 |
|
Dave's TravelBlog and Photo Gallery TravelBlog 04-09 [Previous: TravelBlog 03-09] First, I need to apologize for being late. My stepson owns some rental property that was trashed by his former tenants and in helping him, I fouled-up my back. This is a chronic problem for me and there is no predicting when I’ll hurt myself again. Consequently, I always carry a cane in my minivan, just in case this happens on a seminar day. I’m not going to write this TravelBlog chronologically. The last three seminars included Indy, Newport News and Minneapolis, in that order. I’ll report on them with Indy and Minneapolis and then cover Newport News, which also had a workshop. Indy [Photos] Indy was amazing. The seminar was hosted by Bill Carter, owner of Two Lane Performance. Bill saved the seminar by permitting me to have it in his shop, with four days notice! The previous host had closed his shop and hadn’t notified me. Shame on me for not keeping up on current events! I guess it is a sign of the times because this is the second time this seminar season that a host has closed their business before a seminar. In the first case, I was notified before they shut down the business. I owe a special thanks to Tim Donathen, who was the first to tell me that I had lost a seminar location. Tim took it upon himself to contact Bill Carter and suggest we move the seminar there and man-oh-man, am I glad he did. Bill Carter has a dream facility. His shop is very clean and huge. I’ve seen mass-production facilities that are smaller than his shop. The neat thing about his deal is that he pretty-much works alone. He’s able to keep himself busy, keep his customers happy and is able to afford a large first-class shop to work in. He must be doing something right. Besides his shop space, he’s got multiple office rooms and a great little meeting room, which is where we had the seminar. The class was small, only 11 guys, but the types of cars they had was varied and their experiences were also varied. As is the case with small seminars, this one ran a little on the long side because we had many excellent discussions throughout the day. Minneapolis [Photos] Here’s another event that defied tradition. Bryan Owen and I agreed to have this seminar after the 2009 Tour had already begun. Yet in just a couple of months, he and Scott Davison worked the phones and got 25 guys together. I always like going this far north because cats up here are very anal about car prep. As you go farther south, drag racers race more because they have better weather and they are very tough drivers. Get up north where Ice is King and people keep their stuff parked longer in the winter, when their stuff gets more attention than cars down south. Come early spring and these folks have a major case of cabin fever. True enough, I had a room full of tough racers with nice looking cars. This event was hosted by Randy Quam, who owns Competition Engines. Randy had a room that was a former retail showroom for a Macintosh Computer Store and it was perfect for what we needed. There’s another admirable quality about people in the northern climate, they are very community-oriented. In this case, the communities are the local car clubs, which provided Bryan and Scott the network to spread the word about the coming seminars. This translated into a friendly atmosphere to give a seminar in. Not only would guys joke and tease each other, but everyone was also fed so that we would not separate during the lunch break. I feel it’s always best to keep the group together because we can all, collectively, gain more from the event. Very special thanks for the hospitality to Cindy Owen, Stacy Davison and Sandy Quam for the time they invested in preparing the food and tidying-up after the seminar. I took advantage of this northern hospitality to privately develop a technique to locate the Center of Gravity in a racecar, when in a shop that has no lift. On the day after the seminar, Bryan and I met at Derek Hurd’s house and used his ’68 Firebird as a sample to develop this technique. I included pictures of this in the gallery. Newport News [Photos] It’s a little intimidating to enter into a market, with so many nearby government agencies, where the drag racers consider NASA tolerances a low standard. These guys are smart and they’re picky. Our host was Don Williams of Williams Performance Autoworks. His father, Charles, introduced me to this market. Don’s shop offers complete chassis-related services. He does fabrication, electrical, plumbing and mechanical work. He’s a very interesting guy to talk with. After all, anyone who has posted an 186,000 miles-per-second speed limit sign has got to have some fascinating quirks. His building is a little old-school compared to Bill Carters, but it has the character that comes from walls with years of memories. And with those old walls comes renovation, which is a constant part of Don’s program to upgrade his building. I owe a very special thanks to Don for fabricating some wheel stands for me so I can do CG calculations at future workshops. You’ll see these stands at work in both the Newport News gallery and the Minneapolis gallery. The unique aspect of this seminar was the degree that we covered theory. These guys stayed right with me throughout the day on Saturday and I did feel like I had a room full of rocket scientists. Once Sunday arrived and we were in the shop, they had a special appreciation for the hands-on time they got. There was a certain amount of uncertainty about this workshop. We only had two cars planned and one car was a no-show due to a death in the owner’s family. Don hustled-up a Pro Street customer who brought in a second-generation Camaro. All the rod ends on the four-link and diagonal link were right-hand thread so there was no hope to easily center the rear end, much less reduce the bind in the rear suspension. After checking against the CL and PL, the team found the car to be square within a 1/16-inch. Considering the car had always run street tires that difference was probably built into the car. The second car was an old mule, blue first-generation Camaro that had “buckets of problems.” Slight frame rail shift occurred, corner weights were a problem so we made a spring change (they weren’t the same on both sides of the rearend.) Stay Tuned! Photo Gallery During one of the breaks, shop owner Bill Carter, listened to Jeff Kilpatrick talk about his many racing exploits, which includes old NHRA Modified Racing.
