My story with Barney started off as a pretty much original 67,000 mile garage kept car I picked up at a Mecum Auction here in KC. I spent a lot of time and effort in the first few years restoring the underside and upgrading the mechanicals, the goal was better performance but retaining an original look with the car.
I put a GMPP HT383 crate engine under the hood in the first year keeping the original CCC carb and distributor feeding it.
When the used Auburn posi I put in the 7.5" rear axle began to eat itself, I upgraded to a Quick Performance 9" with the rear disc brake kit.
Along the same time frame I put 2" drop spindles up front and 1" eibach springs out back to help with the stance a bit. Not long after than I saved up and bought a set of Billet Specialties rally wheels and Nitto 555 tires to finish up the lowered stance look.
About the same time I found a set of late model GTO seats, had them covered to match the rest of the interior and replaced the woeful factory buckets. The other interior upgrade came with a Retrosound Head unit that fit in the twin shaft dash plate but offered much improved sound, a digital tuner and connections for a USB stick and MP3.
I also pulled the carpet, painted the floor with rust encapsulater and used RAAmat to deaden sound. New carpet was the last to go back in on the interior freshen up project.
The following winter I installed an electric fan upgrade using a new Ramcharger fan setup and wired up the two speed relays with 2 sensors and a 3 way switch to override the relays when needed. I decided to clean up the underhood harness and like most projects whileImatitis kicked in and before I knew it the entire underhood area was stripped from the windshield forward to bare metal and restored.
This was my first venture outside of the "stock appearing" phase as I added some bright work under the hood when putting it all back together again. I still retained the CCC Carb, distributor and ECM though but completely disassembled the under hood harness and rerouted everything I could to hide as much of it as I could.
Once this was all back together again, I was basically done upgrading the factory aspects of the car and it kind of stalled out. I didn't drive it much, couldn't get into the car show or cruise in scene and was kind of stagnant with the car. Then I discovered track days...or PDXs if you will.
Last May after three 20 minute sessions at speed with an instructor in the car with me on Heartland Park Topeka's road course, my direction with the car changed drastically. I began autocrossing the car a bit with the local SCCA club and started to realize the limitations of the car in it's stock suspension form.
After spending some time studying front end geometry and parts choices, I picked up a set of Detroit Speed front upper control arms and DSE 2" drop springs. When I put those on I also went with the stock spindles again and greatly improved the camber and caster gains along with a better ride and more control over the front of the car...which immediately made me realize just how bad the rear of the car was.
Next up was a set of DSE rear 2" drop springs and a bunch of work to rearrange my rear disc brake package to help them clear the frame with the new lowered stance.
I then participated in a Solo School and the following day another Solo competition and really started to see just how well the car could handle.
The next problem began to surface though. The stock 200R4 which had held up to my abuse fairly well I thought...would spew fluid out the overflow during extended runs on the road course or during the solo runs.
With the new direction I was headed with the car, I made the decision to swap in a T56 instead of trying to build the 200R4 to live up to the abuse I was going to put the car through. I picked up a take out from a 1994 Camaro complete from flywheel to driveshaft, including pedals and everything. Starting the week before Thanksgiving I began pulling the old trans out and preparing to put the T56 in it's place. With a lot of help from the members of the Manual Monte Cult list, the trans swap was fairly straight forward. Biggest problem I ran into was my driver's side Hedman long tube header's collector pointed directly at the clutch slave cylinder, so a new set of headers was also needed along with a rebuild of the front half of the exhaust.
3 weeks and a day later, the car was back on the road, now shifting gears and viewing the vitals of the car through a new VHX Dakota Digital Dash which I upgraded too at the same time. I'm loving it so far, it's like a different car. Everything works very well so far, no strange noises or vibrations...stock clutch that came with the trans works flawlessly and overall...I'm very happy with the swap.
After the first couple of Autocross events this year, I asked for help on a handling issue I was having on some message boards and our own Ron Sutton stepped up on PT and asked me if I wanted some help dialing my suspension woes in. Of course I readily accepted, not really know exactly what I was getting myself into.
First he had me completely map the all of the pivot points of the front suspension, then he designed an economical yet functional way for me to correct the ills of my current setup. We collected some parts, found some free time in between events and Stage 1 was installed.
Stage 1
Mapped the roll center & corrected a RC migration problem
Raised car 3/4" to increase front travel with spring adjusters
Installed larger front sway bar ... kept same 575# springs
Installed stiffer rear springs from 125# to 225# ... kept same rear sway bar
Installed DSE LCA's to add caster
Modified LCA holes to get a little more caster
Increased caster from 5.5° to 7.5° (Better but still about 1.0° -1.5° less than optimum)
Still on 5 year old Edelbrock shocks
I ran that setup at two events, the first one in the rain and then double duty at the second one where the car got everyone's attention by finishing 18th out of 100 cars in raw time. Pretty good for a nice Street Monte Carlo with a full interior including AC if I say so myself.
As of now though, I'm neck deep into Stage 2 which is basically a transformation over to a Ridetech coilover shock suspension setup. The basic installation is done, in the next few days I'll spend some time fine tuning the shocks in a test scenario and our last Autocross of the season is this coming Sunday. Can't wait to see how it runs now.
Anyway, that's the skinny on my project for those of you that don't know Barney already. It's been a blast to own for the past 6 years and I only see it getting better as I go forward with it.
Brian Hobaugh SCCA National Tour June 2014
First Hemi 'Cuda Convertible Ever Built
Short clips: Goodguys Pleasanton autocross and pit videos
SSLance's 1985 Monte Carlo Barney
Hybrid Mode
