HOME Grown
COPO
RPM EXCLUSIVES
by
Stan Smith
>> Progress
continues as we create a 2015 COPO from a stripped down shell
A
few months back (in the July 2016 issue of RPM) we talked about two new projects RPM would be working on going into 2017, and specifically, how our Project HOMEGROWN COPO Camaro body-inwhite pretty much fell into our hands. Yes, we find the story hard to believe too, but it really was found in a
wrecking yard not two hours from Misener Motorsports’ shop! It’s been a few months and we thought it was time to give an update on the progress on the COPO build so far, and, all things considered, the car is coming along pretty well. The first task—knowing that the finished product will be a dedicated race car—was to remove as much of the
car as we could to make it resemble the real deal. When we say “remove” we don’t mean cutting and hacking to save weight. Instead we’re referring to the parts of a production car’s steel inner workings that are removed during the production of a COPO, and also in our specific case, some parts of the car that were a little battered up due to its previous home
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at the wrecking yard. That meant carefully looking over our production body and comparing it to our new handy COPO Build Book (which is basically a guide on how to build your own COPO) we picked up from the local Chevy dealer. First, we drilled out the spot welds (over 100 in all) for the pieces that had to be taken off he car, including
november 2016 | RPM Magazine
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