Greetings everyone...new to this forum. I just bought a 92 Camaro RS that I'm making a dedicated drag car out of. Looking at building a 5.90 car and curious about front suspension options. Haven't seen anything out there yet to get rid of inner fender wells and replace with coil over and a-frame front suspension. Any info or direction would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Bo

 

if its a drap car, why bother with converting the front end to a LA/SA suspension? keep what there, its fine, if you want you can get a coilover setup for the stock layout for some weight reduction from Spohn

 

Wow, thanks for the quick response...I did notice that kit for the stock suspension. I guess my primary reasoning is to get the fender wells out of the way for improving access for maintenance and just a cleaner look. I didn't figure the stock suspension could withstand 700+ hp either

 

you can't remove the fender wells because they are the strut towers...there'd be nothing to mount the struts to unless you do your own fab work. and, stock suspension layout will handle 700hp but not with stock parts. replace rear lcas and torque arm with aftermarket tubular pcs (check out www.BMRfabrication.com) and you can do the front end too if you want to reduce weight a little plus add a little room around the motor.

 

there are stock style suspension cars in the 7's, maybe faster already.

 

There's nothing wrong with a third gen's front suspension. There are always improvements that can be done but the basic design is very good. Using an aftermarket tubular k-member and a-arms reduces a little bit of weight. Putting in a coilover kit helps but isn't necessary.

I use a tubular k-member and a-arms. Koni SPA1 drag struts and Moroso trick springs. That's about it for front suspension upgrades. As mentioned above, you can't remove the inner fenders on our unibody cars. The inner fenders are part of the frame structure. It's not impossible to remove them but it's a lot of work to create a tubular framework to replace what the inner fenders do. For all the work that's involved plus doing a back half on the car for bigger tires, it would be better to start from scratch and build a complete tube chassis car.

To get down into the 5.9's in the 1/8 mile, you're going to need a lot of HP or a very light car. Completely stripped out, our cars are still heavy. A tube chassis car can easily get down to 2400 pounds which makes running fast much easier. My stripped out race car is down to just over 3000 pounds race weight this year. That's car, driver, fuel etc sitting on the starting line.

 

I realize the struts attach to the fender wells and that's what I want to get away from if possible. We're gonna 4 link the rear, tub it all out and was just looking at options for the front end. I'll check out BMR...thanks for the input.

 

I was beginning to wonder if the tube chasis was the better way to go. Cost prohibitive for me unfortunately. Sounds like you have what I'm wanting to do. Just looked at your pics... answers a lot of questions...thanks, AlkyIROC

 

If you want a removable front end for easy access, you're limited to front halving the car or making a complete tube chassis car. Either way will be far easier and cheaper than trying to convert and adapt the third gen's design to something else. Like I said, it's not impossible but there's a whole lot of work involved to do something different.

Another option is to just buy a rolling chassis that's already been done the way you want it which will always be cheaper than what you can build it for. Always lots of deals on Racingjunk. It would have been cheaper for me to buy a rolling chassis than what I've invested in the car over the last 10+ years.

You want to run 5.90's in the 1/8th but are cost prohibitive. You're not going to get there very fast then.

 

Wow.. 3,000 pounds with you and fuel? That is very, very impressive.

What have you done to get it that light? Are you using a stock unibody? Could you give us a run-down of what you've done to achieve such a light weight? I'd love to see some interior pictures too, even though you mentioned that it's stripped.

Oh, just make sure you don't run into this tool bag. He thinks that a stripped down car makes a saggy suspension stiff, and will give me horrible times. He also thinks I stripped my IROC down for looks. Funny stuff.

I did all of this for looks! Considering the heater core, A/C & heat blower, A/C compressor, spare tire & jack, and all 4 speakers would have otherwise been hidden. Just dead weight.

 

All you need to do is click on the link to my web site in the above sig to see everything about the car. It's a stripped down, gutted out race car.

 

Ahh, you have them VFN fiberglass doors. I may be buying them depending on what VFN tells me, if they can made to be functional such as their fiberglass dash. I'd just need to have a fiberglass guy trim them enough to use glass windows, and the electric motor, then I'd be in business.

That's a very neat website you've got. I'm going to have to explor it a little more later today.

 

The glass doors only went on this winter. I have had the car slightly under 3000 pounds a few years ago. It seems it's a lot easier to add weight than to remove it. I added a bunch of weight when I redid the roll cage a couple of years ago. The entire cage adds close to 200 pounds to the car and I don't have any forward tubes through the firewall.

Last year my race weight was just under 3100. After all my winter projects including the glass doors, the weight is now just over 3000. I'd love to get a 2800 pound race weight but there's very little left that can be removed or changed to cut 200 more pounds off the car. There's always more I can cut out of the shell but I doubt I could get 200 pounds from it. Using a hole saw and swiss cheesing much of the metal will reduce some weight, but not a lot.

Heavy cars need beefier parts to survive. make the car light and it won't break as many parts. I only run 31 spline axles because that's all I need. Aluminum and titanium parts can reduce a lot of weight but can also cost more than they're worth. Most aluminum parts are well worth it. Other than the hood and doors, there isn't really anything else that can be easily changed to fiberglass. Even my factory fiberglass hood is still heavy and I can't justify a lightweight aftermarket lift off hood. It's lighter than a steel hood but it's still heavy and awkward.

Fiberglass doors are not designed for glass windows or any kind of regulator. To fabricate a structure to hold the window tracking, an opening for the window to pass through, hold the regulator etc, it would be easier to just swiss cheese the steel door to reduce weight. My steel doors went from 105 pounds each as I unbolted them from the car to 75 pounds after I gutted them but still had glass windows that rolled up and down.

 

What about fiberglass fenders? Unlimited Products sells them, I'm sure you could take off another 5 or so pounds with them.

I'm sure you've heard of them, but do you remember Pontiac's "swiss cheese" cars? Holes drilled everywhere in the frame, just to remove ounces at a time. They had a lot of problems with the longevity of them cars, and only a few are still around today.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpjEmThal_w

What's your cage made of? Chromoly, mild steel? I'm sure there's still a few ways you can take weight off. PST makes custom carbon fiber driveshafts for under $1,400.

http://www.pstds.com/

I read that you have a steel driveshaft. Depending on the specs of it, a PST shaft could be up to 20 pounds lighter. I wish I could blow the cash on one of them right now. I have the goal of making my IROC if not the, one of the lightest street legal cars on this forum. I hope the catalytic converter won't tip the scales.

I've even considered rhino lining my interior, just so I don't have to add the weight of carpet, but not go around with bare metal. It looks pretty good actually, I've seen it done a few times on interiors.

 

There are always ways to make it lighter but is it cost effective. A carbon fiber driveshaft would be nice but I don't have $1400 to invest in a driveshaft to save a few pounds. I can find other ways to spend $1400 to reduce weight. The price of the doors was high enough even though I got them for roughly half price.

Fiberglass fenders are available however the front fenders on a third gen weigh very little to begin with. Once you add in the extra braces required for the fiberglass fenders, you'll probably be back up to original weight again. Since the inner fenders can't be removed, you're not changing much weight if any. Same goes for a complete fiberglass front end. It's designed for a tube chassis car, not a production car.

CM cage will reduce weight but again, there's that added cost of CM tubing plus needing a TIG welder to put it in. MS tubing will last a lot longer than CM. As soon as you weld CM, you've changed the molecular structure around the weld and it will fatigue over the years of use.