z28 Camaro Drag Racer

Wish I had my car here.

2011-10-14T02:49:00.000-04:00

I am currently living in Germany, and boy do I wish I had my car with me here. I recently took a drive on the autobahn from Frankfurt, where I live, to Prague, in the Czech Republic. This is a drive of 500km (320miles), and more than half of it has no speed limit, including a stretch of about 200km in a row without any speed limits.

This would have been fantastic if not for the lousy car I was in. My rented car was a Renault Scenic. Its more or less what you'd get if a mini-van and a hatch back mated. In other words, not good. It was tall and boxy, and the 1.9l diesel engine wasn't particularly impressive either. As a result, I think I topped out at about 180kph which is about 115 mph, and generally tried to settle in at about 170 because much faster just didn't feel safe.

I can only imagine how much more enjoyable this drive would have been in my car. The nice low center of gravity and profile would have been so much nicer for passing big trucks on the highway. The power would have really made use of the open space with no speed limits. Not to mention that its more comfortable to sit in that the rental car was.

RAM Stage 3 clutch.. Fantastic

2011-09-04T11:04:00.000-04:00

Well, I've been driving the car around a bit more recently so I decided it was time to replace my clutch with a new one capable of handling the power that I am putting down.

After talking with the owner of the shop that was going to do the work (he does LOTS of performance work), we ended up going with a new RAM stage 3 clutch and billet steel flywheel. The clutch is a bit of overkill, but I figured that the car is more likely to have more power at some point down the road than less. It is capable of holding about 650rwhp and torque, much more than the 400 that I have.

What a difference, its like driving a totally different car. First off, there is no slip to it, the friction point goes from disengaged to fully engaged with almost no pedal travel. I am not even embarrassed to admit that the first time I tried to pull out with the new clutch in, I stalled. Now that I'm past the 500 break in miles... WOW. I can now go full throttle in 1st gear again and the clutch doesn't slip. I can shift from 1 to 2 and the clutch holds.

I guess now its time to head to the drag strip when I get a chance, which will be next spring since I am over seas for a while right now.

Smile for the camera!

2011-05-28T13:40:00.000-04:00

Some pics of the car...

Mother Nature Defies Me

2011-05-19T07:58:00.000-04:00

Well, we had a nice week there, every day was sunny and mid 70s, with no rain, overnight lows in the 40s or low 50s. Unfortunately, that was the weekdays. The weekends on both sides of that week were not so nice. Now this week its been nothing but rain, most of the day, every day. Bleh. I'm not sure I've even really tried to drive my Camaro in rainy conditions, but I'm sure it wouldn't be all that enjoyable. I have enough trouble keeping the tires hooked up on a nice sunny day that I just don't want the hassle of driving in this weather. Plus, I have a '10 328i xDrive that is nice to drive on lousy days... Even last week when it was nice, sure I drove it to work, but sitting in traffic in this car just doesn't quite have the same appeal as getting it out and driving it on some open roads.

Nonetheless, I hope to have a sunny day soon to get the car out for a drive.

Spring Time

2011-04-09T19:19:00.000-04:00

Man there is nothing quite like the weather warming back up after a long winter. That first day its warm enough to take the t-tops off and take the car out is a day everyone that had the option looks forward to. Unfortunatly it has been an unseasonably cold spring so far, so those days have been few and far between. Taking the tops off, turning the radio down, and just listening to the glorious 8 cylinder symphony, especially when accented by a nice big cam, and going for a drive is one of life's simple pleasures.

Back on the road

2011-02-17T08:56:00.000-05:00

After being more or less snowed in for about 2 months, and being generally not interested in driving her in well below freezing temperatures for a number of reasons. I was finally able to get the camaro out and drive her today. Even though all I did was drive to work this morning (there will be a subsequent drive home as well), there is still, even after nearly 3 years, something intoxicating about the feel of all that power. The roar of the exhaust, the feel of the engine trying to twist in the frame, and the acceleration, you can't forget the acceleration. I can't wait for spring to get here.

