SCCA Camaro

As you recall from earlier blogs in addition to the 1968 Camaro I raced the 1998 Z-28 convertible during my first SCCA outing but I had been wanting a fourth generation WS-6 for some time, and one came up on Craig’s List for sale at the right price.  The only problem was the car was on the Big Island of Hawaii, and I live on O’ahu.  After talking it over with my sainted wife Cris, we decided to fly over to the Big Island and check the car out for the day.  We used miles to fly over in the morning on Hawaiian Airlines and return the same evening.  Dad was here to stay with the girls for the day so it cost nothing out of pocket, and Cris loves visiting the Big Island.  To make a long story short, we bought the WS-6 and sold my Z-28.  In the process I stepped up to a higher class car (the WS-6 is, performance-wise and options-wise, on par with the SS, while the Z-28 is one step lower) as well as a 3 year newer car.  The WS-6 has the 6 speed T-56 transmission with the optional Hurst shifter and a 3.42:1 rear gear with an Auburn limited slip differential.  Additionally the WS-6 has sharper styling and leather interior, and was black on black, all of which I preferred.  The last and best part was the fellow I purchased the Trans Am from had tastefully modified the car with the addition of SLP resonators and stainless steel exhaust, less restrictive air filters for the Ram Air, an SLP smooth bellows, a shock tower brace, and American Torque-Thrust wheels at all four corners sporting 275 rubber in the front and 315 steamrollers out back.  He also had installed a sub-woofer to go with the 8 speaker surround system and a couple of amps controlled by a nice Alpine head unit that has the i-pod interface built in.

Preparing the Trans Am for autocrossing wasn’t that difficult.  I had checked it out before purchase, giving it my own tech inspection.  Mostly I just had to remove anything that was loose in the car.  One of the amps was laying on the back deck without being secured, so I secured it with some Velcro and was good to go.  I wasn’t sure how the car would handle relative to the ’68 Camaro.  If driving the ’98 convertible Z-28 was any indication it would be a lot softer in terms of the shocks.  I did expect it to be a bit tighter than the Z-28 as the WS-6 suspension is supposed to be a higher performance suspension.  I was also keen to see how the big meaty tires would fare on the race track.  Being a stick car, I knew that I’d be able to put the torque down a lot more directly than with the automatic-equipped Z-28, so it would take more finesse to handle the WS-6.  It wasn’t the Camaro I’d be making my debut in the CP class in, but at least I did have a very nice back-up until I got the bent valvestem in the Camaro fixed…

Since I had the glass out, I polished the rear window before putting it back into the car with a kit I purchased from Classic Motoring Accessories and my Porter Cable 6” Random Orbit Sander (model 7336).  A few of the deeper scratches didn’t come out, but overall the glass cleaned up really well for 40 years old!  Next I got the rear window and the rear interior re-installed and polished all of the rear window trim with a little 400 grit sandpaper followed by steel wool (000) and finally some aluminum wheel polish.  This left the stainless steel trim with a bit of matte or brushed stainless look to it.  I was ready to run for the January 20^th race day, now with a red/black entrant, no leaking rear window, and a new trunk floor.  We thought we had fixed the gas tank sending unit by cleaning the contacts up some and ensuring we had a good ground, but I was still getting erratic readings from it so had to continue to try to keep the tank topped off.  I did adjust the rear shocks to one click shy of full hard before putting them back on the Camaro though, and pulled the alternator out as tight as I could on the belt in hopes of not throwing it again at the races.  My goal was to place higher than at least one of my competitors in ESP so as not to be the last in the class, and to break into the top 100 places overall.

December 16^th 2007 was my planned racing debut of the car.  There was a lot to do.  Dad was here with us for the Holidays, so we decided to go together and take the 1968 Camaro as well as my daily driver, the 1998 Z28 convertible.  I was a little concerned the 1968 wouldn’t pass the tech inspection and having the 1998 Camaro there was a little insurance against not being able to run at all.  We had a little work to do even in that regard, as the battery tray in the 1998 Camaro was broken.  So I went to Cutter Chevrolet again and got a coolant reservoir, which doubles as a battery tray in the 4^th generation Camaro and Firebird.  I had also purchased the rear adjustable Koni shocks from DSE because the old shocks on the car didn’t provide much damping—on the highway after dips in the road the rear end of the car was quite pogo-like.  Dad and I put these in and put them at one click off full soft, which is the same setting I had put the front suspension at after I had to adjust the ride height because of RECON.

I had emailed the local SCCA club (www.sccahawaii.org) a little earlier and they had provided me with a link to the SCCA rulebook for 2007.  Trying to figure out the correct car classes was completely overwhelming, especially with only an electronic copy of the rules, so we decided to show up and let them put us in a category.  I read Secrets of Solo Racing by Henry A. Watts.  The main things I took away from the book on first read were hand placement on the wheel, early apex/late apex driving concepts, and an estimate of tire pressure at 38 lbs all of the way around.  I also did some fairly extensive searching for a helmet and reviews of helmets before deciding on getting a HJC AR10 full face helmet from The Helmet Shop.  My helmet arrived the day before race day, we topped off the gasoline, pumped up the tires, torqued the wheels down, and got a good night’s sleep.