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My 69 Pace Car has the clear liquid on the cowl hidden VIN as well as my friend's 68 coupe. Seems everyone I've ever seen has this. I'm pretty sure it was done as a corrosion/rust preventative.

It's not vented at atmosphereic pressure. In fact, it takes quite a bit of pressure to "vent" the tank via the gas cap. The closer the tank is to empty the more you will notice the pressure when you remove the cap. Gasoline has fairly high vapor pressure so when you are running low it creates a lot of pressure in the tank especially when you have a hot day. When the tank is nearly full with liquid you won't notice it so much.

Years before this there was a vent pipe that just ran to the outside dumping all those vapors in to the atmosphere. Those cars did not use vented caps. My 69 uses a vented cap but it takes a few pounds to open it up. This was done to limit the amount of vapors escaping. Beginning in 1970 you start to see EEC systems (evaporative emission control) appear on all cars. That system does not use a vented cap or tank and forces all the vapors to a activated charcoal cannister for storage and then re-introduction in to the intake manifold.

Today, if your gas cap vents at all your "service engine soon" light comes on. A loose gas cap on a modern car will turn on the light. That's how far we have come in controlling evaporative emmisions.

It's a "buyer beware" world with these cars. Just looked at a 68 Camaro for a friend. When I saw that the engine assembly date didn't jive with the build date on the trim tag, and the partial VIN stamped in the block didn't match the VIN tag on the dash I dug a little bit further. The seller said "oh, that is not the original engine" so it wouldn't match the build date of the car etc.... But the VIN number on the dash didn't line up with the Fisher body number on the trim tag so I asked to take the cowl grille off so I could check the hidden VIN. The funniest (or most pathetic) part of this was that as I was cleaning the hidden VIN I noticed the number seemed fimiliar and it was. It was the same as the partial VIN stamped in the block. So......the engine was actually the original 327 block that came in the car but the hidden VIN was different from the VIN tag on the dashboard. Uh oh........   

Needlesss to say we left. That car, in my opinion, was stolen somewhere in it's lifetime. These cars were high theft vehicles back when they were new and I think there are probably lots of them floating around out there with owners who have no knowledge of it.

It's also a good idea to have a radiator shop build up the solder around the neck of the tubes for additional strength. Very easy to tweak them a little during installation and have a leak.

That's a BIG 10-4

I would say neither. If it's not within the generally accepted 'date range" then it's not. Being earlier or later (outside the parameter) makes no difference at that point. There is a general parameter for dating for just about all parts and pieces and they vary widely depending on the part in question.  Some components like engine castings are relatively close to assembly dates but then things like outside mirrors seem to have months of "range". It's a difficult science if you will and it takes a lot of research to be accurate.

I don't know about any sheetmetal as my car has all it's original metal except the RH front fender and it was replaced with NOS. The only thing I noticed with the wheel lip moldings was that, yes, you kind of had to "fit" them in to place but if you take your time they roll in OK. If you look closely on the front fenders you can see where they are not exactly the same contour as the fender lip but only the trained eye could tell. Otherwise they look good.

Where did the air go once in the trunk?

It flowed forward on each side and exited through the black plastic one-way-flow vent grilles in the lock pillar.

Which is part of the "Astro Ventilation" system developed by GM to eliminate vent windows and supposedly improve air flow through the cabin. You will notice in subsequent years that the heater blower motor could not really be turned off as it was meant to run continuously to constantly keep the cabin purged to eliminate the possibility of exhaust gases diluting the air in the cabin. The increased cabin pressure pushed the rubber flaps off of their seats and the cabin air was moved in to the trunk area and out the rust holes that "Mark" mentioned LOL......or out through the seams in the trunk. In our Camaros the Astro Ventilation does not work unless the car is moving down the road with air pressure forced on the cowl grille and down through the specially designed cowl baffling.

The GM engineers neglected to consider that these cars would actually be driven and get loose and leak all over. In a modern car it actually works very well because they are so much tighter and do not leak at all.

Anybody remember the Astro Ventilation Show Car Chevrolet debuted for 1968 to showcase this new system?

That's interesting because I bought a set of the newer rerpros for my car while I'm putting together an NOS set. They fit exceptionally well. Almost can't tell the difference unless you look along the underside. I know there are two sets of repro wheel lip moldings. The good ones and the crap ones. You must have gotten the crappy ones. If you contact the repro vendors and ask them for the better ones they can probably get you those for about $150.00. Same goes for the rocker panel moldings. There are good ones and crappy ones.

[EMI]

That last sentence was supposed to say EMI rather than EFI. Fat fingers on a lap top.   

