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!!

 

That's great!!! congrats.

Good info on the control arms. I'm in the process of ditching my stock trailing arms and building my own control arms from 1"x0.250 wall DOM tubing, building an adjustable 6 link in the process....

Now if I could just get this CNC table for my plasma cutter finished....

How about some titanium rotors while your at the upgrades

 

that's great news that you got some records with the C3 and did better then some of those newer cars

 

You already have the motor and the skill.

I went the next level to the 81 TT front end which lost 150 pounds. The fiber is thinner and the earo is better. Mine has the vents for the air to the front disks. When I bought it money was tight so the additional $375 kit did not happen. It was already a $8000 job with paint. I went with the whole 81 front crush plastic in front of the major vacuum tube pipe.

Then it was major flat bottom aluminum work to get the air right. I had overheating problems at high speed.

This is an older pic of the flat bottom that extends to the long nose with a straight across test

 

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!

 

72Ray, you have given us C3 owners great pride by beating newer vettes but what is this last video? It looks like you are competing against Hyundai's, Subaru's and some wacko Cosmo Kramer on a duct taped go cart.
Now, how impressive would my success with the hordes of females be if they were all grossly overweight?
I got to love ya after that *** whipping you put on those C5's, amidst excrutiating verbal assaults I was suffering at the hands of cynical members who have given up on the C3. You saved me with that video so I am going to cut you some slack on this latest embarrassment. Next time please do some computer editing and make those cars that you are competing with look like Ferrari's, Porsches and Vipers.
Thanks 72Ray!

 

Ray,

Take a moment and think of the image those Beemer drones and Porsche jockeys have in their heads when they go back to work and explain why they only got 2nd or 5th, 6th, 7th, etc.

At night, in their driving nightmares you have created a black ghost that just never stops coming, and then never looks back.

IMHO Your car is the HOT the way it sits.

Mod the crap out of it otherwise, but leave that beauty as she was born, more or less. Corvette Summer was not good for anyone.

 

Not to worry everyone. I'm not planing anything to radical. Mostly flares, lite pin-on hood, fixed lights, stuff like that. Maybe a cool racing stripe or a baldwin/motion type paint scheme. Not going to hack it up. Something tasteful and cool. I still want to drive it on the street now and then.

By the way does anyone know where I can get the lite weight pin-on type hood. The L-88 type. And the clear covers for the lights. Not the flat ones. The ones that bubble for the bulbs? Also scoops for the brake ducting like the old Grand sports had?
Later!

 

Very cool vid

Theres a few forum members whos been making the covers themselfs, otherwise Guldstrand has them around 300-350$ i think.

 

if you take any old L88 hood and rip the frame off you willloose about 1/2 the weight. Then you just have to drill hles for the pins!
BTW hood pins are the exact same size and thread as the hood latch pins :-D

 

If and when you get out there you will find out...

 

72Ray, This is the hood I was going to buy before I decided to leave my car stock adn sell it. It weighs 8 pounds and is the short version. When I asked about shipping it came out to be very high. Something like 100 dollars. I wonder if they would send the hood by greyhound bus though to save on shipping?
http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/New-1...74729869QQrdZ1







As for the headlights, you can make your own buckets, there are plans for those floating around somewhere. For the lenses, forum member Jclgodale3 made his own, I think they turned out pretty good. You might want to message him and see if he will give you some instructions or work something out He had posted how he made his headlights on the forum, but the mods deleted it since it had talk of selling them without being a vendor. It was very interesting to see how he did it though. Here is a pic of how his turned out

 

Whew. I had bad thoughts of a giant front-end air dam, louvers everywhere, and big freaking Whale Tail out in back.

Vintage Hi-PO sounds like your mind-set. There's some trick old grandsport and C2 stuff out there.

 

Great times! I ran a 1:48, in my Chevelle. I can't go there any more with my Corvette since it does not have a roll bar.

 

Words of comfort!
All three of those cars in front of me are Highly modified. Not grocery getters. The evo and cosmo are both in the unlimited class and the STI should be but is in group A. The cosmo kramer has a $50,000 cosworth engine and only weighs 1175 lbs. There is no way 3500 lbs will stay with this car in the corners. What you couldn't see was the cars behind me at least 10. One was a Lister with 550 RWHP that I held off for a few laps. I had a flat spotted tire when I went out for this mock race start. Was only interested in doing that and a couple of laps before calling it a weekend. Next year I'm bumping up to class A to give myself some real competition.
Lastly at California Speedway this year I beat the STI and EVO times. In fact I put up the second fastest time of the weekend.
SOO! you can still brag. This Old ameriacn sports car can still run with the best. LOL
Later!

 

what kind of control arms are you using??? aftermarket stuff?

alex...I think we get the point that you feel some of us here (me including) have done you wrong..now give it a rest already.

 

TT,
The lower control arms are from VB&P. I have allready modified them with mono-ball bushings but had not thought of the stress the sway bay would put on them. When I do my front end stuff this winter I will take a good look at these. I will either modify them to be indestructable or make my own. That's two thing's now from VB&P that have failed. EVERYONE who has this type suspension and runs on the track, check the welds.
I will list again the things to check for fatigue.
1: Rear camber bracket that attaches to pumpkin. Look for cracks in the corners. I had to box mine to keep it from cracking.
2: steeroids bracketry. Moves and cracks. Lets rack move back and forth. I had to weld mine up and add additional bracing.
3: Lower control arm cracking at the sway bar mount area.
4: Loctite everything or wire.
Better to check and be safe then to be Sorry!
Two close calls for me with this suspension. Check, Check, Check after every session.

 

72 Ray - I hope you have the lower control arms all welded and gusseted in.
The only thing worse than the arm cracking is the arm falling off.

Nice runs.

 

Dude! your not very familiar with high performance automobiles are you? I see a "modded" Subaru WRX STI (mid 13 second ride stock easy to get into the 12 second bracket and putting power down through all 4 wheels, BIG ADVANTAGE!), a Lotus Seven (weighs around 1000lbs and while only having about 160-225HP hopefully you can do the math on power/weight ratio and way better stick on it's tires than a C3 Vette.) The front car looked to be a Mistubishi EVO but, I can't really tell because it was so far ahead. Great JOB! of driving with a FAST GROUP of "Little FURRIN cars".

 

Congrats and great vid