Getting closer........

[Jim Nilsen]

I don't know why the first video didn't work but I posted another and the title is,

The CORMARO2

I am going to try and post it up here, hope it shows up.

[John Wright]

[Jim Nilsen]

The 2nd one worked so I will try the 1st again.

Don't know why it won't come up?

[Jim Nilsen]

Thanks John, I'll try a couple more. There is a 3 and 4 video with the same name now that should come up.

The first one might just be on the edge of making it but it says it was successful loading?

[John Wright]

Sweet!...it sounds good.

[Motown 454]

I just tried and got number 3 . But 4 is not up yet. Sounds good Jim.

[Jim Nilsen]

Went for a drive and gave a couple of rides to some friends and had some fun. The concensus from the riders is that it is smoother than and quieter inside than they thought it would be. It was cooler out today and the inside was nice and warm and we opened the vents to cool down, the need for a heater is so far no problem without one.

Found a parking lot and got the brakes warmed up and got them to lock up with reasonable pressure. The pedal feel was good and the pads definately work better when heated up.

Got rid of the noises that were bothering me with the shocks and only one left to go. I think it is the temporary hanger for the exhaust letting the pipes rattle once in awhile.

The cornering is awesome and it stays real flat. Hopefully the front end alignment when I get it done will make everything better and not worse. I have quite a bit of camber in the rear and it stays put and tracks well.

I got more programming done on the racepak today thanks to Donny at Racepak. Having them be able to log on to my cumputer is so awesome.

Still waiting for the tuner to get me a program that is better.

All in all it is getting better everytime I go out.

Tommorow will be another nice day they say and I hope to get more done and maybe some tuning myself to see if I can make it better on my own.

[Motown 454]

Glad its working out for you . You worked hard and deserve some fun time. Ride on!

[nvr2fst]

Jim,
Good to see most of the little things are being addressed and your cruising around. Love the bold yellow with the vette wheels.
Get as much seat time as you can winter right around the corner!

[Jim Nilsen]

Good and bad today so I will start with the bad news....

When I was programming my racepak yesterday the lap top slipped and fell onto the usb cable and bent the port and now it doesn't work. I have 2 other usb ports and my racepak and everrything else works thru them but the Accel DFI. Talke to Dave at accel and he doesn't know what to do and since my version is 3.1 and all of the fixes that would seemingly work won't because of the older version. To update the ecu it will cost $245 and probably $300 by the time it's done. Maybe someone with a bit more computer skills can get the ports to work? I need to upload a program on monday that is coming from the tuner and may need to borrow a laptop if I can't get mine to communicate.

THE GOOD NEWS......

Racepak is awesome, Donny hooked up and got me the newest version in less than 1/2 an hour and it took me from 2.0 to 12.0 and the latest and greatest of everything. I only have to program my accel g's and my fuel level now and I will be complete on my gauges to be fully functional. Next tank of gas and a bit of tilting on the gauge cluster and it will be good to go.

That being done, my speedo reads good on both the gps and the Stewart Warner speedo. The SW speedo is pretty accurate to the gps but seems to go from being just a percent or 2 above or below at times.I will use the gps most of the time except at the track when I will be using the space for other info.

NOW FOR THE BEST NEWS.......

Found a parking lot and did some circles to check lateral G's and left hand turns got to .95 G's and it was still gripping but was starting to make the tires yell for help and the right hand was 1.03 G's and just a bit of tire squeal and still holding.

With a better alignment it may do better possibly? I have the extra camber now that is more of a race setting for sure, so we will have a baseline now to judge by.

The car handles great and with a good tune is going to be a lot of fun. I know that it will do at least 1 G in the corners no problem and I only have 255-50's on it now.

The brakes keep getting better and when I get the accel and deccel G settings in the racepak I will be able to know the stopping force.

All in all not a bad day.

YEHAAAAAAA 1 G is AWESOME.

It felt as good as the ride in Bad Penny with Dave driving!!!!!

[John Wright]

Sorry to hear about the slip....but it's good to hear about the grip!....LOL

[Jim Nilsen]

This last week has been one for just figuring out what to do with the communication from my laptop to the ECU. I am really not too happy with the alternatives and the disappointment with ACCEL continues. Upon a lot of reflection I wonder how many other kits were as messed up as mine out of the box? I have had my moments where I just want to throw out the damn ACCEL and get something different but the cost of that is way too much compared to reflashing the ECU with the new program and hope that it cures the communication problem with the laptop at the same time?

Plans for this week are to get an alignment done and hopefully get connected to the ECU and get a good tune so I can really rev it up.

I am going to make up a string setup to do alignments and will post pics as I go. Matt is coming by with his alignment tools for camber and caster. If all goes well I will be able to do my own alignments in the future.

Back to the little stuff and maybe the big stuff will not seem so bad?

[Jim Nilsen]

Here is the setup I made from $25 worth of parts from menards and a 1.5 in. piece of aluminum round stock 8in. long and some drilling & tapping.

