1968 Chevrolet Camaro - The Real Deal

***Ed Blown Vert*** · 05-15-2008, 05:20 PM

1968 Chevrolet Camaro - The Real Deal

Had you been traveling through Laramie, Wyoming, late at night a couple of years ago, you might be relieved to learn that this car and driver actually exist. In your sleep-deprived state, you might've doubted your own eyes when a vision of a '68 Camaro miraculously appeared. Despite subfreezing temperatures, its windows were rolled all the way down, revealing a beautiful young driver. Snowflakes were falling into the car, clinging to her long hair. She was expertly steering and slipping the clutch like an old dirt-track racer. When she turned and smiled, you slapped yourself hard and slammed on the brakes. All you knew for sure was that some shuteye was long overdue.
That was no caffeine-induced hallucination, partner. Your dream girl was Liz Miles, widely known around the San Francisco Bay area as simply The Girl With the Camaro. Now 21, this California kid was in Wyoming in 2003-'04 attending the home campus of WyoTech. Her side windows are never rolled up, rain or shine or snow. Their super-dark tint is plainly illegal, plus this driver is always listening to her tires. "In the corners," she explains, "there's a very thin line between squealing and sliding."
After 15 months of continuous trade-schooling, Liz earned a business-management AA degree from WyoTech, plus half a dozen ASE certifications. Of more pride to her, she won the coveted Outstanding Student award for leading a class called Chassis Fabrication and High-Performance Engines. Of more than 2,500 students, fewer than two dozen were female. If anyone else drove an old ponycar to school, Liz never saw it in the lot where she parked a black-plate California Camaro every morning.
"Some of the kids did bring rusty hobby cars into shop classes, but not drivers," Liz recalls. "I drove the Camaro both winters. I couldn't imagine not seeing it every day. It'd be like leaving your baby somewhere! Also, I could work on it in class. The longest I've ever gone without driving it was the five weeks before I graduated when I was doing the bodywork and primer."
Her newfound welding and metalworking skills got plenty of practice on a 35-year-old body that turned out to be surprisingly rough beneath its orange repaint. She repaired all the panels and shaved everything that dared interrupt what she rates "the best lines of any car, ever." Body seams, marker lights, bumper bolts, and openings for the antenna, gas filler, and trunk lock disappeared. She wet-sanded it then sprayed the tricky primer. (Learn from a rookie body person's mistakes at www.milesspeed.com, her homegrown Web site.)
"In class, you're allowed to prime any panel you work on," she recalls. "We only had two booths for 200 kids, so I made sure to work on every single panel. Then I asked myself, 'If I'm going to primer the whole thing, how am I going to make it look good?' I couldn't picture it in any color other than orange. I called every paint store and asked the teachers about primers, but I couldn't find an orange that I liked. So, I started with a standard pink primer, then poured in brown, red, black, white, and orange until I came up with a shade that could cover PPG's translucent tinted primer. I wanted the car to be subtle-to look like less than it is. A car doesn't need to be flashy and expensive to be cool. I wasn't about to drop 800 bucks on chrome bumpers, so I stripped and primered the bumpers I had. I don't like chrome, anyway. I don't like anything shiny."
Liz took advantage of another class to create suspension parts of her own design. Since graduating, she's built a custom rear sway bar and is experimenting with homemade traction bars. The goal is to improve upon the Camaro's 12.5-second e.t.'s without compromising its equally impressive (0.97-g) lateral acceleration-all while preserving the traditions of the original SCCA Trans-Am series. Never mind that these race cars disappeared more than a decade before she was born. In particular, the ponycar that inspired her Camaro lust was Smokey Yunick's innovative and controversial No. 13. Liz has the model next to her bed, on the rollaway tool chest that serves as a nightstand, and she possibly knows as much about it as current-owner Vic Edelbrock.
"Just having something pure from that era is attractive to me," she explains. "I wanted mine to look pretty much like it did from the factory. I kept the leaf springs, factory control arms, a full back seat, and 15-inch wheels. I had to make custom steel brackets to adapt Wilwood's big, four-piston calipers and extra-thick rotors to the Rallyes and stock spindles. I need all that brake for autocrossing and road racing. It would've been easy to get a set of 16s that cleared big brakes, but I just couldn't sacrifice the 15s. I also lost 38 pounds, so it was definitely worth it.