EMI is Electrical Magnetic Interference. EMI comes from magnetic fields which come from conductors carrying electrical current such as your spark plug wires or the overhead transmission lines in your neighborhood. This really drives AM signals nuts. Does not have so much of an effect on FM signals due to the frequency they are transmitted at.

One more thing I forgot to mention in regard to this is that your radio has an "antenna trimmer" adjustment which I believe is located under the RH tuning shaft. This was for fine tuning of mast length to give optimum reception. It is a little tiny screw that you turned while tuned to a station. You adjusted it for the best sound (signal strength)

Another interesting thing about AM/FM radios in 1st gen Camaros (or any car for that matter) is that the majority of cars that came equipped with these were sold in large metropolitan areas. Here in the North East FM broadcast was rare. I remember only one station that broadcast FM in the late 60s which explains the rarity of factory installed AM/FM radios. However, if you look at places like Southern California, FM was fairly popular in the late 60s so it was not unusual for cars to be factory equipped. Cars sold in smaller demographics rarely had them. I remember my father buying a brand new 1969 Impala and it had an AM radio with a separate eight track player that hung under the RH dash. I thought that was the most incredible thing I had ever seen. I used to sit in the car in the garage playing the eight track! Those were the days 

Is it curved or straight? I believe it should be curved slightly.  The ones I have are number 3876870.

The problem is the reproduction dipstick tube. As is usually the case with reproduction parts they are just not right for some reason. These repro manufacturers, for some reason, just can't seem to get these parts exactly right. I have an NOS one if you need it. PM me.

The difference between an AM and AM/FM antenna is their mast length. The reason is simple. The FM signal has a wave length of 31 inches. That's why AM/FM radios came with fixed length masts that were exactly 31" long. It's also due to the fact that FM is frequency modulated and receives the signal different than AM. AM, because it is amplitude modulated, has a much longer wave length but the exact length can't be fixed because the station you select will determine the exact length of the antenna mast. You had to adjust the mast to get the best reception for your particular favorite station and that is why the mast was telescoping.

If you ordered the AM/FM combo then the mast had to be 31" long to accommodate the FM signal and the AM reception used a nominal length that worked, for the most part, well enough to receive the stronger station signals.

With the prevelance of FM radios beginning in the 1970s telescoping masts became a thing of the past as the FM receiver required fixed length masts of 31" in order to work well.

The length of the cable connecting the mast to the radio has no effect on static as the cable is insulated like modern coaxial cable in cable TVs.  In fact, the rear mounted antenna mast is a better location for eliminating EFI than the front mounted mast. The further away from the ignition the mast is the better the chance of eliminating "noise" from the radio.

I think it depends on what your goals are and how exact you want your car to be. If you are trying to make your car exactly as it was when new then re-pop parts, for the most part, suck. They rarely fit well, do not emulate the originals and are of poor material quality. Having said that, without them there would be a lot less of these Camaros running down the road.

With my own car I always try to find NOS if I can and if they are not priced to the moon. Then my next move is to look for good used. As a last resort I buy repro parts and then I have a list of repro parts on my car that I'm always looking to replace with NOS or used. Keep an eye out for good used parts as they can often be restored and there is no question about their fit and finish.

Most all of the repro stuff is made in China and when you put them next to your originals the difference is huge. Ask anyone on here about repro weather stripping (although most of that is made in the USA). The unfortuate part is getting these vendors to be honest with you about the quality of the repro parts. You really have to push them to get the truth so that you can avoid some of the real crap. I could almost write a book on how bad some of the stuff is.

A good example of this is a repro 862 horn relay I purchased last year. It wasn't on one week when the horn quit working. The terminals for both wires were dangling from their respective connections and the cover ws gone. Junk.  I would say just come on here and ask as someone on the forum has probably used just about everything at one time or another

John is correct. If there was any damage to the block it was replaced. But in most cases the service rep gave the green light for an entire short block to save warranty time. It was usually an easy sell to get the rep to go this way and it was usually better for the customer as well. I've seen short block assemblies replaced because of a noise that could not be isloated. Seems hard to believe but again it was many times based on warranty time paid versus cost of replacement parts.

Most all the warranty parts were given only a cursory inspection and that was only if the service rep was not on good terms with the parts manager. If they were friendly and not suspicious of any wrong doing they didn't even bother to check the warranty parts. I personally never saw a rep destroy a warranty part.

Many times mechanics and parts guys kind of kept what they thought was useable and often took it home. I can tell you for a fact that a lot of warranty items were not bad because most of the mechanics were not trained very well and replaced a lot of good parts. In the case of an obvious failure such as a short block assembly they often went to the recycler for beer money.

Who would have imagined that any of this stuff would be future collectibles.