SCCA Camaro

After buttoning up the brake system and putting the front end sheet metal back on, the car was back together by April of 2005.  I ball-parked the alignment with some string and straight edges and cans, then I hit the road.  I was underwhelmed by the manual braking set-up, but it was nice to have the Camaro back on the road with no slipping clutch, no leaking brakes, and no knocking valvetrain.  The car was much more streetable with a good clutch and the 3.73 rear gear as well, although the big cam was still a pain in the ubiquitous stop-and-go traffic of East Oahu.  I still wasn’t sure about the timing, and the car bogged down under heavy acceleration, but it was nice to be running again!

The Camaro came to me with some skinny tires in front and some 295s out back.  With the lowered stance the 295s no longer fit but I wanted to largest rubber possible under the car.  A quick call over to Detroit Speed and Engineering and Kyle Tucker told me the largest meats one could reliably put on the front were 245s in the front on a 17” rim that is 8” wide with 4 7/8” of backspacing and 275s in the rear on 17’s 9.5” wide with 5 3/8” of backspacing.  So I ordered some 17 inch Billet Rallye Wheels from Wheel Vintiques from David’s Rally Wheels in San Jose, CA.  Some folks over at the Pro-touring Forum vouched for his excellent prices and service so I ordered the wheels up and put some Goodyear Eagle F1 GSD3s on all four corners in February of 2005.  The front housed 245s and the rear 275 r40 17s.  After getting the wheels I realized that although the Billet Rallyes look sweet, they were likely not the best choice for autocrossing—they are some heavy tires!  The F1 GSD3s were very highly rated (AA/A) summer tires with outstanding wet traction so seemed perfect for my Hawaii-bound car with no freezing temperatures and occasionally torrential rain.  They are ranked third at the Tire Rack among Max Performance Summer Tires behind the Bridgestone Potenza RE050A and the Michelin Pilot Sport PS2.  It’s difficult to get good tires here on island for good prices, and many enthusiasts here order from Tire Rack—even with the outrageous shipping fees you are usually better off going with the Tire Rack and then just having them mounted and balanced locally.  To give you an idea of what I’m talking about, Tire Rack has the GSD3s for $212 each in the 275 r40 17s.  Fed-Ex “Economy” 2-Day (which is really 3 day to Hawaii) is another $58 for two tires.  About 20% of the cost of my car is in shipping…

I also called up DSE and ordered their battery relocation kit, although I optioned without their battery mount as I found one on eBay I liked better for less money.  Check out the corporate promotion on the battery mount I got for $105 on eBay.  I sourced the Optima Red-Top from Costco—they have the best prices I’ve seen on the island on Optima batteries.  The DSE kit was nice with a convenient bulkhead to pass the positive cable through the firewall wherever you need to.  This really cleaned up the engine bay but shifting 50 pounds from the nose to over the rear right tire was the real motivation.  Gotta get my car on the scales and see what it weighs, and how well the weight is balanced front to back and left to right.