Slam Dance

The more we run cars on the unforgiving asphalt dragstrips, the more it becomes clear that tuning is the key to performance perfection. We burn up a ton of space in this magazine waving the horsepower flag. But there’s also another form of power—the power of a good set of brakes. In the giant game of go-whoa, tuning your car doesn’t end with carburetors, heads, horsepower, and torque. There are just as many variables in the deceleration game that can make or “brake” your efforts to be a hero.

The six cars that we invited this year offered plenty of hero potential, but only a couple of cars had the right stuff to play the game at both ends of the track. Again, the great folks at Baer offered to travel to Los Angeles from their home turf in Phoenix to help us out. This year Baer staffers Dan Palmer and Chan Martinez brought their Stalker radar gun and a brake-tuned ’02 ZO6 Corvette to wring out as well. With monster Baer six-piston front calipers, EradiSpeed rotors, and ABS electronics, the Vette promised to set the negative g mark for this crowd of great brakers.

We also invited a pair of Pro Touring ’69 Camaros—Craig Boone’s small-block powered F-car (“Ground Control,” Nov. ’01, page 24) and the 488ci Rat-powered Camaro with monster brakes and 18-inch wheels and tires owned and driven by Brent Jackson. Frank Gearin brought his 481ci ’69 Nova that looked to be the quickest of the bunch along with veteran participant and CHP contributor Tim Moore and his ’67 Chevelle (“Deluxe Accommodations,” Feb. ’02, page 58). RK Sport rounded out the field with a nitrous-injected Cavalier fitted with 13-inch front Baer brakes and flyweight status that looked like it could easily stop short.

Once the track was cleaned and ready to go, we immediately launched into test mode. The first car down the track was Craig Boone’s small-block, five-speed Camaro that ran a high-13-second pass. That was the easy part. When Craig hit the brakes, the rear tires immediately locked up sending Craig into a spin that eventually led to a full 360-degree, tire-smoking roundabout. The good news is that he managed to keep the Camaro off the guardrail and the only damage was to his ego. After he calmed down, Craig adjusted the rear disc-brake proportioning valve out as far as it would go and promised to go easy on the second pass. Unfortunately, Craig never got a good braking run, because he couldn’t reduce the rear brake pressure enough to eliminate the rear brake lockup problem. He discovered that when he spun a second time! He eventually traced the problem to a too-large Ford Explorer rear brake caliper. Needless to say, Craig’s test day ended with a long slide.

The next car in line was Tim Moore’s ’67 Chevelle. The Chevelle’s first pass had nitrous problems, but that was a minor setback compared to his tire-smoking spin of the morning when his rear tires also locked up. Tim revealed that he had carefully trimmed the proportioning valve for the shorter street rear tires. The taller, stickier M/T E.T. Street tires dramatically changed the rear braking efficiency. For his next pass, Tim also pulled the brake prop valve all the way out to reduce the rear brake pressure and then slowly tested the valve with more rear brake pressure.

The next few passes with the remaining cars were uneventful and the Corvette easily took top honors in the braking department. The surprise performer was Frank Gearin’s Nova.

Not only did this unassuming Rat-powered Nova thump with a lowest e.t. of the day, a corrected 11.69/113.70, but the stock front disc/rear drum brakes performed admirably to anchor a solid 438-foot stopping distance. The Nova’s overall performance would prove unbeatable even by the Corvette. The ideal pass would have combined the Nova’s acceleration run up to 100 mph with the Corvette’s eyeball-flattening decel back to zero.

Tim Moore came back to make a couple of good runs in his Chevelle and dialed in the proper brake pressure balance to prevent the rear brakes from locking. Tim pulled out his best overall pass of 12.78/108.96 combined with an impressive 375-foot stopping distance from 100 mph. Brent Jackson also sported a set of big Baer Track brakes on his Camaro, but his stiff sidewall rear tires prevented any kind of a decent launch. The Camaro blasted a 12.67 at an amazing 119.41 mph, but braking limited the nose-heavy Camaro to a best of 452 feet.

The Cavalier had promised to perform well under braking, but it never achieved 0-100-0 mph numbers because the little nitrous’d mini-car never made it to 100 mph. Even with its problems, the little RK Sport Cavalier still knocked down a decent 15.10 at almost 92 mph with the help of a Nitrous Express fast gas kit.

This test was the most revealing of all we’ve done since only two cars didn’t suffer rear brake lockup problems, and they were the two cars that performed the best. The ZO6 took top braking honors while Frank’s Nova took low e.t. up to 100 mph. This year Baer also gave us an interesting look at each car’s performance based on acceleration and braking g-force, which was very revealing. It sounds simple, but very few cars can achieve consistent acceleration and deceleration curves. The braking curve is the most intriguing, because you are trying to maintain the highest negative g-force possible for the entire time the car is moving. That’s tough to achieve.

As usual, we had a blast with this year’s 0-100-0 slam dance. Nobody broke anything, they kept ’em off the guardrails, and we learned that most enthusiasts know much more about how to go fast than they do about how to stop. If we learned one thing, it’s that you can get great performance out of even stock systems if you know what you’re doing. It’s all in the tune-up. And remember, don’t spin out.