1985 Monte Carlo SS known as Barney - Page 96 - Lateral-g Forums

**Goosesdad** · #**951** 11-05-2019, 09:49 AM

Oh man! Glad it didn't get hurt.

SSLance · #**952** 11-18-2019, 02:00 PM

Still wore out from a fantastic motorsports filled weekend. Spent Friday and Saturday racing Barney at the Good Guys Fall Nationals and then spent Sunday wheeling our new Jeep up Crown King Road from Lake Pleasant to Crown King and back down.

Good Guys went fantastic. The changes made to the car to better prepare it for these kinds of courses worked great. The new rear suspension setup really helped plant the awesome power the new Holley EFI created which resulted in fast times comparable to or better than a lot of shop built, high horsepower, big tired cars on Friday. The newly sealed surface was challenging for sure but we made it work pretty well for us I thought. Then they used a vac truck to clean it up Saturday morning and man did the surface get better quick. Some drivers were running times 2-3 seconds faster Saturday morning than they did on Friday, I picked up about a second on Saturday...typically unheard of at any autocross event. We ended up 2 positions out of the 32 car field shootout after Saturday morning runs were done...then one car in the field could not continue, so Scot Spiewak made the field...leaving me out by just a few thousandths of a second. I'm okay with that as the field was stacked with purpose built cars and championship quality drivers, I was just happy to be in the running and able to head home early.

Here is my fastest run which was also my last run of the day on Saturday.

My friend Paul was in town from Iowa and took this video from the sidelines of the same run.

Had a great time seeing and hanging out with all of my racing friend from across the Country, love this event and the way it brings people to the wonderful fall weather here in Phoenix.

Speaking of wonderful fall weather, we took out Sunday morning in our other new vehicle to tackle some off road trails. The new to us Jeep did much better than even I expected and showed the 4 others with me a new form of recreation. I think they are all now fans of off roading and can't wait to do it again. The trail went from easy, to moderate, to difficult the higher we went and the Rubicon handled each obstacle with ease. Even had to go around a nice Can Am Side by Side so that we could pull him over a large rock he kept getting high centered on. Of course the Go Pro and cell phones were rolling the whole time. The views up the mountain were spectacular and the landscaped changed to 3 completely different ecosystems as we climbed. Hard to believe the views in these pics are from less than 30 miles from our house in a huge City like Phoenix. Love living here!!!

Here is a video I put together showing a bit of the trail and pulling the SXS out.

And a few of the pics from up above...

ScotI · #**953** 11-18-2019, 05:11 PM

Nice view(s).

rustomatic · #**954** 11-19-2019, 10:20 PM

Nice view and great pics! I spent an hour in Phoenix traffic today, which may sound bad, but it is impressive how explosively the area is growing. Lots of new stuff and tons of new people probably amount to your property values improving as you age. That's a good result!

SSLance · #**955** 12-06-2019, 11:21 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ScotI

Nice view(s).

Thanks, we agree!!

Quote:

Originally Posted by rustomatic

Nice view and great pics! I spent an hour in Phoenix traffic today, which may sound bad, but it is impressive how explosively the area is growing. Lots of new stuff and tons of new people probably amount to your property values improving as you age. That's a good result!

We've been out here for just over 2 years now and are still getting used to the hugeness of the area. It's crazy though because even though we are in a metro area with close to 5 million people living here this time of the year, 25 miles away you can get to scenic views and away from it all like above. Truly a special place.

SSLance · #**956** 12-06-2019, 12:08 PM

Last summer during our "off season" I made some significant changes to Barney, adding EFI to the SBC under the hood and making big changes to the rear suspension spring and bar rates. Both changes were meant to make the car not only more competitive on track, but also to make it more street friendly off the track.

It took some dialing in to make everything play nice together, not only a lot of street driving to dial the EFI in but several SCCA autocross events to dial the rear shocks and sway bars in to the new rear setup. I'm very happy with the results, Andrew helped a ton dialing the throttle response in and it is now buttery smooth in all instances and making great power every where. I also have the rear suspension dialed in so well that I have not touched a knob screw or bolt on the car since after the Sept 4th SCCA event.

Since then I drove the car to, raced, and drove home from:

A SCCA event Oct 13 (pax'd 13 out of 126)
A SCCA event Nov 3rd (pax'd 23rd out of 110)
A Good Guys weekend (missed top 32 shootout by .005s of a second)
And a SCCA event Dec 1 (pax'd 15th out of 108)

All with the exact same setup in a 3500# small tire car with 57% of the weight on the front tires. Results like this are attributed to all of those that have helped me learn how to tune as well as learn how to drive over the past bunch of years. This hobby is filled with people that continue to pay it forward and this is what makes it so rewarding for me. I only hope I can continue to pay it forward to others in the same manner. Hopefully this car can be a testament that one can run competitively with purpose built autocross cars in a not so prepped, front heavy, stick axle old muscle car as long as you take the time to dial it (and the driver) in properly and still have a ton of fun in the process.

Here is a video of my fastest run at the last SCCA event. It was a tough course with several painfully slow corners that my locker did NOT agree with...but we still came away with a pretty good result.

**DWC** · #**957** 12-06-2019, 12:25 PM

Sounds good. Nice to hear you've got it dialed in now.

Daniel

**WSSix** · #**958** 12-08-2019, 07:30 PM

Glad everything seems to be working out for you, both the car and the move, Lance. I know it's been two years, but that's a heck of a change from KCMO.

SSLance · #**959** 12-08-2019, 08:55 PM

Thanks Trey, we are really starting to settle in now. Kind of strange how long it takes though.

And yes, big change but also a very good change.

SSLance · #**960** 01-03-2020, 09:22 AM

So Andrew has been up to his tricks again...

Out of the blue I get an email from him couple days ago.

"I have a new tune for you to try. I completely reworked the fuel table and I changed the fueling strategy from speed density to VE based.

Load it up, drive it around, and let me know how it goes."

Oh My Goodness!!

He'd have to chime in with the mumbo jumbo of how and what he did, I only kind of "halfway" understand it. All I know is when I step on the loud pedal now, it goes MUCH faster!!!

I'd really like to strap this thing on a dyno now just to see not only the peak power it makes but also the curves and when it makes the power and where.