I decided I just want to do more driving and do less wrenching.

This is the year where I decided I'd had enough. The Trans Am is going up and down on the jack stands more than it goes back and forth.

So I am replacing it with a 2014 Corvette Stingray Z51 /M7 that I hope to take to some autocrosses and track days.

Rather than spend more thousands of dollars replacing things like engines, progressively bigger brakes, and having a car that only *I* can work on, I thought I'd rather spend the money on tires and brake pads.

..and have a car that my wife will actually enjoy sitting in.
She hasn't ridden in the Trans Am but maybe three or four times in the last fifteen years.

(IMG:http://www.ws6transam.org/car/corvette.jpg)

I figure, I'll fix the fuel pump, take the Trans Am into a shop for a fresh dyno tune, and then put it up for sale. It's had thirty years of my love and attention so it'll be hard to part with it, but man, this Corvette sure does ease the sting! Tell-you-what...(!)

Back to hooning around in the Trans Am

Hi everyone,
It's been a few years but I thought I'd check in to see what everyone's been doing these days.
Myself, not a lot int he car department. However I did get the Trans Am out this year, and we're putting a few miles on it.
The car is feeling loose - like the suspension needs a major re-do. The Koni struts are now 25 years old, the Herb Adams rear shocks don't seem to work that well anymore,
The front rotors are crazed and spiderwebbed with cracks, the brakes squeal like a banshee when stopping; I've lost about 3/4 inch of ground clearance over the last ten years
and the headers are scraping on everything. TO top it all off, the UBE Decoupled torque arm is banging around under the car as the snubber seems to have collapsed.
The tires are six years old, and man, they must be hard because I can't get them to hook up anymore: First & second gear just spin when I get into the powerband,
so I need to be easy on the throttle. The worst part is that the tires only have about 1000 miles on them and they are six years old. The best part is that I don't feel too
particular about preserving them, so tire smoke is becoming a pretty fun way to spend some time.

Anyway - I'm just not sure where to go from here, or how to fix that suspension. A full re-do? Rebuild the decoupled torque arm, or jettison it and get something more conventional?

Wow, I missed you all

I miss autocrossing, road racing, track days, and typing about cars.

I recently had an old thread (and subsequent flame) get reactivated and it might be enough to actually get me off my hindsight and underneath the car again.

That, and my 15 year-old daughter recently got her driver's permit and I think we're going to get some of her driving experience around the orange cones (IMG:http://www.frrax.com/rrforum/style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) She's highly motivated. There's nothing cooler than a girl who likes to drive fast at a race course: Except perhaps when that girl is your daughter , co-driver, and pit crew.

Day one results

Hi all,

Day one for NFME was a wet, sloppy overcast one and although it managed to cancel the drag racing, the road course action went full-tilt from 8 AM until about 1:30 PM.

The first set of sessions went with standing water on the race course, and we were all driving on rain slicked surfaces. My first session made me think something was broken under the car because it was so tail-happy. Second gear, forget it: A recipe for disaster. Third gear, okay, so long as you didn't go past 3/4 throttle. The first lap, when I hit those esses, I thought for SURE something was busted due to the massive oversteer, but as the track dried out, the oversteer problem went away.

All of the sessions were 15-minutes apiece, and we had three driving groups. The second session was still a little dicey and tell thr truth, I was running a big gun-shy. Still, I concentrated on finding the smoothest line. Session three was great, as the track was now dry and the tires and brakes were getting hot. We were all running fast, starting with a yellow-flagged zone that extended from Grant's tomb, through the pit road, and back onto the course at the 1000 foot mark. After that, it was green-flag and you could run balls-out to about 110 MPH before dragging it down for the entry into the carousel. The esses were faster each and every time, but there was still a big puddle at the end of the esses in the middle of the two hard 90's before the last mini-straight that brought you back into Grant's tomb. If you weren't able to avoid the puddle, you had to pussy-foot through the 90's and onto the straight or else the back end would come out.

At 1:30 the weather started getting better, so we gave the track over to the drag race prep who wanted to set it up for a 5 PM test & tune. We had free access to the test & tune drag race, but unfortunatley at about 5 PM, the rain came down and deluged the track again. Now it's cold and misty, so it looks as if there's nothing going on until tomorrow morning, when we do drag racing and autocrossing.

So far so good, although Mark F's car busted some wheel studs on the way here, and Andris Skulte busted his new T56 in some inexplicable manner... I'm not sure that he even got to do one session. Whatever it is, it's the same strange issue that plagued his previous build. Andris had to pull his car off the trailer on the way here (to accomodate Frouhar's busted car) and drive it nearly 900 miles to make it to Memphis. Then this happens with the T56. Hopefully he comes up with some solutions. If not, then I guess I'll try to at least lend him some seat time in mine (if he wants it) for the autocross.

Well, we're about to head out for some of those famous Memphis Ribs so I need to get going.

It's a blast, and I'm having great fun.

Cheers, and take care,

-Dan Burk

GCI Performance Drivers School - Gingerman Raceway

As I am seriously missing my time at NFME this year (Event canceled for '07), I signed up for a performance driving school on Monday the 18th. They put me in the intermediate group, even though I've attended only three track events in the last ten years. (I've autocrossed five or six seasons, though and had the same car for seventeen years.)

It ought to be fun, but the car isn't "ready". I don't think it'll ever be completely "ready". At least the engine fuel and ignition maps are in good shape. I'll be under the car on Sunday making sure everything is tight to that nothing will fall off. I'll probably run the street tires the whole day since my track tires are like, ten years old.

Heh, the guy on the phone asked me what kind of car I was driving and I said "It's an '84 Trans Am". He paused and said "Even though it's an intermediate group, I think you'll be okay". I assume he was meaning that "Even though your car is SLOW and OLD, the intermediates will take it easy on you".

I didn't get the chance to tell him that I've logged 1.21 g at Gingerman before, and that there's now 381 RWHP under the hood. I might be sliding around the turns on greasy street tires but I hope to keep up in the straights.

This will be the first chance to try out the newly configured suspension with the decoupled torque arm.

--drb