Camaro Performers Magazine

[97rs4life]

Re: Camaro Performers Magazine

a magazine should never post times that were done with a gtech on a dirty highway. I am sorry but you shouldn't have even submitted times then if that has to be the case (or it should have been put in print how the times were made). Sure we have 3.8l guys running low 12s, one in 11s, with many more 11sec cars coming soon in this next race season. But the v8 guys don't see that because the v6 already gets the shaft in mags.

Heck the grand prix crowd has 2 cars knocking on 8sec barrier, so it is only time and some more money before our fbody cars get into the 10s and lower.

Lastly, these headers are "custom" only in the fact that they were the second set of 3.8 F-car headers (the first was his master) Dawson had made. At this point, he's got a master and, like other header companies, can make as many sets as people want.

Do they have a website or anything along with pricing? The third company with headers for the 3.8 is Clear Image Automotive. Pacesetters (I have them on my car) only a certain batch had problems with the egr tube, but it wasn't that big of a problem, you just had to bend the pipe a little more to make it fit. Mine went in just fine though and didn't leak at all.

The KR you are seeing is possibly just some false KR, some guys swap out their knock sensor for a less sensitive one. The lean problem can be fixed within minutes with HP tuners on a laptop, no biggy there except you went to a tuner guy instead of having your own hp tuners software, so you would have to pay him to change it again.

Last, the manual in these cars doesn't like power at all and blows rather quickly when the mods start coming. Guys either get their manuals built or like a couple of the big guns in the 3.8l fbody crowd, switch to the built auto to handle the power.

[Mighty Thor]

Re: Camaro Performers Magazine

Let's us be grateful that a Mag. finally had one of our own in their pages. Ford Mags. always have 6-10 spread on their V6 Stang. But GM High Po., Pontiac, Chevy, and so on does not. Only once in a blue moon they would mention us.

First of all this is a Calif. car. Calif. car runs slower than most cars from other states because of the climate here. LS1 run low 14's here and high 13's. Pre- 05 Mustang GT runs low 15 and high 14. V6 F-bodies run low 16 to occassional high 15.

Second, this is a smog legal car. How many of you guys are smog legal(by Calif. standard)? Eventhough I'm Supercharged, I am smog legal and I do pass the sniffer, but I have problem passing visual.

I hope Camaro Perf. Mag. does a spread on us again.

Hib Halverson, thank you for doing a fantastic job. My name is Edgar and I have nothing to hide.

[Shodown]

Re: Camaro Performers Magazine

You sound like you know what you are talking about, but why is it that kids on this board and other boards do cam/heads/valvetrain swaps, nitrous installs themsevles, do their own tuning and they dont have near as many issues with their car?

If the project was on a budget, why would you get Dawson headers? Why would you spend money on hours of tuning when there is HP Tuners which is pretty user friendly? You honestly think that an open diff with stock 3.08's will render decent quarter times? Come on man, you could have AT LEAST used a y87 fbody that already has a decent rearend from the factory.

I would like to know what your budget was. I am willing to bet there are people on this site who could have made the car go MUCH faster with the same budget if not less.

My car runs 13.6 on my G-Tech with no KR, 100 wet shot, manufactured (non 'custom') headers and stock cam/heads.

I wish you the best of luck Hib, I really do. I had been following the project and really hoped you would do great things with it. I honestly hope you get this car to break into the 11's, but I'm not buying another magazine or reading another article that has G-Tech times posing as 1/4 mile times, sorry thats just lame. Like I said, you seem to know what you are talking about, but with your wealth of knowledge, that car should be much more impressive.

Oh, BTW, I'm moving to southern cali in July, I cant wait.....

One last thing, the "aero" body kit on my car is factory.

[SilverRS96]

Re: Camaro Performers Magazine

for some1 who is here speakin behalf of a company u arnt puttin out a good image actin just like a 17 yr old bashin kids...this forum if full of wise punks like myself...im not gonna bash what the victor six project did but only wanna read it more to c if u can fix the problems ur havin and what other things u have instore for it cuz i wanna know...but with u reactions to some things i didnt expect from some1 who is representing a company so to u how about ignoring the negative comments made by other members from this board and consintrate more on the facts about the car and not act like ur 17...o and im interested in how u did the oil temp gauge....also i have the stock "areo" kit on my car...gonna make fun of that too?