Carter’s shop is expansive and his projects are interesting to look at. Here (L-R), are Brian Steward, Jason Graber and Robb Houser. Robb was particularly interesting because his day job is being the clutch man for the Matco TF Car.
These guys, (L-R) William Johnson, Scott Burge and Tim Donathen, took their break time going over the weight transfer calculations.
One of Bill Carter’s customers owns this ’75 Nova, which has seen updates from a roll bar, to ladder bar, to now, a tube-frame chassis mated to the stock front subframe. The car is full of tidy work.
Check out the firewall bracing!
Local chassis builder, former TF driver and Nitro FC builder Bruce Nilsen and Competition Engines owner Randy Quam, shared a chat before the seminar began.
All the students had plenty to eat due to the efforts of Cindy Owen, Stacy Davison and Sandy Quam. THANKS LADIES!
Big room! I was worried about the huge room sucking the sound right out of my body, so…
I arranged the tables and s in this semi-circle format and I was able to project my voice for the guys in the back rows.
On Sunday, in a private session, we took CG measurements on Dereck Hurd’s ’68 Firebird. The first thing we did was to level the scales to each other. Here, both guys are using a Speedway Engineering level indicator.
This is the part I wanted to practice. We needed to raise the axle CL 20 inches, using a floor jack that only provided about 14 inches of throw (lift.) So we placed a 6 X 6 under the centersection and raised the car, making damn-sure the caster wheels on the floor jack rolled smoothly as the horizontal wheelbase shortened in the car. You can see the stands that Don Williams, from Newport News made for us.
This is what the front of a ’68 Firebird looks like at a 10-degree angle…
And here’s what a Pontiac driver looks like at a 10-degree angle.
Newport News Thanks Don Williams for building the stands I need to do CG calculations!
Don’t cha wish…
Glenn Payne and Philip Lacy teamed-up on raising the front of the Firebird.
Normally, the first 90 minutes of the workshop is pretty busy until everyone finds their tools and gets settled down to solving their problems.
Here’s a different technique for removing the tension in the sidewalls that’s created when tires are placed on corner scales. Rather than use plastic bags to work as a bear surface, Don Williams simply cut some box tubing into width that he can use to place under the tires. Then the car is rolled onto the scales, which releases that tension in the sidewalls.
David Curtis and Dan Calahan worked together to swap the left-rear spring out of this ‘68 Camaro, while…
Glenn Payne, Philip Lacy and Jim Strong drop plumb bobs to begin the CL process.
The Camaro also got a CG study, no surprise it had a CG at about the same height as Derek Hurd’s ’68 Firebird, about 25 inches high.
Here, the Camaro team grab a bite while discussing corner weights. (L-R) Sean Curtis, Dan Calahan and Gary Hodges.
The bound-up Pontiac was not as easy to reassemble as it was to disassemble. Here, Jim Strong is seen muscling the right-rear coil-over into its mount.
Glenn Payne gave the bottom of the Pontiac a close look…
And what he saw was pretty clean for a true street-driven car.
Here’s Gary Hodges dropping a plumb line.
We always try to have one team working on CL and PL, while the other has access to the scales. Here Glenn Payne, Philip Lacy and Jim Strong align the Firebird onto the corner scales.
One final tip, when measuring the axle CL against the chassis PL, drop the plumb line off the edge of the rotor. This surface is more trustworthy than any fabricated portion of the differential housing.
|
