SCCA Camaro

By May 2007 I had owned the Camaro for three years, and the registration had expired and I hadn’t bothered to renew it since the car wasn’t on the road much.  In Hawaii if you modify a car, it needs to be inspected by “RECON” (RECONstructed car) before it can be inspected for safety or registered and plated.  It took me a total of six trips to the Recon office, DMV, and inspection station collectively to provide proper documentation for the new alignment (DSE provides recommended alignment different than the stock settings), wire the LED brake lights the way the office wanted them, and raise the front end of the car.  The biggest issue that I had was that RECON requires you to provide proof that the car was aligned to factory specifications within 30 days of your trip to RECON.  Well, the factory specs for the 40-year-old Camaro are:  Caster 0° to +1°, Camber -1/4° to +3/4°, Toe In 1/8” to ¼”.  The new settings recommended by Detroit Speed and Engineering are:  Caster +2° to +4°, Camber -1/2° to -1°, Toe In 0” to 3/32”.  That’s a lot more Caster and a lot less Camber and Toe In than the General sent these cars out the door with back in the 60’s, but the result is a dramatically better handling car. 

I’m sure the purpose of the requirement to align to factory specs is to keep vehicles safe, but in this particular situation clearly the new settings are dramatically better handling and therefore safer than the factory settings ever were.  Well, as you can imagine, trying to communicate this to an arm of the local government was no picnic.  I thought I was going to have the Camaro aligned to the factory specs, presented and passed at RECON, and then head right back for the proper alignment (which probably isn’t entirely legal).  Detroit Speed was even so kind as to provide a note on their letterhead indicating that the new settings were recommended with their coilover conversion and tubular control arms.  But in the end I have to give the RECON office credit for their flexibility in seeing the logic of the non-factory settings and improvement in car handling, and therefore safety.  Kudos to the hard-working RECON folks!  Lex Brodie’s did a great job aligning the car for a very reasonable price, and in June of 2007 the car was street legal and just about ready to go for some racing.