PS if u wanna know my name its Mike English...i dont think any1 here is ashamed of their name or anythin about it...its personal preference if they want so share it with others

[UDLOSE98]

Re: Camaro Performers Magazine

haha, my car ran a 15.2 on a busted *** motor......lol

i have no sponsors, no magazine spreads and my car na woulda killlllled that thing, ah well.

Dan Franecki
Oak Creek, WI 53154

if you cant find me from that just listen for the T70 spooling.

[Mighty Thor]

Re: Camaro Performers Magazine

haha, my car ran a 15.2 on a busted *** motor......lol

i have no sponsors, no magazine spreads and my car na woulda killlllled that thing, ah well.

Dan Franecki
Oak Creek, WI 53154

if you cant find me from that just listen for the T70 spooling.

But your car wouldn't pass Calif. smog, Dan Rednecki (J/K).

Like I said the climate here in S. Calif. is different. Remember Greenglow, his car ran 17.xx in Hawaii stock. With mod, he was able to run it low 16 high 15. So climate plays a major factor.

If guys notice that Hib doesn't post here a whole lot. When does post it's for giving us the heads up on his project. I give him Kudos for what he did and for reprenting us V6'ers. I wanna see more articles by him.

[SilverRS96]

Re: Camaro Performers Magazine

i want to hear more about the project also but with him comin on and then reactin the way he did makes him no more right than the other kids that said what they said first...i just wish that he acted more mature for a companies representative...but yes cali affects everythin and all

[Smoke Panther]

Re: Camaro Performers Magazine

Ahem,

I, Chad Harris of Chesterfield/Newport News, Virginia, am hereby calling Hib Halverson a less-than-professional-and-thorough guy for the following reasons:

1. Complaining about the magazine not paying for him to go to a track? Join the club. Without even looking at the timeslip database on this site or any other V6 board, I can name off 12 people and the make/model/year of their car who run much faster than you and have paid the measly(in comparison to the money put into the car) entrance fee to a track. Not to mention, some of them drive upwards of 2 hours to reach a track that's at high DA...and ya know why? Cuz they know that real numbers are all that matters, and the only place to get real numbers is at a track, not some dusty road with a g-tech
2. 3.08's on an open differntial? and stay out
3. And most greivous of all, spitting in the face of anyone that basically, offers suggestions that you haven't thought of. These people have been in the V6 game longer than you could imagine, and have gotten their V6's well beyond your mediocre success.

Alot of us have worked hard to dispell the myth that a modern V6 can't be just as fast as a stock LS1 and beat a stock LT1 while not spending a excessive amount of money, or retaining it's reliability. You and your little sideshow out in California are destroying the progress we've made with every ill-begotten article that gets published about it.

Next time your engine catches on fire, I hope that's the end of it, and you never mod a 3.8 again.

[UDLOSE98]

Re: Camaro Performers Magazine

But your car wouldn't pass Calif. smog, Dan Rednecki (J/K).

Like I said the climate here in S. Calif. is different. Remember Greenglow, his car ran 17.xx in Hawaii stock. With mod, he was able to run it low 16 high 15. So climate plays a major factor.

If guys notice that Hib doesn't post here a whole lot. When does post it's for giving us the heads up on his project. I give him Kudos for what he did and for reprenting us V6'ers. I wanna see more articles by him.

kudos on the name warp

btw how do you know my car wouldn't pass Cali smog (tune it lean,low boost)?

[homedog119]

Re: Camaro Performers Magazine

Holy crap, dudes....you are one gnarly crowd, that's for sure.

What I find annoying about forums is people who trash talk but use screen names. They're too chicken s**t to put their names on what they say.

Well, my name is Hib Halverson and I was the guy who built the Fast Victor Six project car in "Camaro Performers" magazine, then wrote and imaged the magazine series.

First, let me say that I'm grateful to, "Camaro Performers" Editor, Tony Kelly, for having us in his magazine for a year. Secondly, I am not employed by Primedia, the company that publishes "Camaro Performers" magazine. I did the article series on a contract basis as an independent technical writer. Thirdly, when I post here; I do not speak on behalf of the magazine nor am I a spokesperson for Primedia.

When we road tested the car, our acceleration times sucked. No one was more disappointed in that than me. But, rather than fake good results, I wrote the series exactly as it took place.

How'd we end up at only 14.2 with 220 or so SAE at the wheels?

