C5 Z06 dilemma

I bought a really nice Electron Blue C5 Z06 Vette..the only problem, if you want to call it a problem, is that it came with a bunch of awesome track day-oriented mods the most visible one being the Recaro seats and Scrotch harnesses (the rest are various water coolant, oil and trans coolers improvement aimed to improve the car's reliability on the track) that disqualify me from running it in A-Street. I haven't really run with SCCA in the past because my old Miata also had some mods that disqualified it from STS so I've been running with local BMW club more for fun.

My dilemma is now that I need new tires should I get tires in standard C5 Z06 sizes and reverse some of these mods to run in SCCA A-Street or just say screw it enjoy the car as is get all 4 rears so that I can rotate the tires for better wear (I have 2 sets of Speedlines) and just do track days and autocross for fun with BMW Club? I'm not a fast driver by any standard and not going for a trophy or anything in my region..most likely a back marker of some sort.

Putting all these in writing made me think just screw it and enjoy the car as is but I thought I'd ask what you guys would do?? Thanks all.

Seems silly to de mod the car. Get tires, burn tires.

I'd say just have fun and don't go through a bunch of work to fit into a certain class.

I went through the same dilemma a couple of years ago with a car I was interested in buying. It was a gutted 83 GTI that was really built for a local VW only autocross club that was a bit more friendly for classes then SCCA. The car had a gutted interior and a fuel cell and some engine mods that would have basically put it in FSP with some work. Worst of which was needing some kind of bulkhead or fuel cell enclosure for fire safety because of the fuel cell. It also had some rust issues that made me think it would have been better to swap parts over to a cleaner shell. Ironically I did a Search Tempest search after looking at it in person again and I found a much cleaner unmolested 84 GTI for sale 2.5 hrs away that I ended up buying.

Even now I'm kind of facing the same dilemma with this car. It'll be ready for STS this summer after a suspension overhaul and I'm basically going to see how competitive it is. If I end up in the back of the pack after 2 or 3 seasons anyway then I'm going to say the hell with it and build the car the way I want to and just have fun. That may include a motor swap. I don't see myself trying to compete regionally or nationally anyway.

just run ssr. Your class pax is irrelevant and made up/all in your head.

The fastest raw time is the fastest car, period.

You own the car now go play with it. To hell with classes.

Just go drive it. The C5 can run in Classic American Muscle Sports (CAM-S) this year. Your Corvette would be a LOT of fun there! (Even in CAM there are limits on interior gutting, though.)

Danny Shields wrote: Just go drive it. The C5 can run in Classic American Muscle Sports (CAM-S) this year. Your Corvette would be a LOT of fun there! (Even in CAM there are limits on interior gutting, though.)

I came here to say this. You said you don't care about trophies, so run whatever tires you want and run in CAM-S when you're at an SCCA event.

Yep. You are only in it for fun. Focus on reliability and fun for now. Who cares what class you are put in.

Look at your local A-Street class...it may be full of serious hardware and national-level drivers already! Screw that, just have fun!

Drive it as is. De-modding a car makes no sense. Plus, screw class PAX. Raw times are the real decider in my opinion. Watched a guy with a genuine Lotus 7 get FTD at one of our events but he ended up 17th out of 32. Because D/Mod PAX.

First-world problems...

Berkley pax.

Thanks guys..glad the comments are somewhat inline with what I had in mind..just have fun it's not like I'll win anything lol..

Spoolpigeon wrote:

Danny Shields wrote: Just go drive it. The C5 can run in Classic American Muscle Sports (CAM-S) this year. Your Corvette would be a LOT of fun there! (Even in CAM there are limits on interior gutting, though.)

I came here to say this. You said you don't care about trophies, so run whatever tires you want and run in CAM-S when you're at an SCCA event.

I read an old thread about CAM here and it seemed that C5 used to be excluded from CAM-S in 2015. However, looking at 2016 rule book there's specific minimum weight requirement for C5 and C6 so it's okay to run them in CAM-S now?

In reply to ea_sport:

Yup. They're legal for cam-s for 2016.

Just drive the damn thing and don't look back!

Dietcoke wrote: just run ssr. Your class pax is irrelevant and made up/all in your head. The fastest raw time is the fastest car, period.

This. Classing is there to assuage your ego

Should be able to run time only with the SCCA events, just go have fun!

CAM S sounds like the droid you want. being on 200tw street tires really limits the radicalness of cars in the class and the c5z06's can get down to just above the minimum weight without any trouble. Plus street tires keep everything sane. (i.e. it's not going to matter if someone shows up with a 600hp built LSX because they're still trying to get it down through the same tire as you and those tires are already having a hard time putting down stock/bolton ls6 power)

Just run the car as it sits and have fun!

on the other hand if you decide to de-mod some of those cooling/reliability parts let me know :)

This street tire silliness makes autocross a bit weird. I'm no hot shoe driver and I beat all of the SS cars and all but one of the AS cars. In my Civic. If you look at PAX we're all about equal so that makes sense. Kind of.
The competition aspect of autocross is fun, but if you're with a good group, classing doesn't really matter. If you're fast you're trying to beat the other fast guys. If you're not, you're having fun with the slower guys trying to catch up with the fast guys.