I want you guys and gals to watch the G meter from seconds 24 - 32.



I can't tell you just how much I was impressed with the way my car handled on Sunday. Its the best it's ever been by far. The driver even cleaned his act up a bit on Sunday as well.



The results for the whole weekend event are here, we had Day 1 on Saturday, Day 2 on Sunday, then combined days 1-2 for a tour style competition where I placed 5th overall and brought home a 4 pack of beer for my efforts.

https://www.azsolo.com/results/



More later... Right now I'm tearing the rear axle apart to see what all we damaged making almost 30 runs around that 270 degree sweeper all weekend long.

It's amazing what you've done with a fully-featured street car... If it wasn't for the kirkeys, nobody at a car show would think twice about it being another cruiser. Well done!

Thanks Bernie... I've had a LOT of help along the way, including a bunch from you and others on this board. I'm also a constant student in the school of hard knocks and try to retain as much as I can from there as well.

It's fun when it all comes together for an event though for sure.

Did you all see the 1.1-1.2 Gs for 7-8 seconds? It did that with varying degrees of success all weekend long, Saturday one direction, Sunday the other. I think we made about 25 runs total last weekend, most of them back to back to back... First time in a long time that I've sprayed tires steadily and even got the brake pedal a bit spongy Saturday afternoon.

As always impressed with the car and the driver. And just thinking about 25 runs of fun on a weekend, at a VERY nice venue, with gorgeous weather, good for you!

Is there a skid pad at that track? I'm still looking for a potential pad, zippo so far.
Bob

Just the 15 acre pad that we set the course up on Bob.

What was interesting about the sweeper was I could make the car be tight or loose on it just depending on driver input. I spent most of Saturday with it loose because "Angry Lance" was driving it and wasn't until time only runs with Brian Peters yeaching that I figured it out.

From my Facebook post

We had a great time racing with the Phoenix AZ Solo Region last weekend at the Mini Nationals Style local event and I'll get around to posting our run videos up later on with my race report post. I wanted to first share the other experience I had over the weekend, learning how to be a better race car driver.

One of the best ways any autocross driver can hone their craft is to put a better driver in the driver's seat of their car and watch and learn from them. I did this during time only runs last Saturday enlisting Brian Peters to make a run in my car, then listening intently right after the run as he described what he felt in the car, what I could do to make it faster and then more importantly what I could do as a driver to make ME faster.

This video shows how that all went down. My GoPro mic is under the back bumper for better engine noises, so did not pick up the audio from inside the car, thankfully BP uses hand signals pretty good to help convey his message.

Basically right after the run ends Brian starts explaining what the car is doing that he doesn't like, or where it could be better lets say. We talked about it a bit and decided that adding just a few clicks more front rebound would help considerably. I then explained that my experience going that direction leads to an even looser condition on corner exit than I currently have. This is when it gets funny and he adamantly starts pointing to my right foot and telling me to quit using my right foot as much... It was kind of an ah-ha moment for me and Angry Lance.

It took me another run or two to put it all together trying the new method, but ended up about 1 second faster in Time Onlys than my comp runs earlier in the day. I then used it again on Sunday advancing from 5th in class Saturday to 2nd in class on Sunday.

Huge thanks to Brian for the help...and the willingness to help any drivers at an event hone their craft. We should consider ourselves fortunate to have such a wealth of fast willing drivers in our Region to learn from.

Scrolling though my phone looking for things to delete to make room and found this video that I forgot I took a couple weeks ago of Patrick sending Barney deep into the 270 degree decreasing radius sweeper at full send. Check out how composed the car stayed even over the jump mid turn...

He is definitely giving it hell, it takes a licking and keeps on ticking.

What a great way to spend a Sun afternoon.
Here's a link to that course.
https://www.roadracingworld.com/news/the-podium-club-road-course-in-arizona-now-open/

Tires? Or just 15 minutes is enough time to beat on your body. We have a yard go-cart, knobbies on the back and think 7 hp. 10 minutes of that abuse is, DONE.
Bob

I spent two full days out there, over 170 miles on track. It was awesome!! Ran my heat cycled out 660s on the rocket wheels and they did great. Softened right up.


