According to Jeff Schwartz, "This is a complete bolt in chassis that goes from front to rear on the car. It’s not just a front sub frame or some sub frame connectors. This chassis completely bolts to the bottom of the car, and the cool thing is it doesn’t require any modifications to the original tub of the car. It attaches to the front in the area where the front subframe mounts are and then it attaches to the rear of the car inboard of the frame rails.

The full chassis design is going to increase the stability and the stiffness of the car because Camaros didn’t have a full frame. The other nice thing about this chassis is it uses race car parts for the suspension pieces."

"We worked with Coleman Racing as the main source for the majority of the suspension pieces – they make a lot of different race car parts for NASCAR and other circle track race cars. This time, we’re test fitting everything to see if we have all the right goodies, and it will all come apart again for paint, but it’s pretty exciting to see the chassis take shape."

The philosophy behind the suspension and the chassis on this Camaro is to have race car like performance but still look like a stock 69 Camaro. First up are the tubular upper control arms. The Schwartz precision chassis comes prewelded with all the tabs needed for all the suspension points.

Here’s a trick for getting good Grade 8 hardware on the cheap. If you can find a local Farm and Fleet or farm type supply shop, you’ll find Grade 8 hardware sold by the pound as apposed to by the individual bolt. You can realistically can get all the front hardware at a farm supply store for probably 30 or 40 bucks if you bought it by the pound.

The heart of the front suspension is this custom made tubular control arm. It’s made from mild steel and it’s fixture welded for precision. It has fully adjustable spherical rod ends on both ends that can be adjusted to set the alignment specs. It’s got a C&C machined cross brace to keep it nice and rigid. And then it’s got a screw in ball joint on the other side. Although this is specific to this car, this is basically patterned after all the race car components that you watch on the big super speedways on Sunday afternoons.

"The lower control arm assembly consists of two pieces, a strut rod and a lower control arm. The strut rod design uses a clevis and then spherical rod ends on both sides with a press-in ball joint. Essentially, it’s no different than the Tran-Am race cars use… again, all race car stuff adapted to the street."

The next component in the front suspension is the spindle. This is also another basically off the shelf race-car piece. It’s made by Coleman Racing and it is essentially a GM full size 1970’s Chevy Impala spindle. These are popular because of their tall design, which improves front end geometry, and it’s a low cost piece.

The whole front suspension is suspended with a set of Bilstein coilover adjustable shocks. We went with these because the coilover design allows you to have adjustability in the ride height, and the valving of the shock is adjustable. These are pre selected for this car, but there are a variety of options available from Bilstein. You can change the spring rate just by removing the collars and slipping on a different spring. So, this chassis can be set up one way for the street, and another way for the track without having to re-engineer the whole suspension system.

We are starting with 450 lbs per inch springs in front, and we're running 250 in. lbs. springs in the rear. Jeff Schwartz calculated the spring rate based on the estimated weight of the car and the feel we want, but coil-over shocks are nice because it's easy are easy to change springs if we don’t like how it feels.

Next we have a Baer Racing hub assembly that’s going to go on that spindle from Coleman Racing. We’re installing a Baer Claw® TRACK brake system, employing 2-piston aluminum calipers and 1-piece 13" cross-drilled, slotted and zinc-washed performance rotors. These rotors easily fill out 17" wheel packages and use 2 piston aluminum PBR calipers. Although they may fit some 16" wheels, you should check wheel fitment with Baer’s fit check templates if you have questions. This is a custom application, so we are going to fabricate some caliper brackets.

We'll install all the brake lines, master cylinder, and Hydroboost brake booster from Hydratech when we make a little more progress. We're also going to show the proper way to bleed and break in the brakes when they're on the car.

The front suspension is tied together with a tubular sway bar that we got from Speedway Engineering. Again, it’s an off the shelf race car part using a hollow sway bar and splined end links. These bars are tubular, and they’re available in a variety of thicknesses so you can tune your chassis just by swapping the bar for a thicker or thinner version. If you want something more compliant, you can get a thinner tube.

The end links are machined aluminum pieces that you trim to fit your specific length needs. We mocked up the length and marked the cut line with some green 3M tape. After the link is cut to length, we’ll fabricate some connecting links.

The rear suspension and steering mechanism is next on our chassis build. We’re installing a Speedway Engineering Track 9 fabricated Ford 9” housing with Torino-style housing ends. Again, this is the very same piece your NASCAR heroes win with. The housing is fixture-welded for precision, and Speedway Engineering included a drain, fill, and a level checking plug on the rear of the housing. The Track 9 piece is almost too nice to hide under the car!Inside, you’ll find a 9” center section with 3:55 gears and a limited-slip differential set up by Ron’s Rear Ends.

The axles are 31-spline pieces from Dutchman Motorsports. We’ll put all these goodies together when we assemble the rear suspension in an upcoming story.

The Schwartz Precision Chassis makes it easy to slide a complete full frame under your muscle car. And while building a custom full frame chassis from scratch can be pretty expensive, the bare Schwartz Precision Chassis comes in under $2400.00 You then have a bunch of options to choose from to fit your budget and performance needs when it comes to suspension, brakes and driveline options.

SOURCES

Schwartz Extreme Performance

Coleman Racing

Baer

QA1 Motorsports

Bilstein

Speedway Engineering

Dutchman Racing

Ron's Rear Ends

Rural King 

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