79 Camaro build update

[SSLance]

As we add more and more lateral grip to these cars, the more speed we can carry in corners which results in even more forces put on integral pieces trying to hold everything together. I'm just thankful that your parts breakage didn't result in any further damage Dustin. I'm certain you'll build it bigger better and badder than before and go after it once again after.

Thanks for the update and congrats on the rest of life as well. Wish I would have run into you out in Vegas...

[silver63c10]

When did it become January

So, we decided it was time to get our butts in gear on this thing. Everyone else keeps getting faster, so there's no point going into this year with the same pile as we ran last year.

First up, though, there was the matter of a certain silver thing that had decided it didn't like having oil pressure after it got warm.

Shop full of broken toys..

With a refreshed bullet tucked safely away into the truck, the Camaro thrash is on. Several items on the to-do list in all areas of the car:

Stiffer, and slightly taller
An equal percentage bump in spring rate front and rear. Also going to bump the ride height back up a smidge and hopefully cure some clearance issues

Floater time
As we started pushing it harder, it became obvious that even the tapered bearings on the rear end weren't up to the loads 315 Rivals can deliver. Also a good time for revisions on our panhard bar

Engine checkup
After pushing it hard several events losing oil pressure in high-G corners, a checkup on the rotating assembly is in order

Trans Swap
We went with the American Powertrain TKO Extreme with hopes it would solve some of the problems we'd had with our first one.. Long story short, it's T56 time.

Let's get to work..again.

When it came time to get a floater, we explored several options. Ended up going with the Mod Lite from Speedway Engineering. Big thanks to Kenny there for his help getting us all the right stuff, and to Mike from Wilwood for giving us a great contact.

This thing is gorgeous inside and out..

I still love working on this car, and it's even more apparent after working on the truck - race car simplicity is just hard to beat. In the span of a few hours on a Saturday morning I had the motor and trans basically ready to pull by myself, and we finished getting it out in short order in the afternoon.

By lunchtime Sunday things were starting to get a little crazy. Front springs out, rear end out, just chaos.

Before this shop, there is literally no way we would have tackled all this at once. It's been a complete game-changer being able to spread out and get the car off the ground. A year in, we're completely spoiled..

By the end of the day, we had it mocked into position at ride height using some shock analogs fabbed up to hold everything at the current ride height.

Panhard bar

The panhard bar has been a question mark for a long time. After doing a bit more learning over the past several years, it became apparent that mounting the bar this high is less than ideal, so we set about getting it down and adding some adjustability.

We now have 2" of up and down adjustment to play with, and will have the bar around 3.5" lower than it was before. The car has always been really twitchy, and from the research we've done I'm fairly optimistic that lowering the roll center will help with this. Having this as a tuning option will be a great new tool at the least.

About that fresh motor..

Replaying the videos from COTA alerted us to a bit of an oiling issue. Turns out, it's less than ideal dropping to 5 psi in high speed corners for multiple events. Spot checking a few bearings led to the decision to play it safe and go ahead and put a set of rod and main bearings (and a new oil pan) in.

We'll be going back with the same Canton oil pan we had on before. That one had some sealing issues on the rear main, but hopefully that won't be an issue with this being a new block.

Some thoughts on Camaros and 'Camaros'

Been thinking a lot with some of the new builds coming out in the Optima and Cam Challenge events, and us pondering some more extreme modifications for the future.

Our car is a racecar. I don't make any effort to deny that. In the end, though, it's still a Camaro. And I'm pretty damn proud of that fact. We've tossed around the idea of cutting it up, building a full custom subframe, and hacking out all of that Camaro to make it even better and faster and more exotic..

.but I still keep coming back to the feeling of knowing that it's gotten to be pretty good..while still being a Camaro.

How many more months til the season starts? Oh, weeks? 2 weeks? Eep.

[silver63c10]

Originally Posted by SSLance

Thanks for the update and congrats on the rest of life as well. Wish I would have run into you out in Vegas...

Thanks, Lance. We have to cross paths soon - we're planning on doing some traveling this year with the car so hopefully we'll get to race!

