just to make it clear, molds for 1 type of a kit costs approx $35-40K, we have 5-6 u fulfilled 5gen orders and its spread between 11-13 and 14-15 models(so each has different set of molds). All last year I was trying to get more orders for each, but no luck… So we have 2 ways now to solve it: refund you guys with several payments, or keep waiting when we can afford spending another $70-80K for them molds.. I was also trying and hoping to get funds for it different way, for example with Darkhorse kit, making it limited series and sold by higher price, to cover both Darkhorse molds with 5gen Maro molds, but as of today I have only 3 deposits recieved on that

When made 6gen molds and kits, we fulfilled 6 prepaid orders for it, and after full year still have only one guy installed it, and rarely sharing photos, so I can’t promote it as well to sell more and again cover the 5gen molds”

It’s very unfortunate since it was one of the only kits I really loved. At one point I heavily considered offering to be a business investor to help restart his company but it seems like poor business strategy and management. Customers with the oldest outstanding orders should have been first priority fulfillment, which would have generated good reviews and interest necessary to draw new customer sales, but he did not follow that model. As a patient customer I can say this experience has been frustrating to say the least and I can understand not wanting to promote his business when he hasn’t treated existing customers very good. Hard to generate more sales for a company when you have people with outstanding orders over 4 years old that haven’t been fulfilled and are upset. The homepage of Shirokai’s website says:

“YEAH, WE KNOW THE HORROR STORIES.
Waiting months.
Money gone.
Radio silence.
We’ve seen it all too.
That’s literally why SHIROKAl exists.
Because most kits out there are straight-up nightmares.”

But he is doing exactly that same thing to his own customers! I chose to do business with them because they claimed to be different, but proven to be just the same hoax like the rest. No clear timeline of when the refund will occur. I will keep you updated on if/when he follows through.

Wishing everyone happy holidays and New Years, cheers!

[1JEWLDSSRS]

Wow Batmaro, that really sucks!! I really hope they do actually get you ALL your money back, not in just payments like he said, but all of it! Good luck, wish you the best and a Happy New Years...

[GodsRambo]

I think you should post about this on FB and if you can Instagram. I saw a Mustang guy called them out once before a year or so ago and it nearly ruined Shirokai with how much bad press they got.

If people find out that after all the apologies and all the drama., they're still screwing people over, I think it could at the very least prevent others from falling prey to this very poorly thought-out business practice.

They have the Cart before the Horse. It's a shame too because the ideal of mold kits is they should be mass producible for cheaper than a lot of fiberglass kits. I would be highly suspect of their internal finances, as a well managed company of their size should not be this short on funding.