Here's a 17 minute video of me starting at the back of a 40 car pack Sunday morning.

I thought you would run the 660s, to use them up. Mine are sitting right behind still in a warm place for now.
It appeared they liked it when they got a little hotter, good catch a few times in the early laps.
Isn't nice when you can run the old car very hard for periods of time and not have you fingers crossed.

Oh, the second video is the same one posted earlier.

170 miles, maybe 70 laps. Did your lap times get a lot better with seat time?
Bob

This was my fastest lap in the Time Attack portion.



Time attack reminds me a lot of autocross. You spend the early parts of the day in other groups learning your best time then the TA guys grid you in order of your best time, fastest first. They then release you with a significant distance between each car and you get 1 warm up lap, then 2 hot laps to set your best time on a basically clear track then a cool down lap. This was my second lap as I screwed my first entry into one up. I was pretty happy with it as it was just a couple tenths off of my best time set early in the morning Sunday morning.

This is the full video of the whole Time Attack portion.

Fast lap first session was a 1:51, 2nd 1:50, 3rd 1:49.

Sunday morning I ran a 1:46.4xx that I could never back up, ran a bunch of 1:47.0xxs later that day though. Ran a 1:46.786 second lap in TA.

Probably should have loosened the car up some. As I got more aggressive and faster, the car picked up a push. I blamed it on tires getting hotter, but then it did it on my earlier laps also. I was hesitant to loosen it up though because I did NOT want it to get loose on that fast sweeper at the end of the esses...

I didn't turn a knob or a wrench on the car all weekend, ran my autocross setup and it worked pretty damn well. Tons of compliments from the regulars, seems they accepted me as one of them once they saw me run on track.

Watch a 1985 MCSS chase down and pass a M3 (I think?) and a GT500...

Finally had a little time today to take a bit closer look at the underside of my car after the thrashing it took on the road course couple weekends ago. I had so much fun I booked another track day April 23rd so I wanted to make sure I wouldn't have any surprises when preparing for it.

Emptied my Mighty Mouse catch can first.



170 miles on track, 48 laps on a 2.32 mile long track at speed at mostly Wide Open Throttle and this is all that exited the crankcase via the vent system. Pretty freaking impressive if you ask me. Oil level is still on the full mark and the oil looks pretty decent as well.

Tire wear next...



Couple interesting finds... So the course was predominately left hand turns and it had a HARD braking left hand 180 at one end and a super fast (100 mph) big left hand sweeper at the other end. The inside of the left front and the outside of the right front had more wear than anything else. The rears wore pretty even.

As I drove the car harder on course, the balance got tighter and tighter and this shows in the tire wear. The big stiff front sway bar was taking the majority of the roll force and lifting the inside front and overloading the outside front. Pics taken at the track also confirmed that the rear was rolling more than the front which was compressing the outside rear and lifting the inside front. This is the first time ever that I've wished for a stiffer rear sway bar.

I also wanted to raise my Panhard bar to raise the rear roll center height but I'm maxed out at height on the frame side mount. When I lowered the rear ride height I had to adjust the axle side mount lower to level out the PHB effectively lowering the rear RCH. So while the lower center of gravity helped, the longer lever the weight has on the RCH lets the rear roll more than it would if it had a shorter lever (raised RCH).

My easy quick fix answer that I tried today was to split the difference in my front bar holes to soften the front bar halfway... I took the passenger side and put it on the soft hole while leaving the driver side on the stiff hole. This should soften the front bar from about 1485# to about 1300# vs the 1125# it would be if both were on the soft holes.

The autocross course on April 15 has more hard braking then turn in elements than sweepers and slaloms so I need it to turn in better, hopefully this works like I think it will.

I then checked out the brakes.

