Ok…this has nothing to do with the C7, but I thought I’d start the 9,547th rumor!!!
This IS a very interesting video.
283 engine making over 300 HP!!!! Inboard brakes!!!! ONLY 1800 lbs!!!
Remember – “Assembled” in America is NOT the same as “Made” in America.
Thanks for reading.
Tim
I re-posted a discussion on “Would You Take A Viper Over A ZR1?” (http://wp.me/pKHNM-1nH). To me there is really no discussion to be had. There is absolutely no way I’d select a Dodge Viper for a ZR1. Heck, there’s no way I’d select a Viper over any Corvette (even the ugly, big butted C5’s). Yup, even over the horse power difference.
It is mainly the design. The Viper looks like the it’s either broken in the middle or was two cars shoved together. Check this out?
So here ya go – the curve of the hood and rake of the windshield make he look “bent” at the vertical line drawn on the fender. The bump where the side exhaust starts the bent look. The door is hinged inside what would normally be a fender brake cooling vent. Then notice the back-end – it looks familiar, yes like a Mazda. It really looks like a sports car got been by shoving a Mazda Miata in its trunk.
Now take a look at a 1992 Corvette ZR1.
Let rake in the windshield and the brake vents are as they should be!!! Great lines!!!
Collector for a 1992 Viper vs. the 1992 ZR1 is a little one sided with the Viper about $15k more than the Vette, so for investment purposes the Vipers the one to own.
Your thoughts?
Thanks for reading.
Tim
Can’t Beat this 66 Vette
This was early dawn and a few of us early birds already lined up.
It was a great day. Over 400 cars!!! I had the good look to be backed up to the Corvette Class row and right behind me was a friend with his BRAND NEW Carbon Grand Sport (see it in the other posts).
No trophies today, but a great time and a lot of beautiful cars.
Tim
Greg’s new ride.
It is a beautiful Carbon Grand Sport. Of course Greg has already tweaked the engine. (Oh…BTW it is one of only 365 produced!!!)
I opp’ed to take just one car and that was the Mustang – left the Corvette at home :^(
There were some awesome Corvettes there!!
Thanks for reading.
Tim
This is an awesome looking car. Love how this intake is mounted lower front.
3rd trip down the track doesn’t go well.
Thanks for reading.
Tim
We were lucky enough to have a cloudy morning for this month’s Cars and Coffee. The diffused light that the clouds provide makes my job really easy! Enjoy the photos.
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One of my worse fears is to over heat a car, I’m talking almost phobia status for me. I’ve had it happen all too often, with my first car ’66 Impala and various cars I’ve owned. This includes a 1988 Toyota (new at the time). It makes a horrible mess and depending the composition of your it can warp heads and effects electrical work, under hood plastics and even paint.
Avoiding this in one of my number one goals. When I designed my ’70 Mustang’s engine (w/dealer installed A/C – which means that the condenser is in front of the radiator) I picked a triple core aluminum radiator for the cooling plant. I want my cars running cool. I have ever had an over heating with the Mustang and that includes trips to the drag strip. When I owned my 84 C4 I avoid the problem as well. One of the major concerns with Corvettes is….well…let me have Steve, one of my two constant readers show you.
Tim, My vette was running pretty warm about 3 weeks after I bought it. Nice and cool at highway speeds.
The picture shows what I'm sure is a full 22 years of crap on the radiator. Runs at normal temps now. Lots and lots of bolts on that fan shroud. Ha Ha. Steve Thanks Steve. This is the number one place to first look if your Corvette begins running warm. Thanks for reading. Tim
Posted By John Katz, June 25, 2012 in E-News, Engine & Drivetrain
Part 1 http://wp.me/pKHNM-1cL
Part 2 http://wp.me/pKHNM-1cL
From www.hotrodandrestoration.com
Switch Shifters 
With manual transmissions in demand, it isn’t surprising to find that a fair number of vehicles—particularly muscle-era vehicles—that left the factory with an automatic transmission are being rebuilt with a manual. Frederick estimated that about 60 percent of American Powertrain’s classic muscle car customers are replacing an automatic transmission with a manual.
“[The conversion] is time-consuming, but not terribly complicated,” Frederick said. “Most of the parts bolt in.”
