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1993-2002 Camaro Koni STR.T Shocks Review and Install Info

Every F-Body enthusiast recognizes the Koni brand when it comes to racing and very high performance Camaro shocks and struts. A few years ago Koni realized that not everyone needs the added cost and complexity of their full on adjustable shocks, so they started offering the STR.T (“Street”) line of performance dampers. Koni STR.T shocks for 1993-2002 Camaro and Firebird have carefully tuned valving designed to offer the best balance of improved handling performance without being so stiff that they decrease ride quality on your daily driver. These shocks (Koni part numbers 8250-1005 and 8250-1006) have become wildly popular, so the Brothers performance team decided to take a closer look at what makes them such a highly regarded upgrade.

Koni STR.T shocks offer enough added stiffness to properly dampen most Camaro lowering spring kits on the market but are still soft enough to work with factory springs if you’re just looking to replace your old shocks and maybe look into lowering springs later. This flexibility, coupled with their budget price, is what helped make them the most popular shock Brothers Performance sells. Continue reading →

This entry was posted in Opinion, Camaro News and tagged 4th gen camaro, 4th gen firebird, f body, koni shocks, koni str.t, camaro suspension, firebird suspension on August 15, 2017 by Jason Rice.
Education At Speed—Driving the Ford Raptor and Focus RS At Speed

Education At Speed—Driving the Ford Raptor and Focus RS at Speed

To car or truck enthusiasts, the biggest thrill comes from getting behind the wheel and seeing what your vehicle is capable of doing. Be it drag racing, drifting, road course or off-road, it’s awesome to drop the hammer—and it’s even better to do it in a safe environment with skills to get the job done. Of course, not everyone has access to a race track or wild off-road trails, but that’s not a problem for those who purchase the latest Ford Performance vehicles. That’s because included in the price of your new Ford specialty vehicle is a complimentary day at the Ford Performance Racing School located outside of Salt Lake City, Utah.

Ford began the on-track program with the 2012 Boss 302 Mustang Track Attack, and it now offers the one-day driving course to anyone who buys a Fiesta ST, Focus ST, Focus RS, Shelby GT350 or Raptor truck. Each class combines a serious education and a fun day of driving. You’ll learn what your vehicle can do on track, you'll learn how to operate the many systems, and you’re guaranteed to walk away with improved driving skills and a complete understanding of your new Ford.

Best of all, you get to drive the school vehicles, so all you have to do is incur the travel and lodging expenses. There’s a reception dinner, and the school also provides driving suits when required, helmets, and you’ll get top-notch driver coaching from real racing instructors.

Recently, we spent a day at the school which is located at Utah Motorsports Campus in Tooele, Utah. We got a taste of the RS Adrenaline Academy and the Raptor Assault during a full day of driving at FPRS. We started in the Ford Focus RS, and ran on the road course, wet skid pad to learn drifting, and then we moved to the figure 8 and the Urban Street Course.

Our media day was designed to give us a taste of what the real students get, but students get so much more. They learn in the classroom and then get tons of on-track experience. In the classroom you’ll learn the ins and outs of vehicle dynamics, such as how to manage the contact patches, how to smoothly transfer weight and how to string corners together on a road course. Then you’ll move to the RS and put it to practice.

After refueling with a nice lunch, we hit the trails in Raptor trucks. The Raptor Assault program takes students through a well-designed course that lets them experience many aspects of off-road driving. We did hill climbing, rock crawling and learned to drive with the vehicle on a side tilt up to 30 degrees. With that under our belt, we headed to real-world trails where we climbed steep upgrades, descended and ran hard through a Baja section of fast, flat, dirt roads.

Both the RS and the Raptor are amazingly capable and the school gives you the knowledge and confidence to experience them as the engineers designed. I was impressed by how much performance is packed in the Ford Performance vehicles, and how far they can be pushed. Of course, if you’re looking for more performance from your Ford product, be sure to search out your model right here at brothersperformance.com.

This entry was posted in News, Opinion and tagged evan j smith, focus rs, ford performance, ford raptor, utah, ford performance racing school on April 4, 2017 by Evan Smith.
Mid-Engine Corvette & a ZR1?!

Literally within days of each other, prototypes have been spotted and rumors have been confirmed that there will be both a ZR1 version of the current C7 Corvette and a mid-engine C8 upcoming. I know that is a lot of Corvette news in a short amount of time and it is seemingly contradictory, but stay with me here.

The C7 Corvette platform debuted for the 2014 model year, revitalizing the Stingray nameplate for the base car. The following year the Z06 was released (unveiled at the 2014 North American International Auto Show), brandishing its wide-body and a supercharged version of the 6.2L Gen V V-8 platform. In March 2015 (at the Geneva Auto Show) the 2017 Grand Sport was unveiled, which follows the same formula as the C6 – Z06 wide-body treatment and handling upgrades along with the base model’s 460hp V-8. If we continue the C6’s product formula, the C7 is due for a ZR1 variant in the 2018 model year. As such, it should provide a power upgrade over the Z06’s 650hp LT4, but how?

When a ZR1 mule broke cover recently, Autoblog (among others) speculated that it could be a twin-turbo version that makes over 700hp and dubbed the “LT5” (to follow the Gen II nomenclature). From having worked with the Z06’s LT4, I will propose an alternate theory, which is that it could have a larger supercharger – say 1.9 or even 2.3L like the previous ZR1. The bigger blower and perhaps a few other tweaks could support over 700hp while sharing many of the LT4 components. For those of you skeptics out there, from the pictures it is clear that it is a C7 Corvette and it is definitely not mid-engine. And since the Grand Sport is already on the street, what other C7 would be so heavily camouflaged? Mounts for an unattached wing, an exposed carbon fiber hoop (like the C6 ZR1), blue brake calipers (also like the C6 ZR1), and plenty of cooling scoops are evident from the photos.

