i have the same setup and don't think its that rough. It just depends what your used to.

I'd like to go to stiffer springs.

Just run high profile tires at low pressure on the street and the spring is the tire itself.

 

OK' Guys & Gals!
Another sucsessful weekend at the track! (Willow Springs CA.)
Not without problems though!
Good news first.
1st on Sat. with a 1:33.7.
1st on Sun. with a 1:33.1 and the track record.
Also took the Championship for the year. No one can catch me now in points.
That's 3 track records at three different tracks and 10 first places out of 12 races. Not to bad for an old american sports car.

Now the bad news:
All of this almost did not happen. I blew a pinion seal on the first run Saturday. In hind sight this turned out to be a very GOOD thing!
Let me explain:
I got lucky and found a seal at the local auto parts store. Jacked the car up dropped the rear end down and replaced the seal. This only took a few hours, not to bad. (I think the seal went bad beacause I was low on fluid and the pump sucked the seal dry).
Now the real Horror:
When I was taking the car off of the jack stands in the front. My little voice or (God if you will) made me take a look at my lower control arms before I lifted the car off the jacks. I had a pen in my hand which I used to flake some loose paint off of a weld. To my Horror on the drivers side there was a crack that went around three sides of the tube where the sway bar attaches and one starting on the pass. side.
FOLKS! One more run on this could have been disasterous. I go thru turn eight at about 130 MPH. This puts all of the load on this control arm. It was loose enough that I was able to flex it by hand. At this point I had an audible HOLY S**T!! I'm done for the weekend.
As it turned out one of my co-drivers had a welder on his trailer and I was able to repair and re-enforce the control arms to complete the weekend.
So EVERYONE who runs hard on the track check these welds now and after every session. ADD it to your check list.

That's it for me this year. I am starting all of my mods now for next year.
Dry Sump, lightening, body mods and paint. I'm going to make this look like a real go fast car. I will post with progress.
Later!!
p.s. Oh! and a roll bar!!

 

good thinking. We need you around for a while to get all your go fast secrets.

please post picts of your work and vids of the latest time trials.

 

did you take all that heavy crap out of the front? Frame extension etc?

 

Holey Smokes ! That could have been it for you. Glad you found it before it was too late. Congrats on those impressive victories!!!

 

Ok Turtle.
Here's a video of a cool thing they let us try late on Sunday. There was only about 14 of us left at the track.
They let us stage up by time to do a rolling start with a pace car and then go into turn 1 side by side. After turn one we just continued on with a regular session. We got the green flag and all. Just like a race start it was very cool. I qualified for the fourth spot.
Check it out it's kind of cool.
Rolling Start Video

I don't have any pictures of the control arm repair but I will post some when I start tearing into it soon!
Later!

 

Hey Turtle,
My strongest point is to get more seat time. It will make a bigger difference then any mods you can ad.
Since I know many will agree, but no one will stop modding their car, the a word about the slippery slope.
You read in this thread there are going to be issues fitting the slicks and rubbing on cornering. more grip will also cause other things to start breaking. Adding stronger parts in general will cause the weak ones to break and then your adding more parts. overall you are building a better car but if something breaks at 9:15 am on your track day, you may spend all day running down parts and fixing it. but since you don't have a tow vehicle and full tool box (or enclosed trailer) you don't have the tools to do it, but thank g-d you have bailing wire, duct tape and vice grips to get you home.
Just call it the voice of experience.

Then you realize you need to put your track car on a trailer, then you want an enclosed trailer...
I really like my 24' Pace. I keep the racecar, a full rollaway and second set of tools in it, my nomex suit, helmet, jacks, tires, fluids, gas cans, folding chairs, wrenching clothes, cigar ashtrays, case of water, gallons of distilled water, all kinds of spare parts in it.
I hook it up and go to the track, and sometimes sleep in it.

That's a slippery slope and for $35k (about $60K to replace) I'll sell it all to you, with new heads and pistons for the motor included.
Why?
Because it isn't fun any more.