“It isn’t for the faint-of-heart or for anyone short on patience, but it’s do-able,” Hill added. “It’s just a matter of working through the process.”
Obviously you’ll need a pedal assembly; fortunately, according to Hill, there are a lot of aftermarket units that work quite well.
“That also gives you the option of using a hydraulic release bearing instead of a mechanical clutch linkage, which, depending on the application, can have some advantages,” Hill said. “It’s going to take a longer or shorter drive shaft. It’s going to take a different yoke on that driveshaft. The power bushing in the motor for the transmission input shaft may have to be changed. The starter could be affected by the diameter of the flywheel you put into the vehicle.
“You start at the back of the crankshaft and start matching componentry as well as possible—and if you can’t match it, then you have to compensate for it,” Hill continued. “I don’t think we’ve ever run into something we couldn’t convert, as long as we’re talking about American muscle.”
Many of the same issues crop up even when swapping one manual for another—for example, the customer who has a 454 and a Muncie and wants to put a modern six-speed in it.
Like many other projects, it’s significantly easier with older (i.e., pre-computer) hardware. If either the engine or the transmission came with computer controls, it gets a little more involved. And keep in mind that even some modern manuals now have computer controls—the GM transmission that comes with the LS engine, for example, with its skip-shift function.
Of course, some customers will want to go the other way and replace a factory manual with a new, high-tech automatic.
“It’s most important to make sure you have all the correct components—and that you make the finished job look appealing to the customer,” said Poff of TCI. “It’s the mounting that’s most likely to give you trouble.”
According to the experts, you’ll need to ensure that you have the right crossmembers and that there’s enough room inside the tunnel.
“There is no one-size-fits-all solution; every application is unique,” added Poff. “But once the physical installation is accomplished, it’s pretty straightforward to make everything operational.”
Either way, Nichols suggested finding out from the customer how critical it is to keep the car looking original, versus the cost to locate and install all of the correct original components.
As with so much else in hot rodding, the best results generally come from purchasing and installing complete systems.
“That goes for any product from any company in this business,” Frederick said. “We say, ‘Look, we have a turnkey kit. We figured it all out, and all you to do it plug and play.’ Buy it all from one source and you know all the parts are going to work together.”
Thanks for reading.
Tim
Posted By John Katz, June 25, 2012 in E-News, Engine & Drivetrain
From www.hotrodandrestoration.com
Stick Shifting
Meanwhile, manual-shift enthusiasts are upgrading to modern units packing more heavy-duty horsepower capacity—and more gear ratios.
“The generation that is now in their 60s can afford to build the cars that they wanted to build when they were in high school,” said Dick Hill, sales manager for Centerforce Clutches in Prescott, Arizona. And while those folks are not usually looking to build a race car, “they do want a four- or five-speed manual transmission,” he said.
More surprisingly, the trend extends beyond muscle cars and into traditional hot rods as well.
“I have friends who are building Deuce roadsters and they are putting LS motors in them, with a five- or six-speed manual transmission,” Hill said. “There are people who put Cadillac V-8s in 1949–1951 Mercs, and they want a stick. They want a three-pedal car. So that, too, is contributing to the growth of the high-performance clutch market.”
Hot rodders who already own or have owned multiple cars are now looking for something different.
“It’s like the people who buy their first Harley, they want it with every doo-dad they can get, where older bikers are turning back to the Knucklehead or even Flathead motors,” Hill said. “It’s the same with the hot rodder who already has two or three or four toys in the garage. The newest toy is going to be a stick car. And it’s for the same reason that someone will buy a brand-new Camaro, put 1,000 horsepower in it, and drive it on the street while blowing cold air and playing tunes. They want a manual not because they’re going to race it, but because they can have it. That’s what we hear all the time: ‘Because I can.’”
Rating the Ratios 
American Powertrain of Cookeville, Tennessee, sells a broad range of high-performance drivetrain components, from complete crate engines to driveshafts and pedals. The company also distributes Tremec transmissions.
“The hot market right now is for the Magnum six-speed in a classic muscle car,” said Gray Frederick. “The Magnum is Tremec’s replacement for the T-56 is the aftermarket version of what you would get in a new Shelby GT500 or Camaro SS.” Frederick added that people are putting them into classic Mustangs Cougars, Camaros Firebirds, Barracudas and Challengers.
