[andrewb70]

Originally Posted by 3 Chiefs

Andrew I was admiring your car at LS Fest. I was looking for you but didn't see you around when I was there Friday. I know what you look like because I seen your V8 TV video. Anyway I really like your car and was explaining to my wife how much you drive this car and how much you have fun with it. She thought that was cool and thinks I should build mine to drive the wheels off of it too.
You are right, LS Fest was a good time.

Paul

Paul,

I am sorry that I missed you. I actually didn't arrive at Beech bend until about 6:00PM on Friday. My friend Bill Howell was kind enough to bring the car on Friday morning. He was the one doing the auto-cross on Friday.

Andrew

[andrewb70]

For the sake of continuity I wanted to post an update to what's been happening with my car. Since doing the LS swap, I really haven't been able to do many events due to the circumstances in my life. Also, the car has been in storage, with the kindness of friends, but I now have the car with me in Memphis. Back in March I looked at the schedule of events at Memphis International Raceway, and I noticed that the local BMW club holds regular autocrosses at the track. My girlfriend and I attended the March autocross hosted by the Rivercity Bimmers. As it turned out, any car is welcome to participate and the guys were all very friendly. We decided that for the next event we would bring the GTO and participate in the fun.

Yesterday was a gorgeous day. We finally had a break from the rains and the temperature was in the high 60s. There was a slight breeze, but overall, it was a great day. The course wasn't really a true autocross. There is actually a road course setup at MIR and the autocross used a section of the road course for sections of the track. It was very fast and a lot of fun. Cars were a mix of BMWs, a Miata, and a small contingent of Subarus.

The fast time of the day was set by a lightly modified Subaru STi. He ran the course in 56.xx seconds. My first run of the day was 1:04.xx, but as I got more familiar with the course and got a few pointers from a more experienced driver, I was able to get down under a minute. My best run was 59.xx, at which point I called it a day. This was about as much fun as I have had for 30 bucks...

I had a car mount for my cell phone, and I was able to capture some decent videos of my runs. I made a compilation of a several runs. Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5xewTdkzD0

Andrew

[chief455]

NICE!

[andrewb70]

I have a curse. It is the same curse that inflicts many of you. This curse makes people crazy and makes them do things for no apparent reason. I am speaking of the inability to leave well enough alone. My car is fine. It drives great, runs hard, brakes well. But I can't leave it alone.

I have never been 100% satisfied with the rear brakes. It is an older Baer Track system that uses a small C4 Corvette caliper (40mm piston bore) and a 12" rotor. When I was doing the last round of updates a few years ago, I noticed that the caliper bracket was slightly bent. I never really tracked down the reason why this might happen, but it was a little unsettling. So after doing some reading on the forum, I decided to install the 4th gen Camaro LS brake system. The LS brakes have amazingly sturdy cast iron caliper brackets, bigger calipers (45mm piston bore), and I will eventually incorporate the drum style e-brake.

Here are a few teaser shots of the components.

I sourced the brackets from a very good seller on LS1tech, who was parting out a 1999 Firebird. After a trip to the sandblaster and a couple of coats or Rustoleum Silver grill paint, they are good to go:



Being on a limited budget, I was basically forced to use re-manufactured calipers. I got on Rockauto and found that Powerstop sells a set of calipers that are powder coated red for under $150 for the pair. They look very well put together and will add a touch of matching color to the rear:





To round out the brake upgrade, I got a set of Raybestos professional grade rotors and semi-metalic pads. Raybestos is currently running a rebate of $5 per rotor and $15 for a set of pads. The rotor is coated (maybe e-coat) and should stay looking nice for a little longer than plain rotors.



The other main reason for the timing of this upgrade is that I will be having the ring and pinion gear swapped by a shop. I don't have the space or tool to do any of the work myself, and I figure that since the rear end will be completely disassembled, adding new brake components should add minimal to the cost of the swap. The main reason for swapping gears is to eliminate excessive gear whine under light load. This is very annoying when going down the highway, and after talking to several trusted people, the consensus was that a new R&P set would be needed. I am also going down to a 3.42 gear (from 3.73) to reduce highway cruising RPM.

Stay tuned for further updates.

Andrew

[Wick]

Andrew, I noticed your LS brakets don't have the anti lock hole, the hole is there but it's not machined through. I had to use a freeze plug to fill mine in but only after I massaged it a touch.

Let me know how you get the e brake to work too, the lever is very close to the shock mount.