Keep it simple. Go have fun. Get seat time. Drive home.

For your tires, Call John Briget 262 740 0180 in WI.
He will sell you half tread or better, Take off, Kumho or GoodYear GSCS DOT racing tires for about $70 per corner + shipping.

I get my tires from him, GSCS 315/17 all around, but he has lots of rim sizes, probably lots of 15s, he also has slicks, but not at $10

I could race on slicks in SCCA SPO, but I'd burn a few sets to get used to them first.
It would be easier to give up 2 seconds and race on the DOTs, (and have one less set of rims to buy and one less thing to deal with, getting back to fun).

I burn a set of tires in a race weekend, maybe get a weekend and a half but you may have better wear since you aren't driving the way I do.

I have a set of half life tires in the garage I won't be using any time soon and I'd sell them for $200 + shipipng but you probably don't have 17x11 rims.

So I reiterate. conserve your street car, and get seat time, and have fun.
Don't worry about going fast, lap times will come, learn how to drive your car, or any car.
I know you aren't a novice and people get tired of this advice, but I'll never back away from giving it.
Some people are fast and talented drivers out of the box. I wasn't but 5 years later I'm fast enough to get on the podium some days.

Here is a sobering thought, (for me), I'll use Laguna Seca lap times as an example since that is where I like to race.
My best time at Laguna with my old motor, maybe 400 hp, was a 1:43.04. last season, winning times were low 142s. I added 150 hp and bigger brakes but never raced them this season. The track record in SCCA/ITE was a low 1:41 then set in a C4, I figure within 2 years I could drop 5 more seconds off my lap times.
I think the car can take 10 seconds if I was the driver that could do it.

What blows me away is that at 1:43 I was taking 2nd and 3rds, 2 seconds off the class record and I've only been racing fender to fender for about 4 years. The potential to be really fast, with 25 years of good racing left in my skin sack is mind blowing

It comes back to seat time, seat time, seat time and it's as true for me as it is for you.

 

What scared me off of ORR was in the Pony backwards in '01 I was doing about 170 in my Camaro at the end of the 9 mile straight, and the car in front of me, (which looked like a 2" tall carboard box at the time) was stopped on the highway in the middle of the yellow line.

I went long and deep into my brakes and it took FOREVER to slow down, and I still went by him on the left at 130 mph.

170 doesn't feel that fast until you try to slow down in a hurry.

I would ad to "that sub 175 mph is very safe." is maybe under the best possible conditions.
I actually don't consider 175 safe at all because if anything goes wrong that effects your ability to stay on the roadway, like a tire letting go, Your likelyhood of survival is not great.
I have seen some nasty wrecks in ORR in race cars where the driver walked away after catching 100s of feet of air and balling the car up around the cage. I say he won the lottery that day. Most won't be that lucky.
You won't even get me to say ORR is relatively safe.
Even if street vettes tech at only 160 mph (with no added roll bar) that was C.A.R.S. tech in '01 and may have changed by now, I wouldn't want to be in one on the day it all goes horribly wrong.

What makes ORR "safe" is that more people haven't died and it surprises the heck out of me, and I'm sure you too regardless of how you want to rationalize it.
(saying that Roadracing on a course is safe or comparitively safe is rationalization also, but I'm not lying to myself or anyone else about it).

Incidentally, my C4 race car was built by (my mentor) Alan Blaine, ORR unlimited driver.
The perspective that I offer is that I wouldn't track a street C3 with any real enthusiasm.
I have seen a few C3 racecars that have attracted my interest and there is 1 or 2 I would have bought if the timing were right.
Well built and well set up, (and well driven) they are good racecars, but that's still a far cry from a C3 street car.
To make a production framed C3 into a racecar is going to take alot more effort then build and prepping a C4 racecar. Out of the box it is far better suited to the track then almost any other production car, then and now. Go ahead and make a list of better out of the box track cars, but it's going to be short.
The C5-T1 car, which is a few bolt ons away from a street car + a cage is exceptional.
I shudder to think of the potential of a 7 liter ZO6 as a T1 car. For those that don't know, T1 is a showroom stock class, full interior plus a cage, no engine mods and a small selection of factory suspension parts, tires and wheels.