There are some realities of the magazine business that didn't end-up in print. The one that affected this situation is "Camaro Performers" is on a tight budget. The car was built and tested in the Los Angels area where there are no 1/4 mile drag strips operating regularly. There is Pomona Raceway, of course, but that mainly runs for the NHRA Winternationals and Finals. It does have "street legal" events occasionally, but they were never at times convenient to our editorial and shop schedules. One can rent Pomona, as well, but doing so is hundreds of dollars per day and requires the user to have $5,000,000 worth of liability insurance--hardly budget items the magazine will cover. The next nearest, regularly running strip is at high altitude and farther away. Sadly, the magazine was unable to spend the money to either rent Pomona or cover the cost of traveling to LACR, the track up in the high desert. Plus I hate racing at LACR, anyway, because of the altitude. Even the chassis dyno time was not paid-for by the magazine. That came out of my checks for writing the articles. I'm grateful to our dyno vendor, Westech, for giving me a discount for running there so often. If you're in the L.A. area and need truly professional chassis dyno services, go there.

We ran all our 1/4-miles tests on highways late at night. Further, the last sessions were run at sea level in cold weather so the density altitude was in negative numbers, ie: the motor made a ton of torque. Our launch pad was, basically, the shoulder of US 101. We were on street tires and not drag radials. On nitrous, we were spinning the tires through most of first gear. We used a Vericom VC3000 for timing and that system does not have roll-out (there's anywhere from 1-3 tenths right there). Lastly, we wounded the transmission almost at the start of the test and from then on, the 1-2 shift, the most critical one in a 1/4-mi pass, was always tough.

No doubt, these are freakin' sob-story, excuses but, nevertheless, they happened and they contributed to the car going 14.2 rather than a low 13.

So...where's the project going next?

Well, it's done for now and maybe for good in the magazine. There is a chance "Camaro Performers" might want us back later this year, but no deal's been made, yet. The series is going to be rewritten and the car further developed. New articles will be posted in serial form this year and perhaps into early '08 on The Camaro Homepage (www.camarohomepage.com) starting in about a month.

We've already made some changes since the final magazine article appeared. We removed the SLP 1.8 rockers and installed the new, "second design" 1.7s from Yella Terra then took the car back to the chassis dyno at Westech. The car made 224 hp SAE at the wheels at 5750 rpm, a slight improvement over our last no-nitrous test and that's with 1.7 rather than 1.8 rockers. Torque, SAE at the wheels, was 222 lbs/ft. at 4650 rpm and was over 200 lbs/ft from 2500 rpm to 5800 rpm so, the torque curve seems reasonably wide.

We did not use our Nitrous Supply nitrous oxide system in this most recent test session because we were there mainly to validate the Yella Terra rockers as working with our Comp Cam without putting the engine into valve float. I believe we fixed that problem, as the engine pulled hard to its 6200 rpm rev limiter. In our previous tests, w/o spray, back in Oct. '06, we made about 220 at the wheels but couldn't get past 5650 rpm without valve float.

Though valve float is gone, at least with 1.7s, our old nemesis, knock retard, is back. Even on a mix of pump and 100-oct race gas, I was seeing 1-2 deg. KR during these passes. KR is back, because, for some unknown reason (that was the other issue we were testing to investigate) the motor has gone lean by a full air-fuel ratio. Last test, back in Oct. , we were right at 12.5-12.7 air-fuel. Now were up at 13.7 or so and, obviously, when the engine is that lean at WOT, it's gonna detonate, even with 94 oct. or so.

But here's the worst part. The other day, right at the end of the final test pass, we set the motor on fire. Ooops. I had a fuel pressure test gauge connected to the engine during all three of these passes to see if we had a low fuel pressure problem at WOT. At the end of the third run, with the motor at 6000 rpm or so, V6 vibration and the gauge hose moving around, loosened the fitting on the fuel rail. As soon as I saw the leak, I gave the cut sign to the dyno operator but with the fuel pressure these cars run, even for a fraction of a second before he clicked the ign. off, there was a half a quart or so of gas leaking down the back of the motor. Obviously, the exhaust was hot enough to be an ignition source so--Poof!--we had a hot fire going.

Westech had a halon bottle next to the dyno, so I had the fire out in seconds. Gotta love halon compared to dry chemical for fighting gasoline fires, that's for sure. I spent a number of years working for the SCCA as a firefighter. i put out a bunch of race car fires with either 20-lb hand-operated or 150-lb truck-mounted, dry chemical fire extinguishers, but never used halon on a car fire until the other day. It's pretty expensive, compared to dry-chem, but man, does it work great. I'm kinda thinkin', in my own shop, I'm going to swap-out the dry chem bottles I have hanging on the wall for halon. But....I digress.

