Man Chad you are having way too much fun. Congrats and I hope to be out there with you soon.

Let's get out there Ron!!

Chad, great to see you doing what this was designed too do!! Hope the wait was worth it....been following your thread for bout two years now (well how ever long i've been on this forum) and its nice to see it to this point...

I was going back through this thread looking for something and came accross this gem from 2012.

Considering the direction of some builds on here and showing up at Optima I thought it was pretty funny.

I can't wait to run with you guys!! Both track days the past two weekends I was the only classic muscle in attendance and while that is kind of cool I enjoy running with buds a lot more!

Thanks a bunch. As noted in my post above I was going back through this thread trying to find a picture and got caught up rereading some of the trials and tribulations I went through. First of all it was kind of funny to find myself rereading my own build thread and getting caught up in it. Second I got a major thrill and sense of satisfaction, realizing how long it took, to know that I just ran two track days back to back with a combined on track mileage of over 220 miles consistently seeing some high speeds (up to 150mph) beating the snot out of my car and the only failures I had to deal with was one blown relay and a broken hood latch after the event was over. Neither required me to pull out tools.

Man I'm giddy just thinking about it!!!! :hapdance:

Man thats fun> Puttin on the mileage on the track is just WAAAY worth the price of admission. Thanx to Dr. Weld, i went to a trac event in May and now its like black tar herion, and i'm ready for my fixx lol.

Hope to see/meet ya at a so-cal event, i'm down there quite a bit as i have two in college down there....taking it down there after my DSE/rims are done for a road trip with my bride....

True words my friend!

That would be cool to meet up and even better to do an event. I also want to run Thunderhill at some point and since I have Family in the Sacramento area I hope to do that in 2015.

Watch for the NorCal Shelby Club track event in MAY.... Yeah you can bring your Camaro.


This link only lists PAST 2014 events right now - but should be updated perhaps after the first of the year or so.

Seen it coming a mile away.

You really need to go to these Chad. I'm not a big fan of clubs that don't allow lap timing but this is a great get together event.

Thanks Greg. I will keep an eye out for that. I ran with a Shelby club for my first ever track day in the Camaro back in 2009. It was a great event.

I'm planning on it! The track timing thing doesn't really matter to me. I've used HLT with enough transponders now that it is plenty accurate for my purposes so I can always get lap times myself :) The largest difference I've seen is only .2 or .3 seconds from the official transponder time and 99% of my laps is within .02 or.03 seconds.

Now HLT on an autocross... yeah so far useless for me.

After thinking about my hood latch failure I realized it would be a lot safer to have the locking nut mounted on the top side of the upper hood latch bracket. I purchased my car as a roller with the body work done and the latch was installed with the locking nut below the upper mounting plate tightened against the tack welded latch nut. It made it 22K miles like this and I'm not sure which way its done from the factory but the way I've done it below is much safer.

http://carphotos.cardomain.com/image.../19090146.jpeg

Pic is with the latch off the car but I can still just barely get a 3/4" wrench on the nut with it installed on the hood for fine tuning the hood latch height.

So mine failed as well (three different times), you have the male side (hood) shown (you'll need the blue pill for your hood lol), while i had issues with that factory weld breaking (then rewelded, had the back up nut you have shown), my issues were on the female side (still haven't solved it-hence the "eff it" hood pins). Good luck with that...

Change the nut out to a "nylock" or a "hex lock nut"....

Hmm what failed on the female side? Did it break or allow the male pin to slip out?

Good idea. I threw locktight on the nut when I assembled it but a nylon locking nut is probably safer.

Been trying to catch up on some updates.
Since getting the car on the road I've felt my Mast crate motor ran way too rich. This was based on:
> How bad it stunk up the garage when working on it and idling it for any length of time
> Horrible mpg (best tank was 100% freeway super easy driving and 15mpg, most tanks 10-12)
> Black soot all over the tail panel after 1-2 tanks of gas

So last Thursday I took it over to Westech to have them tune it on their chassis dyno. I'm not sure if the car runs any better or not and it's too soon to judge if the MPG improved. It was interesting that the Mast factory tune was spot on for full throttle at a very rich 11.5-12.0 AFR. Initially Eric at Westech was shocked at how rich that was but as soon as we started adjusting towards 12.5-12.9 AFR the motor made less power.

