Reinventing the OneLapCamaro...

[Ron in SoCal]

Originally Posted by James OLC

Holley has a couple of great EFI options - the HP and the Dominator - that would've have worked for us (the Terminator is a 4150 TB style system). I chose the dominator for a couple of reasons... The Dominator allows for upmto 4 tunes to be stored in the ECM which allows is some flexibility... the Dominator allows for DBW which might be desirable for advanced TC functions... Plus We might add a power adder and the Dominator is perfect for that...

Davis makes a TC system which is specifically designed to work with the Dominator and HP systems by Holley and is a straight plug and play solution.

^ That's beautiful baby

[James OLC]

So with the old engine gone it was time to get things cleaned up and ready for what (at the time) was planned to be a “simple” engine swap. Mary dove in head first to tidy things up…



but then, after some always dangerous thinking, talking, and planning we came to the decision that if there was ever a time to do a sub swap – it was now. There had always been a list of reasons not to do it but with the new front sheetmetal most of those reasons were gone. A huge part of the decision making process surrounded the factory “dry sump” oiling system. In stepping things up a notch there were some avenues we looked in to to add a scavenge stage to the oil system. None of them, however, would work with a stock subframe without a significant amount of cutting. Couple that with the need for a subframe for my other ’67 and I eventually convinced myself to do it.

After some talking with a couple of vendors I wound up working a deal with Art Morrison Enterprises to build a slightly custom subframe. The tweaks we requested were pretty minor and AME accommodated them without hesitation and a week later it was in the shop and off to powder.



I know that you’re supposed to mock everything up and do all of the little work before committing to power coating but in this instance I just didn’t have the time to “waste”. With only a short travel fuse to work with we needed to have everything together for an all out thrash over the weekend.

Parts were ordered



and we were off!

[James OLC]

Our starting point was the engine – although it came from Katech fully tested and broken in on the dyno we wanted to do an intake swap and do some work to the stock LS7 oil pan before bolting up the ATS Sidewinder accessory drive and modifying it to eliminate the AC compressor.

The intake of choice was an LSXR 102mm from FAST with Katech billet fuel rails. A pretty straight forward – albeit time consuming – installation.





which was followed by some modifications to the stock GM oil pan with an Aviad sump and windage tray. We’re working on some modifications to an ATS oil pan but those will have to wait for another day while we work out some of the details.





and an Improved Racing thermostat



with a GM -12AN conversion kit



Until finally everything was ready…



That proved pretty easy. The first hiccup of the weekend came when we went to bolt the ATS Accessory drive on – the water pump wouldn’t clear the intake and the back of the impeller was interfering with the timing cover. Not a huge deal but an hour and change of messing around and grinding was needed to get everything to fit right



There is some more work to do but ultimately the AC bracket will be eliminated and a Katech tensioner will take its place – it looks like it will all work but we need to make some spacers to get it just right.

[James OLC]

With the engine together and ready to go in we turned our attention to preparing the parts and pieces we would need for the new Art Morrison Enterprises subframe.

LG Motorsports hooked us up with some very cool parts and pieces for the C6 suspension.



Billet drop spindles, SKF Hubs, monoball spherical bearings and some prefabricated brake duct backing plates from LG Motorsports. The great thing about the billet spindles is that they incorporate a 1” drop and in our application allow for proper geometry of the lower control arms at a typical ride height.



The down side is that the steering arm geometry winds up being off. The solution isn’t exactly simple or painless but we’ve done worse to new parts before. The fun begins by cutting the existing arms off the steering arm… nothing like permanently modifying brand new parts. David then went about fabricating some new steering arms.









I’d love to be able to say that with the steering arms fabricated and the upright modified that we were on to installing the monoball bearings but, unfortunately, it wasn’t that simple. LG utilizes a press fit design that calls for 3/1000 interference – our control arms had 3 to 4 times that. We tried to work one in but weren’t happy with the way it felt to discretion being the better part of valor we decided to send the arms to LG for installation. Yeah – we chickened out – but I would rather be 100% sure that they were installed right.

The downside for us was that without the control arms we were dead in the water for the rest of the weekend. At least until David volunteered his front suspension for our mockup – we were back in the game!

[James OLC]

Next step – remove the “stock” (and I use that term loosely and with all respect due a piece that has served us well for the last five years) subframe. Our starting point…





Except of course… the old sub was kind of at home with the subframe connectors and all… thank you Mr. Plasma





and with that done, the rest was easy and the old sub quickly found a spot on the floor beside the new one.





Next step – install the AME Subframe…

[Track Junky]

[Ron in SoCal]

James if you get a chance I'd love to hear the design ideas on locating the steering arms. I haven't checked mine yet, and am wondering how much I may have thrown off AME ackerman and bump.

Your 'junk' looks spectacular, as usual!

[Tom.A]

Love the updates. I may have missed it but was the wider front tire worth all the fab work in your opinion? I know OLC must have a fair amount of miles over the last 4 years and I would think with the last OLoA you have a few thousand more miles with the bigger tires to compare.

[James OLC]

Originally Posted by Ron in SoCal

James if you get a chance I'd love to hear the design ideas on locating the steering arms. I haven't checked mine yet, and am wondering how much I may have thrown off AME ackerman and bump.

Your 'junk' looks spectacular, as usual!

Thanks Ron - let us get a bit more work/testing in and we can talk. We've done some preliminary work but we still don't have final ride height set to run through everything with 100% confidence.

Originally Posted by Tom.A

Love the updates. I may have missed it but was the wider front tire worth all the fab work in your opinion? I know OLC must have a fair amount of miles over the last 4 years and I would think with the last OLoA you have a few thousand more miles with the bigger tires to compare.

Tom - I think that it was worth it. I wish the rest of the car would have been 100% but on the wet and dry skid pads we were markedly improved over previous years and the car was the easiest to drive that it has ever been. There are some fixes that are still required and at this point I'm not sure if the improvement comes from the tire width or the track width balance. I've gone back and forth on tires for the last couple of months and there might be some more work to do. At this point I know that I could fit 325s (and we could probably fit 345s) all round but don't think that it would be worth it.

[89 RS]

Great updates, thanks for sharing. Good stuff!