79 Camaro build update

[silver63c10]

Quickie update, it's on the ground!

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In the process of powdercoating suspension parts and re-assembling everything. The race is on for NOLA April 14-15!

Also put together a new video showing the process of installing the Speedway Engineering swaybar.

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[silver63c10]

Been a busy month, and we are back in business! Have a few more videos that tell the story, but here's the short version.

The swaybar build from the last update was the final major fabrication item on the list (major being the key word, plenty of stuff left to build, modify, or otherwise cut and grind on).

As we got ready for final assembly, I had to go to Las Vegas for the Mint 400 for work (had to, I promise). I helped get the motor and trans in, and over the time I was gone Dad was able to knock out a ton of the major re-assembly.

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But first.. Who wore it better?

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Back on the ground so we could roll it out for a wash

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Then right back apart for some paint

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That's better

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Some Eastwood bronze powder coat to get everything looking good

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Skipped a few steps (covered in the video below..) but back together!

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Coming together under the hood

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Follow along for more gems like this: @silverc10 on Instagram

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Brake flush and bleed through the new lines

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Quickie alignment and corner weight

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Another quick wash before race day #1..

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..which comes the morning after Racecars for Ransom

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One of my racing buddy's nephew's 4th birthday party. Super fun evening.


Videos from this stage that fill in the gaps.

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Continued..

[silver63c10]

With this many changes, the first trip out was always going to be a crap shoot. After one run, it become obvious that a quickie modification made to the rear shock mounts to extend them wasn't nearly up to the task, and we had to call it a day.

Disappointing, but the car felt reasonably good (in hindsight, nothing was very positive to me that afternoon..) and in one piece at the end of the day.

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An auspicious debut to running in the 'X' class..

Next up was a fresh hood. We've lived with the 4" cowl for years, but it was never ideal. We still need a cowl for carb clearance, but Harwood's 3" has a much lower overall profile. This necessitated going to an Edelbrock RPM Air Gap to gain more clearance, and this piece was ported to flow within a few points of what the old one did.

Initial impressions, I can't tell a difference and it feels even beefier in the mid-range.

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Color matched fantastically by the awesome guys at Heritage Collision Center

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Seriously, they kicked all kinds of butt on this thing, and turned it around quick

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Take 2: shock mounts fixed, let's do this thing

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Successful day with 8 runs and the biggest problem being those pesky cones

The car is light years ahead of where we were. The surface at Mineral Wells absolutely kicked our butts last year, and it was predictable and controlled and planted right out of the gate. It tends toward a push as it is right now, but that is easily solved with subtle doses of throttle, making it easy to rotate the car exactly where you want it pointed. Before, the car would start to push and just never recover without either scrubbing speed or tapping the brake.

The new shock package also deals with the rough sections beautifully. The new springs have the wheel rates at nearly twice what they were, yet the car is mild-mannered thanks to having a matched overall package with custom valving by Penske in the shocks.

The morning runs were a learning experience, gathering up trust in the car and getting myself to not do the same crutches I did previously to account for the shortcomings of the old setup. Where transitions used to mean big braking to settle the front end down, now it can be a lift off. Or sometimes not even that.

It will take a few more trips out for us to fully get on the same page, but I'm super excited about the potential it has shown already.

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10th quickest of the day, with a coned away run that would have been good for 5th. Me likey.

Finally, a few videos to get caught up.

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NOLA coming in hot, and we've got another surprise or two in store before then.

[Gscherer78ta]

Go get 'em at NOLA! I think we are going to be there... Provided we get the clutch parts in time and get the whole clutch thing worked out.

[SSLance]

Car looks great Dusty! The paint looks a lot better than I remember, did you do a respray on it at some point that I missed? Love the work-in-progress videos.

It also looks very settled on course, I bet you'll just get faster and faster in it as the driver adjusts to the car's new abilities. Go get 'em in NOLA!!

[silver63c10]

Car looks great Dusty! The paint looks a lot better than I remember, did you do a respray on it at some point that I missed? Love the work-in-progress videos.

Thanks Lance. No re-spray except what's new on the hood, but we did wax it for the first time in quite a while heading into SEMA last year, lol.

So, on to NOLA.

But first, a few details to wrap up.

I've been wanting a set of AeroCatches for basically forever, and had even bought a set of them last year only to find that our old hood and pin configuration wouldn't work with them. New hood, new opportunities - let's nut up and rip into this fresh paint!

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We've also been skating by on a Bluetooth speaker between the seats the last few years, and decided it was finally time to put something permanent in. Fabbed up a box out of aluminum, sprayed some insulation on the inside, and picked up a marine receiver/amp setup with dual speakers. Also put a phone mount on it so I don't have to chase it around anymore. Light, functional tunes: success.