"Since I got into road racing, I've wanted to prove that a leaf-spring, factory-control-arm car can rip with some good stuff-to break the stereotype of these cars not being able to handle. I think I'm well on my way to doing that. When I run NASA open-track days, there's not another car within 25 years; it's all Subarus, EVOs, Integras, Civics. It's kinda cool having the only one. They call it the big boat."
Liz assembled the current Mouse motor in the week before going off to college. It replaced a stroker engine that she'd built in high school. "I had to pull the 383 because its long stroke wouldn't rpm like I wanted," she explains. In fact, over the last five years, everything you see or don't see here was done by Liz's own hands except for decking the block and balancing the driveshaft.
"Two weeks after I bought the car, it was in pieces on my mom's garage floor," she says, laughing. "I didn't have a clue; I was just taking stuff apart to see how it went together." Unlike most 16-year-olds bold enough to attempt such a feat, this one actually got the car back together. Unlike most of us, this kid enjoyed neither the experience nor encouragement of some gearhead relative, neighbor, or family friend. Her parents' only mechanical contribution was the pink, battery-powered Barbie car she got from her mother, at age 7.
"This came out of her own self," insists Robin Miles, a single mom since Liz was 2. "She has an amazing ability to assimilate information and to remember everything. She's done this all on her own."
"My ability came from the Camaro," corrects her only child. "I can't even describe the impact it's had on my life. It was my entrance into the car world. It changed my friends, my maturity, everything."
"She values the car so much that if a guy wants to date her but does not like cars, he doesn't have a chance," Robin says.
Following her WyoTech graduation, the 19-year-old started a brief job search that ended in the Brentwood, California, parking lot of Dominator Street Rods (www.dominatorusa.com). Three hours of interviewing later, owner Leonard Lopez decided to hire his first female fabricator. More than a dozen people applied for the prestigious position, but only one drove up in a snarling, homebuilt ponycar.
"It worked out well," Leonard says. "I need people who pay attention to detail, and women do that. She knew she was going into a man's world. I had to take that into consideration, too: How were my employees and customers going to view that? Luckily, they're all intelligent people, and they were OK with that. Liz is smart. She doesn't have a problem giving an opinion, but she also knows when to keep it to herself. She kept everything organized, was real meticulous. She has talent and ambition. She carries herself well. That combination is hard to find in kids these days."
"I learned a lot from Leonard," Liz says. "He gave me a whole new mindset about how to go about making things work, tackling problems. I also learned that I wanted to go back to doing this as a hobby and side jobs instead of a career. My goal coming out of school was to own a shop like that. I saw that it's 14-hour days and headaches 24 hours. You work way too much for not enough return, in my opinion."
Thus did she leave Dominator earlier this year to take a crash-course "mortgage boot camp." She has since joined the successful real-estate firm founded by her mother. As Liz builds this new career, she continues to moonlight doing fabrication and installations. Satisfied customers include a local police chief who came to Liz for big brakes on his personal car.
"Real estate allows me the freedom to work on cars and race because it's not a 9-to-5 job," she explains. "I don't have to constantly be asking for a couple of days off; I just take what I need. I'd like to make enough money to work six hours a day at this and the rest in my own shop. My dream is to sell complete replicas of Trans-Am cars; not only Camaros, but Mustangs and 'Cudas from that era, too. I like 'em all! I'd start with a body and tailor the whole car to the customer. Right now, you've got to have a historical race car to enter Trans-Am. But I think there are lots of people who would enjoy owning something like that. I'd build them whatever combination would work best for racing or street driving or both."
"It will take me 7 to 10 years to get there," she adds, then asks: "I don't think 30 is too old to start a business, do you?"
Truthfully, I don't see this dream coming true at age 30, no. I can't imagine this ambitious young woman waiting so long-for anything. Watch for Liz Miles to arrive with the revs up and the windows down well ahead of schedule.
TOP TEN DUMB QUESTIONS FROM GUYS
1. Does that have a cam in it?
Yes, and lifters and pushrods, too!
2. Is that your boyfriend's car?
Asked when I'm alone.
3. You let your girlfriend drive your car?
