1969 Camaro Unrestored Survivor Type Car

1969 Chevrolet Camaro Description

This is a very solid unrestored 1969 Camaro with new paint. I picked this up a couple years ago from a guy who said he inherited it from the original owner. Unfortunately I got very little paperwork with the car to document its history but it looks like it spent most of its life in the St. Louis area. I did get the protecto plate with it and a few other original items.
From the sounds of it the guy I got it from drove it just a little bit then put it in inside storage for about the next ten years. I would guess that the car has been garaged most of its life. At some point the original engine was replaced with another rebuilt 6 cylinder of some type. I went through and did the normal stuff that needs done after a car has been stored that long, pulled the gas tank to give it a good rinse, changed all the fluids, new spark plugs/general tune-up, a carb rebuild, new belts/hoses, repacked the front wheel bearings, etc. After just a little bit of drive time the waterpump was replaced as was the alternator and voltage regulator. All the air conditioning was in place but didn't work so I ended up buying an underhood kit from Classic Auto Air that basically replaced everything under the hood and converted it to a R134 system so now the a/c works good.
The car is now in what I would consider very roadworthy condition. My wife and I even took a road trip in it down to Texas last year. The little 6 cylinder cruised right along at 70 mph blowing cold a/c and getting around 20 mpg. The engine seems to use very little oil but it will smoke a little upon start up if it sits for a while. I'm guessing valve seals would take care of this issue but I haven't done it yet.
When I got the car I was told it had gotten one lacquer repaint in the early 80's and this appeared to be accurate. Overall it appeared very solid with the only signs of rust that I saw were a few spots under the vinyl top where you could tell something was going on. It got backed into last fall and this caused damage to the left rear quarter, trunk lid and bumper. Though the damage didn't look too bad the shop which did the repair was of the opinion that to do the repair correctly would require a full quarter panel replacement. There was also the issue of the old lacquer paint not being compatible with the modern paints. So they ended up doing a full left rear quarter panel replacement, deck lid and bumper replacement. They also removed all the existing paint far enough down to where they could get the lacquer paint removed and seal the car up in preparation for the new base clear coat paint. Their intent was never to go for a full restoration, down to bare metal type of job here. As they were prepping the car for paint they said there was areas where previous body work had been done but it had stayed looking good for this long that they did not attempt to rework these other areas since they weren't going for a restoration job. While the vinyl top was off they did repair the couple of rust areas by welding in new metal.
Overall the car looks great and I would call it a nice driver type paint job that would certainly be acceptable for local kind of car shows. The owner of the shop said they went for a paint job that looked good as you walked around it but they weren't intending to go for super detail on the very low areas. They ended up cleaning up the lower areas of the rockers a little more for me when I requested this.
There are a lot of different ways you could go with this car. I didn't mind cruising the 6 cylinder but I know this wouldn't be a lot of people's thing. With the bucket seats and manual transmission it would be a great candidate for a V-8 and a stick shift swap or of course a LS swap. I wouldn't be afraid to hop in this Camaro and drive it across the country and like I said, I did just that last fall. The couple things on my radar for the car is that the heater won't blow warm air, the heater hoses haven't been replaced since I got the car and the blower motor squeaks a little when you first turn it on. I was going to address all those things at the same time and just haven't done it yet.
I've tried to do a good job of describing the car and posting good pictures but let me know if you have any other questions or want to see the car in person. Overall it's not a flawless car but it is really nice and gets plenty of compliments. I do have pictures of the car when I got it if you're interested in seeing any of those. Thanks! 316-706-1626