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Finally, the last piece of the 60-Day Camaro Makeover - a fresh set of shoes from Race Ready Motorsport (https://racereadymotorsport.com/).

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On to NOLA!

..continued.

[silver63c10]

It's finally time. Got all packed up and hit the road to Louisiana with one event on the new setup. I said last year that seat time was the absolute key to improving..and here we are.

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But first, another one of these just because..

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Lots of water, lots of bridge, that's how you know you're close

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Battle paint: activated

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Saturday was a race..against rain. Our class got 3 dry runs before the bottom fell out.

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Yo, we heard you like GoPros..

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D&E Judging while the rain poured down outside.

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In a mind-boggling turn of events, we ended up 3rd in D&E

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When the dust settled on Sunday, we came up 2 points shy of CB Ramey and his wicked C4 Corvette. The shortened autocross session had me being a little conservative, and that cost us in the end. Super encouraged by the performance of the car, and we have a list of tuning to do over a few events before we head off to Bowling Green the first weekend of June for round 2.

Finally, new video, and a few action shots from the weekend.

bcr035Cgu1U

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Just act natural..

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That hook!

Back to the grind, the clock's ticking on NCM.

[SSLance]

Car looks great!! Man, what a transformation from what it was when you started this adventure. Good luck with the fine tuning...

[WSSix]

Lifting the inside front, too. Good job, Duston. Glad the car's working for you

[flatoutz]

Dustin,

Love the wheels.Whats the width & backspacing on them?

[silver63c10]

Car looks great!! Man, what a transformation from what it was when you started this adventure. Good luck with the fine tuning...

Thanks Lance! It's come a -little- ways since we started this turning corners business, lol.


Lifting the inside front, too. Good job, Duston. Glad the car's working for you

We actually did some work to get that out of it. NOLA had a lot more grip than anywhere we get to run locally. That highlighted the need for some tightening of the shocks and front sway bar, which helped a lot in flattening it out.


Dustin,

Love the wheels.Whats the width & backspacing on them?

They're 18x11s, but the backspace spec is pretty specific to our setup. The rear end is custom width, front track has been altered, and every wheel opening has been massaged to holy hell to help them fit..

[silver63c10]

NCM Time

We made a few tweaks to the setup after NOLA, including stiffening the front swaybar, some tweaks to the alignment, and the usual between event maintenance.

The plan was to get some quality seat time after making the changes and work on both the setup and the driver. The driver part consisted of hitting the Mineral Wells Evo Driving School (which I highly recommend).

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Sometimes you need to get back to basics

Thanks to an uncooperative weather forecast and some other life events, the car setup part turned into 5 autocross runs with Texas SCCA, and an aborted trip out that ended up being a wet event which wouldn't have told us anything.

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Second-gen parking only

SO, we loaded up and headed to Kentucky. Arrived at the track early enough to get through tech and have some time to do some tourist-ing that afternoon.

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Cars from the Sinkhole, before we take on the Sinkhole

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Couldn't resist the allure of the Corvette, had to get one of my own

We were sweating rain the whole week leading up to the event, but lucked out with just a quick shower during our afternoon autocross session. Pretty quickly in the morning session, we determined that a familiar foe was back.

Cody's 79 Camaro, that we did battle with in NOLA last year, has also undergone major surgery and -surprise- we were right back to running within hundredths of each other.

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Nemessisssssss

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In the end, I had one run that would have closed the gap, and one that would have won, but both had cones. We swallowed the slightly bitter pill and took off for the road rally.

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Sunday morning it was time for the big boy track. This place is a ton of fun, but pretty overwhelming with 24 turns, tons of elevation change and blind corners, and some pretty big speeds in 3 different places.

The first session got me turned around trying to drive faster than I needed to, and I ended up pulling off early to regroup. Hit the speed stop for a few runs, and just nothing was feeling right. Things turned for the better during session 2, and the day started to look up.

As the day wound down, we were sitting 2nd in Speed Stop behind Joe Gregory, and needed some time to get around Dan Ballard on the road course. An open track and some help with the line from a kind GT350 helped find the time and the road course win.

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Kudos to Greg for the clutch beer delivery after the last session!

Heading to the awards presentation, we were optimistic but not counting our chickens. Thankfully GTV gets announced first, so we didn't have to wait as long as some others. Vegas, here we come again!

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Super excited to keep developing this thing through the summer, and continue to get my driving up to its level. It's an outright blast to drive both on the autocross course and the track, and I think/hope we're just starting to scratch the surface.