Front pads still have tons of meat left on them even after all that track abuse whoaing it down from 130 mph 48 times.



As do the rears...



I may bleed them again before the track day April 23, but otherwise I'm calling them good to go still. Hard to believe these pads and rotors have been on this car since 2017 and still look this good. I LOVE my brakes...

Lastly as I was lowering the car back down off the chassis jacks I heard a BANG! Took me a couple more times repeating it before I figured out what was going on, then a lightbulb went off in my head. On track a lot of times as I came off the big fast sweeper and the car settled back down I'd hear a bang inside the car. Just a single, one time bang... I had thought it was my rear springs coming off their collar while unloaded then snapping back down on the car when the car settled but what I found today was the tack weld holding my driver side ball joint into my lower control arm had failed and the ball joint was slipping down out of the control arm in that fast sweeper when the inside front was unloaded and then it would bang when it settled back down into the arm. I didn't take a picture but the tack weld had cleaned all of the power steering fluid off around the base of the ball joint as the ball joint rotated around inside the arm. Trust me when I say that when I weld that back into the arm next time...it will NOT come loose again easily...

Otherwise the car is good to go. Super happy that I bought the second set of wheels that are allowing me to venture back out onto the big track once again without destroying my go fast expensive autocross specific tires. I bet I have 2-3 more track days left in these 660s and then I'll leave the scraps of my current Nankangs for yet another track day so I should have enough tires to last me for another year or so track days at least.

Anyone interested in watching me figure out how to get through a couple of road course corners on my own (well with a little help maybe)?

I put these two videos together mainly as a way for me to remember my progression figuring these two corners out last weekend at Arizona Motorsports Park. Only being there on Sunday and not having any instructions learning how to run the track CCW for the first time meant I struggled mightily the first couple of sessions. For the third session, I bolted on a better set of tires and then got behind a couple of better drivers and finally started to figure it out. Unfortunately, my GoPro quit recording in the 3rd session and missed me really picking up speed,. I dropped 6 seconds from the 159s to the 153s during the 3rd session, mainly just be following and learning a couple of corners that gave me fits before.

This is me learning corners 9-8...a sharp right hander. Initially I was trying to double apex it and it just wouldn't work. Finally figured out how to diamond the corner after following a couple fast guys in the third session.



This is me learning corners 3-2-1, a sharp S turn leading into a double left hander. Getting the entry into the first sharp right in the S was difficult to figure out but I finally got it...mostly on my own then I fine tuned it following the same couple of guys.



That was my last track day for the spring, we now take the summer off. I think I'm ready to pull the T56 and figure out why it's so hard to get into 3rd gear sometimes and I definitely need to reseal my whole power steering setup as it's puking everywhere...

I have a extra new complete T56 magnum with a new clutch I'll sell ya.

**ears perking up**

Tell me more please...

I will say that you have definitely put your transmission and power steering pump through the ringer. After watching all your videos I wish we had a road course close by.

You watched them all? 😳

After a 3 year hiatus from track days I'm super excited to finally have the car in good enough shape to really push it on track again. I really enjoy all the seat time and just the general feel in paddock at a track day. Everyone with the NASAAZ crew really seems to like my car as well. Initially it didn't get many looks but like after just my 2nd session people started to stop by, check it out and chat a bit about it.

They have me talked into getting it classed properly and moving up to running Time Trials in the fall. I can't wait..

Sorry it took so long to reply. I have not watched all of your videos but I probably have watched 90% of your track videos, I wish we had an actual track close to here. It excites me way more than autocross.

A local manual trans guy i talked to about all the Tremec trans stuff a few weeks ago. We talked about what lube goes into a T56. I had tried several different ones over the 20 years of beating on mine. That discussion about what works best in a T56 has been discussed in every forum than uses a Tremec 6 spd.
When the C7 Vette was put on the showroom floor I looked in the owner's manual, it said see dealer service desk. I went to the desk and asked what goes in, they couldn't tell me. That's how much the answer to what goes in a T56 is complicated.