With the Mast tune the car made 505 hp to the wheels and 493 torque. After realizing they couldn't improve it Westech's final tune made 497 hp and 482 tq. Interestingly the Westech tune made 10-20 less hp and torque over the entire RPM range... They said that the difference is small enough to be chassis dyno related...

Here is some video from the day.



My old zz4 motor was chassis dynoed at 280 hp and 326 tq. So the new set up makes 80% more hp and 51% more tq. Doesn't drive as nice as my old EFI ZZ4 nor get as good of gas mileage though.

Here is an old video of the ZZ4 pull.

View on Vimeo.com

I attached to this post a PDF of the detailed numbers comparing the Mast tune and the final Westech tune.

For comparison here is the flywheel dyno from Mast:
http://carphotos.cardomain.com/image..._large.jpg?v=1


I'm not sure what to make of the engine falling off about 500 RPM sooner and the fact the Westech tune made less power.

Went out to the Camarillo autocross this past Saturday. My first time running there. Great group, very organized and despite lots of cars there we all got 15 runs. Weather was beautiful and lots of cool cars.

I think the fastest time of the day was a 40.4. Below is a video of my best lap at 42.6... As you can see from the in car view I've got some work to do on my driving technique. Sal ran in the 41's... also a reason I got to work on my driving :)



Some pics Jason from TCI took.

One of the highlights was riding shotgun with Sal from TCI when he went flying off into the dirt at 60+ mph. That run got the blood pumping!
http://photos-b.ak.instagram.com/hph...12112299_n.jpg

Ed's gorgeous Mustang
http://photos-e.ak.instagram.com/hph...31871643_n.jpg

https://fbcdn-sphotos-e-a.akamaihd.n...883cb9c43b5fca

My car on course.
https://scontent-b-lax.xx.fbcdn.net/...9b&oe=5541B987

Dyno's are tuning tools -- no two will give you the same readings. They're used to know if the tuning is going the right way or the wrong way.

My new Mustang motor "dyno'd" at slightly less power than the previous build... funny - because not only does it sound more powerful - it runs better and FEELS way better.

2014 Super Chevy Handling Challenge
 

The March issue of Super Chevy has the write up from the 2014 Handling Challenge.

You can read it on their website here: http://www.superchevy.com/features/1...s-1968-camaro/

Cool pic:
http://image.superchevy.com/f/867143...ont-view-1.jpg

Their video:


They were a bit critical of the street manners / ride quality of the suspension. A big part of this is due to the fact that no shock changes were made to the car for the street portion. Personally, when I drive the car to the track I soften up the rear shocks a fair amount which totally transforms the ride quality into one that is much more street friendly. I also know the car would of scored much better on the skid pad but we made a shock tuning change right before that test which was in the wrong direction.

Anyhow always cool to see your car in the magazine! It was a fun event.

Very cool Chad! She looks great in the magazine. After all that work and frustration it must feel pretty good to finally be able to have some fun.

We're going to SOW's on the 8th with Speed Ventures if you're looking for a "fix."

I thought it was cool Chad! Wish I coulda made it.

nice work Chad!!! long journey to get here.

Chad, just got my copy in the mail and was gonna bump this thread but you beat me to it!

Car looks great. Glad it's running like a champ these days.

It has been great getting back on the track!! I've had a lot of fun the past few months beating on the car and attending some autocross and track day events! Sadly in the beginning of 2015 I've already had conflicts on a number of events pop up. Including the 8th :( I'd love to hit another track day with Hollywood one of these days so let me know if you attend any more. I guess the upgrades are done on your Camaro?

Thanks Ron. It would of been great to see you there. Now that you are building a "track" car are you taking the dead pool car to any track days?

It was. Too long but man it has gotten fun again!

Thanks Dave! So far so good. I've even got a new master cylinder and proportioning valve at home to convert away from power to manual brakes to help with some of the gremlins uncovered at the handling challenge.

I like that move!

Done? Surely you jest.....;-)

Done enough for shakedown.

Got to beat on the car some more in the past two weeks.

Two weekends ago I ran at the Pamona Hotchkis autocross. Saturday was pretty exciting as I placed 2nd in the classic muscle class, Sunday I ended up 5th I think.

Today was even more exciting as I placed first in the classic muscle class. It helped that Jake R. wasn't in the classic muscle class and getting some great driving tips from Matt A.

