SIDOPI, Slow It Down Or Park It
That's what the tech guy at the Sacramento drag strip told me after I ran my first ever 11 second quarter. Sacto can be a bit lax on some NHRA rules, but they wouldn't budge on a rollbar for 11.99 or better. Sorta dampened my enthusiasm for the new best. When I ran another 11 second quarter just before eliminations, I got hollered at big time.
It was bracket night, so a dial in was required. After tracking down some white shoe polish, I wrote 12.000 on the window, mostly as a weak attempt at tweaking the track officials. The first run was against a much slower car, so it was easy to back-pedal and just nip him in the traps. The next run was against a fast car that launched hard. Overdoing it, I broke out with an 11.993. The tech guy went ballistic - screaming at me that if I made another 11 sec pass without a rollbar, he'd ban the car from the strip forever. Seemed like a lot of emotion over 0.007 seconds.
So I talked over my rollbar wish list with Craig Hill at Top of the Hill Race Cars in Pleasanton, CA. The rear seat had to be functional, and had to work both upright and folded down. Swing-out door bars were a must. The main hoop should be tied to the subframe connectors (Kenny Brown Double Diamond), if possible. And the most important requirement - it had to be as stealthy as possible.
Craig said I'd save some bux if I stripped the interior myself, so I did. There are other naked Camaro interior pix out there, and if you've seen one, you've seen 'em all. So the only pix here are of the finished installation. I like it! The pix suck - they were taken in the garage with just a halogen lamp to brighten things up. The pic on the left shows the bottom of the passenger side swing-out door bar. The middle pic shows where the top of the door bar meets the main hoop.
We used Alston tube-mount clevis tabs on both ends of the bars. The swing out kit comes with a tube mount for one end, and a flat plate for the other end. The right hand pic shows the bottom of the driver side door bar. The bolt at the bottom uses a nylock nut, so the bar can pivot freely. The clevis pin at the top locks it in place
The last two pix are shots of the main hoop, harness bar with camera mount, and the rear braces. The back seat is completely functional. although a bit hard to get to. We couldn't correctly position the harness bar and still enable the seat to fold down, but I can unbolt the seat back and re-attach it in the folded down position. The t-top well cover folds flat between the braces. The main hoop tubes pass through holes in the floorpan mounting plates and are welded to the subframe connectors as shown below right. Naturally, they are also welded to the mounting plates. This car is stiff.
This page started out to be just a rollbar description, but I've done a couple other things to the interior. I wanted a shift light, but not the big dash-mounted Autometer job that screams "I'm a racer wannabe". So I mounted a big red LED in the "eyebrow" air vent above the climate control knobs. The rpm switch function comes from the Smart Spark, the LED and resistor came from Radio Shack, and the grommet around the LED came from my local mom 'n' pop hardware store.
After installing the Meziere electric water pump, it seemed prudent to add an idiot light that would grab my attention if the pump pooped out in the heat of a battle. Also, since my oil pan lacks road race baffling, the same idiot light could be used to indicate low oil pressure. I used an identical LED/grommet/resistor setup as for the shift light, an oil pressure switch from MSD (30 psi), and a water temp switch from Pegasus. The MSD temperature switch uses a pipe thread diameter that's larger than the hole in the LT1 head, which is why I picked the more expensive part from Pegasus. The idiot light circuit is wired so that the LED blinds me if either the oil pressure or water temp get bad.
The shot on the left show the shift light in the right eyebrow vent and the idiot light in the left eyebrow vent. The other pic shows the idiot light illuminated. It is no problem to see these suckers in bright daylight. The temp sender can be seen peaking out just to the right of center in the right hand pic below. I claim there is sufficient header clearance because the wire insulation hasn't melted (yet).
Also seen in the left pic is the momentary contact line lock switch I added to the B&M shift handle for the Ripper. It required drilling two holes at right angles to each other that both meet each other and miss the threaded hole in the tee handle. The switch is inserted into the horizontal hole, and the wires come out of the vertical hole. Not shown are the two fan switches in the ash tray that let me run the fans between passed at the strip. The way the car is wired now, I can run the water pump, radiator fans, and Aftercooler water pump in the pits with the engine off.