Part XVI

1989 RS Camaro

Project Camaro has been a blast to put together, but now it's time to find out what we really have. We still have some additional work to do - especially the body work that needs to be completed, but we decided that with time running out on the racing season in our area we needed to get the car to the track. One item that we had to finish up was the rear hatch retention. It's been one of those items that we never really had a good idea of how to finish, however when we finally had to do something, it turned out well and was actually easy to accomplish.

First we bent a couple of Dzus retention plates into the desired shape, then marked the area on the side fender where we would be attaching the plate. Next we drilled a pilot hole in the hatch sheet metal to locate the center of the hole in the retention plate.

Next we marked off the area under the hatch where the plate would need to rest and removed any extra sheet metal that would prevent that. Essentially we were removing everything except the top sheet metal of the hatch in this area.

With that completed, the hatch sits down on the retention plate and the Dzus fastener keeps it in place. Works great and really didn't take long to do. It's funny how some items always seem like they are going to be a royal pain, but end up being nothing at all to deal with.

Just a quick shot of the car sitting in the driveway basically ready to go the drag strip. This picture doesn't show the Lexan side windows, but those are also in place now.

We learned a very long time ago that the first few trips to the dragstrip with a new car always have their share of "new car blues". As hard as you might try to make sure everything is perfect, there's still something that won't be exactly right or breaks or falls off the car. This car was no different. The first pass was to be a very easy, half-throttle shot just to make sure that the engine ran okay, that the steering worked and the brakes would slow us down. That we accomplished with a mid-14 second timeslip. The next shot was going to be a bit more aggressive off the line and a little higher RPM number for the engine. Well, we did get off the line; just not very pretty, but we were also stuck in first gear. Arriving back at our pit space, we checked the transmission fluid which was perfect, so we knew we had some other issue going on. Jacking the car up, we found that we had melted a 6 inch long area of the shifter cable. The exhaust heat from the left side header had melted it. And without a spare cable (who carries those?) we packed up and returned home.

Our next trip to the strip was a bit more productive. Having replaced the cable with a heavy duty unit, we also put a shield between the exhaust and the cable to help it survive. There was also a slight problem with the rear tires rubbing the control arms that we had not noticed before. We simply replaced the 1/2" spacers that we had installed with 3/4" units and that took care of the problem. There was also a very bad bog leaving the line at about 3000 RPM and we decided to switch to a different carburetor. That seems to have helped the problem, but now we have another problem with the engine shutting down at the end of a run. Mind you that at this point, we are still running our initial setup with about 32-34 degrees of timing, valve settings that aren't dead-on as of yet and a carburetor that is basically out of the box. Far from being a maximized combination at this point and we certainly haven't figured out the optimal leave RPM or shift points. There was also a massive quantity of oil downs and breakage at the track that day limiting us to just three attempts with the car. The first was another partial throttle pass to make sure the car was okay and netted us a mid-13 second time slip at just over 90 miles per hour. The burn-out was a bit weak too and there was some question as to whether we were spinning the tires equally. On the next shot, we tried to make sure of the burn-out, but the car decided to twist on us and Phillip let out of it, stopping the burn-out. That run rewarded us with a 12.08 at just over 111 MPH. Not bad really, three passes on the car and we are already in the low 12's.

Hey, where's the Camaro? Oh, just sitting in the staging lanes for about an hour after some yo-yo thought they could save their run following a huge wheelstand. Needless to say, he shot across both lanes after leaving the line, caught fire, dumped oil and transmission fluid and just missed hitting the wall. By the way, if you ever make it to VMP (our home track), look for the pirate flag, come on by and say hello.

We finally get to make our last shot down the track and agree that we need a better burn-out and should leave at a slightly higher RPM. The goal is to pick up an 11 second ticket. The burn-out this time goes well, the tires are heated evenly and Phillip quickly stages the car. With the final amber lit, he hits the throttle only to have the car leave so hard that it catches him off-guard and he momentarily lifts then gets back into it. The scoreboard shows the result, a 12.04 at 114 MPH. We had just missed getting the car into the 11 second zone on our 4th pass.

So ends our second day at the track. We do plan on getting at least one more test & tune in before the season ends along with that 11 second timeslip. But we want to give you a quick look at our other project car too, so here's a few pictures.

Merlin III block with Eagle crank, Manley rods, SRP Pistons, CompCams valvetrain and Brodix heads.

This was taken just after fitting the new engine to the car.

The motorhome in the background is another project we recently picked up. Not too bad, 40,000 miles on the clock, but needs some TLC.

This is my favorite office and as you can see I keep it simple. Tach, oil and water are my only gauges. The box in the center is the Pro-Cube digital delay box that is just about mandatory equipment if you're running Super Pro brackets.

Check out the latest update - Project Camaro, Part XVII.