Time for a little bit of an update, I guess. The car has been pretty well static aside from the gear change back in June, which leaves the work to be done on my end.

We're a year in to running the car, and I've been sneaking up on finding the limits while mostly leaving all the settings alone.

This event was also notable because it was the first one I've driven the car too, which felt pretty good aside from forgetting to back the shocks down for the trip over.


The last couple trips I wanted to focus on reigning everything in a bit. In the last videos I posted, it was a spray and pray, dive bomb everything and figure it out later approach. This time the focus was to keep speeds in check and be tighter on the cones.


I managed to be much more controlled in most areas, and way tighter on the cones - to the point of only having one clean run out of 5 :knock: This one, incidentally the first, was thankfully enough for the class win and top CAM time, but 28th overall PAX (class and PAX results). Progress, but I was still pretty frustrated with the cones.

A brief intermission..

Fast forward to two weeks ago, and a back to back weekend between two different clubs, NTAXS and Equipe Rapide. In late July. In Texas.

NTAXS runs a slightly different format, with each car taking all their runs of the session back to back. This leaves only a couple of minutes between each, which isn't very Camaro friendly even in moderate weather. Enter the Z!

This paid off in two ways, giving me a chance to drive it in anger again for the first time in months, and to instruct my dad in back to back sessions with us co-driving. He's coming along great over the last few events, and really having a blast. It's been good fun watching him progress, and has helped my driving as well.

His best run:


And mine (where's my 200 extra horsepower, 50mm more tire, and 3.5 degrees of camber up front?!)


Even on worn out tires and bone stock suspension, it's such a fun car to throw around. We ended up the day 3rd (I coned away a time good enough for 2nd, ugh) and 11th in a pretty big class of 24.

Back to regularly scheduled programming

The next day it was back to the big lot at Lone Star Park for some wide open, gravel slinging, hill climbing fun. Already a little beat from the heat the day before, I trudged out bright and early Sunday morning (this time I remembered to back the shocks off 3 clicks all around, at least).

I was sweating before I even got to the track, and things just got hotter from there.


The course was big, and fast, with an optional crossover that you could really fly into and out of.

The first run cost me a 6 and a CAM class magnet off the driver's side, both of which were returned, thankfully. I brought a new run log sheet to keep track of tire and brake temps, but there just wasn't enough time between runs to keep this up after the first since I was by myself.

What I did see was pretty promising, with only a few degrees difference from the outside to the inside of the fronts, and brake temps being pretty close front to rear as well. Not bad for a complete shot in the dark on alignment, and word of mouth from Mike at Wilwood on tire pressure settings.


Due to some confusion during the event on classing, I ended up with the win in CAM-C, rather than CAM-T, over Aaron Sockwell in the DuSold 6G Mustang, with the only clean run I had in the morning.


While the grip isn't great, and the gravel is wreaking total havoc on our paint, I LOVE this place. Nothing like topping the hill at nearly 70 mph then jamming the brakes into a deeply downhill off-camber turn. Not your typical autocross, for sure.

This was a fun trip, but man was I beat by the time I got home. The car did great, handling the heat like a champ (it was 114 in the driver's seat when I climbed in to drive home).


Maintenance and other miscellany

After 2/3rds of a season, I'm extremely happy with the Falkens. We've run a lot, including USCA, and a decent amount of street driving, and they still look good and fat all around.

That being said, the, uh, rears are showing a bit more wear than the fronts (go figure?).


Got them rotated front to rear, and did a general once-over to make sure nothing looks like it's going to fall off. Only found one issue, which has plagued us since we started all this last year.


It looks like our plans for the winter are going to include building a floater 9-inch for it. It has eaten regular Timken bearings (literally spit the inside out of one), and is now leaking around a Moser o-ring'd bearing. Frustrating, but nothing we can't fix.

If anyone has an idea of what we're missing that is simpler than building a new rear end, I'm all ears.

Finally, two of our local clubs have a contingency program with Discount Tire. I got signed up last weekend, and hastily threw on the stickers before running, so they needed to be redone. Looking more racey now, but.. I like a chance at free tires, and we love Discount either way, so I'm happy to run them.


Up next

Boy, this got long again. Next up for us is another trip to Lone Star Park, at an event originally billed as the North Texas Camaro Club autocross, but is now a come one, come all and have fun type deal. Excited to fly the Camaro flag and try and get after some very fast drivers in a range of cars.

Big time thanks to Greg (Gscherer78ta) for putting everything together! Should be a lot of runs, a lot of friends, and a great opportunity for testing and tuning.

And drinking water. Lots, and lots of water.

Great write up Dusty! I hope the event tomorrow is a lot of fun and that we all learn some things- I did my best to ensure we could have a lot of seat time- I think there will be some that get ~20 laps!

I would really like to know how you go those big meats under your fenders? I think we should swap our wheels tomorrow to give me at least a snowballs chance in TX of catching your times- sound like a plan?
You've been driving great and it's very apparent that you've been getting some good seat time and it's paying off. I really like running in the same group as you but, I also like riding with you to see what you're doing so I can get some tips.

Drink lots of water tonight and rest up for tomorrow!

Greg

That first picture with you and Chris with his Maverick is great.

As for the bearings, are you running the Set20 tapered bearings? They are the big 3.150 diameter bearings. They are supposed to hold up to cornering abuse versus the normal roller bearing. At least I really hope they do. I have them on the ten bolt that's waiting to go in the car.

Glad to hear of your continued success Duston. Keep it up!

