2005 F-Body Reunion at the National Corvette Museum

OH YEAH!!  Here we are, Auto Cross Day!!!  Jeff and I had been looking forward to this the WHOLE trip!!

NNow, Jeff and I had NO idea if the NCM organization would allow someone to ride shot gun on the Auto Cross course.  Just in case, we came prepared.  Jeff and I have matching racing belts (I had to pull mine out of my Camaro before we left, they have not been used SINCE the engine spun it's bearing).  Jeff popped the rear seats out prior to us leaving for Kentucky.  The third and forth gen F-bodies are VERY easy to put these belts in (thread two eye bolts in, use the bolt for the seat as your third anchor and you are ready to lock the belts in).  Sadly, all this preparation, only to find no passengers allowed.  OH WELL, at least we came prepared!!

The shot above shows the nose of Jeff's Firebird.  The black third gen and the red forth gen belong to the group that sat with us at the Homestead dinner the night before.  We knew we were going to see them at Auto Cross, but did not expect to be right behind them first thing in the morning waiting to be tech-ed!!!

The above shots are of the course, some cars actually running the course and the staging area.  My digital camera can take some REALLY LOW quality video (60 seconds worth).  I grabs some videos too (not on the web site).
There was one forth gen Camaro that ran and I think scarred the crap out of a lot of people!  At one point it had looked like it was spinning and sliding out of control.  I wish I had video of it to share so everyone one reading understood what I was talking about.  This car from my perspective, looked like it was about to slide through the timing station.  After what I saw, I expected the people in the timing station to faint after it ended (thankfully with NO injuries or other mis-haps).

Now I bring us to the SAD part of the Auto Cross day....  Nothing prepared us for vehicle failure!  Jeff made a run on the course and on turns where I KNEW he should have had more power, his exhaust made sounds like it was hitting the rev-limitter!!!  Jeff made one more pass to rule out a fluke incident and the same thing happened!  His Firebird should easily go above 4000 RPM before it would be ready to shift, yet it was not going beyond 4000 RPM.  Jeff is suspecting since his '94 Firebird has about 50,000 something miles it's due for a tune up.  Despite this problem (which would cause Jeff's times to not be as fast as he could get), his times still seemed pretty good!  It was decided since we have a long journey to get home, we were not going to run the Firebird any more that day (Jeff made two out of three runs and I made no runs).  Just for the record, a week after we got home from the event, the Firebird quite starting, so who KNOWS what might have happened if we kept PUSHING it...