Stock trailing arm and Banski trailing arm
Way back in Chatper 7, I replaced the front control arms bushings, since the stockers were 11 years old and had 150K miles on them. On the rear, however, I had left the stock control arms and bushings. Poly works OK in the front, but in the rear, the bushings really need to allow some twist to prevent bind, and poly won't do this. Binding bushings can lead to werid handling, like snap oversteer. Instead, the best solution is to replace the factory control arms with threaded rods and hiem joints. The hiem joints are a perfect solution: they allow plenty of rotation as needed, but don't allow any slop or play. These have been on my wishlist for quite a while, and I finally got it done. I picked up a set of trailing arms and camber rods from Banski Motorsports. These particular arms have several features I like: they are aluminum, like the factory arms, they use name brand hiem joints, and instead of jam nuts, they use an omega clamp to keep the rod ends from spinning in the arms.
Stock trailing arm and Banski trailing arm
Stock camber arms and Banski camber arms
Trailing arms installed
Both camber arms installed, with dual Spintech mufflers under the diif
As expected, the stock bushings were just beat. The install was pretty straight forward, and another alignment was done afterwards. I was a bit curious to see if my front alignment had slipped any, and it was really close to where I had set it last. The final specs:
Front Camber: L -2.4 R -2.3
Front Caster: L 6.9 R 6.6
Toe: .15 degrees out
Rear Camber: L -.8 R -.7
Toe: .08 degrees in
One theme you may have noticed is that this car needs to lose weight. Less weight = faster lap times. One big area of weight in the car is glass. I'm
still running the stock glass all around, and it's heavy. I've been eyeing a lexan rear hatch for a while, but they are pricey ($450 plus shipping), and
I'd still need to get a hinge to attach to the car. The factory hinge is very, very well glued to the factory class, and it's nearly impossible to remove it
without breaking the glass. Luckily, I found a great deal on Corvette Forum: A brand new in box lexan rear hatch and a used factory hinge for $250, and it was
even in Dallas, so I could pick it up and not worry about damage in shipping. I spent one Sunday driving to Dallas and back, and the hatch was mine. I don't
have it on the car yet, so no pics, but I'm working on it. The lexan isn't as stiff as the glass, so it will need some kind of fasteners or supports to
properly mount it. Hopefully I'll find some time soon to get it at least mocked up.
So, I had promised some auto-x coverage. Auto-x 1 finally came around, and I was definitely ready to test out the new engine at a real event. I got my
Azenis on the car, and was ready to take on the AWD Boost Buggies in SSM. But, it didn't happen. The previous day, during the OD101 auto-x school,
the car started developing a big miss under acceleration. I didn't see anything wrong under the hood, but it started to stumble more and more often. During
pre-runs of the course for Sunday, the car actually died and was very hard to restart. I noticed the car would run as long as the revs were kept low, but revving
above 3K would cause it to die instantly. A quick check of the computer for codes didn't shed any light on it, so I attempted to run Sunday anyway. Fail soon
followed. Before runs even started, my car died on course taking a radio to a corner station, and I had to be pushed back to the pits. Ugh.... Despite my
opti-ownage, I still managed to get second in SSM. Norman was kind enough to hook me up with a co-drive in his nationally prepped STX WRX Wagon. He was
even running shaved nats tires. He destroyed the rest of us in SSM, but I still managed to beat everyone else.
Like any good LTx owner, whenever I have a run problem I think Optispark. You're probably saying 'but Chad, you have teh LS1 coil goodness, how could it be the opti'? Well, I do have LS1 coils, but I still use the opti half of the opti. I suspected the opti disc had come loose inside the cap, since I hadn't touched it when the motor was out. Thanks to the new ATI damper, pulling the opti is easier than ever (but still not fun). After getting it off, the disc was still very firmly attached to the input shaft. I wasn't really sure where to go next, but before putting the opti back on, it occured to me that perhaps the optical section was in fact bad, despite the fact that it looked perfect. I really didn't want to spend $200 to test this theory, but since I have a lifetime warranty replacement from Autozone, a 10 min trip and I had another reman opti for free. After putting the car back together, amazingly the problem was fixed and the engine was running great again. Boy, do I love those optis...
Auto-x 2 rolls around, and I was excited. My competition showed up in the form of an Evo IX MR. Joel is smoking fast, and his car works well on the dirty concrete of the Annex. The car ran great, but I wasn't able to keep up. Joel put together one miracle run that had me covered. I was pretty close (a few tenths off) on my fastest run, but it had some cone issues. I ended up second. The car was back to it's old self, namely being loose in throttle lift and braking situations. This problem doesn't show up on the track, but at auto-x, it makes the car interesting to drive. It put the power down reasonably well, but going into a few obsticles was very interesting. I may investigate stepping up from my current 30mm front sway bar to a VB&P 32mm bar. The car has excellent front grip and turns in very well, but the rear isn't quite able to follow. A smaller rear bar could acomplish the same thing, but I think I'd rather have a little more roll stiffness in front than go softer in the rear.
I don't have any pics of the auto-x, because my photographer decided to sleep until 12:30, but the engine performed great. Oil and water temps were spot on, it cranked every time it needed to, and it was making more power than I could use on most of the course. The slightly elevated power band helps keep the rear end planted in the slower corners, and when given a little space, it really screams. I'm still pretty rusty from being out of the car for so long, so I may hit up a Houston BMW auto-x this coming weekend. Beating up on some German cars could help get me back in the swing of things. Coming up in 1.5 weeks is Tamscc auto-x 3; I or may not try and have a bigger bar on by then. Either way, it's time to step up and start winning.