Team Honor Flight Camaro takes on the 2013 One Lap of America!

[CarlC]

Originally Posted by Roberts68

Gave me goosebumps Carl. Words can't express the feelings once we are old enough to understand what these Veterans really endure for all of us. The debt owed is insurmountable.

God Bless you and guide your journey.

Thank you for sharing. I will spread the word, in fact with your permission I would like to speak of it at our upcoming Camaro club annual banquet Jan 5th.

If you have anything I could use, permission, objections or suggestions please email me. I will print copies of what you might send to make donations easier for folks to make. Membership expected exceeds 200 annually.

I have to ask, Is this your same red/black 68 you will be running or a different car?

Thank you Robert.

That would be great! Please feel free to use any and all of it. That's what it's for. Most people don't know Honor Flight or their purpose. Thank you for your help. If your group decides to to donate to Honor Flight I may be able to do something a bit special on the car for them

It is the same car. It has been in my family since 1977. My father traded a 1953 Ford pickup for it, then my sister drove it for five years. I traded my el Camino for the Camaro since she needed a truck. It's appropriate that the car makes the journey as well.

[Sieg]

Carl,

Great mission you've embarked on and I wish you and your team the best.

"We can't all be hero's. Some of us have to stand on the curb and clap as they go by." ~Will Rogers

[Roberts68]

Originally Posted by XLexusTech

Like the idea ... not such a fan of all the decals.. but the rest I like.

My initial reaction to the appearance wasn't one of appreciation but now understanding the symbolism of the gold stars, seeing Joe on the trunk stripe giving the "proverbial push" to the Camaro while raising awareness so other Veterans can experience the honorable experience they so richly deserve I have to commend Ben Hermance on the layout. I can also see that perhaps Carl wants to retain aspects of the Camaro I have always been something of a fan of because it has stayed largely true to it's original appearance externally. It looks to be done in a fashion that can be easily returned to it's original appearance as well.

Originally Posted by Roberts68

... I will spread the word, in fact with your permission I would like to speak of it at our upcoming Camaro club annual banquet Jan 5th.

If you have anything I could use, permission, objections or suggestions please email me. I will print copies of what you might send to make donations easier for folks to make. Membership expected exceeds 200 annually.

Originally Posted by CarlC

Thank you Robert.

That would be great! Please feel free to use any and all of it. That's what it's for. Most people don't know Honor Flight or their purpose. Thank you for your help. If your group decides to to donate to Honor Flight I may be able to do something a bit special on the car for them

It is the same car. It has been in my family since 1977. My father traded a 1953 Ford pickup for it, then my sister drove it for five years. I traded my el Camino for the Camaro since she needed a truck. It's appropriate that the car makes the journey as well.

As I read the history in your response I remembered it...[ insert memory related post-40 excuse of your choice here ]

Anyway Carl, thought I would share this post I made with you using your info pasted from here. Please feel welcome to monitor it, join our tiny little forum if you like.

[CarlC]

The modifications to the outside of the car are all, mostly, reversible. There may be a few holes on the front valence that will remain due to the splitter supports. Over the years every single photo of the car at high-speed on a track shows front end lift. Recent aero work confirms what needs to be done to reduce this, but the real solution(s) would better done on a whole new build. There's little enough time to get what's in Ben'sdrawing done, especially since there is much more going on than what can be seen from this one view.

The plan is to get the car in livery ASAP and get it out to the bigger events. Without the decals it would not garner nearly the attention needed to support Honor Flight and the companies that support the fundraising efforts.

Originally Posted by Roberts68

My initial reaction to the appearance wasn't one of appreciation but now understanding the symbolism of the gold stars, seeing Joe on the trunk stripe giving the "proverbial push" to the Camaro while raising awareness so other Veterans can experience the honorable experience they so richly deserve I have to commend Ben Hermance on the layout. I can also see that perhaps Carl wants to retain aspects of the Camaro I have always been something of a fan of because it has stayed largely true to it's original appearance externally. It looks to be done in a fashion that can be easily returned to it's original appearance as well.





As I read the history in your response I remembered it...[ insert memory related post-40 excuse of your choice here ]

Anyway Carl, thought I would share this post I made with you using your info pasted from here. Please feel welcome to monitor it, join our tiny little forum if you like.

[CarlC]

Lots of work going on with the car. Updates coming shortly. It's a battle against time to get everything done and keep the news coming.

There should be some great news coming shortly. In the meantime, here's a great trailer for a newdocumentary featuring Honor Flight and four veterans. The movie opened at Miller Park in Milwaukee on December 7 to a world record movie crowd of almost 29,000 people.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GM_XB...layer_embedded

See here on how to have the movie come to a theater near you. I'm going to be making the request as well.

http://www.honorflightthemovie.com/see-the-film/

[CarlC]

Sorry for the long lag time between the announcement and now but work on the car has been progressing at a feverish pace. But, to get to today there was a series of upgrades and systems test performed in the Autumn of last year for validation.

