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The wife drove it just once, back from the local shop, and hasn’t driven it since!
It was exactly two weeks later that I lowered the ride with some Eibach springs and had a Flomaster cat back exhaust fitted and a month later I took it upto Santa Pod on a Street Racer Sunday. Hooked.
In 2004, following several minor modifications trying to get that extra little bit of power from it, I eventually ran an 11.65@117 with a 1.57 short time…not too shoddy for what was basically still a stock internals engine. But I had nowhere to go now….. there are precious few people in the UK that had experience of the new LS1 engine (that was stock in the Camaro) and even in the US it was still a relatively new engine for performance builders and somewhat limiting in terms of where I could go with it at the moment.
Fortunately one of the people I’d got to know while trying to squeeze a bit more from the car was Jon Webster at Webster Race Engineering who quietly guided me in the right direction and suggested some viable options, the most important of which was to sort out the back end first and make it strong enough to withstand whatever levels of power I ended up throwing at it, now or in the future. The car went to WRE in September 04, right after the final round of the Street Racer Series, for a full Pro Street conversion; back half, cage, tubs the works - even a towing hitch to tow the support trailer behind me to race meets!
The plan was to build a car with good street manners but which could also compete amongst the top runners of Street Eliminator.
As the work commenced on cutting up the car and fitting the cage, tubs etc I busied myself collecting the various other parts that I wanted from a couple of dealers in the States that I had got to know quite well. LS1Speed Inc in Illinois supplied the Madman manual steering rack, the only aftermarket unit for a 4th gen fbody and the BMR lightweight front suspension units.
Following a trip to the World Street Nationals in Orlando, and the very helpful Eddie at American Motorsports, I returned with suitcases bulging with Autometer gauges, pumps, sender unit etc etc.
The car was taken to the Extreme Wheels show in February by WRE as a “work in progress” where it received a lot of positive comments as well as a few “who in their right mind would cut up a new car?” type comments. Once on its wheels and the big BFG rubbers the car had a good stance about it and looked very tough.
Go to The Build Up page to see the pictures.
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