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[SSLance]

Congrats on the GTV win and invite Dusty... Besting Grandma on the road course is no small feat...can't wait to watch the videos from NCM.

Keep the driver skillz sharp over the summer and you'll be a force to deal with in the desert in Nov...

[70rsss396]

Very Cool! Congrats on your win!!

[Gscherer78ta]

Congrats on the win at NCM Dusty! It was a lot of fun watching you and Cody battle it out, two fierce competitors! Good thing Team Y88-R was parked between you two in the paddock.

We had a blast all weekend long!

[silver63c10]

Been a couple months, and we've been packing in as much summer as we can, so how about an update?

What does that entail? Let's go through a quick rundown..

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A little autocross - just some Texas street cars

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A little maintenance and some updates after some discussions with Mike at Wilwood

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A little friendly rivalry

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A little preparation for Alabama in August..

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Some track time

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Turns out July is hot in Texas

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..and this thing is turning into quite the track toy

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A little touch up (this thing got SANDBLASTED before we even got to the track in Vegas last year)

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A trip to Alabama to hang out with friends

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A muggy afternoon of good times with our Texas crew on Friday

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Some pets and licks from Cosmo the Track Dog

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Some recon at the track


continued..

[silver63c10]

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Picked up some inspiration at the museum (highly recommended)

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A little rain after a long day chasing the setup on the car Saturday

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And after a super fun day on the big track Sunday, some hardware to bring home!

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QV5Q5rL1LT8

Can't say enough about Barber. Incredible facility, amazingly fun track, and friendly people all the way around. It was an awesome weekend, and I cannot believe we were able to come out on top with the group of cars that were there.

Super excited to get some more seat time over the next few months and see what we've got in the big show at the end of the year.

[WSSix]

Nice work, Duston. I did a track day on my motorcycle a few years ago at Barber. Loved the track and thought about what it'd be like to run a car there. .

[Gscherer78ta]

Good Work Dusty! Not only has your car been improving and turning into a very nice toy to run the track, you've grown your driving skills at an equal rate!

Barber was a great time, always fun to have friends at the track!

[shelteredV]

Good work, congrats!

[SSLance]

Very solid update! Well done... Keep it up now...

[silver63c10]

New year - new update.

So the last few months of 2018 were a blur, with a last minute decision to haul up to Road America and fight for the Optima GTV season points.

Traveling to this huge, historic track helped motivate us to try an idea that had been floating around for a bit on the spoiler.

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New in front, old underneath

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Better looks (in our minds at least), 4 positions of adjustability, and less drag

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Final painted and in position

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Also took the opportunity to update the front end. Light is good

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Alignment and corner weights checked, ready for battle

We passed through the parking lot at Road America on Power Tour in 2004. I told myself then someday we would go back to run it, having never even done an autocross. It was surreal to pull in the gate knowing we were there to race.

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Cold. Surreal and cold..

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Mixing it up with these two spectacular cars, incredible drivers, and all-around cool people was a highlight of the year for sure

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We had a big group of familiar faces, and took in the local sights at night..

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The autocross was tight and slick. We were in a great spot after the morning, but fell down the order in the afternoon

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RA is F - A - S - T and beautiful in the fall

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Yeah, real fast.

In the end, we finished third in class, but bettered our score from Barber earlier in the year and locked up the GTV points championship. Still hard to believe..

Once we made it home from Road America, it set in that in mere weeks it would be time to turn around and haul to Las Vegas for the Invitational.

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War paint: Activate


To be continued..

[70rsss396]

Stellar work Duston, can’t wait till I get mine finished.

[Tinker]

Congrats Duston on the points championship. I live only 30 minutes north of Road America so seeing your post makes me more excited to finally get my car on the track.

[OutrunNAScaR14]

I always enjoy getting to run with you. I can't wait to see how well you run this year. Keep the Disco Camaro on top of the charts.

[WSSix]

Sorry I missed your update earlier, Duston. Glad the car is performing well. It looks great!

[silver63c10]

Been a crazy long time since I updated this. Kind of a lot happened. Installed EFI. Gave it a makeover. Had a kid. Got into a little fight with a tire wall a while back. Formulating the plan for what's next, and in the meantime putting together kind of a wild little update on our old farm truck.

Camaro time coming up again soon.

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/52805239102_58c311c4d0_z.jpg ('https://flic.kr/p/2osdDSW')
COTA 2019, we dropped 10 seconds from going there with Optima in 2016 - running a 2:30 in the dead of summer.

