Transcription
[Music] Hey guys, before we jump into today's video, quick announcement. We've got a new merch item, a T-shirt and a hat, atlammerch.com. Personally, it's my favorite one we've done yet, especially with the performance-driven. So that's it, let's jump into today's video.
Man, hey guys, what's up? It's Sean, Autotopia LA. Today, we're back here at the Marone Automotive Museum down in Orange County, and it is a freak show. Every time I come here, that has never, ever, ever gone away. This is my friend John Marone. John is part of the family that created the Marone Museum. I was saying it to Vincent, actually, your son. He's talking to me, and I, the whole time, I catch myself looking around. It's hard to focus on anything but how insane his cars are hanging on the wall. You know, there's a Pagani off in the background here. There's so much to see. By the way, you guys, I highly recommend, every dollar that comes in here gets donated to do cool things for kids. Bottom line, Marone Automotive Museum, badass.
So this is a fun one, dude, cuz, cuz these two cars, and you guys, we're going to focus on the red one today, but there's a reason for two cars being here. So why don't you give a bit of the backstory of why the yellow Bandini car and how it gave birth to this transition? Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. Oh, by the way, welcome. Thank you. Say, bud. It's good to see you again. Bob and Pat Bandini were, are very close. Um, they're like family. I was there when Bob started the school. So the big picture is, this was Monique's Bandini Race Driving School car. O2, obviously, it's a, a C6. And what happened was, I said, Pat and Bob, when, when you're done with the school, done with the car, I'd like to buy the car because it's, it's a commemorative deal. It's a piece of you guys. It's a piece of, piece of Monique and, and Hur Street. Yeah. So we bought the car, dialed it all in, and, um, did a lot of work to it. You can imagine it was a school car, so it had a lot of stuff that needed to be fixed. I'm sure it's been beat on. So what we did is, the family, Monique and Vince and I and Colton, we just made a decision, and Michelle, um, we're going to go build a track car. Cuz all the kids raced, and we all raced. I'm retired from racing, you know, since I was six, and I'm 66 now. Yeah. So what we did is, we dialed in the car and built a race car. What we did to the car is all stuff that could be repaired. We all decided, said, look, we don't want to cut this car up. It means too much for the family, and it means too much to Bob and Pat. And we lost Bob this last year. You know, he finally passed away, and he's the first American to win Daytona, Sebring, and Le Mans. And he's history in that blue stripe car behind us. Legend. Legendary driver. What do you do? Do you hack this car up? No, you don't. You don't cut it up. That's where the transition happened here.
I'm looking, looking forward to talking about this. I mean, for one, it looks, it's funny, as painted up as that one is, this one looks dramatically more radical. The big splitter out here, the wing. So let's talk about what have you built here? There was a key decision-making that we, on this car. We were out there at Willow with the family, we're doing it and buzzing through and having a good time on a track day. And don't get me wrong, it's not a play car, it's serious. Yeah. What happened is, a guy in a C7, he came out of the pits, cold tires, had never taken a lap on Willow. Pushed that magic button. That magic button shuts on all the traction control, still track, everything. ABS off. Yeah. He goes out there, turns the corner, loses it. Instead of feathering it while he's moving out and just keeping it straight, he bails, overrotates, spins back around, and it goes off one backwards, hits the corner, flips it, flips again, and flips again. The thing with this car is, you've got this halo back here, and this halo, okay, is got two roll bars in it. Basically, what they are is inch and a half steel tube and stitched together. Well, what happened is, the first hit pushed this thing down almost at a 45-degree angle. Then it hit again, and it hit again. It flattened it right to the seat plate. So proving what you were saying before, in order to make this a true track car, you got to cage the car. You got to cut it up. You don't want to do that with this car. That inspires you to do this. Seeing what happens when you put this thing on its top, right? Yeah. Nothing scares me but a bad accident due to lack of proper equipment and fire. And that's what you'll see on this car. Our fear, and that's a, that's a race car driver's greatest fear.
