Starting my mods for this years autoX season, or Modding a C4 corvette for autox

L

lozer

New member
So i thought i would start a photo journal of my mods for my vett this year.



Specs 1989 l98 350v8 convertible 6 speed corvette.

vet.jpg




Current Mods are 1984 z51 stock springs (super friggin hard) Smallest stock sways (ironically 89s were quite small)

qa1 adjustable shocks with the car lowered 1 inch all the way around.



I placed third in my class last year and i aim to be first this year.

Empire Sports Car Association



So the goal this year is to get a bit more traction a bit more power and Much better braking.



Traction is addressed with heim jointed trailing arms.

TrailArms1.jpg




Brakes are being addressed with Hawk HP+ pads (damn expensive), a brake perportioning spring, and stainless brake lines topped off with ATE superblue racing fluid



The Power will be a set of under drive pulleys, A linginfelter Super Ram intake with my stock intake base (ported by me) and a set of 1.6 full roller rockers i scored for a song.

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I will be posting periodically so enjoy



 
lozer- Hey, good move on the trailing arms, many overlook those. Those gonna mess with its street manners much?



What made you decide on the firm spring/small sways approach? I always found the :argue about which way to go on that interesting, remembering the old shoot-outs between Herb Adams and D.I.C.K. , uhm... oh [shoot] what was his name?!? Started with a "G" :confused:... where they compared firm spring/small sways with softer spring/bigger sways.



You go with any poly bushings or are you sticking with rubber?



You gonna run stock rotors? What's the prop. spring gonna do to the bias?
 
Hey Accumulator.



Street manners don't mean a whole lot to me as this car is mainly a track toy and weekend terrorizer. But in theory they will make and transmit more noise to the chassis and cause possible vibration as there is no rubber to deaden the vibrations or bumps.



Ive always been a firm spring soft sway guy. the car feels more reactive or just seems to react faster with the stiff spring / soft sway set up. This can get you into trouble quicker but it also offers a increased chance to nail the apex a little better. Last season i ran with the stock (soft springs) and some much larger bars front and rear. This set up was good enough to net me 3rd in points and 1 solid win but it just felt slow and mushy in corners and slalom felt absolutely slow.



Your thinking of gilstrand. Here is a forum thread with the shootout gilstrand/ adams shootout



I have offset poly bushings in the lower front. The heim jointed stuff is replacing most of the poly i had as it seemed to bind and not like to move.



Yup keeping the stock rotors as they have very little wear and the pads im using aren't silly aggressive. The proportioning valve is going to shift the brake bias just a bit more to the rears to cut down on nose dive under hard braking and keeps the chassis planted.





Oh and i already have an auto power race bar that is Scca approved. But it's not required where i autox unless i go to R compound tires.
 
So i wrenched around a bit tonight an got the rears done (or so i thought)



Here is what i started with



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And this is what i ended up with



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Now the kicker is when i went to do the stainless lines in the front i found out that i was sent the brake kit for a 93 to 96 model.:angry

The Vett brake vendor i used has the wrong part number listed for this year. So i shot off an email and will call in the morning to get it sorted.

On the bright side my port and polish kit showed up from Jegs (35 bucks or so). I also might have a hot lead on a lt4 hotcam that will give me a nice boost to the super ram intake.
 
lozer- Ah, thanks for explaining! I always find these kinds of setups interesting.



And yeah, "Gilstrand", that's it. Heh heh...I guess I'm dating myself when I refer to that, I still remember reading that when it first came out, I set up my new f-body with Adams' VSE-brand stuff.



On the poly bushings, I guess I was thinking mainly about the sways. Yeah, I hear you on how poly can bind; it's not "always the best!" the way some people think.
 
Sorry for the delay. I've been waiting for parts and dealing with the vette brakes to get me the correct lines. I should have pics and more up this week.
 
lozer- This is a good time of year to do this stuff huh? I oughta get wrenching on one of my cars instead of posting here so much :o
 
Accumulator said:
lozer- This is a good time of year to do this stuff huh? I oughta get wrenching on one of my cars instead of posting here so much :o
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I think that ship has long since sailed, Mr. 33,500+ posts and counting :nana:
 
Heh heh....yeah...If I don't get rolling on the newer Crown Vics suspension I'm gonna end up having to farm it out, that'd bug me.
 
Gah I try never to farm out anything. (i do my own alignments with fishing line, jack stands and steel ruler)



Anyhow update time.



SO i got the brake stuff finally and those are done. Hawk hp+ pads everywhere along with goodridge steel lines and ate blue fluid.



I got the new 1.6 Roller rockers on and adjusted (until the motor starts, they always need to be touched twice) Also threw on the under drive pulleys.



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Got the old intake off and found where the coolant leak was. right behind the distributor. Swapped all the bits from my tiny stock intake to the new ported intake base.



original base port size

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Ported edelbrock base size

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Got thew pretty new runners installed and called it a night.



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I should have her running by Saturday morning/afternoon.
 
lozer said:
Gah I try never to farm out anything. (i do my own alignments with fishing line, jack stands and steel ruler)..
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Heh heh...well, I oughta mention that I'm, uhm...congnizant of my limited abilities, and that can factor in too.



..SO i got the brake stuff finally and those are done. Hawk hp+ pads everywhere along with goodridge steel lines and ate blue fluid...
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Good stuff, and the Hawk pads generally work well for me without needing a whole lot of heating up. Though one set dusted something awful for some reason...weird pinkish dust too. Not that I expect that to be a big priority in your case ;)



I got the new 1.6 Roller rockers on and adjusted (until the motor starts, they always need to be touched twice) Also threw on the under drive pulleys.
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Whose pulleys did you use? Are they nice and pretty too?
 
Your right dust dont mean squat to me as the car dose not see more then 5k a year.



i used Jet performance and there just regular old black.



So finished the job tonight and im delighted. Car pulls to 6k rpm like a water buffalo with a cattle prod up its ***. (enjoy the visual) Sounds pretty smooth and almost no hickups so far. I did have a backfire that sounded like an explosion (i mean friggin big)



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lozer- You running the original valvesprings with the 1.6 rockers? Think it'd benefit from a retune after these changes?
 
Naa i swapped out to lt1 valve springs. And i bought a retune with it.



Now im hunting for a supercharger setup LOL
 
lozer said:
Naa i swapped out to lt1 valve springs. And i bought a retune with it.



Now im hunting for a supercharger setup LOL
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Heh heh, for AutoX, I'd be concerned that a blower would do more harm than good (referring to your times, not "real harm"). Might be tricky to get nice flat, linear, (and predictable) power curve. You can guess how the centrifical blower on my one Crown Vic is when it comes to AutoX :rolleyes:
 
lozer said:
i imagine a bit of wheel spin. but if i can tune it right it should be ok.
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I dunno.. I consider wheel spin to be the devil :think: I'd think that "not quite enough power" is usually just right for AutoXing, or at least better than just a bit too much.



I was beating a young guy in a modded C5 *with my Crown Vic* before he wised up and quit overdoing it on the loud pedal. OK, OK, I know...you know what you're doing and he was, uhm...young. But you get my point ;)



Now for a road course, well...[#^&%] yeah! 8-9 lbs of boost would really wake that car up! Just get something that's nice and seamless with regard to on/off boost.
 
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