Updating the OPTIMA Batteries OneLapCamaro for 2011 - Getting Down to Business

[James OLC]

Well it’s time to start getting the OPTIMA Batteries OneLapCamaro up to speed for this years Tire Rack One Lap of America which promises to make last years adventure look like a bit of walk in the park. This year we’re doing the same mileage as last year (around 3,600) but we have one less day to do it – that makes for a couple of 500 plus mile days and one awful looking 700 mile transit stage (yech). Fortunately the OLC Team is coming back stronger this year and now we actually have a clue what’s in front of us.

For 2011 Fast Mary Pozzi is joining me as co-driver for race and OPTIMA Batteries is once again sponsoring our efforts. We also have support coming from Hellwig Products and FM3 Performance Marketing who helped us last year as well as new sponsors Baer Brakes and RideTech who are letting us torture test some of their cool new products. This year we’ll also benefit from have a second car running as part of Team OPTIMA – Jimi Day and Steve Kepler will be running the race with us in Steve’s tried and true Z06. Steve has beat on this car as much as I have seen anyone beat on anything so I am sure that he and Jimi will have a blast in the uber-competitive “big bore” class.

For the most part the OLC held up pretty well in last years race – we killed a set of brake pads, cracked some rotors, destroyed some axle seals and obliterated a clutch on the last day of the race but came away in pretty decent shape. Nonetheless, we saw the need for some improvements to defend our title and set about scoping some new bits that should make us a bit more consistent and hopefully more competitive.

We’re working with RideTech to evaluate and dial in their new TA3 Triple Adjustable shocks. RideTech has really stepped up to the plate over the last two years and is making some top-notch Pro-Touring pieces in addition to their Air Ride systems. Last year they released their non-adjustable and single adjustable coil over shocks and at SEMA they debuted their Triple Adjustable offerings. For this year’s One Lap of America we’ll be heading out with one of the first sets of TA3’s and putting them through their paces.

At SEMA last fall Baer Brakes rolled out their new Baer Tracker Full Floating Axle Conversion kit and we were immediately sold. Designed to eliminate axle deflection the Baer Tracker is a huge step in eliminating pad knock back and providing a more stabile, predictable brake response. In addition to the Baer Tracker we’re stepping up to a new set of 6R Monoblock Competition Calipers, which should give us an absolutely incredible brake setup.

We’ve been working with Blake and the guys at SpeedTech for a while now and last month they came up with a solution to adapt the new SKF ZR1 hubs to the ATS spindles so we’ve got a pair of those on the way now. The stock hubs are great but one of our stops this year are the high banks of Daytona and a bit of overkill won’t hurt up front.

We’re also working with Rick’s Stainless on one of their VaporWorx tanks. This will be a huge confidence booster for us since we saw more than one competitor fail last year due to fuel issues. It will also help in the Silver State where fuel consumption is less than optimal. For reference, in the One Lap of America last year we averaged something like 28 mpg on the highway and 2.8 mpg on the track – knowing that you’ve got a bulletproof setup will be a huge improvement for us.

In addition to that we’ve got some more tricks up our sleeves that we’ll share over the next couple of months. New wheels are in the works, necessitated by our tire choice for this year’s event and we’re hoping to have some new aero tricks at our disposal (time permitting) that look like a huge step forward over where we are today. We also need to figure out something for a stereo (to avoid the whole “humming thing” this year) – hopefully we can find someone we trust to do what should be a pretty basic install.

[James OLC]

We’ll update things as they come but to start things off we got the ball rolling with RideTech just before Christmas, sending them our old shocks for dynoing and looking for a base line with their shocks.

I’ll try to post all the graphs but here you can see a comparison of the old shocks and the new RideTechs and the range between full stiff and full soft. We had been running at the very soft end and had no more adjustment.



You can see that the RideTech shocks are quite a bit softer than the old shocks so a spring change is in order. We’re increasing the coil rates by 100 pounds up front and that should give us something that is not too far out from where we were. One of our goals was soften things up so we’re well on our way.

[James OLC]

We decided to start with some testing of the softer shocks – firmer springs using RideTechs single adjustable coilovers to make sure that we are in the ball park of what we need before committing to the valving on the triple adjustables.

Here is one of the mono-tube single adjustables right out of the box. Besides the one-piece impact forged body (which is cool as heck) you’ve got the upper and lower spring perches and all necessary hardware to do the installation.