So walk us through what all you've done to the car. Okay, LS3 that has a seven in it, which is the Z06. Comes with, the rumor has it, with the car, and this is like I said, this is a rumor, that a guy owned it and he put a blower on it. What happened is, he didn't tune it correctly, and he ended up putting a rod through the side of the block. It was detonating pretty heavily. Mike from Redline took a look and salvaged as much as he could, and he built the motor. So that's where the major expense was in this car. What does this make power? Was it? 6.5? It makes 656 at the crank. So, you know, you're looking at 575. You're also in a car that weighs what? 3200 pounds. You guys have caged it? Yeah. This has an aluminum frame, so it's immediately 300 pounds lighter. So then we gutted the interior. Pseudo, we didn't tear it all apart. I wanted to make it so it looked nice. And so we know, took a lot of the carpet, the back. So what we ended up doing is taking all the racing suspension we took off of this car and we moved it onto this. And the unique part about GM, and I don't know whether they had this in a plan. These are carbon composite springs that have been in there since the '60s. It's got a leaf spring sitting sideways, transverse mounted. You're going, what kind of antiquated technology is that? But Chevrolet managed to do a really nice job with it. They put a big C-beam over the top, it incorporates the shock, and on top of the shock is the bump rubber. So they got this big bump rubber perch is sitting right in here on both sides. And on the back, you put Pensky double adjustables in the shock tower perches. And guess what you got? You got a car with coilover suspension, fully adjustable. Very cool. Ride height, corner weights, all the stuff you can do anything you want. And rebounding compression dampening, which is critical when you're setting up a race car.
What's your transmission in the car? It's got the standard transmission. It had the transmission within it. It had 25,000 miles on the car and it grenaded the motor. But it's amazing that you can put about 1100 horsepower through these transmission, the transaxle assembly, and they hold it. So it's a phenomenal transmission. So we put a short shift in this. We then put the half cage in it because I didn't want to go upside down and have a problem. Sure. As you can see by the, everybody thinks it's a nitrous bottle in the back. It's got nine jets on it, and that's a fire bottle. It's cool how you guys brought the cage all the way back here. We mounted up the adjustables. We put the big sway bar. It's got an inch and a, probably I think it's a 2-inch bar in the front, hollow, and it's got a solid inch and a quarter in the back. And the interesting thing about the springs, the stock Z06 comes with about 25-30 pound springs in the front and 20 pound springs in the back. We have 600 pound springs in the front and we have 550 pound springs in the back. And the reason is, you want to level the car. Your critical mass is leveling that car during, in, in heavy corners. And why? Because that tire remains straight. If you get into the corner, like Willow Springs, Willow Springs, other than two turns, are all right-handers. You're loading the left-hand side of that car. So what happens is, you want a lot of camber in those left-hand wheels because when that tire starts to roll under, the suspension starts to push, now you have flat, unified, all the way across your contact point. So, and then on the right-hand side, you put, instead of one and a half degrees, you put one degree because the right-hand side is always on the trailing side of the car when you're loading it. So if you load it too far, you're constantly wearing the inside. But if you stand it up, you're wearing the tire all the way across.
You guys can see how he lost me at this point, right? The people who are watching this, there's somebody right now, I understand what that guy is saying, totally. This, this is all race terminology. Me being just the enthusiast guy, I see stuff like, like, I love the wheel tire setup on here. That's not what was on this car. What happened is, the car usually came with a, they came with a 19 and a 20. This is 18s. So that's 18 by 11s. This is 18 by 13. So what happened, that's what allows for you to put the big sidewall on both the front. And they're critical because this has ZR1 brakes on it. You can see it's got a 16 and a half inch carbon ceramic. There's six pistons front and rear. Wow. So when we take the car for a drive, you'll understand it. You get to the end of the street and you're going to go, "Marone, we're going to die." And I said, "No, you're just going to hit the brakes." And then when you drive it today, you're going to understand, "Whoa, okay." And I'm going to tell you, just stand on the thing, thing, and mash the brakes. And what do you do? You get, still have, does it have ABS? It has the ABS has been tuned out of it. Inside for the traction control, um, for the yaw sensor or stability track, and for the ABS, they're all hooked together. What happens is, there's a big bus that runs down the, the front under steering column. You take that bus and you disconnect it, and it negates everything. Now everything's shut off. Now your dash lights up like red lights, but you ignore all that stuff. So this car has no assists whatsoever. No assist. You got nothing. I have nothing.