[6 Grrrs]

Andrew...What rear end is in your car? I can't remember if you run a stock 1970 Abody rear or possibly a 12 bolt.

Also I am interested in how the ebrake works on these calipers? Is it a mini drum inside the hat of the rotor, or incorporated into the caliper (like the ratchet setup from the '80's GM cars)? That rotor does not look like it is shaped properly for a pair of shoes inside, but also I cannot see tha backside of the caliper with the ratchet assembly.

[andrewb70]

These brackets are from a 1999 Firebird. I think it might have had the 3 channel ABS system, which would explain why the brackets are not machined for the ABS sensors.

The parking brake setup has a drum style inside the brake rotor. I am not implementing the e-brake now because I don't have a pedal for the e-brake in my car (long story). I will eventually make the e-brake functional but I will have to install a hand operated lever.

I have a Chevy 12 bolt that I got many years ago.

Andrew

[69*Goat]

Originally Posted by andrewb70

I will eventually make the e-brake functional but I will have to install a hand operated lever.
Andrew

Is "Drifting" in the future of your GTO Andrew? LOL.

[andrewb70]

Originally Posted by 69*Goat

Is "Drifting" in the future of your GTO Andrew? LOL.

Not exactly. I don't have a pedal or cable installed for the e-brake due to speakers in the kick panels...

Andrew

[HWYSTR455]

Originally Posted by andrewb70

Not exactly. I don't have a pedal or cable installed for the e-brake due to speakers in the kick panels...

Andrew

Did you use the pre-formed kick panels that have provisions for speakers, or did you cut out OE ones? The ones that come with the cutouts allow for the e-brake. If you didn't use those, maybe swap over?

You can also space out the e-brake assembly to clear the speaker. It will probably get wobbly though if you go too far. The kick panel kind of guides your foot straight so you don't put a side load on the pedal.

A lot of rear disc calipers require an e-brake to maintain proper preload, but would imagine that's redundant info for you.

.

[andrewb70]

Originally Posted by HWYSTR455

Did you use the pre-formed kick panels that have provisions for speakers, or did you cut out OE ones? The ones that come with the cutouts allow for the e-brake. If you didn't use those, maybe swap over?

You can also space out the e-brake assembly to clear the speaker. It will probably get wobbly though if you go too far. The kick panel kind of guides your foot straight so you don't put a side load on the pedal.

A lot of rear disc calipers require an e-brake to maintain proper preload, but would imagine that's redundant info for you.

.

I used the kick panels from whatever vendors sells them, I forget now. But I installed different speakers in them and they stick out quite a bit. At this point getting a pedal in there will require way more work than I am willing to do, so it will just stay that way for now. The LS1 rear brake calipers are completely removed from the e-brake, so I don't see any issues there.

Some progress has been made. I feel terrible having to outsource some of this work, but I really have no choice. Luckily, the shop where the work is being done came highly recommended and they allowed me to hang out while they did the work. The owner's son was doing the work, and he was doing a good job.

Here is the new gear installed:



The brakes were mounted on the passenger side without any drama. The caliper abutment was well spaced away from the rotor and there was no contact even when the axle was pulled out all the way against the C-clip.



The driver's side, for some reason, wasn't as cooperative. The caliper abutment was nowhere close to fitting and after taking some measurements, we determined that the axle offset on the driver's side was .125" more than on the passenger side. I don't know why this is the case, but we ended up using some precision washers to space the caliper bracket away from the rear housing flange. Once that was done, everything lined up great.



Luckily, the guy doing the work was paying attention and he noticed that the driver's side hard line from the center to the caliper was pinched.



There were marks on the exhaust where it looked like the rear end hit during a hard bump. Since the hard line runs over the top of the axle it got smashed. New lines will be made and they will be routed along the backside of the axle tube instead of over the top.

Andrew

[HWYSTR455]

Maybe swap the speakers out?

.

[andrewb70]

Originally Posted by HWYSTR455

Maybe swap the speakers out?

.

Must have good tunes, hello! LOL

I will eventually install a level in the trans hump. Or, I saw this the other day:

http://www.estopp.com/

It looks shallow enough that I think it can be mounted above the driveshaft in the trans tunnel.

Andrew

[6 Grrrs]

That seems overcomplicated for a simple task. It is slow and the beeping would drive me nuts.

How about a simple OEM handle from a Honda or something, mounted to the tunnel?

