ws6transam

Hi everyone, I'm reposting this from the lounge where it got buried in about twenty minutes last week. --drb
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NFME was the most fun event I have ever attended, bar none! It's a combination homecoming, road event, drag race, autocross, and car show all rolled into one three-day event. I know some of you have read about my engine, which I've been working on since, like, forever! (five years, actually) Well it's done, and running in the car.

http://www.ws6transam.org/miniram385f.jpg

I managed to get it running just a few days before the event, drove it onto the trailer and took it to Memphis with minimal tuning. It ran great with no drama, other than the punishment it put to the tires whenever I mashed the gas pedal

Once in Memphis, it was onto competition, where a quick check of the tune showed AFR to be in the 11.5 to 13.0:1 range at wide-open throttle. All in all, a pretty conservative, safe tune.

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I have a trophy here on my table, and it's the big one for autocross: First place, Prepared class. It was a blast to drive: After the slalom it was a sprint through the lights in second gear while bouncing off the 6600 RPM rev limiter~!

I did it on street tires, too, which though slippery in corners, were an advantage on this track because race tires got a two second penalty. Even so, I still had the second fastest overall time of the day: 44.527 seconds. Brian Burdette's ESP class '94 Camaro with the big 12-inch wide autocross tires was turning high 41 second times and looked REAL good out there! Brian's an active autocrosser who hits about twenty events a year, and has done it for nineteen years straight. He was the only one faster than me on that course. After the race, I spent the afternoon giving people joyrides around the autocross course, and I went around it seventeen times! I'm sure the last few times were down in the 42 - 43 second range, though we didnt time it.

Yeah, I had an AWESOME time! There was some minor interference problems with the LS1 driveshaft and the loop, and the hood was buckling at 145 MPH in the straightaways. Other than that though, the car was running like a swiss watch. All nine dragstrip passes were E/Tíng in the high twelves, low 13's at between 112.0 and 113.0 MPH. On the second to the last pass that I dared try, I lost ALL traction, backed off, then got on it with a MONSTER wheel hop as my reward. After that the gears started howling so I quit dragstrip on the very next pass.



I had to make compromises on the exhaust system in order to make the event: I reused my Edelbrock TES header & Y-pipe which are 1 5/8 primaries. The head itself has an exit diameter of 1 3/4 so I am dead-heading the port on the collector flange. I am SURE that this is killing performance, but since I can make tire smoke on demand, what do I care!?? This car is just flat-out FUN to drive! It revs like nothing I have ever experienced and is the fastest car I've EVER sat in, much less driven!



You guys just wait, I think I'll be able to tune this car into the 119 MPH range next summer when I upgrade the exhaust and axle. It's only six MPH away, and I havent even tried noodling with the timing table at all! For now, I am going to work on taming the fuel table at mid-throttle, as well as tighten the suspension, finish off the graphics, and finish the little body details that I couldn't fit into the NFME schedule.



NEWS FLASH: Next year the NFME comes to Indianapolis!~! You guys with F-cars GOT to do this!! For $250, you get three days of autocross, high-speed road track experience, as many test and tune drag strip passes as you can stomache, a car show, and tons of hangout time with some of the nations most knowledgeable F-body owners. My buddy Glen Wanieo got in eighty minutes of road course, fourteen autocross runs, and probably twenty drag passes on his '89 TTA. Thats nearly an entire season's worth of driving all jammed into three days.