I'm curious about some of the, the whole aero package because it's, it's pretty radical, dude. We talked a little bit about the wing, but this is almost like heading into the realm of time attack. We've got the side skirts on it, and then we've got this, um, Ryan at C6 Carbon built this for us. This was kind of the prototype that he did for it. We took it and built all the, all the C-beams on the front. And then this unit is normally is hollow. So what we did is, we filled it. We back-filled it with resin in here to make it solid right here where we bolted in. And then we took these cat whiskers and we moved, yeah, we moved them up and bolted them to the radiated core support. So you see the little holes in them, you put a drill bit through them so you can tighten up the bolts, the nuts on both sides, got their jam nuts. And then Ryan, what he did is, I said, look, I need these, these canards on here. I want to play with the canards and play with the aerodynamics. Yeah. So we did is, we put the canards on it. He 3D printed them for me and shot him up here. He hasn't got the carbon one done yet. These are the prototypes. Oh, got it. Okay. And they're on with plastic rivets. So all you can do is get underneath, nip them off, and then put a new rivet in. Right now, we tried this out, we like it, it works at Willow. The car is normally capable of, right now with a motor, probably 212 miles an hour. Okay. When it's arrowed out, holy crap. Now, as soon as you hang all the ground effects on it, the car will do about 175, 180 because you're taking all this ground effects and you're stuffing this car into the ground. Sure, sure. But it goes around the corner like a go-kart. Well, better than a go-kart, I'll bet.
Bruce Meyer, you know him, of course. Bruce has been a friend of mine for a long time, but Bruce has something very, he has the original Trifecta car that won Daytona, Sebring, and the one Johnny O raced with Indy Lights with Johnny O'Connell. So I asked him, I, uh, I asked Bruce to call. I said, hey, can you take some measurements for me? I wanted to know where he put the wing. And this is the identical, the same wing and everything else that that car uses. It's a 72-inch wing across. Now, the distance between the under part of the wing and the top of the car, they had it at 8 inches, 8 and a half inches. So I put it at 9 inches. But what I did with the aero, I wanted to get the back open. With the rules and regulations, you can't have the back, any wing, you can't protrude it any further than the back of the car. But I moved it back because your focal point is here at the axle. So you talk about leverage. The further back you get the wing, the less wing you have to apply to get the same amount of downforce because you're further away from your fulcrum point, which is the axle. So the further you get it back, the more downforce you make with the less amount of wing. And because we're not going for any SCCA championship, we're building a car that works. That you go on track, Dan, this is a track day, have fun car. That's why you're not worried about the rules. Frankly, to me, the most, the C6 is the most beautiful of all the Corvettes, other than the early Corvettes, a '62, '63. The front section has the beauty of the Dino, the Ferrari. Just, it's got that unique look. The problem is with Chevrolet, they cut the butt off this thing and they made this big old hump on this thing. So what we did is we lengthened the car. If you stand back and look at the car, lengthens the car. Yeah.