What you can’t see (obviously) are the guts of the shock – Teflon seals and wipers, deflecting disk valving, and internal extension and compression bump stops – these are high quality, high performance pieces and should be perfect on the OneLapCamaro.



Top and bottom you have Teflon and Kevlar injected spherical bearings. At the top you’ve got the single adjuster and the coil mount that is held in place by a simple snap ring.





What you can see at the bottom of the shock is the forged aluminum pinch clamp that is (IMHO) a really creative alternative to the conventional setscrew style. Not only will it get away from damaging the aluminum threads and stripping the set screw but I can actually see the clamp and won’t be searching around with an Allen wrench in my hand wondering which hole has the set screw and which is just a blind hole.



Here is where the RideTech Mono-Bore is a bit different than most – you can see that body is a single piece… very cool.

[James OLC]

Fully assembled with the Hyperco springs we’re hopefully ready to go.







Another nice feature out of the box is that RideTech includes these aluminum spacers/inserts that allows you to use either 1/2” or 5/8” hardware. We had been using 1/2” bolts so the inserts ensured that we would have a hassle free installation.

[James OLC]

At least in theory…

Nothing on the OneLapCamaro is ever that easy and the first issue that we found was with the lower control arm mounts. Since we wanted to be able to do back to back testing with different shocks we wanted to keep the old mounting points to allow for a simple change. Unfortunately differences in the shock bodies themselves led to a clearance issue with the SpeedTech LCA. As you can see the first issue is with the actual mounting points for the shocks – the old setup was too close together to use the aluminum sleeves.



The second issue is that the shock wouldn’t reach the mounting point anyways. The old shocks had a 1” longer head on the shock and now we were hitting the LCA before we got close to the Chicane lower mount.



Before going any further I think that’s it’s important to say a couple of things – because this is going to look like a real pain in the butt…

1. This is not a problem with either the SpeedTech Lower Control Arm or the RideTech Coil-Over Shocks. The Chicane shock mounts were designed specifically for either a Bilstein or Penske shock – that’s it. Because I wanted to be able to run any shock we needed a slightly more complicated solution.

2. There is an easy solution that could have solved this problem in about 30 seconds… we could have simply kept the existing mount “as is” with no changes and used a stock style T-bar mount in the stock holes. Going this way allows the RideTech shocks to work with the SpeedTech LCA with absolutely no modifications.

3. David and I went the direction we did because we wanted to. This isn’t necessary for 9 out of 10 installations but we wanted to run the longest possible shock and by going this route we gained some much desired shock travel – probably more than we need. It also allows us to run the same shock front and rear which makes replacement and spares and all that jazz much simpler – again, not important to 9 out of 10 people but for the One Lap of America space it at a premium and the ability to have a single spare is a great benefit to us. (that sounds like a great justification now but at the time we didn’t know that – lol).

[James OLC]

Anyways…

We pulled the front LCA’s off



Fired up the mill and opened up the base of the LCA to clear the shock body…



Cut the shock mounts off and moved them out about an inch.



And just like that we were done.

[James OLC]

We installed the fronts





and the rears



and got ready to set ride height… which is when we realized that we needed longer front shocks. We quickly figured out that one of the rears would work so a quick call to RideTech had a pair of longer shocks on the way.

David got the fronts in yesterday so we’ll be doing some testing soon – we’ll keep you posted.

[Matt@BOS]

Thanks for chronicling the upgrades for this year. You guys are a real wealth of knowledge and it's great to see the thought process going on behind all of these changes.

I'm curious about these new Ridetech shocks, are they priced similar to Penskes? I've been starting to shop shocks for my next project and hadn't heard about these until you mentioned them. They sound like a good product that is engineered with solid performance and low maintenance in mind. I guess you're good advertising for Ridetech lol.

Matt

[chr2002ca]

As always, thanks a million for documenting and sharing all of your upgrades and changes. It's REALLY appreciated. The OLC is one helluva machine and it just keeps getting better. I look forward to seeing it and you at RTTC. Kick some ass and have some fun during that One Lap of America event also.

[Flash68]

Great posts. Just saw your car and new shocks at the Pozzi shop last weekend. Very nice looking stuff all around.

Love that you beat the hell out of that car!