You can laugh if you want but I have no doubt that a driver like Scotty B, T1 runoff driver former C5 (now Viper) could take my C4, with 150 more HP, 200 more ft lbs of torque, and 300 lb less wt, (and lots of other goodies) then his C5 T1 car, and turn lap times faster then his T1 car which was setting track records at almost every track in the West. (and he has agreed to find out).

 

I've turned fun laps in my big diesel dually doing safety.
If all I had was a C3 I'd take it.
If my racecar broke I'd take my street camaro which has turned may laps, and if that broke I'd steal my wifes 740 bimmer.
Run what you brung and have fun.
It's all about seat time and having fun.
My advice is when asked where to spend your money to get the most out of the track experience, don't buy mods, buy seat time.

 

I'm actually talking about production frame build ups, not throwing a body on a tube frame, purpose built, racecar

 

Great video. Passing him on the hill must have been fun!

 

just curios how tall are they?

 

I also run heim jointed trailing arms and use solid bushings for the rear spring! Max stiffness-adjusted Koni reds too.

trucks!

I don't have anything of the sort, and don't want to street drive the car enough to warrant buying any. When I have to drive on the street to break something in, it'll just be on the race tires and I can live with it.

My only point was that for guys considering dual purpose setups, 550/420 is the absolute max I would recommend (and I really wouldn't recommend it for the street, but I'm used to Michigan roads!), and not for nice ride quality at that.

 

What do you run on your race car?

 

As far as what?

 

sorry i didnt specify. i meant front and rear spring rates and sway bars.You rune koni shocks to? are these the adjustable ones avaible from vb and p?

 

I've been reading along and here are my experiences so far. I've been involved in and a fan of road racing since the 70's, but never as a driver 'till recently. I've started using my BOSS 302 locally (Sears Point, Thunderhill, etc.) and it is essentially stock. Granted, it's under-braked, under-suspended and far from competative anywhere, but for me it's a perfect starter and I'm having a blast. The part about seat time is right on. The more time I spend circulating, the better it feels, the faster I go. I run on hard a** street tires and they are definitely the lowest common denominator, but it makes me run a correct line, work on my smoothness, and go easy on the throttle exiting corners. Once the '69 has a rollbar (dang convertibles!) I'll do the same thing with that and work up gradually with dedicated race tires and wheels as the last step.

I'm probably one of the slowest cars out there, but it's way better than rippin' around on the street.

Hans

 

Hans,
Nothing wrong with that approach.
That's how I started.
I'm happy just competing as my budget will allow.
Seat time is the most critical factor to good smooth laps.
Having fun in the process, who could ask for more?
Later!

 

There you go, he posted it on the first page.

 

I really don't think that over 120 mph is safe even with my roll cage. I've just lessoned the potential for problems. I know exactly what your saying about slowing from high speed. You cover so much ground with just a moments hessitation.

I just got on you because C-3 covers so many years and so does C-4. You could take a stock high HP big block and only put $2500 in suspension and $1500 in tires and you would have a car that could beat nearly any C-4 with The same $4000 budget. On a high speed power track like thunder hill............. The ZR-1 and Grand Sport might skew the statement though.

You can look at it another way. No early c-4 beat my 79 out auto-Xing in BSP It wasn't untill the 86 Vettes came out that I ever got beat. The reason was anti lock brakes. If I would have been road racing then it would have taken away the ABS advantage.

So 84 and 85 Vettes never beat 79 Vette. Those first C-4 were heavy dogs with low HP

I've owned C-4's and out of the box unless you got one with the suspension package I wouldn't even drive them. I don't feel safe in c-4 and older unmodified Vettes