Let's go for a go. Take it for a ride. [Music] You know, one thing we left out in the, in the interview, you guys, um, how the exhaust on here is stock Z06 exhaust minus cats. We got 3-inch all, all the way back. And the reason we did that and left the mufflers on is when you're coming out of the Kink at Laguna Seca Raceway, they got a dB meter there. And the problem is with a dB meter, you get over a certain decibel, and you, they'll take you off the track. We just left the mufflers on, and then we, we don't attract too much attention on the audio portion. Like I was saying to you guys, when the car was just sitting there idling, it sounds, "Holy John, holy John, Jesus." We didn't do anything yet. You're not going to tell me ahead of time that you're about to do that. You're kidding me. Why would I tell you ahead of time? That way, it wouldn't be a surprise. Holy crap. God dang. This, I mean, that's cold tires. That's nothing. Well, that just gave me a sense right there. Seriously. A little [Music] bit. It's really funny. We were talking about it, race car driving, seat time. Right? When you've done just thousands of miles on the track, your viewpoint of what's fast and called the average enthusiast guy like me, my view of what's fast, very different worlds. Holy John. Holy crap. Jesus. Oh my God. Holy jeez. Jesus. Oh [Music] [Laughter] See, Sean, a little bit about differentials. You know, I know you know a lot about differentials and how differentials work and everything else. With a differential, how it works is on your tip end, and you got a posi. It grabs that clutch pack or that gear pack and it extends it to both wheels. The problem is, is it's neat when you're running in a straight line or a drag car. But when you're in a road race car, you go around a 90-degree corner at 45, 50 miles an hour, like we're doing, you tip into that throttle, it locks up the diff. So the right wheel and the left wheel are spinning the same speed in the back. So it's immediately tearing the car loose. One's trying to go one speed around the corner, the other's trying to go the other. Right, right. But if you go into a corner and you're off the throttle or neutral throttle, where you're not engaging that differential, it's a pack up that, that posi. You'll find that the car goes around the corner beautifully, and the rear end doesn't want to step out. Ready, Sean? I don't know. Whoa. Oh. Oh God. Holy [Music] crap. God, got him. Oh, there goes the [Music] radio. [Music] Jesus. That gets the pucker factor up a little bit. You got, you, you got me paying attention over here. But did you feel in any way, shape, or form, that the car was getting out from under us or was starting to move at all? No, it absolutely felt dead planted. No, this got, remember, at about 60 miles an hour, well, actually about 45 miles an hour up is where all the aerodynamics start to take effect. Right? So consequently, what happened, this is even playing in right now. You're not going fast enough to get any aero right now. The car is generating probably 80 to 150 pounds of downforce. That rear wing right now, at speed, at 165, 70 miles an hour, that wing is generating 3 to 400 pounds of downforce. Wow. Dude, and the front end is doing about the same. So it just takes it and plants it on that contact patch all the way around in all four tires. Yeah, you're planted. Oh [Music] God. Now here's where the ground effects really take [Applause] effect. Jesus. The car pushing down. Whoa. Jeez. You were cooking, dude. I just looked over at your speedo and, uh, you don't want to talk about it. No. My friend Jeremy from Roadster Shop says many miles per hour, tires are probably spinning at. What many miles an hour, and it's still, it's still going many miles an hour. Come up on the bumper. All right, tell them to hold steady. I trust your driver. Oh God. Okay. Okay. Oh, you're freaking me out. Jesus. Okay. He's a driver. Holy cow. You guys haven't figured it out yet. John's trying to see what it'll take to freak me out. Which was turn one, by the way. Car hits hard, dude. Yeah, it does. I mean, I've been in overpowered cars. This car hits really nice. It's like, it's got all the juice in the world. You know, the nice part about it, you can feel the car, and it's in control. It's not like, "Oh my God, what am I going to do next?" Yeah. You're a hell of a driver, dude. Ah, it's just, it's all the car. You're about to see how quiet, mellow a driver I am. That's okay. Okay. So we pull a U-turn then? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, for sure. I want you to do me a favor though, before you hit the U-turn, go down here, get it up to top gear in, in second gear, and then cram on the brakes. Just go up. First gear. What do you mean, cram on the brakes? Cram on the brakes is hardest you can. Pet him. Second gear. Keep going. Second gear. Harder. Harder. Harder. Now brakes. Jesus. Is that amazing? Oh, and that's with no ABS. So it's about 10% ABS. We put in this, we backed the computer system out and detuned it or deprogrammed it, but not deprogrammed it, backed them off. So you get about 5 to 7% ABS towards the end. That's it. Got it. Boy, that's a serious stop. Now, you could do that at 140 miles an hour. I mean, you could literally do that at buck 40 miles an hour, and it will come to a stop like you can't believe. Wow. I, you like that shifter? God, I love just right away. I'm look, where you are. You're relaxed. Your arm is laying here. You're just, this is just bitching. It's so [Music] slick. That's the power range. Personally, I love where it's purposeful, usable power. Yeah. The nice part about it is, the better your suspension, the more usable the power is. For sure. God, wow. This car, you really can tell how planted on the ground it is. Is it a stiff car? Yes, it's supposed to be. It is. But we, but we just rode on bumpy roads and everything, and nothing about this was bothering me. You get up above 100, 140, 150 miles an hour, everything gets softer very fast. Does it? So that's why you want a stiff suspension to keep the car off the ground and out of the deal with it when you get with the ground effect. Well, I love the pedals are so easy to do a pretty good blip. You know, I mean, I mean, I'm half on the brake and just a little blip like that for a downshift. I set those pedals up. Chris added the pedals, he widened them, and then put the throttle and the brake closer by a half inch. So what happens is, you can heel and toe it a lot easier. And so, and then he put the grip, the grip pedals on it. So it makes it real simple. Oh my God, this car is pretty cool, huh? This car is so easy to drive. I knew you'd have a [Music] blast. Holy cow. What you just did is where people get in trouble is the car starts to come loose, and they let off. Well, it's the F. Exactly. But I know what the car is going to do. The car is very stable. It'll tell you exactly what it wants. Always. Yeah. You just got to have the skill set to know how to listen. Yeah.
We didn't talk tires, by the way. 345 rear, 35 front, and they're slicks. So they're picking up everything. They're also making life super sticky. Goodness, man. That big gnarly pop when you shift at the top of it. The braking is so crazy on this [Music] thing. [Music] Wow. I know what it is. It just makes me smile. It does. Like a little kid with it. I'm not [Music] kidding. Holy cow, this car gets up to many miles an hour very quickly. It really does. Yeah. I can tell you enjoy driving this car, don't you? Immensely. It's something you've created, you know, and it, it, you've sorted it out because being obsessive compulsive, everything's got to be just right. Yeah. And it, it does exactly that. Well, and it's built to do what you wanted to do. That's the thing. And for, like, I got to admit, kind of crazy how small amount of money you have in this car. Yeah. 52,000, and it's more than that. It's probably about 3,000 more because the LS motor, the LS7, you couldn't get [Music] [Music] Right. It really does eat the bumps. It's, there's a lot of bumps I see on the road where I'm used to other cars that where the suspension's not dialed, so you get not enough compression and too much rebound, and you get a lot of hopping around on the road, you know? Yeah. It's, they're not set up properly. That's not at all. Guys get in the cars, you put big motors in them, and they, and they step it to the floor, and, "Okay, I'm going to haul ass." That's not the way it's done. I just enjoy being in cars that are power to weight is balanced. It's not overpowered. I don't like overpowered cars. They scare me personally. And I don't like cars that don't handle. I mean, simple enough, you know? I, I like cars that handle well where you can go for an enjoyable, fun canyon drive, drive it six-tenths, and have a great time. Have a great time. You're not on the edge of your seat. That's this car. You'll go up to Willow, you'll be able to drive at your eight-tenths and be a very comfortable place. Sure. And that's what the car is designed for. That was just a great time, man. Shooting with John is always a good time. Being here at the Marone Museum is always a treat. And getting to ride with John in this car, I mean, you got a car that's properly set up to be driven with a guy that really knows how to drive it. So that was just an extraordinary experience. Now, if you might have noticed, we've been gone for a couple of weeks. We're back. So I'm asking you going forward here, if you like what we do, like the video, subscribe, comment, share the video. And please check out atlammerch.com. If you haven't gotten any of the Autotopia LA merch, we've got some really cool stuff. So head over atlammerch.com and check it out. And as always, you guys, a massive thanks for being here, watching, and supporting us as we continue to grow. Happy New Year to you guys, and I will see you in the next one. All right, man. Later.