Reinventing the OneLapCamaro...

[James OLC]

As many already know, the OneLapCamaro has been at Best of Show for the last couple of months getting some “tweaks” prior to testing for next year’s Tire Rack One Lap of America. I had originally planned to keep this quiet until it was “done” but as the project has moved forward I’ve had a couple of people asking for details so I figured that since some pics are already out there anyways so… here it goes…

Long story short – our performance at this year’s One Lap of America was really encouraging (in the big scheme of things). We were competitive in our class and, with the exception of a couple of “melt downs” (not always in our control), we were not far off of a really promising finish in most individual events, as well as overall. I’m well aware of the limitations of the car (mostly related to the front end) and as Mary and I were driving away from South Bend we started to discuss how we could improve the car for 2013…

I knew that we needed more front tire and better overall geometry. We have been talking for 3 years about changing the sub-frame but for me that was too complex (read expensive and risky) a change on its own – it would have required new headers, steering, inners, mounts, and cutting off the old one – so that was “off limits” for now. I also didn’t want to risk “messing up” the car by doing anything that could not be undone or put back. So we formulated a plan…

The front tires and “geometry” could be achieved in one of two ways – subframe or sheetmetal – and since subframe was off the table the decision was to try sheetmetal and so my first call was to the guys who I would trust with any project incorporating tin and paint – Dick and Jon and the crew at Best of Show.
Another piece of the puzzle was weight and we identified some of the heavier pieces that could be replaced or switched out – like the rad support and AC components – to take some physical weight off the nose. Carbon was off the table for me (I haven’t had a lot of luck with it) so everything that we were doing would be mindful of excess weight.

The third leg was Aero… David, Carl and I did a fair bit of background work, testing, and experimentation and determined that there were some (predictable) aero shortcomings with the car (in general) that we hoped we could improve on. I made the decision to change the front end (a fair bit), alter the hood for better air flow and cooling, and add some downforce front and rear. There is more room for experimentation but that will be in the future and on the track.

Piece by piece the process has seemed fairly “minor” but taken overall I think they are fairly dramatic. And… to be completely honest… some of these changes won’t be for everybody. Function is trumping form in most cases and that leads to some… different… styling in places.

The process started, predictably, with disassembly (well to be honest the process started with aero testing, wool string, and video) at Best of Show. I made the decision to replace all of the front sheetmetal – packing and boxing all of the original pieces so that they can go back on to bring the car back to “original” some day.

Disassembly: