That is a work of art.
That is a work of art.
I made a video about the harness guide bar and show the carnage of the broken window Link to Video
Last weekend was the first big local car show so I have been trying to get the car ready for its debut. The morning of the show I had it up on the lift and checked it all over-checked fasteners and fluid levels and looked for anything that could rub or melt on something else. Then I went for a short drive and it was a bit of a disaster. The trans would pop out of 2nd,4th and 6th gear, the clutch pedal went hard and would not move, making shifting impossible. I had to switch the car off at lights and start in gear to get home. After a bunch of diagnosis, I could see that the threaded collar of the hydraulic throwout bearing had spun itself in. The throwout bearing then went to full max extension and would go no further and there was no pressure from the pressure plate to force the fluid back into the master cylinder. I could not fix this without removing the trans so I simply made and aluminum pickle fork the right thickness and stuck it through the access hole and bolted it in place-works like a charm until I can remove the trans. Then we drove to the show and the power steering started to make noise and as we drove very slowly through the throngs of people at the car show, it spit power steering fluid out the resevoir and onto the header-smoke ensued. Despite all this, the car was the belle of the ball. I swear everybody at that show came by to see this car none of them had ever seen before and there was nothing but positives shown to us the whole time. Many, many questions were asked, pictures taken and I even started it up and gave them a few revs. I filled the power steering up before the drive home but it was empty as we turned up the back alley. One of the factory hard lines (not one I made) had failed and I trip to the local hydraulic store got me fixed up with something that would work. I went for a longish drive tonight and had no issues. Oh yeh, the shifting problem turned out to be the rubber shift boot I have, it put enough resistance in the lever to kick the car out of gear. The car feels way faster than the Pink Panther but the HP/weight ratio numbers say that is impossible.
Bravo !! Love the license plate.
I made a video about the front splitter and getting the flush mounted glass installed Splitter and glass install video
I spent 3 hours installing the driver side door glass and am happy about that except I discovered that the regulator gears are stripped and it won't go all the way to the top without some assistance
Door assemblies are the hardest part of any restoration. Everything from gaps to latching to window fit and operation is going to keep you up at night and probably never be done 100% to your satisfaction.
Also very rewarding when you do get it right.
Never been happy with any of the manual aftermarket window regulators that I have tried. I know it is late in the game, but other than the originality thing, for a resto-mod, I would be tempted to convert to electric.
Pete
In reply to NOHOME :
I'll be happy when the doors are the only thing I need to worry about on the Towpar...
Some exciting new developments. I took the Camaro to an A/C shop and they hooked up their vacuum pump and it held a perfect vacuum for 25 minutes. They charged it up and it blows cold air! I can't believe it was that easy. I just cruised around with the windows closed and enjoyed the cold air.
I know many will be skeptical about what I'm about to say but the Camaro was frightening to drive. Smoothly pulling away from a light was a challenge and if a cop was beside me, I would be berkeleyed. I started asking questions on the HPTuners forum and found that it comes down to a table in the tune for desired throttle. Basically, it controls how much the throttle body open for a given pedal movement. Also, it was suggested that the default map when the ECM doesn't see a BCM signal is the Sport map. So what I did was cut and paste the Normal map to the Sport map and tried that. It definitely drove easier so the proof of concept was confirmed. I went a little further with it and did my own little tweaks to the map and it's even easier to drive now. I have an autocross event in two weeks and might even make more changes but I wanted to share the maps with you. Here are the before and after maps.
I highly recommend looking your project car over after every drive until you are confident everything is going to be fine. So far I have found a loose motor mount bolt, loose shifter bolts, loose pedal reinforcing plate bolts, muffler rubbing on torque arm and a leaking axle seal. All these things (except maybe axle seal) are easy fixes with some loctite and were caught before anything became a bigger problem. The axle seal is a mystery, I took it apart to inspect and it all looks perfect. I looked at diagram that came with the axle and it's installed correctly. I've got a new one coming.
That's like my favourite picture right there.
So much tire!
The Winnipeg Sports Car Club asked me to represent them at the Driven car show so I got a show board made and put the Camaro in the show. There was a continuous stream of people coming by to take pictures and ask questions, I was very flattered by it all. In the end I won Best Chevrolet and in case you ask, there were a bunch of other very nice Camaros, Vettes, Chevelle and Chevy trucks that I beat out
This whole weekend was a huge success for the Camaro. I went to a local autocross event in the Camaro and Briget took her Corolla GR on its new Bridgestones. She ran before me and did a dirty 79 second time and I ran a dirty 88 second time, which obviously was quite poor. I needed to get through my head that I have to drive the car differently than what I am used to. There were 3 pivot turns on the course and I had downshifted to 1st for each one and even though my steady-state grips seemed very good, getting the car to initially turn was difficult. I could see after first run that my 34 psi cold tire pressures were too high, the edge of the tire was untouched. I lowered to 30 psi hot and got a high 87 second time. On my 3rd run, I didn't downshift for the pivots and just left it in 2nd gear for the whole run, got a low 87. I was thinking about the problem with initial turn in and realized that the dampers were all set to full soft because our roads are E36 M3. I turned up only the compression 5 clicks and the difference was immediately noticeable. I took 6 seconds off my best and ran a clean 81 second time!! Unbelieveable! The car is starting to feel like a properly sorted car, it's only going to get better.
Fantastic work man. The only issue with massively adjustable suspensions is so many ways to get it wrong before you find the sweet spot.
I don't remember, did get around to corner weighting the car? Typically helps balance and response a lot.
In reply to 84FSP :
Yes, I scaled it and corner balanced it. Since then I have moved shock mounts so I should probably do it again. I feel like the set up is way closer to ideal than the Pink Panther was in the beginning but for this one, people way smarter than me designed it. Sam Strano of Stranoparts.com spec'd the springs and dampers and he and his cars have more Championships than I can count so I'm off to a good start
I took it autocrossing and it was eye opening. Last year when I tried it, I threw a belt every time I ran and the car had understeer every time I tried to turn and accelerate. Over the winter I reduced camber, stiffened rear bar and softened front bar. This time, did not experience understeer but the car felt a little unresponsive to initial turn in. On my last run I stiffened compression 5 clicks and the car came alive, shaving 6 full seconds off my time and putting me top 10-incredible! There's more work to do but I feel like I'm competitive.
In reply to loosecannon :
Tell me about your camera mounts!
AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) said:In reply to loosecannon :
Tell me about your camera mounts!
Here is the video of the event Husband VS Wife
Sometimes at low speeds I'll go over a bump and the slight change in the gas pedal causes the car to jump, starting an unpleasant bucking situation. I've been messing with a table in the tune that changes the rate at which the throttle can open. It's made a big difference in driveability and doesn't seem to hurt performance during spirited driving. I may tweak it some more but here is a screen shot of the table as I'm currently running it. Those numbers were all at 100% before I changed them.
I've now driven about 1000 miles since completing the car and in the latest video, I go over the things that have gone wrong. I forgot about the exhaust leak between some joints, though. First 1000 miles-what went wrong?
I had my second autocross with the "finished" Camaro. This time I started with lower tire pressures and the shocks set where I had them last time. My first run went great and I set a competitive time immediately, and it was clean! My next run was quicker but I clipped a cone in a narrow chute (picture attached). The chute was in theory wide enough to go straight through, however, approaching it in a straight line was very difficult for bigger cars like mine. Anyways, I got a temp warning buzzer and looked to see my engine temp at 215 F. I have two big fans on the rad and only 1 of them has ever been needed to keep the car cool. The second one only comes on when engine temp exceeds 207 F or when the AC is on. Well, it didn't come on today and I don't have the tools at the track to diagnose but it seems like a short somewhere so I disconnected it and carried on, spraying the rad between runs. The car felt great on the track, I was able to throw it around and it never did anything weird and didn't even lock up a tire once. I finished 2nd in class (by only .2 seconds) and was only 4 seconds off the top raw time for the whole event (an SSP Porsche Cayman GTS) 75 seconds vs my 79 seconds. I was quite disctracted by the fan issue so I couldn't get my head in the game but I still think I did pretty good and I love the car even more now
We had another event and this time I started off with the shocks set to where I left off last time, and was educated by Sam Strano on how to tune them. It all worked very well and the car felt better and better. I still need to learn to trust it but the car does nothing strange and feels very tossable. I was quick and clean on my last run but just before the end, there was a sudden loud whining noise and I didn't know what it was. I won the class by 3 seconds, which is awesome but the ride home was stressful because of the racket going on under decelleration. I got home and discovered that the pinion was all loose and I'm certain there was damage to the bearings, too. I pulled the diff out and am not sure if it's just a loose nut or bad bearings but I took to the gear shop today to get fixed. While they are in there,I'm getting the ratio changed from 4.11 to 3.90 and getting the LSD changed from a Detroit Locker to an Eaton Tru-Trac. Click for video of the event
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