[andrewb70]

Originally Posted by 6 Grrrs

How about a simple OEM handle from a Honda or something, mounted to the tunnel?

This is the direction I'm leaning towards, but honestly, it won't happen until v3.0 of the GTO build...lol


Andrew

[andrewb70]

Well, the gear swap is finally done and I couldn't be happier. It is quiet and the ratio is perfect.

The rear brakes are definitely exerting more force. This is due to the larger bore of the piston and the fact that Raybestos Advanced Technology pads are fairly aggressive, even when cold. The rear brakes lock up now, and they never did before. I have an adjustable prop valve, so if need be, I will reduce the pressure to the rear. I will hold off on doing that now, because I am first going to change the front set-up slightly.

I got ahold of Alan Bailis, who used to work at Kinesis when I bought my wheels. My name came up on his caller ID and he knew exactly who I was. Pretty amazing for a man that has serviced thousands of customer. He is now working for Fikse, but after explaining what I needed, he was able to help. I ordered two inner wheel halves that are 1.5" wide than my current wheels. This will widen my from wheels from 8" to 9.5". I checked for clearance, and I see no reason why I can't run 275 tires in the front. I am also considering running the new BFg Rival tires in 275/35 front and 295/35 rear.

When I widen the front wheels, I will also install a set of Raybestos pads on the front in place of the current Hawk HP pads. I like how the Raybestos pads work when cold and after talking to Tobin at Kore3.com, he said that I will probably like the Raybestos pads. If, after going to a wider front tire and new pads, the rear still lock up before the front, then I will reduce pressure to the rear to balance things out.

I also got my speedometer working and calibrated. As you all might recall, when I had the Richmond trans rebuilt, I had them take out the speedometer gear. I did that so I would not have to worry about the slip yoke hitting the gear. This is a concern with the Richmond 6 speed transmissions. With the loss of the speedo gear in the transmission, I no longer had a source to drive my VDO speed sensor.

Luckily, I have ATS spindles that have a built in ABS sensors in the C5/6 hubs. Dorman sells the ABS jumper harness that fits the C5/6 ABS sensor: PN 970-007.



One of the leads needs to be grounded, while the other lead is the signal wire. It doesn't matter which is which. Run the signal wire to the Autometer gauge and recalibrate. The ABS sensor will start sending pulses after 2-3 turns of the wheel.

The C5/6 hubs have a 48 tooth reluctor wheel. I am running 255/40-18 tires in the front, which according to TireRack, are 801 turns per mile, so for the two mile calibration period, they will turn 1602 times.

1602 x 48 = 76,896 pulses per 2 miles. Having that information, you don't even need to measure out an accurate 2 mile stretch of road. I started my calibration and when the counter on the speedo got to 76,000 I stopped it. I compared the speedo reading to the GPS reading on my phone and the speedo was slow by about 2 mph. I assumed that the GPS is accurate. So I repeated the calibration and stopped it when the counter got to 74,000 and now the speedo reads exactly the same as the GPS.

Andrew

[HWYSTR455]

Once I go through the driver (again) I will look into the Raybestos pads, have heard good things about them. I ran the hawks for a while, but they just don't work well until hot. (As you eluded to). I've had some white-knuckle experiences on exit ramps that I would like to avoid in the future! I have some Delco pads on there now, forget which, but they suffer once very hot.

I would love some nice wheels, especially on the 'bird. I dream about the Fikses! The LeMans has 9.5 wide on the front, have tried 275s (17s), but with the wheel opening moulding, there's slight contact at full lock over bumps. (so I dropped back to 255s)

Nice math Andrew! As mentioned, I will be doing a makeover on the driver here in the next year or so, and am looking at speedo/gauge options. Making a note of the part number! Some have been successful (to some degree) getting ABS to work with the AFX spindles, so hopefully by the time I get to that part of the makeover, I can incorp.

On a trivia note, noticed your sequence number on your spindles! So I had to take a shot of mine, which is 000009. (looks like a preceeding 6 in the pic, but is a 0). The original effort was for 67-69 Camaros, and it took me some time to convince Teetoe (Tyler) to do a run for the 2nd gen F/B ones. (he didn't feel there was a market for them initially, and it was the steering arm that needed development). I talked a guy from Texas on the pro-touring site into shipping him some 2nd gen F spindles for a pattern, and that's how I got some of the first run sets. Teetoe worked with a guy over at GW (think it was Mark?) on making specific control arms for the A bodies, and I was lucky to get a first run of those too. I recall Teetoe saying he couldn't keep up with the orders for them, and he was happy to have taken that venture on. Now there's several that are making similar ones, even CPP has them. Wonder how those are, compared to the originals...

