Steering 3

I’m still not done!

I got the control arms installed, but found that the manual steering pitman arm is ever so slightly smaller than the power steering version. While waiting for the correct one to arrive, I did get the headlight doors and grille installed. That long-ago parts car also got me front and rear bumpers, so I was able to replace my bent one during this process, which looks a little nicer. It will be easier to figure out vacuum line routing once the engine is running, so that isn’t all hooked up yet, but the doors do work well with a hand pump.

Once the correct pitman arm arrived, I was able to bolt together all of the steering linkages. Unfortunately, I found that the sway bar end links I have are a little too short to work with the new lower control arms. I’m also missing the spacer that goes between the power steering pump and adjusting bracket to keep the pulleys in line. Hoping to finish this little project without waiting on new parts, I got out all of my old Camaro-related parts and bits of hardware hoping to find stuff that would work. No such luck, but doing so did refresh my memory on what was there and I was able to start getting that stuff organized. New, longer end links are on order but I’ll just make a spacer out of a nut or something.

I did get tires on her and lowered her back on the ground for the first time in 3 months, so that felt pretty good!

I’m leaving on a week-long trip the second week of October and have a few other non-Camaro car things to get done. I really want her to be able to move out of the garage by next weekend. I’m close. Technically, once I replace the roughly nine million gallons of transmission fluid that poured out of her while in the air, she should be able to start and at least move out into the yard right now. But this week, I am going to try to get this little project finished – the power steering pump and gear bled and plumbed, the subframe connectors in, the sway bar attached, align her, get the windshield wipers working, get the headlight door vacuum lines hooked up and do a little tuning. In my mind, this will take an evening or two. But then again, my brain says everything I’ve done should have taken a weekend or two at the most, so I guess I’ll see what happens.