I'm not shy about saying I learned a lot from James last year riding in OLC. Safety and reliability are paramount. Both of us agreed that the front lighting on OLC needed some help, and that's a safety issue. I'll double-down on and say that the stock rear lighting on my car is also wanting in comparison to modern cars.

Those thoughts led to two products. The first was one posted by Roger at Ironworks on the new LED headlights that he offers. After a few conversations with him about fitment and light capability a nice package with a new set of modern LED lights showed up and made their way into the car. Here's a photo before with the Hella 90/100 bulbs (100-hour life rating.)



Don't mind all the rock chips in the grillwork :-)

The headlight bucket had to be removed and the back enlarged to fit the back of the new housing. A scroll saw worked very well to open the back to 5-1/4" dia.

The old and the new:



The rest of the assembly went without a hitch. The preload spring has to be stretched a bit to fit but other than that the overall swap took just a few hours total.

After installation:



Here's a side-by-side against a wall comparison. Note how there is a definitive horizon line and better width saturation with the LED on the right vs. the Hella on the left.



Night driving is far better than the Hella's or the lights that were on OLC. On a very dark night on roads with no lighting it was significantly easier to see.

Here's where the triple bonus comes in. Not only are these lights likely to outlast the car vs. the 100-hour rated life of the others, but they required just a tad over six amps to operate. The Hella's are seven amps each. That's less electrical load on the alternator, no special relays are needed, and smaller connectors can be used.

Thanks to Roger who convinced me that I would not be disappointed.

The other lighting upgrade to the car was the replacement of the front turn signals and rear taillights to the modern Digitails LED panel lights. There's no comparing the original vs. the Digitails. The LED's are shockingly bright at night. No so much with the originals.

With the addition of some Ebay red and white LED side marker bulbs, the entire outside electrical lighting takes a grand total of 8.5 amps to run. The electrical power requirement for lighting has been cut by almost 70%. Better safety + better reliability = winner.

[CarlC]

Farther back than I care to remember I took the Tick-Tock-Tachometer in the Camaro to be repaired. At the time Shannon Hudson, now the owner of Redline Gaugeworks, performed one of the first modern Tick-Tock-Tach gauge transformations as well as a clock repair. Fast forward twenty+ years and it was time for Shannon to work his magic again on the instruments.

The OLoA seems to have at least one high-speed track on the docket each year. For 2013 it's another bucket-list track, Daytona Motor Speedway. With a possible top-speed of 150+mph, the original 120mph speedometer was in need of an upgrade, along with a re-calibration and change in the warning and redline of the tachometer.

In keeping with the retro-theme of the car, Shannon re-worked the speedometer to house an Autometer 160mph meter movement. He also re-tick'ed the face of the gauge with new numbers but without the smaller hash marks. Trying to fit four hash marks between each major number would have made the gauge far too busy. Here's Shannon's handiwork.



The speedometer includes a digital odometer and tripmeter located just under gauge-center. They are controlled by the red button located just below the left-hand instrument housing. The button also controls the speedometer calibration settings.

The tachometer originally had the 5200rpm warning line. We decided not to change that since covering the yellow with black would likely not look good. With the supercharger, up-shifting anywhere in the warning range yeilds good results.

There is a small yellow LED located just under the left hand turn signal indicator. This is for the engine control module Malfunction Indicator Lamp. It's hardly noticeable except when it lights up. It's a subtle touch that blends well.

The back of the cluster has a new circuit board where all of the standard fuctions are still used through the stock wiring plug. The MIL and speedometer feeds from the ECM are fed into the cluster via the wiring just under the center of the right-hand gauge (speedometer) along with the odometer/tripmeter control wiring. The clock still uses the original brass terminal connector for power.



From a functional and appearance standpoint, it's great. Unlike other cable-driven speedometer options, there is zero needle bounce and it can be re-calibrated in seconds when gearing or tire changes are made. I can count on one hand the number of companies that I have paid to work on parts for the Camaro, and Redline is one of them. Each time the work is perfect and the modifications performed as I would have wanted them done. Thank you to the team at Redline Gaugeworks for a job well done!

[Nessumsar]

Good stuff, Carl!

On your old Hella setup did you have them run off of a relay, or were they on the original harness? I'm thinking about ditching my "HID" bulbs if I can't get a better pattern out of them.

[CarlC]

Relays. At that power level it's mandatory.

[KPC67]

Coming along nicely