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Jim Davidson took these shots while I was on the road course and they look terriffic: Check them out:

http://www.jimd.com/M05/05-05-05/pag...5-M05-0054.htm

http://www.jimd.com/M05/05-05-05/pag...5-M05-0095.htm

http://www.jimd.com/M05/05-05-05/pag...5-M05-0096.htm

http://www.jimd.com/M05/05-05-05/pag...5-M05-0097.htm

http://www.jimd.com/M05/05-05-05/pag...5-M05-0118.htm

http://www.jimd.com/M05/05-05-05/pag...5-M05-0119.htm

http://www.jimd.com/M05/05-05-05/pag...5-M05-0120.htm



Here was my favorite third gen paint job: This car nearly beat me in the autocross, too! James and I split the cost of a hotel suite so I got to see a lot of this car. The hood is a custom design he created with a projector and a graphics program. He nearly took the "best third-gen" award.

http://www.jimd.com/M05/05-05-05/pag...5-M05-0282.htm



Here I am, wearing my drinking pants, hanging out that evening:

http://www.jimd.com/M05/05-05-05/pag...5-M05-0274.htm



Here's my buddy Dave Zug doing some parking lot surfing on the dash pad from his Camaro. It's amazing how far vinyl slides on asphalt! I think he surfed a good twelve feet withough falling off!

http://www.jimd.com/M05/05-05-05/pag...5-M05-0278.htm



Here's some aucross action:



In the slaloms, though probably not the fastest line through:

http://www.johnspics.net/fbody/day2/.../IMG_9737.html



Brake for the hard left:

http://www.johnspics.net/fbody/day2/.../IMG_9725.html



Hard left turn, then powerslide through the right-hand sweeper:

http://www.johnspics.net/fbody/day2/.../IMG_9726.html



Mash the brakes, dive into the box, tip the gas and bobble the wheel left, flip the rear around and squirt out the other side of the box!

http://www.johnspics.net/fbody/day2/.../IMG_9739.html

transamtom

Glad you had fun Dan.

I might be in for Indy next year,do you have any dates?

ws6transam

No dates as of yet, they need to secure a date, probably in the fall. It'll be in June, though. Nice weather! No rain!!

kandied91z

that's one of the longest posts i think i've ever seen you type...

looks like some decent fun, too bad superfest wasn't combined like that. indy sounds alot more reasonable indeed. i take it there weren't any real wild thirdgens at the event?

ws6transam

I think anyone with an F-body that's willing to give mailing list servers a try ought to sign up and hang out. The f-body.org mailing lists are direct descendents of the original F-body list that predates most of the internet. I've been continuously subscribed to it since January of 1994. The "list" is actually where Jason D. and Chris Frezza hooked up, I believe.

Almost everyone on the list is a long-term owner with some serious knowledge. It's a great b.s. filter, actually.

http://lists.f-body.org/mailman/list...TOKEN=19970202

AutoRoc

Dan! You RULE!

Those pics are awesome and it definately looks like a fun weekend. How many cars total? $250 is a steal too.

Car's looking pretty stout in all three categories. oops 4 categories. Your car must have been one of the cleanest there since it just finished a complete overhaul.

ws6transam

As far as cleanliness, it was probably # 4 or #5 of the 50 third-gens that were there. Unfortunately the Ohio DOT decided to saw concrete on Wednesday so in less than ten seconds, the car got completely covered in water-borne concrete paste because the darned workers were hosing down I-75 straight into the path of oncoming traffic. I've still got concrete dust on the car in all the little crevices! It's also covered in an oil tar film that I got on the way down. A whole claybar treatment is needed. Gosh, that four coats of Zaino sure didnt last me very long!

AutoRoc

Roger that! I clay'd our shop truck yesterday. I make the Detroit/Toledo I-75 run everyday through the orange barrel battlefield.

DougJ

Hey Dan,

there were 31 3rd gens registered. a few of them Im sure didnt make it,

but it was a good time thats for sure.

DJ

ws6transam

Oops, it was the 51 Firebirds that I remembered! Sorry! Oh well, as my grandpa once said, if the story is worth telling, tell it your way!

Anyway, there were plenty of clean third-gens there, and ALL of the second gen cars with actual license plates were super-clean. I'd say James G's car, the yellow camaro from Arizona, the black GTA, the '85 Z28 race car, these were all nicer than my old bird.