Ok, so where am I going next with this car?

Well, we've got repairs to do, mainly the MAP sensor, 3 or 4 wiring connectors on the right side of the motor, replace some plastic vacuum pipes and put some new plastic split-loom in place where the existing stuff melted. I've got the upper intake off and there is no more damage than that. Next, I've got to find out why the engine is lean and solve that problem. Then, we're going to swap the Yella Terra 1.7 rockers for a set of Yella Terra's second design 1.8s and see if they, too, can run to 6200 in a stable valve train. Following that, I'm not sure where we're going to go in the motor department. In fact, that might be the end of our engine mods.

As for other areas of the project? Well, for sure, I need to do something about our road test conditions. I'm not sure what that will be, but we gotta do something. I've, also, been looking at the 1-2 shift problem we have. I pulled the trans to look at the clutch and the clutch hydraulics. Found no obvious problems, but I machined the flywheel then changed the disc and clutch slave for good measure. Some road testing after the clutch session points at a trans with a damaged 1-2 synchro/dog clutch assembly and maybe a bent shift fork. After I repair our "fire damage" and solve the air-fuel ratio problem, then I'm going to get the trans apart for a damage assessment.

Now, because of the 10,000 char. limit on posts, I'm going to take up one specific comment made earlier in this thread in a second entry.

Thats wat too much for me to read

[UDLOSE98]

Re: Camaro Performers Magazine

Thats wat too much for me to read

let me sum it up...

we dont use our real names cause we are scared
he tested his 1/4 illegally on freeway at night
excuses
blah blah blah gibberish gibberish gibberish

it bothers me cause he called out chris (shodown) who i respect and whose car is putting down better numbers....

his project was sponsored and everyone else here, including me pays for all their mods out of pocket

calls us KIDS WHEN HE IS STREET RACING!!!!!

[flyfrito_SS]

Re: Camaro Performers Magazine

I agree this guy needs to stop hating, if you write a piece for a magazine you should be open to critisim from the general public............. if you are not willing to accept both positive and negative opinions, than don't run it in a publication, just my .02

[Shodown]

Re: Camaro Performers Magazine

I agree this guy needs to stop hating, if you write a piece for a magazine you should be open to critisim from the general public............. if you are not willing to accept both positive and negative opinions, than don't run it in a publication, just my .02

My thoughts exactly. :)

[SpeedingFirebird]

Re: Camaro Performers Magazine

I agree this guy needs to stop hating, if you write a piece for a magazine you should be open to critisim from the general public............. if you are not willing to accept both positive and negative opinions, than don't run it in a publication, just my .02

I concur. If he felt his reasons were valid, then there is no need for a knee-jerk reaction. Coming out insulting everyone right off the top is not going to win any people over. Calling out people and calling them dumb is just childish.

With that said, we've all posted some lame stuff on boards before.

My name is Oliver Clothesoff, and I live on a boat floating off the coast of Maine.

[Mighty Thor]

Re: Camaro Performers Magazine

let me sum it up...

we dont use our real names cause we are scared
he tested his 1/4 illegally on freeway at night
excuses
blah blah blah gibberish gibberish gibberish

it bothers me cause he called out chris (shodown) who i respect and whose car is putting down better numbers....

his project was sponsored and everyone else here, including me pays for all their mods out of pocket

calls us KIDS WHEN HE IS STREET RACING!!!!!

It's best to just lock this thread.

For one thing, if we are going to do criticism it should be constructive. I didn't see that here, it's more like an insult to a guy who has been a member here for a time now, but hardly post, and has given us good representation.

We do have kids here that behave like kids and there's nothing we could do about that. V6 F-bodies are just within their reach.

I remember when I was one of the first member here (98FirebirdV6 before Thor)and the first member, only second to Shirl, to have force induction. Stefan criticized me left and right and called my blower fisher toy. How do I repay back, with insults too. Since this was his board, the members got on his side. This is why I changed my screen name and started all over again.

Then Mach Perf. came in with their ATI kit and criticized us Powerdynes, Tiago came in with his Turbo and criticize us SC. Everything was really stupid.

Now let's move on and be grateful we had a spread.