Brought Home The Dream: '69 RS Z/28

[BJCHEV396]

Very nice! Congrats and have fun!

[hema]

Thank you for providing the useful information about the car. A great article

[A12pilot]

Beautiful! Enjoy it!! Spend a few minutes each evening just staring at it knowing it’s in your garage. Sometimes we all get caught up in numbers this, date code that, and we forget the sum of the parts is what gets our hearts pounding.

She’s a beauty!

Cheers
Dave

[cruiserofland]

Originally Posted by A12pilot

Beautiful! Enjoy it!! Spend a few minutes each evening just staring at it knowing it’s in your garage. Sometimes we all get caught up in numbers this, date code that, and we forget the sum of the parts is what gets our hearts pounding.

She’s a beauty!

Cheers
Dave

Absolutely and thanks! I'll have to keep taking videos, too - amazing how much the sound is a part of the soul of the car, and you don't get that with just a few photos...


These past few days have been a steady stream of friends and neighbors coming by (at a social distance) to see the car. So many anecdotes of "my dad had an orange '69!" and "I have to show my friend - he's going to flip" and just all kinds of stories and smiles. And it's the loudest car in the fleet so it'll help that the neighbors are excited about the car too haha.


I've thought about a 1st gen Camaro for so long that it still doesn't feel like it's actually in my garage. More like I'm at the Monterey Historics and how cool that I get to stand this close to it! Great stuff, and what this hobby is all about.


Time to figure out why the steering column cover is free to rotate out of position enough to defeat the reverse lockout...

[cruiserofland]

Had my first twilight drive. The more seat time I have, the more I'm starting to "wear" the car, and the chambered exhaust is just addicting... Got stuck in reverse again after parking (where the shifter moves to neutral but the lockout stays engaged), and this time rotating the cabin-side steering column jacket didn't fix the lockout linkage alignment so I had to jump under to move the reverse rod back to neutral. I'm hoping the reverse bar just needs adjustment so will tackle this weekend. Might be fun to switch to steel bushings with a Hurst rebuilt kit while I'm under there - anyone do steel in the linkages and like it?

[Lee Stewart]

The first thing I did when I bought my 69 Z was to get rid of that horrible Muncie shifter. If you intend to drive it, put a Hurst in it. You will never regret the decision.

[cruiserofland]

Ah, thanks Lee, I had that wrong and thought the bushings were replaceable on the factory Muncie/Hurst linkages but looks like not. I might have to add that to the bolt-on upgrades list...

[William]

The original shifter for all '69 Camaros w/4-speed was a Hurst. I had several back in the day and the reverse lockout functioned perfectly. Yours is not correctly adjusted or has non-original components.

[Lee Stewart]

Originally Posted by William

The original shifter for all '69 Camaros w/4-speed was a Hurst. I had several back in the day and the reverse lockout functioned perfectly. Yours is not correctly adjusted or has non-original components.

I bought mine used - had 18,000 miles and it had a Muncie in it. It may have been swapped out to a Chevelle SS 396. The car was not 100% stock: had headers. Flat hood Lemans Blue with White stripes and Dark Blue Interior. No spoilers.

And those damn RWL tires. I must have spent a 100 hours with Brillo pads working off the curb scuff's each time I blew parking it against a curb.

[cruiserofland]

William and others, this may be a dumb question but is the cabin-side steering column jacket supposed to be rotatable by hand? I'm wondering if there's a missing pin or internal fastener in the column that allows the jacket to rotate out of position and so mess up the lockout geometry. In the meantime I'll get the car on jack stands tomorrow to adjust the Hurst linkages...