No Go In the Snow

2011-02-13T10:07:00.000-05:00

Unfortunately this January saw the east coast hit with weekly storms, ranging from dropping a few inches of snow on us, to over a foot. As you might imagine, this kind of weather doesn't agree with many 500hp rwd sports cars, traction control or not. As a result, it has unfortunatly been a while since I have been able to get the Camaro out for a drive.

The good news is that things are looking up. The temperatures this coming week have highs in the upper 40s to low 50s, and lows at around freezing, and there doesn't look to be much rain in the forcast either. Hopefully this means I will be able to get the car out and exercise it a bit. I am not a huge fan of letting a car just sit, thats how things mysteriously go bad.

Like New Again

2011-01-07T06:48:00.000-05:00

Well, I picked the camaro up from the body shop the other day. It was dark already, but even so, I could tell it looked better. All the dents on the hood were fixed up, and it was repainted. While he was at it, I had him respray the lower front end too so that any little rock chips etc would be cleaned up. The marks from when it was egged are all cleaned up, as was the rock dent on the right rear and the bubbles in the clearcoat (age spots) were cleaned up on the rear lid. All in all the car was basically toally repained, and some panel gaps re-aligned.

She looks like showroom pretty. I even had the headlight lenses cut and polished to bring them back to sparkle clear.

This just reaffirms that there is nothing better looking than a shiny black car with nice polished up chrome rims...

Camaro Gets a Facelift

2010-12-29T08:13:00.000-05:00

After just letting little dings here and there slide for a few years, my patience finally ran out a few months ago when I noticed that there were now a dozen or so small dents on various surfaces of my car. This was caused by a hail storm that came through the area in mid-summer. Mainly on the hood there were about a dozen or so little dents that you can only see when the light hits them just right. A phone call to the insurance company, about an hour with the adjuster, and a few days of waiting later, and I had myself 3 insurance checks to get the hail damage, some marks from my car getting egged 5 years ago, and a chip from a rock getting kicked up by a lawn mower fixed. All of this for only $300 out of my pocket.

The car should be in the garage getting worked on at this moment, and I am excited to get it back in what should be nearly showroom condition.

Magnaflow Performance Exhaust for the z28 Camaro Drag Racer

2009-08-30T22:41:00.000-04:00

When choosing which cat-back exhaust system to put on my Camaro, there are a ton of options. Prices of the performance exhaust systems range from about 400 for a simple system on up to close to 2000 for a nice true dual exhaust setup. In deciding what I was going to get I wanted something that would perform well, sound good, and not break the bank.

There are sites out there with tons of clips of various exhaust systems. I did a bunch of listening to these clips, but they have to be taken with a grain of salt, because for one, the clips aren't taken with good equipment always, and the quality of computer speakers isn't always fantastic. Even still I was able to rule out some systems because they sounded too raspy. I was able to rule out other systems because they cost too much.

What I settled on was a Magnaflow performance cat-back exhaust system for my camaro drag racer. The Magnaflow systems sound great, are affordable, make proven numbers on the dyno, and even look great sticking out the back of the car. If you haven't read my other posts, I'm running a full race exhaust from the block back. I've got a set of 1 ¾ into 3 in collected long tube headers, a solid y-pipe without cats, into my Magnaflow performance exhaust from the y-pipe back.

With my cam, my car sounds great. It has a nice healthy rumble at idle, doesn't rasp much at all, doesn't drone in the cab at any cruising rpm, and really screams at wide open throttle. I've gotten many many compliments about how nice my car sounds. All in all, I'm very happy with my magnaflow performance exhaust system.

