![\"1967](\"http:\/\/www.rhoadescamaro.com\/build\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/P1080117.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nThe week of National Championships in Lincoln Nebraska starts with the ProSolo Finale – the last event in the ProSolo series – there are winners for that event by itself, but since ProSolo has points, it also determines who is the year-end class champion.\u00a0 After the Finale, the regular Solo National Championships are run – half of the people run on Tuesday\/Wednesday, the other half Thursday\/Friday – there are over 1200 entrants so it takes 4 days!<\/p>\n
For me this year, the ProSolo Finale was mainly a big test and tune event to make sure the car is ready, and the driver is warmed up for the Solo National Championships I’ll be running Thursday\/Friday.<\/p>\n
Having successfully completed the Pre-Nats Thrash of the previous post, got the car out to Lincoln with a long but smooth two-day trip.\u00a0 Unloaded the car and took these photos – the\u00a0wheels are CCW Classic-5’s – 18×9, with a lot less backspace than the Jongbloed’s I’d been running.\u00a0 The CCWs are a bit heavier but have a nice vintage look.<\/p>\n I’d signed up to run the Test ‘n Tune the Friday before the ProSolo just to make sure everything was ok and to get warmed up.\u00a0 It was blisteringly hot that day (over 100) which made doing anything a chore.\u00a0 At the test ‘n tune, on the first run, the car\u00a0wasn’t running right.\u00a0 I suspected it might be some intake tricks I’d tried, so I drove back to the paddock and undid the tricks, trying not to burn myself.\u00a0 Back at the test ‘n tune waiting to do my second run, the car stumbled a bit, then shut off!<\/p>\n That seemed strange to me, and the way it died in a not-so-sudden way, more of a stumbling death, made me think it might be fuel.\u00a0 In building the car I goofed and didn’t connect the fuel gauge sending wire, so I have no gas gauge – it’d been totally full for the\u00a0San Diego Tour\u00a0earlier in the year, but I hadn’t added any since.\u00a0 The Camaro holds 18 gallons, which means that with Sunday morning runs at El Toro, the Farmington ProSolo, and a few other miles of miscellaneous putting around and idling, the car burned 18 gallons!<\/p>\n Fortunately the fix here was easy – add gas!\u00a0 5 gallons in and it was good to go for my second test ‘n tune run.<\/p>\n On this run, something else bad was happening – there was a bad cycling rubbing sound coming from the left rear.\u00a0 I’d been interested in how things looked back there, so I had the camera watching the left rear from the outside.\u00a0 Sure enough, upon review, the axle was moving all over the place!\u00a0 Big lateral deflection, combined with axle tramp, made the rear axle look totally out of control.\u00a0 Somehow I’d been able to get away with this setup before…maybe it was the grip from these new-gen tires on concrete, maybe it was fatigue in the U-bolts holding the big sandwich together, not sure…but in any case, it was very not happy.<\/p>\n To combat this, I skipped the last two tuning runs, and headed back to the pits to get to work on the car.\u00a0 Wanted to remove the big spacer blocks from the equation.\u00a0 Since the axle perches expect a multi-leaf spring pack, and I’m running a single composite leaf, would need *some* spacer block.\u00a0 Fortunately, the central warehouse for Speedway Motors is here in Lincoln Nebraska, only a couple miles from the event site<\/p>\n From their huuuuuge warehouse, was able to get 1\/4″ and 1\/2″ spring spacer blocks, and the 1\/2″ turned out to be perfect – it snugged the plate for the driver-side watts link connection right up to the welded-on spring perch, reducing the leverage these parts had on each other significantly.<\/p>\n Saturday morning for the first set of runs I was rather apprehensive.\u00a0 It was very hot out (already in the 90’s), and the car had two failed test ‘n tune runs the previous day, and no testing on the new setup.\u00a0 To my delight, things went well.\u00a0 The car completed its Saturday morning runs without issue – though I did happen to spin on my last run.\u00a0 Times were quite a ways off the pace (about 1 second per side) but I was putting a lot of attention into the car – wanting to be sure it was running properly and healthy, and that nothing was rubbing or coming apart – instead of focusing on driving and hitting my marks.<\/p>\n Saturday afternoon was a bit of an improvement, even though it was extremely hot (100+) when we ran.\u00a0 For this session I moved the camera under the fuel tank to watch what the axle was doing at the left rear<\/a>:<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
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