Chad's 68 Camaro V3.0 build. LS3 & TCI goodies

[CurtiSS 69]

Originally Posted by Chad-1stGen

Aaaand for the second time this year I did track days two weekends in a row (back to back), though this time the first one involved a 1,000+ mile round trip and the 2nd one was 400+ miles round trip! I'm racking up the miles on this car!

This past Sunday I hit Buttonwillow. This is the first time I've been on this track since 2011 and personally is the track I've been MOST looking forward to running V3.0 of my car. Buttonwillow is one of the more varied tracks in SoCal IMO and offers a fantastic comparison of my new and old setups.

Sadly, I only got a couple of traffic free laps but I managed to run a best lap time of 2:05 which was about 9 seconds faster than my old best. In reviewing the video of my best lap there is at least a few seconds available just cleaning up my driving so I think I might be able to run a 2:02 or 2:03 on my 200TW Falken street tires!

Here is the video of my best lap. I had gopro malfunctions so this is just my iphone's camera set to 480 resolution.


I did manage to capture a cool shot of my first ever off track excursion on Truck Stop.


This track day was also impacted by two negative experiences. One huge one. There was a serious wreck coming out of the esses towards sunrise corner which resulted in one fatality and one person with major injuries being air lifted. It was a very sobering reminder of how dangerous track days can be. Especially since the car involved was was fully caged, fixed back seats, 5 point harnesses, and was being driven by a "professional" driver who has operated a tuner and builder shop since 1995. Due to the violent passenger side impact against a concrete wall (corner worker station), speculation is that due to lack of a containment seat the driver suffered a lethal sideways injury to his neck/head while the passenger who was in the impact zone had a passenger airbag / door to stop the helmet movement.

The second negative which is totally minor in light of the accident was that I lost my dash, marker, and tail lights and despite playing with a multimeter and fuses for a few hours I wasn't able to figure out until I got home that the Horn fuse was the culprit. Painless wiring runs the power for the driving lights (not headlights) through the horn fuse!!

Hello Chad,

Thanks for sharing the footage: ) It seems like the car and the driver have out grown standard HPDE events... Go on to NASA TT as you were talking about before. I think you will really like it. It's easier to grow and have fun when you have the carrot in front of you rather than being held up by traffic.

Regards

CurtiSS 69

[Spiffav8]

Chad that was a great post on the event and I really enjoyed the video! That looks like so much fun and really motivates me to get my car finished.

The death at the track is a serious bummer. As Greg and others have stated...No One our ranks Major Safety.

[Chad-1stGen]

Originally Posted by Sonar Chief

You don't ever want to hear about a death on a race track ... safety is paramount is these street cars! My heart goes out to their families!!!

It is a really unfortunate occurrence for sure. Some interesting threads spawned by this accident that really makes you think twice about how you approach these events.

Originally Posted by GregWeld

The Buttonwillow death (let's call it what it was rather than downplaying it to an "incident" or "accident") is something ALL of us should be thinking about when deciding whether or not our cars are truly track worthy.

We've already seen cars on fire on a couple cars that hang around here.... These drivers were only lucky that they were okay and could get out of the cars. I'm always reminded of the "what if" that fire came after a bad crash where I couldn't help myself to get out - or if the door was jammed etc....

The horsepower and tires that are being built into ordinary street cars gives them the ability to carry some serious speed.... in most cases - far exceeding the drivers ability and the safety equipment required in many of these events. The speeds we're able to obtain at the end of some of the longer straights is astounding! Therefore - the likelihood of an "off" - or a brake failure - or a spin etc go up accordingly.

Some "incident" might have absolutely nothing to do with our own equipment - preparation - or skills. They might simply be because someone in front of us had an engine let go - or spilled the guts of their radiator....

Like I always told my kids -- "it's all a lot of fun.... right up 'til the time you get hurt". While that was more about football and soccer, and jumping bikes, etc.... it still rings true in our adult activities.

Those are good points Greg. The level of safety preparation on this car was higher than my own (currently not hard to do) and higher than 90% of the cars I see on road course tracks at these types of events but it still wasn't enough.

Originally Posted by Tomswheels

After reading about what happened, it seems the passenger side of the vehicle impacted, but the Passenger survived and the Driver did not. Makes me reconsider choice of seat, and HANS device usage on ANY track larger than Autocross...

I've been researching seats and hans devices again myself.

Originally Posted by CurtiSS 69

Hello Chad,

Thanks for sharing the footage: ) It seems like the car and the driver have out grown standard HPDE events... Go on to NASA TT as you were talking about before. I think you will really like it. It's easier to grow and have fun when you have the carrot in front of you rather than being held up by traffic.

Regards

CurtiSS 69

Thanks Curtiss. I've done more research on the Nasa TT events. Looks like a fun time but I'd never be competitive in most of the classes. I still think it might be worth trying and I've got my eye on the 2016 schedule.

Originally Posted by Spiffav8

Chad that was a great post on the event and I really enjoyed the video! That looks like so much fun and really motivates me to get my car finished.

The death at the track is a serious bummer. As Greg and others have stated...No One our ranks Major Safety.

Too true. Glad you enjoyed the video.

[CurtiSS 69]

Hello Chad,

It is true that it would be tough to be competitive in TT on an individual event basis, but the car & driver development are priceless and fun. One other thing. You have a very reliable car, and look promising on the track. If you compete in most of the events you could be surprised at season closing. The cars in the higher classes commonly break; ) There's your first Ace. Keep your momentum going. We are all sorry Ivo is gone, but sometimes it just happens. Luckily these are not common occurances.

Regards

DEC

[WSSix]

The gold paint on the wheel centers was a good choice. Glad the car is performing well for you, Chad

[Chad-1stGen]

I was reflecting back on the past 13 months since I got my 68 Camaro back on the road with all of the v3.0 upgrades sorted out and realized just how many events I was able to attend, how the car performed and it really got me stoked.

Between late October 2014 and the beginning of December 2015 I:
- put over 9,000 miles the car
- attended 6 Open track days
- attended two Optima USCA events
- attended my first SCCA autocross
- attended around 25 different days of autocross total
- all done without trailering the car to the events

I embarked on the upgrade path to make the car more fun to drive at the track and autocross which was a 100% success. The car is indeed so much more fun to drive now and also so much faster. Four of the road coarse tracks I attended this year, I had attended in previous years and at each of them I dropped my lap times considerably. I won my first autocross and went on to win a few of them and even more top 3 / podium finishes.

I can't wait for some events in 2016!!

[Tomswheels]

Will you start on Sunday? There is a new CAM title up for grabs...