Man, Saturday was a blast! Thanks again for putting everything together - my dad got 17 runs, there was brake dust literally falling out of all the wheels on the Z when I swapped them back out, haha.

Thanks, Trey! We're just running the standard bearings right now, not tapered, and after doing some reading that is definitely the problem. I think we're going to look at changing the ends on our current housing and try those before we go all in on a floater..

August autocross in Texas, and other signs you may be a masochist

A little update from the weekend. I've been fighting with a little hesitation coming off the corners since it's been hot. Coming into the year, the carburetor still had the same basic setup from our drag racing stuff, and from much cooler weather at that. About a month ago, I stepped down a bit on the jets front and rear, and it was happier but still not all the way there.

The biggest problem was a little hesitation out of corners, particularly when just hammering it at lower RPM. The first thing on the list was squirter size, as we were pretty sure it was still rich and just loading it up at the hit. Stepped down from a 42 to a 35 up front, and things came ALIVE.


It was obvious from the first hit of the throttle that we were much, much happier.

Since putting the 315s on, it's never wanted to really just lay waste to the tires, but it was doing it. Hazing them at 60+ mph in 2nd gear? No problem at all. All this, combined with a lack of food and sleep, and it being unmercifully hot (driver excuse generator ACTIVATE!), made for an interesting first session, as shown above.

At least it puts on a show? :lol:

All in all, we were able to get what we needed to accomplished. The bearing leak on the rear end has gotten bad again, so the planning will have to start on that soon. It's always something..

Looking great out on the course!! Love that you get to beat on your car so many times a season.

You don't have to switch axle ends to upgrade to the tapered bearing setup, but you will need new axles as the ID of the A20 bearings is a bit larger than the radial bearings. I did this upgrade last winter and so far **knocking on wood** my rear axle bearings have held up good.

Several times this weekend past, I'd stand up from checking tire air pressures or something and get woozy a bit...then head directly to the cooler and get another water to chug. Have no idea how many bottles of water I downed this weekend, but it was a lot. Keeping hydrated is very important at events like this as well as sunscreen.

Thanks, Lance, we are very lucky around here - between 4 different clubs, we can run nearly every weekend Mar-Nov with events that are an hour or less away. Not that we really want to right now..it was 108 here yesterday.

After some more investigation, you're right on the bearings. I was thinking we had the smaller diameter bearings, but they are the 3.150s. After everything our axles have been through, a fresh set probably wouldn't be a bad thing, anyway.

EDIT: Just found all of your trials with this in your thread - it's like reading the same book we've been living since last fall :headspin:

Looks like the Challenge was a blast, we may have to try to make it up for that next year.

Think we found the problem :lol:


I noticed a bit of a leak before the Camaro Club event (mentioned in my post on the 7th). Before what I was planning to be my last run anyway, I noticed the barrel of the wheel was shiny. Climbed under and noticed a drip of oil on the bottom of the rotor, and a pretty moist housing end.

The last time we rode this merry-go-round, it had just shucked the inner seal piece on the bearing. We're never ones to let up, though, and I think we got all of it this time. New Moser axles with tapered rollers came in yesterday, and dad got them swapped out last night.


We'll put them to the test Sunday, as we're heading right back to Lone Star Park, where I assume the last one got broken.

I've also noticed some pretty significant brake pad kickback the last few trips out, I'm hoping this will help in that area, too. Nothing like having a manual pedal that requires a ton of pressure, but not being sure if the free travel is going to be nothing or an inch or two as you're approaching a turn..

Thanks again for the tips, Lance, that simplified this process greatly.

---

As the end of summer approaches, I've started a winter 'to-do' list. This year was always a "work on me, get on the level of the car" campaign in my mind, and I'd like to travel a bit and hit it hard with some improvements next year. Right now it includes:

Needs:
- Adapters to use a standard coilover spring up front so we can bump the rates; possible bump in rear rate as well, need to put pen to paper to see
- Install the new brake and clutch master cylinders we already received from Wilwood. This includes a size change for the fronts to get a little more travel and lighter pressure requirement at the pedal, and hopefully a much better feel overall
- Bigger, dual-pass radiator to help with summertime and road course running; ducting to the grill openings and blockoffs around the rad to clean up airflow up there
- Airbox that fits to the cowl to keep the heat off the carburetor

Wants:
- Stiffer front swaybar (likely a splined Speedway unit or something similar of our own design)
- Adjustability for the rear bar - right now it's fixed and way too stiff for everything else in our current combo. Either way, being able to tune it is a must in my book
- Fuel injection (big ? at this point)
- Air dam/splitter
- Stock look fiberglass dash and some more interior pieces including an insulated headliner to (a) chase a few more points at Optima events and (b) not roast quite so bad in the summer

And I'm sure there will be more..

Dustin,

Now that you have track time on your wheel & tire setup.Do you think you can lower it a bit more or do you think its going to rub.

Since the initial trip out, where we had to hammer the fender lips some more, we haven't had any rubbing issues other than on the swaybar at full lock, even in full compression.

I intend to drop it another 1/2" or so once we get our front spring situation sorted out - it's bottomed out on the adjustment right now. With the QA1 ProCoils, we're limited to using a big block spring to get up to a 650 lb rate, and it's way too tall for our setup.

Dustin,

Keith at customworks.com has coilover conversion you might be interested in.I'm interested to see how the 315s work up front because I want to do the same thing on my Camaro.If its not too much trouble since you have the inner wheel wells out.Can you snap some pics with the wheels at full lock to see how close wheels are coming to everything?It will be greatly appreciated.

Mike,