.

[andrewb70]

Thanks for the comments.

I looked into trying to get ABS working on my GTO, but I think it would be hard. As you said, several have been able to make it work, with varying degrees of success. Mark Steilow has made it work on a couple of his latest builds, but then again he has access to the engineering resources inside GM. Bosch makes a motorsports system, but it is about 8,000 dollars. It is fully programable and will work on any vehicle. Maybe on the 3rd build of the GTO I will try something...

The CPP spindles are a cast iron version of the ATS spindle, and frankly I don't care for it, for various reasons.

I am really hoping that the wider wheels work out and I can run a 275 tire. It should really help with front end traction.

Andrew

[andrewb70]

It is time to post a few updates on the car. I haven't really been driving it much this summer because of a lack of time, but I am getting excited for my next event. I just registered for the Holley LS Fest and it is time to get the car ready. Here is a list of things that I plan on doing.

1. I noticed when the car gets hot, while siting in traffic, the steering effort increases. I double checked the fluid level and even though it doesn't seem to be boiling or spilling out, I decided to add a power steering cooler. I realize there are various options for this, but it seems that the easiest and most sanitary install will be to use the 4th gen f-body cooler that mounts in the upper radiator hose. Several people have mentioned that this might not be the best solution, but I have the cooler already and I will give it a try.

2. I changed my rear brakes over to 4th gen f-body "LS1" brakes using Raybestos premium pads. I chose these pads after several conversations with Toby at Kore3. As much as I want to believe that I have a race car, I do not, and thus I need my brakes to work even when they are cold. The Raybestos pads have a similar friction profile to the Hawk HP pads. I will be swapping out the Hawk HP pads, that I have in the front, to the Raybestos premium pads, to match the rears.

3. There is no denying that having bigger front tires is more desirable. My current tire size is 255/40-18. I've been running this size mainly because my front wheels are only 8" wide. During the recent brake upgrades, I've had the opportunity to really examine how much room I have in the front, and it was clear that I can go with a wider tire and wheel in the front. I managed to track down Alan Balis, who used to work for Kinesis wheels, and after getting some measurements, he sent me these:



The beauty of having 3-piece wheels is that they can be altered to suit the needs of the application. These are wider inner hoops that will increase the width of my front tires to 9.5" :screwy:

4. With the increase in the front wheel size, I now need bigger tires. I struggled long at hard over my tire choice. My current tires are Falken R615s, which are admittedly an older tire technology. Falken does make a new version of that tire, called the 615k, but I was reluctant to use them because of size availability. I currently run a 295/40-18 in the rear. This is a 27" diameter tire. I want to run a 275/35-18 tire in the front, which is 25.5" tall. I felt that from an aesthetic perspective, the front tires would look too small compared to the rear and it would look funny. Again, as much as I want to believe that I have a race car, I don't, and looks are a factor. Ideally, I would run a 295/35-18 in the rear, but Falken doesn't offer that size in the 615K....

So, the choice was pretty clear. BF Goodrich just came out with their new Rival tire, and by all accounts, this tire kicks a$$. So I pulled the trigger on a set of these:



The 275/35 fronts and 295/35 rears are a perfect match. The rear is about 26" tall, which is a hair taller than the fronts. They are designed to be used on 9.5" and 10.5" wide wheels, which is exactly what I will have after widening the fronts. The Rivals are a true street tire, with a tread wear rating of 200, which allows me to use them at events like the Holley LS Fest. Using the Rivals was just a natural choice. I am very excited to get them on the car and see how they work, both on the street and on the autocross track.

I will be doing these upgrades sometime in August, so stay tuned for more pictures of the installation process.

Andrew

[HWYSTR455]

Nice tires! I have 9.5s on the front, and 11s on the back, but 17s. Luckily, they fit over the brakes, but it REAL close. The center section is a fraction of an inch from the caliper. I will buy new wheels when I do the freshen up, and will go through the exersize of fitment and clearance then. May ping you to compare notes! Same with tires.

The clone needs pads, the ones on there now are ones that came with the kits, and they squeal like a pig. Very annoying. I will be buying the Raybestos pads for it.

Will be looking forward to your feedback on the pads an tires! Maybe try to get a video or two from the LS Fest!

.