What is your dream car?

[Jim McK]

Originally posted by fuzzydwarf
...learned a couple of big lessons. [1] Brakes do you no good when all four wheels are off the ground, and [2] Concrete doesn't splash when you hit it.

BWAHAHAHAAA!!! That's great.

[thrlride]

LOL, those are two hard lessons to learn!

[pclausen]

Another vette guy here.



2000 C5 w/ the following mods to get to 418rwhp:

ARE Stage II heads/cam
Long Tube headers
"Off-Road" exhaust
B&B Tri-flow exhaust
Hall TRIC Intake
3.73 rear
Lowered

It should break into the 11's but best I've managed so far is low 12's. Just can't get the 325 Michelins to hook!

Truck is a 2002 Duramax/Allison LT crew-cab LB running a predator 85hp tune. I also got a Warn M15000 winch on it now.

I'm happy w/ these rides and don't really have a need/desire for anything else right now. Besides, since I found this forum, all my money is going into my reef tank.

[Jeremy Blaze]

My racing experences;

I drive mine and my dads 1955 Chevy Bel Air Drag car. It is a street strip type car, back halved, big block, foot brake car.

My dad and I campaigned 2 RX7's in SCCA Solo II for a year.

I have bracket raced since I was 16, (26 now) so thats a good 10 years practice at cutting the tree.

I have always wanted to do some hardcore rally racing, but the closest thing to it, was a modded VW baja buggy that I used to bounce off trees in the woods behind my parents house, ( built about a 2 mile course)

I have also wanted to do some open track racing like Road Atlanta, and I am thinking about building a Camaro for the CMC Race series in the Indiana, Ohio, Michigan region.

[thrlride]

pclausen, that's a nice vette but with those heads and cam I would think you'd have more rwhp. Has the computer been professionally tuned?

[pclausen]

thrlride, keep in mind that this work was all done back in the winter of 2000/2001. The tuners have picked up a lot of new tricks since then. To answer your question, the work was done by Agostino Racing in Toronto, who at the time were among the top tuners. I trailored the car up there and then flew back up a month later and drove it back down to Virginia, in the snow no less. They did all the mechanical work and tuning. It was done just before LS1-Edit came out as I recall.

I did brake a valve spring twice (1st one after putting some 25k on the car after the mods), and when the second one broke, I replaced all of them with duals. Right now 4th gear syncro is gone and I need to replace the slave. With all this fish tank business I've gotten myself involved in, I haven't had time to deal with that yet. Car still drives fine, I just have to remember to go from 3rd to 5th gear and not run it all the way out in each gear or the clutch sticks to the floor. Kinda keeps me out of trouble, so perhaps that is not such a bad thing.

[Jim McK]

Originally posted by pclausen
thrlride, keep in mind that this work was all done back in the winter of 2000/2001. The tuners have picked up a lot of new tricks since then. To answer your question, the work was done by Agostino Racing in Toronto, who at the time were among the top tuners. I trailored the car up there and then flew back up a month later and drove it back down to Virginia, in the snow no less. They did all the mechanical work and tuning. It was done just before LS1-Edit came out as I recall.

I did brake a valve spring twice (1st one after putting some 25k on the car after the mods), and when the second one broke, I replaced all of them with duals. Right now 4th gear syncro is gone and I need to replace the slave. With all this fish tank business I've gotten myself involved in, I haven't had time to deal with that yet. Car still drives fine, I just have to remember to go from 3rd to 5th gear and not run it all the way out in each gear or the clutch sticks to the floor. Kinda keeps me out of trouble, so perhaps that is not such a bad thing.

Damn...you sound like my friend the Snowman. Do you know Doug Plette? I think Doug and his various incarnations of the Snowmobile practically live at Agostino.

[thrlride]

Originally posted by pclausen
thrlride, keep in mind that this work was all done back in the winter of 2000/2001. The tuners have picked up a lot of new tricks since then. To answer your question, the work was done by Agostino Racing in Toronto, who at the time were among the top tuners. I trailored the car up there and then flew back up a month later and drove it back down to Virginia, in the snow no less. They did all the mechanical work and tuning. It was done just before LS1-Edit came out as I recall.

I did brake a valve spring twice (1st one after putting some 25k on the car after the mods), and when the second one broke, I replaced all of them with duals. Right now 4th gear syncro is gone and I need to replace the slave. With all this fish tank business I've gotten myself involved in, I haven't had time to deal with that yet. Car still drives fine, I just have to remember to go from 3rd to 5th gear and not run it all the way out in each gear or the clutch sticks to the floor. Kinda keeps me out of trouble, so perhaps that is not such a bad thing.

