Introducing " Chain Reaction "

[Bow Tie 67]

September 2006 I attended Run Through the Hills II with my fourth gen Camaro and fell in love with the old iron that could do it all. Within 30 days I had sold my 67 Camaro and purchased this project from this forum. At the time it felt odd to me to document the build here as it was another members project. I chose to use pro-tour dot com and although I enjoy that site, I will admit I use Lateral-g almost as much, without posting. Well I thought it was time to change that and introduce it to this forum.

So here it is after a full season of racing. These are some mods I'm in the process of making to better suit its intended use, track days. I chose to perform this build during the long Chicago winters, while driving it each summer. With that being said there is alot of unfinished work, making it look a bit ratty. Although the look on a C6 drivers face when I'm inches off his rear-end is priceless. And the rat look seems to get more attention than I expected.

I plan on making the Long Haul this year and attending the Motor State Challenge the weekend after. I am a member of the Midwest Council of Sports Car Clubs ( http://www.mcscc.org/ ) and will be racing with the club as well.

Matt Altamore






So after last years summer of events and the September race body mods, ( http://www.pro-touring.com/forum/showthread.php?t=47895 ) I made the decision to pour more dough into the car in the name of performance.

1. Dedicated track wheels and tires ( Z06 style 17 x 9.5 with Toyo R888 )



I used Skulte wheel adapters after taking carfull measurements. My goal was to use the same size tire at all four corners. This allows me to rotate and keep replacement costs down. One more benefit will be a wider track width in the rear, albeit less rubber on the ground. I'm hoping they will offset each other.





With the 275/40 17 tires on the front I will lose some turning radius and will modify the front wheel wells. This pic is with the suspension at full bump. I rushed to cut and really did not need to take as much out of the rear section. The car should never reach full bump with the wheel turned out ( inside tire on turn ). Oh well I'll just have a little more work to fab up a filler piece.





2. New 2008 6.2L L92 engine.

LS7 cam going in



3. Upgrade sway-bar to control body roll

Mocking up for front splined swaybar, I ended up going with a straight arm instead of the 30* arm.



I'm starting with a 1 1/4" splined .095 wall sway-bar up front. The large steel pillow blocks in the pic did not fit the Chassis works front sub-frame. I played with the idea of using the Bronze bushing inserts with the CW Aluminum pillow blocks, and may re-address this down the road. For now I purchased energy suspension pillow blocks, whose rubber inserts fit the CW mount perfect. To the right is a 1/2" end-link which will not be used, instead a 3/8" will be used due to packaging constraints. Over to the left are unfinished A-arm to end-link adapters I started fabricating.

[rich-allen]

Great looking project!

For the record, I dig the rat look myself.

[Cread01]

very cool project. i have been thinking about going to a splined sway bar myself so I will be keepin an eye on this.

[ParkerRS]

Matt, great to see you here. I really loved the unfinished look with the aircraft style tags stenciled on everywhere at RTTH last year. The car ran very well there in September so the engine upgrade and suspension tweaks should really boost it. Keep up the good work and the updates.

P.S. I just came out of lurking over here a couple of months ago myself. LOL

[Bow Tie 67]

Mocked up the KRC steering pump and Woodward reservoir. The KRC has a replaceable flow orifice ( blue fitting on pump ) which allows adjusting the feel of the steering. The Woodward reservoir has a dual wall construction, the return comes in at an angle and flows through small holes on the lower half of the inner wall. ( kind of hard to see in pic ) One nice surprise, the pump inlet -10 90* fitting does not hit the alternator bracket.






I also mocked up the rear diff vent system. I used aluminum line I had, but will change over to stainless in the future. I wanted to run the line parallel to the brake line but the exhaust is so tight with the Quadra-link I had to duck under the brake line and route it up the back of the housing. The pics make it look all deformed, which I'm attributing to the lighting and camera angle.

[Bow Tie 67]

I had some time to take pics last night.

I ended up using a 30* arm for the front sway-bar to get better angles for the end-links. AN hardware was used through-out, along with 1/2" rod-ends bushed down for -6 ( 3/8" ) bolts. One advantage to AN hardware is they are only threaded on the end. This gives the load bearing section of the bolt a uniform surface and the full strength of the bolts diameter. AN harware is also close tolerance, having drilled all holes with a mill the bolts are rather tight.








The Chassisworks pillow block pads would not allow the collar locks to sit against the pillow blocks. I bought some UHMW plastic ( Ultra High Molecular Weight Polyethylene, similar to Delrin ) and machined it as a spacer.






The L92 is coming along.



Mock-up of a dual pcv oil seperator system. I used two Canton oil filters I picked up, with internal mods of course.



The rear sway-bar installed. I was worried about the loads this may see and elected to weld the attaching brackets to the frame.






A better pic of the differential breather system. Of course AN fittings were used just like the fuel and brake systems.