Adding a ZL1 front end to your car.

[The Stig]

Originally Posted by Mamooth

Having my kit from Ofer installed,

the body shop called me with some problems and hopefully you guys can give me some info:

Front wheel well liners do not match? Should I buy new ones? I assume this is because of the air ducting in ZL1?
Are they your OEM wheel liners? The SS wheel liners don't match up with the ZL1 bumper.

Front air channels are different in lower bumper... they said they removed them and left them out... how worried should I be about this? I thought there was ducting to route to the brakes on the zl1 and you just remove the pieces of it for this install?
I think what they're talking about is the brake ducting, but I'd have to see a picture of what they are talking about to be sure.

Fog lights (with the conversion harness from Ofer) come on for a second and immediately go back off... has anyone had this happen?
Is it the top set of lights or the bottom set of lights? One is your DRLs and one is your Fogs

Comments/answers are in blue

[Mamooth]

Originally Posted by The Stig

Comments/answers are in blue

Thanks for the reply (and grats on the ZL1 order!)

Yes it seems the liners are different as you said... should I just have them modify mine to hold or buy the ZL1 items? I don't want it to flap around.

I just told them to remove all the ducting from the front as that is what I had seen other people do in the threads I could find. This is ok, right? Just more airflow?

The big issue is the fogs. I have tried calling them back, the big pain in the butt is I travel for work and I can't go look. All the guy told me is that they came on and went off right away. I'm trying to get them back on the phone but they are all at lunch.



I friggin HATE having other people do my work. It's always this way, no one ever knows what the hell they are doing and don't care to find out.

[Mamooth]

I knew I should have just waited until I could do the install myself

[MR. FBDY]

Originally Posted by Mamooth

Thanks for the reply (and grats on the ZL1 order!)

Yes it seems the liners are different as you said... should I just have them modify mine to hold or buy the ZL1 items? I don't want it to flap around.

I just told them to remove all the ducting from the front as that is what I had seen other people do in the threads I could find. This is ok, right? Just more airflow?

The big issue is the fogs. I have tried calling them back, the big pain in the butt is I travel for work and I can't go look. All the guy told me is that they came on and went off right away. I'm trying to get them back on the phone but they are all at lunch.

I friggin HATE having other people do my work. It's always this way, no one ever knows what the hell they are doing and don't care to find out.

With the inner wheel liners, the one hole is in the same location for both cars, so what I did was make a cardbaord template of the ZL1 nose and transfer the hole location onto the wheel liners and drill a couple new holes.

For the lower grill ducting, the SS lower grill has a flat plastic fairing on both sides of the lower grill. You can either slice it off vertically and eliminate the ends, or just cut a little at the top and bottom by just slicing the plastic supports, that way it will flex and push back to install the lower grill.
I left mine in place and I got my nose all the way on without cutting it. If you dont know what it is, it will feel like the nose wont go on.

As for your fog light issue, I dont have a SS/RS so I dont know why they may not work.

[The Stig]

Originally Posted by MR. FBDY

With the inner wheel liners, the one hole is in the same location for both cars, so what I did was make a cardbaord template of the ZL1 nose and transfer the hole location onto the wheel liners and drill a couple new holes.

For the lower grill ducting, the SS lower grill has a flat plastic fairing on both sides of the lower grill. You can either slice it off vertically and eliminate the ends, or just cut a little at the top and bottom by just slicing the plastic supports, that way it will flex and push back to install the lower grill.
I left mine in place and I got my nose all the way on without cutting it. If you dont know what it is, it will feel like the nose wont go on.

As for your fog light issue, I dont have a SS/RS so I dont know why they may not work.

Nailed it

Only thing I can think of regarding the fog lights is - did they install Ofer's harness? Did they install it correctly?

[Mamooth]

Originally Posted by MR. FBDY

With the inner wheel liners, the one hole is in the same location for both cars, so what I did was make a cardbaord template of the ZL1 nose and transfer the hole location onto the wheel liners and drill a couple new holes.

For the lower grill ducting, the SS lower grill has a flat plastic fairing on both sides of the lower grill. You can either slice it off vertically and eliminate the ends, or just cut a little at the top and bottom by just slicing the plastic supports, that way it will flex and push back to install the lower grill.
I left mine in place and I got my nose all the way on without cutting it. If you dont know what it is, it will feel like the nose wont go on.

As for your fog light issue, I dont have a SS/RS so I dont know why they may not work.

Thanks for the info, I relayed a bit of what you guys have said to them via email, still cant get them on the phone

The lesson learned here is I will never have work like this done somewhere again unless they do the exact work I want all the time. I'm worried now that they didnt install anything correctly and I am going to have a fire or blown relays/ballast, rattling parts. This install is NOT straight forward enough for a regular body shop to do, apparently despite all that I've read about how easy it is. I am seriously worried about the fog light harness.

[Mamooth]

Originally Posted by The Stig

Nailed it

Only thing I can think of regarding the fog lights is - did they install Ofer's harness? Did they install it correctly?

Yeah it's Ofers harness, and I don't know if they did. It's a standard dealership procedure here: I can only talk to the writer, the guy installing my parts doesnt talk to customers, and the writer honestly seems clueless. I asked him if they wired both sets of fogs with the adapter kit and bolted the eyelet to the positive terminal and he acted like I was speaking martian.


I am never in my home town and I work seven days right now so there isnt even a way for me to go inspect what they've done so far. Sucks to be me,

[jewel25]

Originally Posted by MR. FBDY

With the inner wheel liners, the one hole is in the same location for both cars, so what I did was make a cardbaord template of the ZL1 nose and transfer the hole location onto the wheel liners and drill a couple new holes.

