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1968 Chevy Camaro Bushings - EscalationWe Spent The Summer Sorting Out And Fine-Tuning Our '68 Project Car. From the February, 2010 issue of Camaro Performers By Steven Rupp Photography by Steven Rupp
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Call it "keeping up with the Joneses," or even chalk it up with not being able to leave well enough alone. No matter how you look at it, the necessary task of refining and dialing in a car is a long (although fun), process. It's also a very important one if you want your Camaro to be a true performer. We see it all the time; a newly-built car hits the streets, and even though it's filled with the best parts available, it fails to impress at the track. But it's not the fault of the parts, or the builder. The cold, hard truth is that it's in need of some sorting out. Spring rates need to be dialed in, shock or air settings adjusted, and a host of unforeseen gremlins taken care of. Things that looked great on paper, proved to be problematic in the 3D world, and systems that work great on the street, falter or flat out fail when subjected to the rigors of track use. We had been running an electric... We had been running an electric pump for years without any issues, but the problem is that it pumps the same volume at 6,000 rpm as it does at idle. Since we spin our engine hard, we decided to move back to a mechanical pump and opted for this sweet, high-flowing (and good looking) unit from Edelbrock. There's a reason why GM spent millions of dollars and countless hours getting the new '10 Camaro ready for street duty. Every part on a car needs to work harmoniously together to reliably produce a ride capable of taking all the abuse we tend to heap on them. When you're talking about a custom-built car, like one of our classic Camaros, the task is twice as hard. Often we're trying to integrate aftermarket parts from a variety of companies. This is why any car typically evolves from being done enough to cruise around the block, to done enough to tear up a racetrack or drive across the country. It's a process as basic to hot rodding as the actual building of the car. Our '68 project, Bad Penny, is no exception. It seemed like the more we beat on the car, the more kinks we found in its armor. But rather than bemoan the problems, we set about addressing them. The result is a better overall car, both in terms of performance, and reliability. After all, cars, much like Rome, aren't built in a day.  Staying with our trend of...  Staying with our trend of ditching unwanted heat, we had AFCO Racing add an oil cooler to our aluminum radiator. Oil pumps out of our Canton pan, through the radiator, and then cooled oil flows into our remote K&N filter and back into our 402 stroker.  One thing that has always...  One thing that has always plagued our project car was the lack of shock travel. Over the summer we ran the car at several tracks and found that, under hard acceleration or hard cornering, our shocks were bottoming out. David Pozzi, of Pozzi Racing, came up with the idea to raise our rear shock mounts. The first step was to fab up some mounts.  The mount was then welded...  The mount was then welded to the top of our Watt's link cross brace. David also notched the rear frame to give the new shock more space. As for the shocks, they are Bilstein units custom valved by Race Car Dynamics. In addition to being longer, they are set to work with our new suspension changes. We combined the shocks with a set of Chassisworks 310-pound springs.  There was nothing wrong with...  There was nothing wrong with our old brakes, but Baer is sponsoring a braking event at this year's Optima Invitational and asked us if we would like to try out their new 6P brake kit, so we decided to give them a try. Since we had never hooked up our old parking brake system, we ditched it completely. This saved us 6 lbs. of unsprung weight, and made our new 14-inch rotors lighter than our old 13-inch rotors with the integral brake drum.  The fronts were a tight fit,...  The fronts were a tight fit, very tight. But the Baer 6P calipers managed to clear our Forgeline SO3 wheels thanks to a 1/8-inch spacer from Pfadt Race Engineering. Due to the different piston sizes, we also moved up to a 1-inch bore Wilwood master cylinder.  The Baer system was loaded...  The Baer system was loaded up with a set of great street pads, but since we were prepping for some track time, we decided to upgrade. After talking with Todd Miller at Hawk Performance we were swayed into running their DTC-30 pads on all four corners. Since most of our events were set to be short, we needed a pad that would have great low-temp bite, yet stand up to the road course thrash.  One thing we did right after...  One thing we did right after last year's Optima Street Car Invitational, was add a rear sway bar. Of course nobody made one for our three-link system, so David Pozzi modified a Hotchkis second-gen Camaro bar. He even found a way to add in seven points of adjustability.  We had been beating the ever-loving...  We had been beating the ever-loving crap out of our car over the summer and decided to replace all the fluids. The rear got new gear oil from Currie, the power steering system got Red Line synthetic, the brake system got Wilwood high temp, and the engine got nearly 8 quarts of luscious Torco synthetic racing oil.  Lastly, to save a little weight,...  Lastly, to save a little weight, we decided to try out Optima's new 26-lb. Group 51 battery. Its compact and lightweight design is just what we needed. To secure it in place, Eddie Motorsports sent us over one of their billet hold downs. They even engraved it with the official "Bad Penny" logo.
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