Our 79 Monte Carlo- Pro Touring Project

[ssn696]

Ramey, thanks for making the video! Makes me want to run my car when it's back together again. I enjoyed the sounds associated with shifting through the gears with a manual transmission. The best part was the ear-to-ear grin that must have been squeezing your helmet out of shape - thus the familiar squeaking noises. Some blue painter's tape on the visor edges may help, although I bet you didn't notice. It was fun seeing you get bolder as you made more laps! Good job respecting the hardware you worked so hard to prep for the race, and not redecorating the annoying Firebird with your fenders.

 

[UMI Sales]

Thanks for the onboard video and you did a great job on driving the car. Your hands didn't play too much with the wheel so the car seemed to be behave properly. What gear were you running in the rear. That firebird in front of lost alot of speed in the corners but got a good jump on you on the exit and into the straight. I'm surprised your 4 link was able to push the firebird with the leaf suspension around the corners. Someone set your car up really nice. Did anyone take the tire temps after the race?

Thanks for the kind words! The car is pretty nice and stable even at 123mph. The rear gear is 3.42 with the TKO600 close ratio road race trans. Our rear suspension system works pretty awesome. It's currently the Viking Crusader high rebound shocks and 150 lb coilover rear springs. The relocation brackets were in the top hole to help forward bite but not induce roll steer. Rear Pro-Tour bar is unhooked.

 

[clean8485]

Any photos or info yet on the clutch pedal or linkage setup that you're using on the car?

 

[UMI Sales]

Ramey, thanks for making the video! Makes me want to run my car when it's back together again. I enjoyed the sounds associated with shifting through the gears with a manual transmission. The best part was the ear-to-ear grin that must have been squeezing your helmet out of shape - thus the familiar squeaking noises. Some blue painter's tape on the visor edges may help, although I bet you didn't notice. It was fun seeing you get bolder as you made more laps! Good job respecting the hardware you worked so hard to prep for the race, and not redecorating the annoying Firebird with your fenders.

Ha! Thanks for the comments. I should have taken the wind noise tape off the RePlay camera so the engine would drown out the squeaking. I can hear it a bit, yes, but it's not too bad. This was the last session so I didn't push it.

 

[UMI Sales]

Any photos or info yet on the clutch pedal or linkage setup that you're using on the car?

Thanks for the question. We are using this exact pedal:

http://www.sickspeedmonte.com/Pedal.htm

The only modification we made was to remove the foot pad and weld on another one so it visually matched the brake pedal.

We used a stock LS1 master cylinder. On the master cylinder we removed the disconnect and installed the -4 line connector so we could us a Tilton 6000 series throwout bearing.

It all works pretty nicely.

 

[pontiacgp]

I cut my brake pedal to match the F body pedal I used. As for the rear sway bar you know as well as I do none of the race cars have rear sway bars. I don't know if you heard but Nascar started testing the rear sway bar on cup cars a few years ago but I never heard anything after. For your front bar are you using a 1 piece or a 3 piece and do you know the rating, that is if you want to reveal it.

 

[UMI Sales]

I cut my brake pedal to match the F body pedal I used. As for the rear sway bar you know as well as I do none of the race cars have rear sway bars. I don't know if you heard but Nascar started testing the rear sway bar on cup cars a few years ago but I never heard anything after. For your front bar are you using a 1 piece or a 3 piece and do you know the rating, that is if you want to reveal it.

We are using our one piece traditional 1.250 front bar. Nothing fancy yet. Just good ol' regular UMI stuff. On paper the rate is 496 lb/in.

For our rear bar on auto-x, we have a prototype thin wall 3/4" PT bar which helps the car rotate but only has around 200 lb/in rate. We actually have the 3/4", a 7/8" and our standard 1" so we have a lot of tuning ability.

1" makes the car nice and flat on the street but sometimes we need just a little bit less.

 

[pontiacgp]

I agree with you on a track not to run a rear bar. It's difficult enough to set a car up, especially a road course, without having to throw a rear bar into the equation.

 

[UMI Performance]

The new Bowler Tremec 5-speed is working very well so far, we have completed three events and done well at all three. I am behind on updates but I'll start with this past weekend.

Our Monte participated in the Ohio Muscle Car Challenge held at Pitt Race this past weekend. The event included Friday night Track Cross, Saturday all day road course and Sunday autocross. We were able to take our G-Body 2 full seconds faster this year on the road course than last year, we are very happy about that. For this year we also running the Bridstone RE71R tires and we are having great luck with them.

 

[pontiacgp]

Those Bridgstone tires have a 200 treadware, they must stick like glue