In a hobby full of aural delights, it's often the small noises that bring the most satisfaction. There's nothing like bellowing pipes for an automotive adrenaline rush, but it's hard to match the satisfaction of a solid "clunk" as a perfectly restored and adjusted door latches into place. Unfortunately, many third-gen Camaro aficionados don't know what we're talking about. The newest of these cars are nearly 15 years old, and the oldest more than 20. So unless you were lucky enough to own a fresh-off-the-line Camaro or a low-mile used specimen, chances are your friend's long, heavy doors are sagging on worn hinges. Restoring that factory-fresh clunk would be reason enough to give this area some TLC, but as we learned, there's a lot more at stake, namely the very integrity of your Camaro's body.We got the low-down on just how critical this area is from Andy Sherrer, president of Automotive Hinge Solutions and creator of the Door Hinge Repair Kit for '82-92 Camaros we picked up from Classic Industries.
Sherrer made time to rehab the hinges on our '84 Z28 while on a West Coast trip, and explained how this process is about much more than doors that shut nicely. First of all, Sherrer reminded us the third-gen F-body is a unibody car, so it doesn't have an actual frame. Rather, it has front and rear subframes, a floorpan, two doors, and a roof. This setup is much lighter and less expensive than a body-on-frame layout, but isn't anywhere near as strong.Recognizing the need for body reinforcement, GM utilized the doors. Ever wonder why third-gen doors are so heavy? It's because they've been heavily reinforced, and as Andy told us, "These reinforcements to the door are critical to body integrity and strength. Once the doors are closed, it becomes a strong, solid connection between the door striker and the upper door hinge." Of course, all this weight puts a great strain on the hinges, especially the top assembly. Doors that sag and hit the ground effects are the least of your worries. If the critical juncture is worn out, the body, especially the cowl, is free to move about.
Eventually, it will move enough to cause cracks. Subframe connectors are the best way to reinforce a unibody car, but installing a set on a third-gen Camaro won't entirely eliminate the problems caused by worn hinges.So what's the solution? Sherrer showed us the "official" procedure, which is a bit draconian, to say the least. We'll give you the abridged version: After removing the door, those with the temerity to try this method must scribe the location of the hinge where it attaches to the door with several welds, which must be found and drilled out. Then the new hinge must be properly located on the door so that four new bolt holes can be drilled to attach the hinge to a reinforcing plate placed inside the door. The procedure is similar for the new lower hinge, which only has two bolt holes and must be attached to the body, which takes three bolts. (One hole location must be transferred to the hinge.) What do you think the odds are of having a door that lines up?Sherrer decided the answer was to replace the hinge pins and bushings rather than the entire hinge assembly, so he had new pieces made for his '86 IROC, and eventually made the pieces available to the public as a kit.
We'll show you the process, but suffice it to say it's much less painful than the ordeal described above. Sherrer says he's installed a repair kit (each one fixes one door) in as little as 47 minutes, though he advises most folks to plan on two hours. We'd say this is right on. But what's even more impressive than the short time commitment is the result. The repair components were easy enough to install, but we were amazed when the repaired and reattached driver's door swung shut-without any alignment or adjustment-and latched with a solid clunk. For a day's worth of work, we ended up with doors that shut like they're supposed to and a Z28 that's functionally more solid than it was. Does this look like a real Lamborghini to you? The "Mercy 4" built by CARKITINC uses a Pontiac Firebird as its base. It's up to the buyer to install the $3,995 kit which, according to CARKITINC, can take anywhere from 4-6 weeks to install. If the idea of owning an extremely fast and hugely expensive Lamborghini sports car for less than $4-grand sounds too good to be true, that’s because it is.
To drive the point home, Lamborghini Automobili is taking legal action against CARKITINC, a kit-car company based in Albertville, Alabama. For approximately one year now, the small outfit has been making the dream of Lamborghini ownership slightly more accessible. “It’s really just for fun,” says Jackie Johnson, owner of CARKITINC. Johnson first got the idea to build his Lamborghini kits after seeing a white Murcielago LP 640, owned by professional snowboarder and skateboarder Shuan White, on television. When he researched the car online, Johnson couldn’t believe the exotic car’s stratospheric sticker price. “No car can possibly be worth half a million dollars,” he said. He soon created a fiberglass mold of the Murcielago and began selling the Lambo-look-alike kits online, throughout the U.S. Starting with a used Pontiac Firebird, CARKITINC’s Lamborghini “Mercy 4” body-kit fits directly over the American muscle car, visually transforming it into a jaw-dropping exotic car – at least from the outside.
CARKITINC has been building its Lamborghini replicas for about one year. Lamborghini contends the kits are blatant rip-offs and is now taking the Alabama-based company to court to halt production. All the mechanical parts and interior trim can be left standard. You’ll need to chop the top of the Pontiac to make the kit fit, and the entire process takes about 4-6 weeks to finish. It wasn’t long before the kits got the attention of Lamborghini, however. “Evidently they must think our cars look pretty good,” said Johnson, in regards to what he considers the Italian company’s over-reaction to his kits. “They’re taking it really seriously.” Johnson equates the legal tussle to being “like something from the Twilight Zone.” Before Lamborghini filed legal proceedings against CARKITINC in the U.S. District Court system, the company had reached out to Johnson with one fixed and firm request: Chop up those Lamborghini design molds. “They told me they wanted a videotape of me, or someone else, using a chainsaw on the molds,” Johnson explained.