This past weekend was AWESOME!!! Drove the Javelin down to Buttonwillow and beat on it for back to back track days. I’ve had the car since 1992 and drag raced it a couple of times but this is the first time ever the cars been on a road course. The car was great. Honestly I was shocked at how well it worked on track. It’s got a street alignment and I don’t know anything about setting/checking tire pressures. My first session was ridiculous. I’d never been to Buttonwillow before and no idea which way the track went. For my second session I grabbed an instructor who showed me the line. Then I rode in his Porsche Cayman S and got to see how he did it. So, for my third session it just clicked. I finally felt like I was actually driving the track. I spent the rest of the day and the two morning sessions on Sunday just getting faster and faster. The group that put on the track event was NCRC and they were great. I have to give a plug for my brakes. They were amazing. I have a wilwood front disc setup put together by Ken McIntire. They just rocked. If you are interested in getting a track worthy brake setup on your AMC, contact him at McIntire Machine in Crows Landing , CA.
I had some company on Saturday as I met up with Gaetano (gitter done from the Pro-Touring forum) and got a few laps in his killer 600+ HP aluminum block ’69 Camaro. Very cool!
I did have a couple of glitches. First, I had a 6000 RPM chip in my MSD box. However, the rev limiter was kicking in more like 5600 – 5700. Too low. I’m going to switch to a 6500 chip. The other issue is that after my second session on Sunday the car started sputtering on the cool down lap and stalled as I got to the pits. I had no idea what the problem was. I thought maybe the car had gotten hot and I had vapor lock. So, unfortunately, I sat out the rest of my sessions because I thought I had to let the car cool down. Anyway, at the end of the day I still couldn’t get the car started. By sheer luck I had stalled right near where some guys with a stock car were pitted. I went out and asked if they had a carb guru. Well they listened to my description of what had happened and took a quik look at the car. I swear it took them about 4 1/2 seconds to diagnose my problem. I had a piece of junk in the metering needle. The junk turned out to be a small sliver of blue anodized aluminum from the AN fittings on the carb. So, I’m going to swap out my fuel rail. Anyway, after empyting all the backed up fuel from the float and clearing out the junk, the car started right up. Huge thanks to the guys at Wide Open Throttle performance for saving my butt!!!
Despite the minor glitches I’ve had a perma grin on my face all week. I’ve done 3 track days in my vette this year but running the Javelin was just so much more satisfying. It was very cool to be out there in a car I built and feel that it was actually working. AMC RULES!
Enjoy the video…