Quick update: spent Saturday and Sunday replacing all the control arm bushings with PFADT poly bushing kit. The work was straight forward but very tedious: remove control arm, press out old burnt marshmallow rubber bushings, press in new bushings, install control arm; repeat 7 more times... Then spent a couple hours and aligned the car: -2.0/-1.0 F/R camber, 0/2mm F/R toe. Front caster setting was a guess. Managed to get a few hours of sleep and went to the Victoria Day Track Junkies lapping event. Car felt very quick and had much better steering feel. But... 3 laps later, something felt very off. The steering was tilted about 15 degrees on the straights. My worst fear, eccentric bolt slip, happened. I immediately pulled off track and limped the car home. I quickly rigged up my alignment gear, and realized only rear left stayed where I set it, the other 3 corners were significantly out. Front right only had -0.1 camber left. Pretty sad... Apparently, GM made the eccentric bolts smaller than the slots they are in, so it is fairly common to lose alignment in track/auto-x situations. The video below is a good example. Mine was not as dramatic, but I am glad I did not try pushing the car one more lap.
Thankfully, my good friend Daniel was very generous and offered to share his FRS. My track entry fee was salvaged! The FRS was a fun little car with great chassis balance. It was very easy to drive on a track.
Next step, before next track day, purchase (just did) and install pfadt camber kit that uses slots instead of eccentric to adjust camber/caster. The internet suggests the initial set up is going to take hours, but once it's set, I won't have to touch my alignment for 2-3 seasons. What I can't stop asking myself though, I'm sure funk32 has had similar thoughts, when can I stop dealing with these bugs and focus on enjoying the car for what's it built for?
I wanted to give a huge shout out to Davenport Motorsports! I purchased my pfadt stuff from these guys, their pricing and especially service are unbeatable. Namala@Davenport is a Corvette owner himself, and frequents Castrol. He turns a 1:24.xx lap with his daily driven C6Z06 on cup2 tires. He is always patient in explaining technical stuff and giving me pointers, and he never hesitates to share his setup and findings from their R&D and experiments. Great guy, great shop.
