1986 resto on '68 Camaro while living in USA

A few old photos of an amateur resto I did in a '68 Camaro while living in the USA from 1986 to 1988. Having moved there for a stay of 2 years and not knowing a soul I thought I needed something to keep me entertained when not at work. A $900 special 327 3spd column manual fit the bill.

To keep the van connection I've thrown in some snaps of my daily driver, a '70 El Camino with a camper shell. In the spirit of the early vanners that El Camino was the cheapest car that I could sleep in and let me get away in it every chance I could; saw 34 states in 2 years.






















Great car, never spent a cent on it until the wiper motor burnt out. Figured I didn't need the wipers since I was in California, then forgot about it completely until I went to turn them on heading into New York City at night (Manhatten; you've seen the traffic) when it started to drizzle. I remembered the wipers then.




Ignore the Monaro, it was just on that page in the photo album












Parked across the street. My flatmate Don's '73 Cadillac el Dorado in the background in front of the house 5 of us shared (in shadows). Beautiful car to work on, so much elbow room, no scraping your knuckles trying to fiddle a spanner into any tight spaces. In the mid '90s he moved back to Michigan from California so I went over to make the cross country trip with him in the Caddy. 2000 miles at 9mpg. Some really funny things happened on that trip, felt like Chevy Chase in movie Vacation.
 



Our neighborhood was like the Simpsons, the whole development was built around late 50's or early 60's, every house was identical, some with vertical weatherboards, some horizontal, some part board part stucko, different colours, some with garage opening at front, some with driveway swinging in from the side all to try to make them look different but they were identical; it was like pre-fab mass produced affordable housing. Nobody buys a block of land then builds what they want on it, you buy houses the way they buy hamburgers, straight into the finished product.



Above was after conversion to RHD back in Aust in 1989.

Good job on the Camaro, do you still have it ? Sounds like a fu couple of years too.

Cheers Mark

A Great Resto Pete and a Great Read!

Well Done!

I'm very Jealous though.  LOL!

Luv American Muscle!

Great story Pete!

And a nice looking resto you did on the Camaro too!

What an awesome adventure your stay in America would have been, 34 states in 2 years! wow!

And you did it in a couple of Classic American cars... nice work!

Thanks for sharing.

Cheers,
Karl.