With the Camaro back on the road, I started driving it to work. The new brakes at the back squealed really badly, and got progressively louder. I re-bled them which made no difference and after double checking everything got the rear of the car off the ground and took them to bits. They looked perfect, so I put the wheels back on and checked again. The drivers side was wobbling really badly, and after a bit of checking I decided it was another bent axle. I took it to Zane’s for him to check, and sure enough it was. I came home, parked it up and ordered another from Summit. I got new body bushings at the same time, as the ones on the car were well gone, and when I took the car back to Zane’s I got him to fit them for me. The car rides and handles much better now so they were well worth doing.

When I got the car back from the repairs, I noticed the plug on the ignition switch was slightly melted. I cleaned it up and guessed that it had been left with the ignition on for a couple of days and left it at that. I then noticed my voltage gauge was showing 12v when running, as was the PCM’s gauge. I checked and double checked all the wiring and couldn’t find out why. Then when I was coming home from work, smoke started coming from the switch. It was too hot to touch, but I had the option of risking it or getting the car recovered back to the house. I decided to risk it, and drove all the way home with it getting progressively worse. I got home, pulled the battery leads and had a look at it when it had cooled enough to touch it. My mystery voltage loss was from the switch which was knackered. I could either get another from the US, or find an alternative. I found a cheesy start and ignition switch panel on ebay and bought that. I took it all to pieces, and threw away the crappy relay and wiring that came with it and replaced it all with decent stuff. I wired two relays in, one for the Accessory circuit, and one for the Ignition circuit. With it all done, a quick test showed 14v at run on the dash gauge, and I think it looks cool. Weird turning off the alarm and immobiliser, then putting the keys back in your pocket to drive tho. Plenty more to do on the car, and no time to do any of it.