For the lower grill ducting, the SS lower grill has a flat plastic fairing on both sides of the lower grill. You can either slice it off vertically and eliminate the ends, or just cut a little at the top and bottom by just slicing the plastic supports, that way it will flex and push back to install the lower grill.
I left mine in place and I got my nose all the way on without cutting it. If you dont know what it is, it will feel like the nose wont go on.

As for your fog light issue, I dont have a SS/RS so I dont know why they may not work.

This is what my shop did.

Originally Posted by Mamooth

Yeah it's Ofers harness, and I don't know if they did. It's a standard dealership procedure here: I can only talk to the writer, the guy installing my parts doesnt talk to customers, and the writer honestly seems clueless. I asked him if they wired both sets of fogs with the adapter kit and bolted the eyelet to the positive terminal and he acted like I was speaking martian.

WOW just WOW!!!! My first meeting was with the shop manager. Then I had a second meeting with the guy doing my install. At my shop they match the person doing the labor to the car. Since my work was customized I got the guy that does domestic cumtom work. He actually called me when he had a question. They explained to me step by step what they were doing.


Good luck with the install and don't let the shop push you around. If it ain't want you want bitch until you get what you want.

[jewel25]

Originally Posted by Mamooth

Yeah it's Ofers harness, and I don't know if they did. It's a standard dealership procedure here: I can only talk to the writer, the guy installing my parts doesnt talk to customers, and the writer honestly seems clueless. I asked him if they wired both sets of fogs with the adapter kit and bolted the eyelet to the positive terminal and he acted like I was speaking martian.


I am never in my home town and I work seven days right now so there isnt even a way for me to go inspect what they've done so far. Sucks to be me,

Remind me never to go to that dealership.

[2SSRS@Gen5diy]

Originally Posted by Mamooth

Having my kit from Ofer installed,

the body shop called me with some problems and hopefully you guys can give me some info:

Front wheel well liners do not match? Should I buy new ones? I assume this is because of the air ducting in ZL1?

Front air channels are different in lower bumper... they said they removed them and left them out... how worried should I be about this? I thought there was ducting to route to the brakes on the zl1 and you just remove the pieces of it for this install?

Fog lights (with the conversion harness from Ofer) come on for a second and immediately go back off... has anyone had this happen?

Hi lets start, the well liners will work but you need to drill 2 new hols per side, the top one works the rest do not, this is do to the new placement for the 3 holes GM used, its not the air duct i have added the ZL1 air duct to SS well liners by drilling 2 new holes at the inside to hold them up, there on SPCBA car with out a problem, so dont buy new ones if your not going to go all out on the ZL1 look, IMO.


"Front air channels are different" why yes they are, but all you do is cut off the parts in the way, here is all you do,


If they connected the harness the right way and it comes on then it will stay on, if not send it back and i will replace it if its bad.

[Mamooth]

Originally Posted by 2SSRS

Hi lets start, the well liners will work but you need to drill 2 new hols per side, the top one works the rest do not, this is do to the new placement for the 3 holes GM used, its not the air duct i have added the ZL1 air duct to SS well liners by drilling 2 new holes at the inside to hold them up, there on SPCBA car with out a problem, so dont buy new ones if your not going to go all out on the ZL1 look, IMO.


"Front air channels are different" why yes they are, but all you do is cut off the parts in the way, here is all you do,


If they connected the harness the right way and it comes on then it will stay on, if not send it back and i will replace it if its bad.

Thanks, Ofer.

I am making the four hour trip home today and taking a day off work to go have a look see. All work stopped until then. I appreciate your service and love the kit and dealing with you. It's a shame everything else about this has been hair raising.

[Mamooth]

OK!

So this all turned out a bit better than I was expecting other than the time off work I had to take.

I got to the shop and after a little bit of discussion (remaining calm) with the advisor I asked to speak to someone who knew more about the install... like the guy actually doing it.

When we got back there to him and started talking he seemed a little confused over what the problems were. In his words he was "trying to make sure the advisor warned you about the fact that some pieces needed to be cut" and had no intention of cutting a new car to modify it unless the customer knew about it. Well that seemed fair...

So we set about looking at the car and the paint looked incredible.

I tested the fog lights and they work exactly as Ofer described the kit working and exactly as I had outlined in an email to them...

The install tech wanted to pull it in and show me everything that was done so he completely disassembled and reassembled the front end with me there free of charge.

After all of this I was wondering how it had come to this and talking with the guy and he said it wasn't the first time that customers dealing with that particular advisor had had issues with his complete lack of understanding of what was going on.



So in the end, I am happy with the install, the tech knew what he was doing but was overly cautious. Which led to an idiot causing me to lose 2 days of work over something that could have been resolved by me talking to the tech. Why I wasn't allowed to do that, and in fact he told me that none of the emails I had sent were shown to him and he didn't even know about the level of arguing that had gone on until yesterday, I will never know.

The manager came out and talked to me for a bit and was a great guy, and all seems right with the world. I only wish I hadn't had to actually be standing in front of them and miss two days of work for them to want to talk to me.

[2SSRS@Gen5diy]

In 2 words it sounds like the adviser has a "napoleon complex" to me, we at camaro5 have done so many ZL1 bumper installs that its not funny, from Socal to New Zealand and the middle east, members on this site have done this mod to there camaros.

I think if you take your car to any dealer you need to ask them if there members on camar5 first and if not find a new dealer. IMO


PS, glad it worked out for you but losing 2 days of work is not good.

[Nutro]

AARRGGHHH! I want to do this front bumper so bad but I've already got ZL-1 side skirts and rear bumper. I'm not a fan of making the whole car look like a ZL-1 though.