Hello,

I just bought a nice low mileage 2002 Camaro SS. I have owned a fox body Mustang in the past (when I was in college and didn't have two nickels to rub together) and I knew alot about road racing and more mild street hard cornering performance suspension in that car. I intended to buy a fox body Mustang but kinda got talked into an LS1 Camaro, and I'm glad I got the Camaro.

For the fox Mustang, getting information on road race/hard cornering Mustang setups was real easy...seemed like every Mustang message board had a road race/auto cross sub forum, there were two companies that produced road race suspension "packages" (and raced them in the American Iron series...you could just read on their website and get a feel for what was out there and how it would work,) and corner-carvers.com was dominated by Mustang suspension discussion.

For the Camaro, I'm not seeing as much information on what can be done to the Camaro in order to get it to turn really well. I see Strano and Spohn for suspension components, but alot of those look to me like drag racing suspension pieces.

Can anybody point me to discussions of LS1 Camaro road racing suspensions, write ups of cars setup for the track, or something similar?

 

You'll want to check out the road racing section of this forum (scroll most of the way down), but a better source is frrax.com

 

ffraax would be the place to read up at.....

 

Thanks for the link/site guys.

The other thing I'm gonna do/started doing tonight was search for all posts by Sam Strano...learned alot in just an hour of reading, and found that I'm only 1.5 hours away from where his business is located. Seems like he's the guy.

 

Sam has championships to back up his knowledge and he sells you what works not what's most expensive. He also owns a mustang that he kicks *** with. I buy all my suspension and brake stuff from Sam.

 

thanks sheikSS...that's the direction I'm headed. Learned alot in one night by reading the threads he's been involved in recently and the road race forums...and it shines through (from reading his posts) that he's not just trying to sell stuff.

 

Probably the best handling solid axle car I've been in was the GM High Tech Performance project STi Killer. It's running all our stuff and it just works well. He has impressed more than his fare share of instructors and people lucky enough to drive it around Sebring.

http://www.gmhightechperformance.com...ade/index.html

Car has come even further along since this story. He's getting over a buck-forty at Sebring and then throwing the car into uneven surface corners at speeds up to 80-85mph and the car stays tight and glued.

 

I've always found it a coincidence that just prior to or immediately following a "feature story" in these periodicals, that a vendor, whose products were prominently displayed in the articel, had a big advertising spread.

For example, in a tire shootout, Nitto or Toyo or Michelin or Hoosier would kick *** in the "testing" conducted and then magically have a big advertising spread.

Not saying this occurred in this particular instance, just reminded me of why I stopped subscribing to those rags.

 

We've maintained a consistent advertising schedule with GMHTP and several other magazines. GMHTP is also filled with most of our major competitors. In this case, the parts were tested accordingly and the parts happened to work quite well on one of the most complex and challenging high-speed road courses in the United States, if not the world. Not saying it never happens in those magazines but it's easy to write a good story when the parts perform. ;-)

 

Do you want to actually use it for road racing? Or is this just your street vehicle? Everyone should have a "goal"

 

Funny, isn't that what you guys said about the "old" BMR springs with tokico shocks and heavily miss matched swaybars (wasn't it like 32mm/25mm?)?

I wonder how much quicker the "STi killer" could have gone with a better matching rear swaybar, 17" wheels, and a Fays2 watts link...

 

I'm not going to get into a huge debate. The fact is I've been doing this a while, with proven parts. And I too have had my stuff on magazine cars, and went a hell of a lot faster with my stuff than without. I've never changed my spring rates, I've never changed my bar sizes once I dialed into what I found worked (which not everyone can say). I do test and played with many, many things.

In the end, everyone will tell you they know best because we all sell parts. The difference here is that when I did the GMHTP stuff, they came to me. I have NEVER advertised in that magazine, before, during, or since. The then editor wanted my stuff, and that's what he got. He didn't go faster or skew the results because I am an advertiser. Further, of the vendors here you can see me, driving my Camaro (well former Camaro it's sold and on the way to Texas right now) and you can see that it works.

 

It's a street vehicle that I want to take to auto cross and road courses for HPDE 's. I want it to get to the limit of what this car can do, handling wise, without it being impossible to drive on the street. This isn't a daily driver, and I don't ever HAVE TO drive it. I'll drive it on the street when I feel like putting up with a car that handles great but rides a little rough...don't know if that makes a whole helluva lot of sense, but that's what I've got in my head.

 

Are you running just the Mustang now?

 

I'd strongly recommend at least considering Sam Strano's spring and Koni shock setup. You can't go wrong with that for autocross, spirited daily driving, and mild track days. I'm not sure if you'd want to go with stiffer springs for more serious road racing.. but if you get there we are probably talking about gutting the car out more.

Just realize each part has a purpose. I'd add a modifcation.. try it out.. see what you want to improve.. then add different modifications. I autocross and do local spectator drags around an oval track. It's natural for noobs to think they need to modify everything before they try racing.. anyone can pretty much race their car in bone stock form. Crazy modifications usually bump you up to difficult competitive classes. Mild modifications within your class requirements make you competitive and it's cheaper overall when targeting specific areas of the car to improve.

 

+1 for Strano and Frrax. Start off with a Strano setup and if you want more, head over to Frrax for more hardcore info.

 

I was but my car has had issues. And it was exclusively, I spent half the year in a 2010 Grand Sport Corvette (winning). And I'm buying another GM, LS powered car to replace the Camaro.

 

I kind of have that same goal (one day) for my car. With that said. I don't think you can go wrong with the direction Sam leads you. Do yourself a favor if you haven't already and give him a call. Just talk to him about your direction. I haven't seen your exact model and options yet, but I think you will be more than happy to just start with some Strano springs, Koni shocks, and maybe some larger sways, or even some 1LE sways like I have. If you are truly serious about getting into the autox stuff then you may opt for the Dual Adjust Koni's instead of the singles like most go. I have to say that if I had some good rubber on my car I would like to say I could hang pretty well with the best of them. Of course that is with someone behind the wheel that knows how to drive. LOL. I'm ok, just never had any training in autox.
Good luck. Enjoy the car.

 

What kind of car do you think you will choose?

 

A Corvette of some type.