1985 Monte Carlo SS known as Barney

[Ron in SoCal]

Originally Posted by waynieZ

Congratulation's Lance, and here's to even more success next year!

Here, here

or is it "hear, hear"?

[SSLance]

Originally Posted by glassman

Lance, besides autox, are you planning on tracking it at all?

Congrats on a successful season

Thanks! I plan to track it some at the Optima events I hit next year.

Originally Posted by waynieZ

Congratulation's Lance, and here's to even more success next year!

Thanks I can't wait...Is it March yet?

Originally Posted by instro84

nice work lance, loud forward to seeing updates.

Thank you. I'm looking forward to getting started on them.

Originally Posted by Ron in SoCal

Here, here

or is it "hear, hear"?

Either one works for me...

[Ben@SpeedTech]

Congrats, nice way to wrap up the season! Looking forward to seeing changes for next year.

[SSLance]

The off season work on Barney has begun with earnest.





I've ran the stock CCC carb, distributor, and ECM on my car for the whole 7 years that I've had this 383 in the car and it has ran great. It's got many wins in it's class with the SCCA autocross, a Street Modified championship, a third place trophy in it's debut at the SCCA Solo Nationals, and several very successful track day events where it surprised a lot of people over the past couple of years.

During the later part of this season though, at our autox events held on larger more open courses...the car kept getting beat by the newer LS powered cars in my class. I wasn't sure what to do about it until the last event of the season which was held on our local tight technical course where I won over those same cars by over a second. I was getting beat by an upper RPM horsepower deficiency. It was time for a change...

This engine has always built fantastic torque down low, but the ECM would pick up noise from the knock sensor and start pulling timing out up around 4250 RPM which would kill the upper end horsepower.



I researched putting a MPFI setup on this engine but ultimately decided I could swap in a LS1 cheaper than to put EFI on this engine correctly...and I'm not really interested in doing that at least right now. So I started researching ignition boxes and found this super cool MSD unit #6530 for sale locally at a good price, so I picked it up. A friend had a re-man quadajet left over from his car he didn't need anymore and I picked up a new MSD #85551 distributor and started the swap to pull the CCC out and put the MSD ignition box in.

My heater core sprung a leak last fall so it needed to be replaced as well, seemed like a good time to do it all at once.

My goal is to get the complete CCC harness out in one piece, put the ignition box somewhere under the dash and use the CCC grommet to run the MSD harness back to the engine. The distributor has had the mechanical advance locked out and is set back in place with the rotor pointed at the #1 spark plug wire and a basic tune has been loaded into the programmable MSD box.





I sent the carb off to a friend to have him make sure it is 100% ready to run so that when it's bolted on and the ignition box is fired off, my ignition problems should be solved and hopefully I can realize the true potential of this engine.

[Ron Sutton]

Keep up the improvements !



.

[WSSix]

Sounds fun, Lance. Glad you're staying 383. Good luck with the change over.

[SSLance]

I recently went to PRI in Indy to try on Race seats in preparation for major safety upgrades for the interior of Barney. I wanted to run a HANS device on any future track days and this meant I also needed to add harnesses, which meant new seats as well as a place to attach the shoulder harnesses too. After all of the groundwork was laid, seat style picked out, roll bar installation design and quote...I got cold feet and had pretty much decided to not go through with it. It was going to take a rear seat delete modification to make it work properly and still look good and I also couldn't find the exact seats I wanted...

That was until a week ago Friday. This is when I stumbled across a garage sale ad that had a perfect pair of seats in it at a fantastic price.




These seats come with a winning pedigree already, they were in Mark Stielow's 1967 Camaro Mayhem when it won the Optima Ultimate Street Car Challenge in 2012. Hope I can do them justice in Barney as well.


Saturday I took the GTO front seats and rear seats out of the car and Sunday delivered them to their new owner. Once the new seats get here I'll get them mocked into place...then once I get the car running again it's off to the fab shop for the roll bar and rear seat delete sheet metal to be put into place. Then I'll cover the sheet metal with sound deadener and eventually carpet that matches the maroon carpet up front for hopefully a very nice finished look on my now two seat street car.

It's a big change, but I'm certain I'll be much safer in the car plus I'll be more secure which should help the driving and the added bonus will be the roll bar structure will significantly stiffen up the body which will also help with the car's performance.

The getting the car running again bit entails a new carburetor, distributor, and ignition system. I've pulled the 1985 factory CCC computer system and am working on a new mechanical Quadrajet, MSD programmable ignition box\distributor and a wideband 02 meter install which should help me tune some more power into the upper RPM range to help me beat that Poncho and Camaro in this coming season on the bigger courses.

I also pulled the steering column and sent it out to be completely rebuilt and modified to more match the new features of the car. It'll be locked in park, the linkage arm removed, and the steering wheel lock disabled as well as the very worn tilt mechanism rebuilt and improved upon over the factory version and have a nice satin black paint finish applied before it's sent back.

Right now the car is in hundreds of pieces and I'm in parts jail waiting for everything to come back before I can reinstall. Hopefully everything will come in in the next week or so and once I get back from my trip to FL next week I can resume on the off season upgrade projects.