Originally Posted by WSSix

Congrats on the house, Duston.

Thanks Trey! Been a crazy few months but it's starting to look like something finally.

..I'm told progress is being made in the rest of the house too..

[Gscherer78ta]

Great update Dusty! You'll make it for the season opener I'm sure, you always seem to eek something out and show up.

Your garage looks a lot like mine only, a lot more race car'ish than street car'ish. I hear ya about everyone getting faster and faster, I too am adding a bunch of modifications this winter and I'm sure we'll have a lot of fun with them. I'm not sure how competitive the Gold TA will be though. Not only is your car becoming a lot faster but, you have learned a ton behind the seat and that helps when you get to the Optima events and our local events.

[silver63c10]

Update time! Been a crazy few months to say the least.

Shortly after the last update, we decided to go to the Optima event at NOLA. Those of you familiar with the calendar will note that meant having the car together and ready for battle in just a couple of months.

We got things wrapped back up in early March and hatched a plan for maximum seat time and testing ahead of NOLA. This included a few autocrosses and more importantly a load of track time with NASA and an open track day.

Ready to rock with an extra gear, a rock solid rear end, and a fresh bullet

We hit a local club's autocross, where Dad got to drive the car for the first time and officially became HOOKED. Everything went well there so it was off to Motorsport Ranch Cresson for a NASA HPDE.

This proved to be an up and down weekend chasing some braking issues, but worked out well in breaking my fear of working on stuff at the track. I was also able to bump into HPDE4 and take a step closer to the crack of Time Trials.

We still had some time left before NOLA, and the stock spindle and bearing setup began the stick out as the last weak link in an otherwise strong chain. We sourced a set of C5 bearing spindles from CPP along with 5x4.5 pattern hubs from Detroit Speed and blew the front end apart again.

With a few weeks left, the schedule fell perfectly to get an open track day and two autocrosses in before leaving for Louisiana. This would be the perfect shakedown for all systems, as well as a significant amount of seat time.

We headed to Eagles Canyon Raceway with the goal of getting a few sessions in with no issues. It soon turned into 3 sessions, playing with shock settings and tire pressures and actually tuning the car for the first time in a while. We chased a push through the center of the corners, eventually stiffening compression on the rear shocks a few clicks and going up in tire pressure to get some rotation on throttle.

That thing where you're -that- guy at the track day

When all was said and done, we had dropped 4 seconds off the lap time from last year and felt fantastic about where things were sitting. There was an autocross that Sunday, and it was too good to pass up..

Hindsight being 20/20, we should have skipped it..

The event was being run at a lot known for being rough, and one section went across a ridge that fell smack in the middle of a braking zone. I had the unique experience of watching the car get broken, as Dad was driving it in a separate class during the heat I was working.

We loaded up and went home, and after a few days I had kinda sorta calmed down. Fortunately, I had the next Friday off and was able to rebuild the center section and get it buttoned back up for one last event before NOLA.

Better. Faster. Stronger. Save your templates, kids.

Just for giggles, we decided to make one last spring change, bumping the rear rate even further in an attempt to get some of that tail happiness we had before back and cure some other issues we discovered at the first event of the year..

The last autocross went without issue and provided some much needed tuning time for the new springs. With that, it was time for a quick wash and on to NOLA.

[flatoutz]

Dustin,
What do you think about the quality of the cpp c5 spindles?

Mike,

[silver63c10]

Originally Posted by flatoutz

Dustin,
What do you think about the quality of the cpp c5 spindles?

Mike,

They looked good out of the box, and everything seems to be good with them through a few months of use. I'm not sure if it was the spindles themselves or the hubs, but we did have to add a 1/4" spacer to gain back some track width that we lost with them, but they are rock solid even on one of our home tracks that is really rough.

[silver63c10]

NOLA on my mind..

With a quick wash, some fresh brake fluid, and a general once-over completed, we loaded up and headed south. Got to the track, got tech'd, fire drilled, and decaled, then headed out to find some gulf coast seafood.