Asked of my male passengers.
4. Why does she always have a different guy?
Asked at autocrosses, where I always have a passenger. It slows me down, but I like to expose people to what I do.
5. What does your dad drive?
A Fiat and a Ford Ranger.
6. Why aren't you in college?
I didn't want to wait four years to get my life started, and I could see that it would not get me what I wanted.
7. Wanna race?
Street racing is done by stupid people with no respect for cars. There's too much to lose. It's mostly Hondas and stuff, anyway.
8. Why don't you have a boyfriend?
I have enough projects for right now.
9. You're here to meet boys, right?
WyoTech is a great place to get attention from guys, if that's what you're going for, but my heart was in it much deeper.
10. Who built it for you?
I did.
Quick Inspection: '68 Chevrolet Camaro
Liz Miles
Danville, California
Powertrain
Engine: The owner's third Mouse motor began with a 350 block. A forged crank propels GM powdered rods and hypereutectic pistons. Red Line Racing Oil keeps the internals alive. Liberating 0.035 inch from the business side of Dart Pro 1 aluminum heads brought compression up to the targeted 10.3:1. Liz personally matched the intake runners to a Victor Jr. manifold. Comp Cams does the heavy lifting (0.560/0.567-inch, intake/exhaust; 242/244-degree duration at 0.050 inch) motivating respective sets of solid-roller tappets, chrome-moly pushrods, and Crane 1.5:1 Gold Race rockers. MSD's ignition box and Pro Billet distributor shoot sparks through Crane 8.8mm wires to Champion plugs. Although a stock-style fuel pump remains in place, it's now acting as a block-off plate and clever camouflage for the blue Holley that's actually pulling and pushing 91-octane California gas. The owner fabricated a 1-inch pickup for the stock fuel tank then plumbed 11/42-inch aluminum tubing up to the 750-cfm Demon (which she wishes wasn't so doggone shiny). A cool combination of an Edelbrock Victor water pump and a manually activated Flex-a-lite fan enabled elimination of the engine-driven fan. Hedman headers blow through 3-inch collectors.
Power: The dyno sheet from Robello Racing (Antioch, California) shows 501 hp at 6,600 rpm and 434 lb-ft at 4,900.
Clutch: McLeod's steel flywheel, 11-inch disc, and diaphragm pressure plate spin inside a Lakewood can.
Transmission: The black tattoo on her right palm (of the classic shifter-ball H-pattern in reverse) is a stranger's first clue that this is a four-speed diehard. Liz rows a Muncie M-20 with Hurst linkage.
Rearend: Survival of the original 10-bolt speaks well of Yukon axles, Eaton's Posi unit, and 3.73 Motive gears. Spicer U-joints bookend a 3-inch driveshaft.
Chassis
Frame: Stock subframes are tied with welded Competition Engineering connectors. The car's 3,220 pounds are distributed 54/46 percent (front/rear).
Suspension: QA1 single-adjustable shocks anchor all four corners. In front, a Year One quick-ratio steering box (two turns, lock to lock) gives directions to the Hotchkis 2-inch-drop coils and 111/48-inch sway bar. Rear springs are 111/42-inch-drop Hotchkis multileaves, and Liz made her own 1-inch sway bar. Energy Suspension bushings appear everywhere.
Brakes: Up front, a pair of vented, slotted, 11.750x1.250-inch Wilwood rotors meet fat Wilwood Dynolite calipers-all of which fit behind 15-inch Corvette Rallyes, thanks to caliper brackets custom-built by the owner. Liz swapped out the rear drums for Wilwood 12x0.800-inch rotors and four-piston calipers with integral mechanical parking brake.
Wheels: Wheel Vintiques steel Rallyes, 15x7- and 15x8-inch.
Tires: Dunlop 8000-series 245/50-15s all the way around.
Style
Body: The owner filled all body seams and shaved off everything the law allows. Less than legal is a glass tint so dark she doesn't dare raise the windows. Liz welded up the unnecessary bumper holes and built a smooth firewall. Her black license plate and steel, 211/42-inch cowl hood enhance the period-perfect effect.
Paint: No, it's not; this unique orange resulted from an experimental concoction of PPG primers. Liz sprayed the suede herself then masked off and painted Z/28 stripes in Krylon flat white.
Interior: The genuine-GM theme extends to a '68 SS396 tach and '69 bucket seats (selected for the added safety of headrests). The glovebox conceals MSD's 6AL, timing control, tach adapter, and shift-light switch, along with a 5-inch fuel-level gauge from a factory dash. Hidden in the ashtray are a timing-control adjuster and trunk-popper button. Liz grabs a Grant wheel, yanks a Hurst handle, and surveys half a dozen Auto Meter gauges. Her sound system is plenty powerful, but no match for an engine roar that's barely muffled by 3-inch Flowmasters and the owner's full-length exhaust system.

Photo Gallery: 1968 Chevrolet Camaro - The Real Deal - Featured Vehicle - Hot Rod Magazine

Read More | Digg It | Add to del.icio.us

More...