Mrs. Skylark's 06 GTO

[Supercharged111]

It definitely seems to work well. Stock specs call for 6.5-9. I have the ability to go more but I want to wait until the new tires and wheels are on.

I've read if you go too far with caster you'll get tire "flopover". Not sure where that occurs, but you get to a point where the tires begin to lean more than rotate. I believe you also lose camber with body roll as you add caster, and you lose camber with steering input as KPI increases.

 

[red98]

The left column is when I put it on the rack. From the top down is;
Front caster
Front camber
Front toe
Rear camber
Rear toe.
Caster the foreward angle of the ball joint to the centerline from vertical caster numbers are intentionally further from spec because there is no downside to positive caster outer than slightly stiffer steering feel. The positive is that the more caster the faster the car will return to center and be more stable.

The camber was left alone due to being within spec and wanting to see how she handles and wears tires. The important part is to be fairly even.

Toe is the angle that the leading edge of the tire is pointing inward or outward. Front and rear toe are dead in the middle of spec. You can see the initial rear toe was off and the car would've slightly dog walked. I bought the tool to properly locate the cradle and adjusted the rear toe so that it drives straight as an arrow.

Thanks for the explanation! Makes more sense now.

 

[skylark]

My sweetie and I spent some quality time down at the shop. We ripped all of the stock exhaust off. She pulled the valve covers and rockers while I worked on manifolds. We mostly dropped the rack but left it connected to the tie rod ends. Kooks instructions say to put it in from the top on the driver's side. We tried pulled the motor mount bracket and that didn't help. We pulled out the stock air box and that wasn't enough. We pried, pushed and pulled the header down and when it finally went into place it fell all of the way to the ground... So apparently it super easy from the bottom. Of course in the process I broke the coolant temperature sensor. We finally got it torqued down and asked my sweetie to give me 10 minutes to get the passenger side in from the bottom. Sure enough, in 10 minutes all that I had left was to torque it. All told we worked on it for just about 3 hours.

The rest of the weekend promises to be big. We have the new shifter from Tick, we're having a go at the HS 1.8 rockers again, duspeed, fix an AC leak at the high side port, balance and rotate the tires, roll the rear fenders, oil change, the rest of the exhaust and I know that I'm forgetting stuff that is on the list.

 

[jgreen16]

The perfect color. Definitely a nice car.

 

[skylark]

It has been a while since I updated this thread! We did get the Harlen Sharp 1.8 full roller rocker arms on but we had to put on summit tall valve covers to clear them. We balanced the front tires . A new shift knob was needed so we got one from Speed Dawg. At the same time we installed the shift boot that we had made. During this process I realized just how crappy the rear tires were so we ordered Continental DWS06+'s for the rear. The last thing we needed was to blow a tire on the dyno. We installed the Nick Williams 103mm throttle body. Some protection for the underside was needed so we put on a BMR skid plate. A full synthetic oil change rounded rounded out the last of what we did just prior to doing a dyno tune by Wong Performance in Vancouver Washington.

Most recently we did another full synthetic oil change. This week we had to put in a Genuine GM starter. This weekend we installed a Ram aluminum flywheel, an LS7 clutch kit, a brand new Magnum F T56 transmission, a carbon fiber driveshaft made by The Driveshaft Shop and of course fresh fluids.

Unfortunately the damn check engine light is on for the skip shift which is not in the new transmission and we had asked the tuner to remove when we had the dyno tuning done.

That combination of the LS7 clutch, the Tick shifter, Magnum F transmission and carbon fiber driveshaft is super sweet! That is the best shifting transmission that I have ever had. It is so much quieter inside the car than what it was before. I can't believe how much road noise is gone.

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[skylark]

Oh, the fluid on the bottom of the driver's side header? That that is our next project. I thought we just need a rack boot but apparently we have some slop in the rack as well.

 

[Supercharged111]

Nooooooo not the LS7 clutch! It weighs a ton and likely killed off any gains from the rockers. That's why I did a Spec Stage 1 in the early smaller diameter with aluminum fw/pp. Shaved 20# and really woke up the car. Speaking of Dyno, where's the printout? Those T56 Magnums are nice units, it's basically a TR6060 with a T56 shirt on.

 

[skylark]

Nooooooo not the LS7 clutch! It weighs a ton and likely killed off any gains from the rockers. That's why I did a Spec Stage 1 in the early smaller diameter with aluminum fw/pp. Shaved 20# and really woke up the car. Speaking of Dyno, where's the printout? Those T56 Magnums are nice units, it's basically a TR6060 with a T56 shirt on.

With the aluminum flywheel it is 3 pounds lighter than the stock clutch. I haven't had good luck with spec, they all started chattering. We needed a stock feel due to my wife's Rheumatoid Arthritis. The dyno definitely wasn't impressive. It put down 341/345. Sadly the stock to the flywheel rating is 400. I was hoping 375ish...

 

[618 Syndicate]

With the aluminum flywheel it is 3 pounds lighter than the stock clutch. I haven't had good luck with spec, they all started chattering. We needed a stock feel due to my wife's Rheumatoid Arthritis. The dyno definitely wasn't impressive. It put down 341/345. Sadly the stock to the flywheel rating is 400. I was hoping 375ish...

Post the sheet if you can. You can lose 30 hp between dyno brands and settings.

 

[Supercharged111]

With the aluminum flywheel it is 3 pounds lighter than the stock clutch. I haven't had good luck with spec, they all started chattering. We needed a stock feel due to my wife's Rheumatoid Arthritis. The dyno definitely wasn't impressive. It put down 341/345. Sadly the stock to the flywheel rating is 400. I was hoping 375ish...

Ahh, I missed the aluminum fw part and yes, on a Dynojet I would expect 340 to be a stock reading so 370+ for sure.