The next race was February 17th—so it was time to start planning for any improvements or upgrades to be made. The Camaro had a nagging exhaust leak as well as a power steering pump leak that I planned to address in the month before the next race. Since I was taking the headers off the car, I decided to strip the rust off of them and coat them with high temperature POR-20 (cast iron color) while I was at it. The POR-20 is made by the same folks that bring us POR-15, which I used on the floor pan of the Camaro earlier in the blog. POR-20 is for high heat applications, up to 1400 degrees F. After removing the headers, I spent hours scouring them with a Scotch-Brite pad and the metal prep products from my PPG paint system, DX579 Metal Cleaner followed by DX520 Metal Conditioner. After a thorough dry in the warm Hawaii sun, I put two coats each on the headers with a disposable brush. I found the easiest way to do this was to hang them with a wire from a header bolt hole, which allowed for good coverage on the headers without too much in the way of acrobatics and/or messing up areas I had just painted. The headers look 100% better than they did before I coated them, so it was time well spent.
Hot starts, which were a problem because I had increased initial timing to 14 degrees because I had such a big cam and wanted more torque off the line, seemed to improve with the POR-20 treatment on the headers, which was a big bonus from doing the coating. I had the Camaro ready for its third autocross outing. Unfortunately though, I was travelling on the road for work three of the four weeks in February, and came down with something that I never could kick…and was sick for the event day of the 17th. I thought it most prudent to stay home and recuperate, so started planning for the next event date…March 30th. After my travels and recuperation from my illness, I had about a month to do some additional improvements to the car, and decided to tackle the front end ride height and shock setting on the Konis. If I got that done, I figured I would install the computer for the Holley Commander 950 along with the Wide Band Air Fuel Ratio controller and sensor.