Shortcomings of the Camaro Drag Racer

2009-08-22T18:50:00.002-04:00

In my last post I talked about choosing stage 1 of upgrades for my camaro drag racer project. With stage 1, I added power, and that is basically it. As I mentioned there are some drawbacks to working with this approach. The first major issue, and the most difficult and expensive to fix, is that the stock drivetrain really isn't meant to handle all of this power. Secondly, there is the issue of handling related to suspension, handling, and braking. The weak drivetrain is, in my opinion, the more important of these issues, as it affects more typical daily driving, as well as more spirited or track driving.
What does all of this mean for my project camaro drag racer? Basically it means that I have a bunch of power that I can't use.
Right now, the weakest part of the car is probably the clutch. If I heat the tires up and try to launch the car, the clutch almost always slips. During extreme acceleration when shifting from first to second, the clutch will slip from time to time. This is still the original factory clutch, which was never intended to handle this much power, with 65000 miles on it.
Keeping this clutch in there, even knowing that it slips, is a conscious decision meant to protect the rear differential though. The rear end differentials that GM chose to put into their LS1 powered cars are definitely a weak spot. They're barely robust enough to handle hard launching with sticky tires under the stock power levels. However, I would much rather have a clutch that slips under hard acceleration than a differential that explodes on launch. The fix to this is upgrading to a Moser or Strange 12 bolt rear, which also lets me put in steeper gears. The choice for me would be to move from my stock 3.42 ratio to 4.10, which will give the car even better acceleration.
Upgrading the power levels of the camaro drag racer was, I still feel, a good choice. It is definitely more fun to drive, and it sounds fantastic. I get a lot of compliments on the sound of it. Plus, under normal street driving, the drivetrain issues don't really make themselves apparent.

Choosing upgrades for the drag race camaro

2009-07-29T22:22:00.004-04:00

Now that I've decided that stages was the way I was going to have to get my camaro drag race ready it was time to decide what those stages would be. I thought things through and decided that this camaro was still going to be a street car for the forseeable future so I wanted some fun stuff.

At the time I was deciding on this, a few things went into my thought process. First, I wanted to spend about $5000. Second, I also have a 1991 Nissan 300zx twin turbo, and that car handles like a dream with the 4 wheel steering, lower center of gravity, and better suspension. All said and done, I decided to get some engine work done.

The package I settled on for stage one of my camaro drag racer upgrades was: Custom grind cam kit, ported oil pump, new timing set, under drive pulley, new plugs, airbox lid, mass air sensor, american racing long tube headers, off road y pipe, magnaflow catback, dyno time and a custom dyno tune. The total cost for parts and installation: $5500.

The results were pretty inpressive for a cam only car, especially considering that this is a 2000 and it has the older, somewhat crappier LS1 intake. 402 hp and 398 tq SAE corrected.

More important than what I did choose to do with this stage is probably what I didn't do. Come back in a few days and I'll talk about the short-comings of this setup for my camaro drag racer project.

Powering up the Camaro

2009-07-27T17:54:00.002-04:00

In March of last year I got a pretty decently sized tax refund and I decided it was time to finally get some work done to my camaro. I'd been reading up on various message boards, like LS1.com, for a while about what to do and whatnot, and decided on my end goal. I went around to a few shops to start pricing stuff up. As I said before, my Camaro is a 2000, meaning it has the mighty LS1 engine in it. The LS series of engine is now GM's go to engine for most of their v8 applications. It's been in the Camaro, Firebird, GTO, Corvette, SSR, and they also made it into a truck engine. There are lots of after market parts for them, and finding a shop willing to work in them is pretty easy.

I originally wanted to do heads, cam, intake, and exhaust, as well as all the supporting modifications that go with these main areas, like throttle body, mass air meter, rocker arms, etc. I was also going to need a clutch to hold onto this power.

I got some prices from a few shops and was looking at something like 12-13000 all said and done. This would have put me in the 600 hp 550 torque area, but the pricetag was more than I paid for the camaro when I bought it, so I settled on stages.

My goal was and is still to have one of the fastest street dirven camaros in the area, but I'm just doing it in stages now.

My z28 Camaro Drag Race Odyssey - A Beginning

2009-07-27T17:11:00.002-04:00

I've decided to start a blog about my experiences drag racing my 2000 z28 camaro. I bought the car as my college graduation present to myself in June 2004. At the time it was bone stock, except for better than factory tires. It was my daily driver until November of 2007, and I never bothered to take it to the track, because I figured that there are enough timeslips out there for stock Camaro and Firebirds. I couldn't afford to get any work done to the car. Then in 2008 I had some spare money and it was time to get some work done.