Fire in the hole! We didn't run it for long, though, just long enough to make sure we had everything hooked up right. After a short run, we shut it down and looked for leaks. None were found, so we loaded up the Camaro and shipped it back to Best of Show Coachworks in San Marcos, CA, for the final touches and missing sheetmetal. You can find a short video of the car firing up on www.popularhotrodding.com. | 
Back at the body shop, we re-hung the fenders so we could figure out the front wheel offset. Penny will be running Toyo Proxes RA1 R-compound tires. Since we had the tire, we were able to nail the right size. We came up with 18x9 for the front wheels (with a 6.5-inch backspace) with a 275/35ZR18 tire. This still gives us a decent turning radius. The rear Toyo RA1s are 335/30ZR18s. | 
If you remember our subframe story (see "Framed!" Dec. '06) we installed Chris Alston's Varishocks into our front C5 suspension. Now we took the time to install matching coilover shocks in the rear. The double-adjustable shocks will make tuning a breeze. The springs are 9-inch 210-lb units. |
The mounting points of the new C5 suspension sit farther back than the factory control arms. This means we needed to trim the inner fenders just a bit to clear the back of the upper control arms. | 
Looks almost like a car again. The hood was installed with DSE's new billet hinges and it should be noted that while they're mostly cosmetic, they do make adjusting the hood a ton easier. We also installed DSE's radiator core-support closeout. This cleans up the front of the bay and helps push more air though the radiator. Now we just need to fabricate an air intake and tune the engine on a chassis dyno. Testing it at Fontana, our regular test venue, is just around the corner. | |