Wanted to give you guys a short update on the ol' Green Machine. We have been working on a couple odds and ends in the off season to get ready to put in work at events all through the warmer months. First, the setbacks. Last year we had all the power we could ask for but ran into a couple issues that basically cut our season in half. Long lead times on the previous clutch put us behind at the beginning of the season, and shortly after installation the new fried clutch putting us back in the garage waiting for a replacement. The long lead times seemed to be due to the Jerico transmission being a bit of a blacksheep due to spline count and not very common. We ended up going to Centerforce for a Triple Disk unit spec'd out to our requirements. We have had luck with similar units in our 71' Camaro, so it was a logical switch. Secondly we had some damage to one of our Weld wheels that parked the car for that weekend and pushed us to running some mismatched rear wheels we had laying around. Wouldn't be the Green Machine if it were pretty, so nothing new. No test miles on the new Clutch yet, as we are waiting till spring hits and the roads are cleaned up here in Central PA.
For wheels this season we are sticking with the Weld S77's in 18" x 9.5" in the front and ordered 18" x 11" for the rear. This year we are going to run a staggered setup with 275/35r18's out front and 315/30r18's out back. The car seems to respond well to the 275's up front and we have found it likes corner turn in with this setup. The 275 will also allow us to run the Green Machine in the Street Machine (SM) Class at Goodguys events, while our Camaro and LeMans will be running in Pro class with 315's squared. The fronts that we are reusing have seen much better days so I polished them back out the best I could.
With what is looking to be 4 race cars running for this season I plan to run the Green Machine at any local event I can get to this year, as long as the car and myself are both in town. Keep an eye out for updates as we get closer to Spring.
Dave
UMI Performance