Gotcha, with today's tweaks it sounded low, I didn't realize it was all done years ago.

418 at the wheels is nothing to sneeze at though!

[thrlride]

A friend on mine has a 97 z28 with a 396, port and polished lt4 heads, aftermarket cam and many, many other goodies and the best he could do was 430 at the wheels.

Big difference between the LT1 and LS1....

[mdt178]

funny scene from Mr. and Mrs Smith: Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie were driving a minivan (two door Nissan?), being chased by 3 BMW M5s. She out-drove them, and of course, in the end blew them up.
Which brings me back to the topic, the 2006 M5 with the monster engine will be another dream car for me. I'm OK with the design of the new 5s. I still have not gotten around to like iDrive yet. Still, it's gonna be a sweet ride.

[pclausen]

Originally posted by Jim McK
Damn...you sound like my friend the Snowman. Do you know Doug Plette? I think Doug and his various incarnations of the Snowmobile practically live at Agostino.

That's funny. I remember reading about snowman on corvetteforum back about that same time frame. At the time I think he was running an iron block best I recall. And I remember seeing a picture of his engine compartment packed full of snow. Mine wasn't that bad!

I picked up my ride about the same time Eugine did (EuG on the forum), and remember chatting with him and Nick about Doug. Funny stuff!

[thrlride]

I mentioned my fathers Cobra. He finally got it back from the shop so I took some shots:

[Jim McK]

Originally posted by thrlride
[B]I mentioned my fathers Cobra. He finally got it back from the shop so I took some shots.

Beautiful! Absolutly beautiful!

[thrlride]

I didn't know I had these:

His 68 427:



His 78 pace car:



The ZR1 he had:

[Crusty Old Shellback]

SWEEEEET!!

Man I'm envious of your dad.

Great pic's. Let's see some more of the cobra.

[thrlride]

LOL,

I'll see if I can get some more. Those are the only two I have.

I want to wind it out but the motor was somewhat rebuilt 30 miles ago!

[Crusty Old Shellback]

I talked to my mechanic when I was building my motor. I asked him how I should break it in and should I run it without the blower during breakin.

He told me to put the blower on and run it like I'm going to drive it. The main thing to do is break in the cam which happens during the first 5 min of run time when you start it for the very first time. Bring it up to 2000 RPM and run for 5 min. Change oil and filter and your set. Then change the oil and filter again at 500 and check for metal particles.

I did that and it's been running fine for about 6k miles. The only thing that takes a bit to break in is the rings seating. I ru straight 30 wt oil with a bottle of lucas oil addative in it. I also got rid of the oil filter bypass so ALL of the oil HAS to go thru the filter. I went with a larger filter though because of this.

Good luck and go have some fun with it.

[cecilturtle]

If I had the money, I would run to the nearest Ford dealership and buy a new GT40, hands down the most beautiful car ever made IMO. Especially since the Mach 5 hasn't been seen around for a few years, I hear Spridle stole it.

[thrlride]

Whey were rebuilding it they replace the hydro cam with a solid lifter and then basically aligned everything. They replaced the crank and bearings.

Whoever built the motor 1100 miles before did a bad job for all of this to go bad.

[pclausen]

That is one sweet Cobra! (vettes are nice too!) Am I seeing metal flakes in that beautiful blue coat of paint? Definitely try to get some more shots of it.

Years ago I dropped a 351W into a '81 F-150 whose 300 straight six threw a rod. When I fired it up for the first time, and held it at 2000 for 5 mins, my dad reached down to close the radiator drain. That was fine and well, but there was no radiator shroud, so his hand hit the fan and sliced off a chunk of skin. I kept holding the throttle open (still had 4 minutes of cam break in to do). Dad was dancing around next me and mom took him to the hospital all before I shut down the engine. They grafted some skin from under his arm and his hand looks fine now. He only blamed himself for not realizing the fan was there and insisted that I kept the engine running. He didn't want to be the cause of messing up the break-in procedure. He's funny like that.

[thrlride]

I'll try to get some more pics of it.

The paint is metal flake.

I don't know much about these cars, is that not normal?

[pclausen]

I don't think they came with metal flake in them from the factory back then, but I think it looks very nice myself.

[thrlride]

I just wish it had power steering! Boy am I spoiled.

[budhaboy]

Originally posted by pclausen
I don't think they came with metal flake in them from the factory back then, but I think it looks very nice myself.

they did. its called Guardsman Blue metallic.

[pclausen]

Wow, I didn't know they used metal flakes back then. I wonder when that type of paint was first introduced in the automotive industry?