“The cars that people spend the most money on are the cars that [are] getting Magnum six-speeds,” Frederick added.
The Magnum is available with two sets of ratios, with the closer-ratio unit being the more popular of the two.
“The wide-ratio box has a 0.5 overdrive, which is very tall; a lot of engines can’t pull that much overdrive,” Frederick said.
But when it comes to overdrive, isn’t more better?
“That’s a myth,” Frederick said. “You can say, ‘Alright, I’m at the ragged edge of my cam, where if I’m on flat ground I can hold 70 mph all day.’ In a perfect world, that would be great. [I]n the real world, at some point you’re going to have to slow down for construction, and then speed up again; or you’re going to hit a rise, or something else that causes your engine to run out of breath. [T]hen you’re going to have to shift and that’s what you’re trying to avoid.
“You want to put it in sixth gear and leave it sixth gear,” he continued. “You don’t want to run down the highway at your cam’s peak performance, which would be 3,000–4,000 rpm. But you do want an rpm where your engine can pull your car up hills, and pass without dropping a gear. If every time you put your foot in the gas the engine lugs and you have to shift, that becomes very inefficient. We’re helping the customer understand that, even on the highway, you want to stay in your powerband. Otherwise the overdrive doesn’t do you any good.”
Frederick recommends the wide-ratio unit mostly for torquey big blocks.
“A Pontiac 455 will pull a stump out of the ground at 800 rpm; it doesn’t have trouble pulling a car at whatever rpm you’re running,” he said. “A Mopar 440 and some other big blocks with a lot of low-end grunt can usually handle the taller overdrive, too. And of course we’re dealing with a lot of electronically fuel-injected (EFI) engines now, and most of them have computers that can cope with low rpm very well.
They can retard the spark, they can meter the fuel differently, they can do all kinds of things.
“We help the customer choose a rearend ratio and a gear set that’s going to give them the best performance, from top to bottom,” Frederick said.
Pedal Pressure Another concern, according to Hill of Centerforce Clutches, is the physical effort once associated with a high-performance clutch.
“Our customers all ask, ‘How stiff is the pedal?’” he said. “That’s why we’ve been very successful, whether it’s a single-disc clutch for mild upgrade vehicle, or dual-disc unit that can hold 1,300 lbs./ft. of torque, we’ve been very successful in making them streetable.”
The average consumer, Hill said, could climb into a car with a Centerforce dual-disc clutch, push the pedal to the floor, and not realize that the car was modified.
“[T]he person who has a $75,000 Camaro or Corvette wants race-car performance without the race-car effort, so this is pretty significant,” he said.
Still, selecting the optimal clutch for any particular application is a complex task best left to experts.
“There are different linings and different friction materials on the pressure plate,” Hill said. “Heat is a factor. The first thing you have to know is how the vehicle is going to be used. Drag racers realize they are going to drive their car until they break it, where hot rodders don’t beat their cars up as bad. They are very proud of their cars and they want to drive them, not break them. And unless the car has been tubbed, a street machine generally runs smaller tires, so you want to tune the clutch for that.”
McLeod Racing of Placentia, California, offers its RST and RXT Street Twin clutches, both double-disc units that hold up to 1,000 horsepower, with the pedal pressure of a stock clutch, said President Paul Lee. Contributing to this low effort—and to easier installation—are McLeod’s hydraulic release bearings, “which fit most applications, replacing worn and/or outdated mechanical linkages,” he said.
“We’re selling more clutches for vehicles from the 1960s and 1970s, and installing a new hydraulic clutch in one of these cars can significantly reduce pedal effort,” said Rich Barsamian, national sales manager for Advanced Clutch Technology (ACT) in Lancaster, California. The company also offers a wide range of clutches for GM, Ford and Mopar applications, each rated for torque at the crankshaft.
When installing an aftermarket clutch, Barsamian suggested, “be sure to use the right amount of lube on the input shaft—it is possible to use too much. Be sure parts are free from dirt and oil, and washed in a non-petroleum-based cleaner such as acetone, alcohol or brake cleaner. Be sure to follow the correct torque and tightening sequence when installing the clutch cover—and do not use impact tools.”
Thanks for reading Part 3 coming up.