Most every T56 produced for the first 15 years of production on the side of the case is stamped Dexron II, which was discontinued long time ago. What the substitute for Dex II could or should be had long been debated, which aftermarket lube to use. My T56 installed in 02 brand new i ran Valvoline Dex II for awhile, tried a Valvoline Durablend II and syncros didn't like it. From then until now using Mobil 1 ATF Multi Vehicle synthetic, more than 10 years and 20 K on that lube.

Tremec never in the past sold a lube for T56 line of trans. It wasn't until a few years ago that they finally sold a Tremec T56 lube, expensive and at times contained unobtainium making not available. Now seeing it for 150 buck a gallon, 4 qts.
https://www.tremec.com/menu/manual-transmission-fluid/

Now the interesting part. When talking to Jody Haag he told me what he considers the best lube for a T56, a trans with carbon 1-6 blocking rings and brass reverse ring. it seems he knows what he's talking about, he's been playing with manual trans for many years, has help many people.

Here's his FB page. I don't do facebook. But last week took a drive past his business location and intend to call him and stop at his business for a bench racing chat about Tremec. I met him at our local car show a month ago, two TKX 5 spds and his new line of shifters for them on the tailgate of his cool S10.

Here's his FB.
https://www.facebook.com/people/Jodys-Transmissions-LLC/100054303380613/

Here's a link to the trans fluid he says should go in a T56 and most other Tremecs.
https://products.lelubricants.com/p...yn-multi-vehicle-atf-1150?from=viewitems

It's been a decade since changing the T56 lube in my aftermarket wide ratio made to bolt into a old school Chevy bellhousing. It is easily the winner of the "weakest T56 torque wise" ever built, If memory serves it's 375. After 20 years of hard driving, mostly behind the 427, it has times when it misbehaves. You just know particularly 3-4 could use a couple fresh parts. Way back in like 04 3-4 syncro keys failed and I refreshed a lot of internals, solid keys, forks, new 3-4 parts.
Learned what a PITA a T56 is to take apart and refresh and thought I never wanted to do it again. So never abused it, beat on it yes, but didn't bang gears.

So thinking will drive the 86 to see Jody, but 4 qts of 1150 and give it a try. Maybe improve the troubling 3-4 shift. Wonder what the pro autox of road course Tremec trans guys are running? Jody says tested against ALL the others 1150 is the best ATF.

Lance your LT1 trans was changed to carbon? All the above was you mention a trans R&R.
Bob

I've never been inside this trans... It was out of a 1994 Z28 with 80,000 miles on it when I put it in and I probably have 20,000 more really hard miles on it since. I'm pretty sure it's still got whatever fluid I put in it back then still in it as well.

I think my issue is the bent shifter rod thingy that the early ones were known for. My friend Mike Hitt had same issue, went through his on his own, made it worse, then bought a brand new Magnum T56 to replace it. I'm trying to avoid that process. I know Mark Bowler of Bowler Trans pretty well, may just send it to him and let him have a look see to come up with my best option.

With an LT1 T56 and it's unique install parts you kinda get stuck rebuilding it, or making the conversion to LS types installs. The early T56s, LT, LS and my A/M all varied in parts, bell depth, input shaft length, tailhousing and overall length are a few differences. Those of us using the old T56s would need to start from scratch to do a new Magnum, 6060, lots of parts.
When the LT T56 were first introduced I believe all came with fiber blocking rings like used in the T5. The LS trans a few years later were then carbon and lasted longer, less problems. All the early T56s had problems with the stamped steel keys, solid keys pretty much fixed that problem.

My quess is it get very pricey quickly to make any of the old T56 very good again. Would think all the parts to build, upgrade an LT are available still.
Was told by Haag the other week and Bob Hanlon,years ago, "there are no replacement input shafts" for my aftermarket T56, it's unique to that trans.

Don't dillydally, even Bowler probably gets booked up for trans build.
Bob