I'm not a 'take pictures of your food' kinda guy, but sometimes you just have to

Saturday we started out the day with design & engineering judging out of the gates, and finished in time to get our first autocross run in on the first trip through. I spent the whole morning tagging cones and being a general mess, finally gathering things up for a clean run as we went into lunch.

The course was fun, and required pushing right out to the limit of several cones to be where you needed to be. In the afternoon, I found time early, then fought all afternoon to put all the sections together into one run. We sat on a fairly comfortable lead until the next to last run, when Cody Puckett in, of all things, another 79 Camaro, got within .03.

He put together another clean run but wasn't able to improve on his last lap, and with the pressure off I let out a deep breath and finally stitched all the parts from earlier together into a 30.9.

The new format has autocross going all day on Saturday, which ended up being fun because we got to run with all the cars in our class vs. being split up like previous years.

Saturday evening was the road rally, D&E points were posted (a bloodbath for us again), and then we did some general maintenance including a pretty substantial carburetor change for the incoming cold front.

We knew coming in that to have any shot at winning, every single point in the timed events would be critical. Falling as much as 51 points behind other GTV cars, the hill got that much steeper Saturday night. We knew for Sunday every every last bit of time we could get would be critical.

Hot Laps and Speed Stop and Hot Laps and Speed Stop and..

In previous years, Sunday has been pretty typical of a standard track day. Go out for 20 minutes, come in and chill and look at the data, repeat. This year, the Speed Stop moves to Sunday and makes for a pretty hectic but fun affair.

Timing issues in the morning caused some delays, so we spent time at the Speed Stop chasing time on both sides of the mirrored course.

The whole day was kind of a blur, and I never managed to get video of any of the Speed Stop runs. Through random draw, we kept getting the right side first which put us on the left with hot brakes and tires. A 9.46 came fairly early on the left, but I just couldn't find the pace on the right until the very end after road course session 4 with a 9.37. We weren't able to keep up with everyone in our class, but felt good about the times and called it a day with that.

Road Course

Oddly, we came into this event with way more seat time at the track than on the autocross. I had studied up on video and track maps, and felt pretty good about the layout. The back side of the track has a similar flow to the front section of COTA, just without the hundreds of feet of elevation change.

Thanks to Optima for the shot

Consistently found time throughout the day, and our move to the expert run group proved to work out well with tons of clean track in every session after the first.

The T56 really paid off, as the car now just keeps pulling hard in 5th gear, running up to 145 on the main straight. We are planning some aero work for the front end that will hopefully help it out in that area in the future.

It once again came down to one final session. We had waited for the charge from Mills in the Beach Cruiser 68 all day, and went out for the last session to take one more shot at improving after sitting on 1:58s for three sessions. I was able to hook up with Feras in his Z06 through much of the lap and get some help with the line, and cracked the 57 mark with a 1:57.840.

The predictive timer on RaceChrono wasn't working, so I had no idea if the lap was good or not. It wasn't until I pulled into the hot pit after a cool down lap that I realized what the time was. It was an awesome feeling to finish up all three events with our best time of the day at the end.

When it was all tallied up, the road course was our best overall finish, which is huge.

Waiting for the Points

Optima awards ceremonies are fun, especially if you get to hear your name called. We were fairly confident we had the times, the question was were they enough to get it done for the class win and that invitation. Fortunately GTV gets called first, I don't know that we could have handled waiting through the other classes.

14 points ended up being the difference over Mills, with Ken Kelley in the former RideTech Chevelle close behind him. I'll say it again - holy crap.

Since these events started, we've watched them and thought about how cool it would be to get that invite to Vegas. As excited as I am to get to drive it in that event, it means a ton to get there for my dad who has treated this thing like a second job this year.

We also have to send a big thank you again to Mike at Wilwood for his help not only with the brakes, but also for putting us in contact with Speedway Engineering and recommending the new spindle and bearing setup. The braking has never been better, and has made a huge difference.

Now the to-do list begins again. Have to get ready for the show - see you guys at SEMA!

[rickpaw]

Congrats on the win Dustin. Good luck in Vegas.

Tu

[Gscherer78ta]

Well Done Dusty! That's really awesome for you and your dad, who have put a lot of work into your car but, also into your driving!