79 Camaro build update

[silver63c10]

Update time - two successful trips in the books!

Got back out weekend before last for the North Texas Camaro Club's autocross, had an absolute blast and got a ton of seat time, which is exactly what I needed at this point with the car.

The majority of our changes made for positive results. Brakes are much improved thanks to both bias adjustment and a change to Polymatrix B pads, as you can tell by a few lockups in the video. Rear grip was much better with the rear sway bar disconnected, as well.

Moving to the stiffer springs up front reduced a lot of the dive, but the car is still way loose all over both in corners and lateral acceleration.

We have some plans on the drawing board for both issues, including building some adjustment into the front sway bar and eventually moving to an outboard mounted coilover vs. the QA1 ProCoils as we're at the max spring rate already.

On to the video..



And a few pictures that illustrate the roll/dive/squat issues reasonably well..

[silver63c10]

Offseason update time!

So, the 3DTuning app is a pretty sweet way to pass the time..anyway.

After a pretty unsuccessful trip to finish the year due to some (hopefully since resolved) steering issues, we went into winter with a few goals.

- Rolling flat - getting adjustability in the front sway bar, whether that meant buying a Speedway setup or modifying our current conventional bar

- Rolling fat - get the new wheels and tires sorted out

- Stopping reliably - new Wilwood 6-piston binders up front will take the heat of track work much better than the current 4-pistons, which will move to the back in place of the uber-budget stock metric front calipers

Swaybar Mod

So, swaybar adjustability. In the interest of cost, modifying the existing bar was the best option. One of the more interesting setups I've seen was on an IROC race car that Legendary Motorcar restored several years ago, which used a sleeve that slid back and forth at the end of the bar, and we set about replicating this in our own way.

Using some chrome round stock that was leftover from our hydraulic business, a sleeve was machined to the proper inside diameter, split, and drilled for a crossbolt. A heim attaches to tabs at the bottom, which attaches to the lower control arm.

5 positions are available, and even the first one should be substantially stiffer than the original. This will hopefully bring the rear bar back into play, as we disconnected it early on to help rear grip.

Rolling Fat

On to the rolling stock situation. Our original plan, thinking that space was limited more than it ended up being in front, was for 10/275 up front, and 12/315 or 335 out back. After some test fitting and measuring, a much, much cheaper set of 18x11s were sourced from XXR. We'll be rocking 315s all the way around, and there's room in the budget for brake upgrades.

Since we initially got it on the road, the wheels we've had have never been what I had in mind, but what we could work with at the time. I'm..in love with these already.

The plan for the year is hitting several autocrosses before late March, when we'll head to TMS for the Ultimate Street Car Association event. New brakes will be worked out before then (I'd feel much better with more caliper all the way around for the road course and speed stop).

Our season is supposed to start this weekend, and the plan was to test out new datalogging equipment in my daily driver Z. It's not looking like the weather is going to cooperate despite the fact it was 80 degrees here today, though (sorry, Northerners ). Ready to get going..