Dan's 1984 Trans Am: 1LE/WS6 with Minirammed 385 CID engine and T56 Tremec transmission conversion.
Six years in construction, it is finally ready. I've owned this car for over fifteen years, and it's been the subject of a third-gen website since 1997. However, this was the year when family and financial circumstances came together and we were able to finish construction of the engine, restore the car, install the six-speed transmission, put in the roll bar, and fix the twenty one years and 138,000 miles worth of door dings, sun fade, paint chips and stone chips that made the still presentable paint look...well, old.

My thanks to Laura, my wife, for encouraging me to finish this long, long project. It finally came together this spring with SIXTY consecutive nights of feverish work, culminating in the start of the engine with only six days before the National F-body Motorsports Event.

I arrived in Memphis Tennessee with this freshly painted machine, a rudimentary tune on the fuel injected engine, and only seventeen miles worth of driving on the whole powertrain.

NFME was a blast! After a few "adjustments" to the crossmember, driveshaft loop, and driveshaft, I took it onto the road course for a few easy test laps. However, after about the third or fourth lap, the car felt so tight, so good, so smooth, that when my driving instructor Dave T. looked at the wide-ratio monitor and saw nothing but 12.5:1 AFR while under power, he said "Wide-band looks good, you are good to go." So, with only 25 miles on the engine, I put the hammer down and felt the rush!

Fortunately the hood latch was adjusted right, because later in the day, as I crested 145 MPH in the straightaway, the ram-air II hood lifted from the air pressure, bowed up, and buckled... That was the end of the high-speed testing. Luckily nothing was damaged! Now I've got hood pins for very good reason!

After that, I stuck to drag racing and autocross. In the drags, where I went six passes, each and every pass was high 12's or low 13's: I was severely losing traction at the start and the 60-foot times were abysmal. However, all six runs were within 1 MPH of one another at a solid 113 MPH in the quarter mile.

Then I entered the car into the autocross, since it was running so good. No leaks, no knocks, pings, pops, smoke, or anything. Temps were a solid 186 degrees all day long.

Much to my surprise, I took home the first place national trophy in the prepared category! Okay, maybe I should not be TOO surprised, since the car has been measured on the curves of Gingerman Raceway at 1.27 g lateral acceleration... This is a sweet handling car, with 1LE spec brakes, and a suspension that is built of Spohn rear suspension pieces, and a mixture of Koni , Moog, and Herb Adams pieces in the front.

After the Autocross, I spent the rest of the day taking joyrides around the course, and we managed to put seventeen runs in around that course without ever knocking over a single cone!

The new engine: 385 cubic inches, internally balanced.
396 RWHP at 6250 RPM, 383 ft.lb torque at 4250 RPM.
19 miles per gallon on the highway.

The engine has powered the car to a fast lap of 145 MPH on a closed course. Give me some more straightaway and I might even be able to shift it into sixth for an even 180 MPH.
Integrated straight into the plenum, directly behind the throttle body are two nitrous spraybars. These were precision machined for me so that next year, once I have finished installing my FAST LSX ECM, I will be able to dual-stage feed the engine. The motor has been equipped for nitrous use, with ceramic thermal barrier coatings on the combustion chamber, valve faces, exhaust ports, and piston faces. The engine is also equipped with 4340 forged steel crankshaft and 4340 steel H-beam rods, along with a full set of ARP fasteners from top to bottom. I should be able to safely spray the engine to about 630 RWHP.

The car is equipped with a Chromoly six-point roll cage and a set of Teamtech harnesses. The total race weight of the car is now 3460 lb. without driver. I've installed these safety measures for road race duty, as well as with the goal of breaking into the 11.50 E/T at 120 MPH range, naturally aspirated.
First I MIG welded in the floorplates above the subframe connectors and above the rear subframe.
Next, my master weldor Dan Pendell climbed in and TIG welded in the Chomoly tubes that I had notched and pre-fit into the car. He's a master: He can even modulate the foot pedal with his knees while laying upside down on his back to obtain the perfect bead.
Then, it was on to the paint shop. The boys at Vision Collision in Haslett put in fifty hours of time in order to get the panels perfectly ripple free. I disassembled the car for them and brought the pieces over. I *nearly* went with a color change to Jamaica Yellow, but stuck with the original Sand-grey Mettallic, and restored the factory graphics.
Look at that Ram Air II hood! We thought we were being smart by block sanding the hood and making it as flat as glass. Then we painted it, and chose to let it air-cure without heat. It looked perfect! However, the Ram-Air II hood is SMC plastic, so after the first thrash session in Memphis, the heat of the engine and the 90-degree summer sun put the ripples back in. Ah well, All in the name of experimentation!
Look at the lines. The paint is smooth as glass, and this picture was taken before any wax. It's a base/clear paint process from Sikkens. The material cost was $1100 per gallon.

So, Here it is. It's a magazine quality showcar with real race attitude. Sorry to say, I already have scratches in the paint. In fact, the passenger mirror housing is dented and the door panel slightly rippled from getting too close to the wall at a race track this summer. Unfortunately a photographer chose that moment to try and snap a picture by leaning over the wall, and I destroyed his camera with my mirror at about 100 MPH. Luckily no one but the Nikon was hurt.

Excitement. That is what this car is built for. It has already proven to be rather bullet resistant: This last August I drove it to the Woodward Dream Cruise, and idled in traffic for three and a half hours, while slowly working my way from Royal Oak to Pontiac MI and back. Then I placed it on the Livernois Motorsports Dyno and logged this graph that showed the engine makes a solid 396 rear-wheel horsepower. That's streetable power too: About 460 HP at the crankshaft.

Then there was M10: The tenth annual Michigan all-GM event, held on October 15th. It's hosted by Jason Debler of http://www.camaroz28.com at Mid-Michigan Motorplex in Stanton Michigan. I've gone to all but two of these events and they are great fun. This year was no different: I put the car down the drag strip sixteen times in about four hours. The first few runs were pathetic (low thirteens, high twelves) because I couldnt get traction. Then a friend told me to drop tire pressure to 18 PSI, do a burnout and count to twelve. I did so, and was rewarded with my first sub-two second sixty foot launch. It was great! my E/Ts dropped imediately into the mid-twelve second range. After that most of my E/Ts came in between 12.4 and 12.6 seconds. In retrospect, looking at the FAST XFI logged data, I realize that I am being very timid with the clutch release: One second, 30% throttle, drop RPM to 1800 then hammer the gas. If I speed up the clutch release, get the throttle open sooner, and dont let RPM drop below 2700 RPM, I should see some solid eleven second time slips. Ah, the fun!

Did I mention that I have already installed two solenoids for the dual-stage dry nitrous kit? Yep. That's next year's project, after the suspension and Z06 brake upgrade!

See you at the NFME event in Indianapolis on May 18 - 20, 2006!