Video here:

Nice job today and congrats on a well earned win! All that seat time really looks to be paying off :thumbsup:

Thanks Jake. Seat time definitely helps but man I have a long ways to go to catch up to you faster guys. It was a fun weekend for sure!

Nice job Chad! Car's gettin better every time out.

How did the non power brakes feel?

Thanks Dave. I yearn for the day we are all hitting a track day together again!

I wish I knew Vince. I've been too short on time to do the simple fabricating I need with brake lines and brackets to get it installed. A potentially costly mistake given this pic:

https://scontent-dfw.xx.fbcdn.net/hp...4c&oe=55B89E07

Good times at Del Mar yesterday. Over breakfast this morning I realized that I'm the only first gen Camaro on the board at 4th place in Street Machine.

Today is going to be even tougher!
http://i1380.photobucket.com/albums/...psmrcfi2ud.jpg

Great competition in that class Chad. Your all within thousands of a second. :thumbsup:

+No doubt ^^. Your car is getting sorted out very nicely Chad. Looking forward to seeing it in person. I shoulda came down for that GG, i've always wanted to go to that one and just didn't plan well

Whats up with the autocross on Friday's? wish they did that for Pleasanton, i only got 3 runs in on saturday as it was PACKED. It was a fun social event, but i liked the course they had set up and wished i could of drivin it more....

Autocross is fun, but the track is my crack!!

Those on Facebook have seen a bunch of pics from this weekend but I wanted to share with the broader Lateral-g.net folks.

I had a great time going to Optima this past weekend. First of all anytime you can drive your car 300 miles to an event, beat on it hard for two days, and then drive it 300 miles home without pulling any tools out of the tool box is a success!

Friday recap:
I had taken the day off of work to drive out to Vegas but used the morning to 1) wire up my DSE wiper motor and 2) fix a broken rotor bolt. I think I've had the wiper motor on the car for 5 or more years but never actually hooked it up...

Car is packed up and ready to go. Driving the car rather than trailering it means I need to keep the Sub for quality tunes... or ones strong enough to overpower the wind noise from a window design that is practically 50 years old.
https://igcdn-photos-g-a.akamaihd.ne...42283020_n.jpg

TCI came to my rescue on the broken bolt issue so I stopped by their shop on the way out of town.

It was a good thing too because on my drive to Vegas it rained a little bit but on the road rally portion it rained the whole 1.5-2 hours including pouring pretty hard in some spots.

Getting some use out of those wipers!
https://igcdn-photos-a-a.akamaihd.ne...19059607_n.jpg

This was my first road trip in the Camaro since the V3.0 build and I was fairly pleased with the 19.5 mpg I got since driving this to and from a local autocross I usually get closer to 12 mpg. However, I also learned that the off idle flat spot created by my Westech tune was an order of magnitude worse at the 2500 ft of elevation in Vegas.

I started this post a few hours ago. Will have to add the rest later. More pics, video and story to come.

EDIT: to finish the Friday recap. Made it to Vegas without incident and not too terrible on traffic. My wife was actually already in Vegas for work and had to work through the weekend which meant I got to see her and do dinners with her as well as have a free place to stay! It was worth the 20 minute drive to the track and back each day.

Good talking with you Chad. Glad things went well for you.

Cole

Here's a few of the pics I shared on FB.

http://i981.photobucket.com/albums/a...psrunspyvj.jpg

There are 6 vehicles in this pic (look closely for the Zephyr). The wheel to wheel racing this weekend was epic.

http://i981.photobucket.com/albums/a...psrbdhsxqa.jpg

http://i981.photobucket.com/albums/a...ps2gsa5nwx.jpg

http://i981.photobucket.com/albums/a...pspuoehlle.jpg

http://i981.photobucket.com/albums/a...pspgleh3lz.jpg

http://i981.photobucket.com/albums/a...psowdlvgia.jpg

http://i981.photobucket.com/albums/a...pswegnfdap.jpg

http://i981.photobucket.com/albums/a...ps4nb837dl.jpg

-J

Chad, Congrats on the win and even more props on driving the car out to the event and back!! Looks like you have your car dialed in:thumbsup:

Well how much fun was that!!!


Oh yeah -- he's hooked!!

Congrats Chad. Cool pic of the car in front of New York on the strip.