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/52805239347_0a4bfce05e_z.jpg ('https://flic.kr/p/2osdDXa')
Added a black two tone and gold lettering, inspired by the R30 Skylines

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/52806244053_a5641890f9_z.jpg ('https://flic.kr/p/2osiNBF')
Upgraded to Holley Dominator EFI with race throttle body, also added cylinder EGT probes for monitoring

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/52806053119_b77cb0357a_z.jpg ('https://flic.kr/p/2oshPRH')
Optima Invitational road course, 2019

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/52805796051_dd7fddfd83_z.jpg ('https://flic.kr/p/2osgvrv')
In 2020, we got a little bored like a lot of people did, and added some aero. Nine Lives wing paired with a splitter.

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/52806052909_64fedb93fb_z.jpg ('https://flic.kr/p/2oshPN6')
Tried out some new tires in 2021. It didn't go to plan.. ended up going off track in the worst possible spot at Heartland Park during Gridlife.

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/52806052789_c517999a96_z.jpg ('https://flic.kr/p/2oshPL2')
Cars are dumb. But we wouldn't have it any other way.

Keep up with the latest on everything we're doing on instagram: https://www.instagram.com/silverc10/

[WSSix]

Glad to see the update. I actually came across your Instagram while hunting out pictures of C10s. I don't really use Instagram but the C10 looked great. Good luck with it all, Duston.

[CHJNCSU]

Thanks for the updates and great pictures!

[silver63c10]

Glad to see the update. I actually came across your Instagram while hunting out pictures of C10s. I don't really use Instagram but the C10 looked great. Good luck with it all, Duston.

Thanks Trey! I'm so geeked to get the truck back together, I need to make a thread for the saga of it someday. We've had it for 25 years this year somehow..

Thanks for the updates and great pictures!

Thanks! We're lucky to have some great photographers around. Most of the great action ones in here are from Kaleb Kelley - he shoots all the Optima events and does fantastic work!

[SSLance]

Those valve cover stickers almost make me wish I didn't have centerbolt heads!

Love them!!

Thanks for the update...

[syborg tt]

Man this car is so bad ass and the fact that you drive the crud out of it. I hope to do the same with mine when I finish it.

[silver63c10]

Lil update on things..

Remember that time the car needed a quarter, door skin, and a fender so we took it down to the tub and started all over again? I sure do :headspin:

Quick summary of the plan:

Lighter, quicker, faster, and (hopefully) nicer. When you re-evaluate a full build after 15 years, there's always a number of things you'd do different. Turns out, we decided that was most of the things..

Drivetrain
427 LS with a Dailey dry sump. Probably keeping the T-56 but may find a G-Force or other dogbox along the way.

Front Suspension
Still using stock frame rails but everything else is new, and was designed in Fusion 360. Following sort of an asphalt late model design idea, but our own weird way of doing things. Joes racing uppers, custom built lowers, Sweet Mfg rack, ATS spindles, big ol Wilwood brakes.

Rear suspension
All-new 3-link. The truck arms were cool, but had some warts that it was hard to solve. We've learned a good amount with the 3-link in the truck, and I'm pumped for it in the car.

Roll cage
The old cage was less than ideal. We can build better, lighter, stronger, and safer in version 3. Will also be moving drivers position back a good amount.

Wheel & Tire
Big ol wheels - we'll step up to 18x12s all around (or bigger) to deal with the current crop of absurdly chunky 200tw tires.

Aero
Planning a lot of tricks like a laydown, ducted radiator, possibly flat floor, wing, etc., but the overarching goal is to keep it looking Camaro.

What are we going to do with it? That's a great question. We still love the Optima format, but the series has changed a lot and the locations are not ideal for us being in Texas. Gridlife Track Mod's ruleset is a good place for the car with their Pro Touring exemption, but the car will never realistically be competitive there. And again, locations are all 2-days drive from us.

So for now, it's a fun engineering exercise, and a chance to say "How can we make this better?" ..like, over and over again.

Currently working on the front suspension. Geometry seems good. One bite at a time..

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/54430410441_5019e8918c_b.jpg (https://flic.kr/p/2qVQ5Gr)

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/54430615484_abae9a57a8_b.jpg (https://flic.kr/p/2qVR8DE)

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/54430652984_bb7d19e1f7_b.jpg (https://flic.kr/p/2qVRjNd)

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/54430830045_41820a6a91_b.jpg (https://flic.kr/p/2qVSeqZ)

[ScotI]

Keep those updates coming. This car has always been a favorite of mine so it's good to see the changes as things progress.

[WSSix]

Yeah, it's a favorite of mine too. Glad to see you're still out there having fun with the car, Duston. Best of luck on V3 of the beast.

[syborg tt]

Keep those updates coming. This car has always been a favorite of mine so it's good to see the changes as things progress.

Yaa, What Scott said

This thread is full of so much info and I look forward to seeing more updates.