Matt gave me the idea from a link online on do your own alignment. They wanted a bit more than I care to pay so 4 hrs worth of work and here it is.

With a bit more refining of the mounts they will be able to bolt and unbolt from the bumper easily.

Hopefully the tuner ,the weather and everything else will come together on wednesday for the car to be able to reve up and drive.

Here are the pics of the basic setup for the alignment.

[Jim Nilsen]

Matt came over today and I got my first lesson on doing an alignment. I forgot to take a few pics of the setup but it work really well for the money invested and it will be something that can go on and off with ease with a coulpe of finishing touches.

The front end would only allow about 7/8 degree camber and close to 1.75 degrees caster. It would have taken a lot of work to get it to have more of both on one side so we opted to just get them matched for now.

We took it out for a spin and it was not running so good today with the fixed timing. The plugs could have been fouled a bit but we got to test the alignment a bit and we were turning .97 g in the right hand corners and cold leafy pavement. The car still tracks nice from what it seems with less camber. There was a lot of camber in all of the settings before and with less it seemed to slide a bit more up front but it could have been the pavement more than anything.

After Matt left I went to a friends and told him about my laptop/ecu problem and he let me use one of his old laptops and it will communicate with the ecu and that really makes me happy. Now I can load my program from the tuner as soon as he gets it done, he has been swamped with other things so he said by the weekend he should have a tune for me.

I have a few things to do and check before we get the tune and it is keeping me down to slow speeds and no torque so the trans is getting broke in the way it is supposed to at the least and other things could use the breakin time too.

Now that I can commumicate with the ecu I feel a whole lot better about it all. It was really distressing to not be able to try anything to get the tune better.

So that's it for now and maybe tommorow will get me a lot further.

[Jim Nilsen]

I just got done changing the plugs and resetting the lash to .035 and it likes the extra lash a whole lot more, the next step is to go to .040 and see if that is even better. I can go all the way to .050 with the cam I have but I don't think it will need much more than the .040.

Going for a ride with a friend in about an hour to see if it can do better than the 1.03 g's it did with the extra camber. I am thinking it will be about the same but the pavement is a bit cooler so we will see?


The car is going to be awesome when it can lite it up to 6000 rpm.

[John Wright]

Jim...try to warm the tires but don't over heat them...the grip with street tires starts falling off pretty quick once they get too hot....and it takes some time to get them to recover. just my $0.02

Glad to hear that the old laptop will talk with the ecm. I was hoping that your tuner would run his program through his laptop in real time and then once he worked it out as best as he can get it...then burn a new program for your ecm.

[protour73]

I love the detail of your updates Jim. I will make point of a trip up to Rockford in the spring, I'd love to check out all of your well detailed work on the car!!!

[Jim Nilsen]

I love the detail of your updates Jim. I will make point of a trip up to Rockford in the spring, I'd love to check out all of your well detailed work on the car!!!

I will look forward to the visit. It's always fun to get together with PT members and share experiences and our cars.

The best thing is if you bring another YELLOW Camaro into the neighborhood we can out number the others 2 to 1 ,lol.

[Jim Nilsen]

I just talked to the tuner this morning and he said he is going to send me the tune later today, YEHAAAAAAAA.

I just hope I don't have any issues with the size of the file and it getting thru. i have had enough issues with pics and videos going thru and I don't think the file size of a program is any bigger than a picture but if it has other problems I won't get it. I am not really familiar with putting files on a disc from an email so that will be a learning experience.

I also hope the laptop I am borrowing will get it in the ecu with no communication errors. If all goes well I am looking forward to the first time I can put the pedal to the metal and feel what full throttle is like.

Wish me luck I need all of it I can get.

[Jim Nilsen]

The weekend didn't bring me all it was supposed to as far as getting the tune in my email but I made progress on a noise that I thought I had fixed and then it would return and leave. I found it to be the shock moving on the bushing and allowing the metal part of the shock to rattle against the shock mount. Now that I have the thing spaced on both sides so it can't move the noise and other noise i thought I had have completely gone away. the telegraghing of the noise showed up in the strangest and scariest of places.

With the noises gone and the warm weather and sunshine giving me more opportunity to drive it, the car is working really well and I started to get on it a bit with confidence. The car is geared just like I engineered it to be and I will be able to use 2nd at the autocross where others were using 1st and hitting the rev limiter. I can get off the line with a lot of control over the tire spin and will be able to go to 36 mph at 6000 rpm and when I go to 2nd it is right in the sweet spot of the torque curve. The gears go in 30 mph increments all the way to 185 mph at 6000 rpm in 6th with a 26 in. tall tire. With a taller tire and not much of a taller tire the speed would go to 200mph just like I had designed it to. I totally love the incremental stepping of the gears and the ability to choose which way to shift according to the next corner or straight away.

I feel I can now move on to some of the things that need to get finished but was not wanting to have to go backwards to fix things.

I will try to get a video from inside the car while going thru the gears. When the car can go to 6 grand it will be just what I was looking for and the late model stock car engine is really liking the gears too.