If, in fact, the ZR1 debuts for the 2018 model year, we should expect an official announcement no later than early next year. This, then, raises the question as to when and where a mid-engine model fits in. According to The Detroit News: early 2019. Moreover, its sources report that the current generation will run until 2021 when the mid-engine C8 – code-named “Emperor” – becomes the sole Corvette. The C7 uses a front-mid arrangement, which places the engine behind the front wheels. However, many feel that placing the engine behind the driver and in front of the rear wheels is a better method of balancing the handling as well as providing greater platform flexibility for variations such as all-wheel-drive and hybrid-electric models to mirror other currently available supercars. An announcement is expected in early 2018 and production starting late in the year. Former chief engineer Tom Wallace and head of product development Bob Lutz weighed in on the mid-engine, hybrid Corvette. In fact, Lutz says he was approved for an all-wheel-drive Corvette in 2007, but had to scrap it due to the impending bankruptcy.

Some may think that these rumors are simply perpetuated by the media, and that there is no basis for a mid-engine, all-wheel-drive, hybrid Corvette. However, it is important to keep in mind that the Corvette has always been about pushing the boundaries of technology to produce the ultimate performance. Through his many prototypes, it was apparent that engineer Zora Arkus-Duntov (aka “Father of the Corvette”) only cared about performance. He was a racer after all, and director of high performance at Chevrolet. In 1959 Duntov built the first mid-engine prototype (dubbed CERV), and the early ‘60s sequel used two separate torque converters for the front and rear drive wheels. If this is any indication, the only legacy that Duntov or the Corvette team cared about is the legacy of winning – not the legacy of an outdated platform.

This entry was posted in News, Opinion and tagged 2018 Corvette, Mid Engine Corvette, C8 Corvette, Corvette news, Corvette rumors, Chevrolet Corvette on August 11, 2016 by Scott Parker.
Is GM Cooking Up a 427ci & Twin-Turbo Gen V V8?

Will the new Camaro Z/28 have a 427ci Gen V V8?

The cat has been out of the bag for some time that Chevrolet has been cooking up a Gen6 version of the Z/28 as well as a mid-engine version of the Corvette. While a mid-engine Corvette could stay just a concept, as it has since the ‘60s, the Z/28 has already been spotted testing at the Nürburgring. The original speculation was that it would be very similar to the previous generation, but faster and powered by the supercharged LT4 Gen V V8 found in the upcoming 2017 Camaro ZL1 as well as the current Corvette Z06 and Cadillac CTS-V. However, after this video surfaced, it seemed to indicate that the track-born model will have a naturally aspirated Gen V V8 engine.

[Camaro fans note: don’t worry about the crash at the end, this car was back on the road the next day.]

Now you may be thinking that a naturally aspirated Gen V8 engine is the natural choice (no pun intended) for a car built for road racing like the new Camaro Z/28. So where did that original speculation even come from? Well back when the 2015 Corvette Z06 was launched at the 2014 North American International Auto Show (NAIAS), journalists asked Corvette engineers point blank: why not a 427 Gen V V8? The answer was that they could not make their performance target, assumed to be over 600 horsepower, and that the R&D costs did not justify the increase in power over an LS7. And without the flagship supercar to bear the cost burden of developing a large cube Gen V V8, it seemed unlikely that a 2018 Camaro Z/28 would have such an engine. From a cost perspective, it was more likely that the Z/28 would have either the ZL1’s LT4 or a slightly hopped-up version of the LT1.

The big BUT (there’s always one) is that the Camaro team never likes to play second fiddle to the Mustang. Since the Shelby is making 526 horsepower with its flat-plane crank 5.2-liter, that would be the obvious performance target for a new Z/28. It seems unlikely that Chevrolet would be able to extract that from a 6.2L LT1, which begs the question whether a 427-cube Gen V V8 is in the works. The counterpoint is that the Camaro is almost a hundred pounds lighter, and does not require as much power to equal or surpass a Mustang. And, in fact, one of the greatest benefits of the Gen V V8 engines over the Gen IV is average power, not peak. Anyone who has driven a C7 Corvette Stingray can tell you that the off-idle torque of the 6.2L LT1 is comparable to the LS7 in the previous generation Z06. A stark contrast from the high revving, dual overhead cam Ford motors. Could Chevrolet make a 427ci direct-injection engine that makes over 526 horsepower? I’d bet on it. But, will they?

As for the mid-engine Corvette, a prototype was spotted at GM’s proving grounds in early 2015. The Corvette team has been toying with the notion of making a mid-engine Corvette since Zora Arkas-Duntov was at the helm. The current mid-front layout with the transaxle was sort of a stepping-stone to optimum front to rear weight balance. As horsepower continues to climb, many engineers think that a mid-engine layout is needed for traction – hence why the fastest production supercars in the world use this layout. According to the latest rumors, the mid-engine platform will eventually replace the C7. However, it will first be unveiled as the new halo model. As a last hurrah, we could very well see the first twin-turbo production Corvette. Some have said it has a smaller displacement Gen V V8 (such as 5.5 liters), however a certain GM dealership claims it is a 6-cylinder with 700hp. The price could be over $150,000. Given GM’s need to separate the Corvette from the Camaro, its experience with twin-turbo V-6s and the release of the new Ford GT, all of this sounds entirely possible.

This entry was posted in News, Opinion, Camaro News and tagged corvette, Camaro Z/28, Gen V V8, LT1, LT4, C7 on May 17, 2016 by Scott Parker.