As everyone knows our last outing at Buttonwillow some 2 years ago was a little less than stellar with the car deciding to chuck it's number 3 rod through the block and subsequently blast the turbo and uppipe with around 12 quarts of oil and catching the car on fire on it's very first out lap. If I'm being honest the damage outside of the engine itself was very minor and we could have put the car back to what it was inside of 2 weeks. We discussed that route but honestly I just thought that would be lame and had a number of things bouncing around inside my head that I wanted to do to the car that with no engine in the way made sense!
Anyways a list was created that went something along the lines of this,
- Rebuild the entire flat bottom and framing (The existing had taken a beating over the years)
- Make the brakes actually work and not require the input akin to an international bodybuilder to stop the car
- Redo the front end framing that supports the Intercooler, bumper pieces and splitter
- Design and build a real turbo kit (Dumb Subaru's and their 8 feet of piping) based around Garrett's latest technology GTX4088r
- Change the fueling system to support north of 1000whp
- ETC.
- ETC....
With a lot of external support and help (Now this is a fucking list for you!)
- Yukio at Garrett for the turbo's
- Mike and Co at Greddy for the IC core (Finally a real core, not some boat anchor that I can fry egg's on after one pull!)
- Marty at Turbosmart USA for just about everything boost, some fuel and a ton of Penrite fluids!
- Mike Kenney and Brad Ratcliff for the manifold
- Chris Rado and the whole World Motorsports crew for letting me steal their old scavenge pump and probably more that I'm forgetting right now!
- Andrew over at T1Race (Injector Dynamic's) for really coming through on injectors
- Kenji at Cusco for the diff's
- Rishie at AutoRnD for the kick ass AME TM02 wheels
- Dan at CCI for the awesome clutch kit and spares
- Brian at BC for new rods and crank
- Sean at JE Pistons for the custom pistons with the ridiculous wrist pins
- Steve at RED for the block
I'm sure I'm missing a few folks but this was about 2 years ago and given as I can't remember what I ate for breakfast I feel somewhat OK if I don't remember all of the exact details!
So right where are we, ah yes GTA x SLB 2014, well this time I figured given all the changes and such I'd try something totally new so there I was phone in hand booking a test day at Buttonwillow the Wednesday prior to the event (11/5) Oh shit I nearly forgot another modification of significance during our absence. Our driver Jeff Westphal tied the knot with his long time girlfriend Brianna, the reason I only remember this at this point is we moved the test day back one day as he was flying back from his honeymoon arriving late at night on Monday the 3rd.
After loading up, a fantastic scenic drive down the I5, sleeping in front of the gate we were all set to shake the car down and get started on dialing in the chassis. Did I mention we were testing at Buttonwillow?? Jeff goes out to make sure nothing falls off and comes in stating the car is breaking up under any load. Bare in mind I have probably put around 400 miles of dyno time on the car testing turbo's and such over the past year or so without a hiccup so this strikes me as a little odd or perhaps the norm for us at Buttonwillow!
After testing a few things out it became apparent this was not something we would be able to fix at the track and we had for sure clogged up our injectors and even with our attempts at back flushing them the problem was not going to be something we could get any test data from the car without serious risk to the engine. A quick phone call to Andrew at T1 Race Development ensured we'd have a new set of injectors awaiting us at the shop the next morning.
We spent the weekend removing the entire fuel system (and I mean everything!) cleaning it all out and replacing all filters. With the new Injector Dynamics's injectors in I proceeded to go over the engine on the dyno. We've been having more than a few gearbox related issues with the shear amount of power and torque we're now seeing out of our Garrett turbo so I limited the car tuning to only the low and medium boost profiles as the last time I mapped the high boost I broke 4th gear and an axle on the dyno.
OK sorry if I've bored the complete shit out of you by now and we're not even talking about the event but I wanted to at least get everyone on the same page with a little of the background leading up to the event!
So it's now Thursday test day we're all set and ready with the exception that we have a car with a ton of changes that has had 0 track time, A driver that hasn't seen let alone driven the car at WOT in two years and an timed event the next day!
Thursday went along with us making some small changes and Jeff getting the feel for the car, I think we only crossed start finish once when we used one of the two sets of Hankook C91 tires we had to feel out the balance of the car on them, if I recall the lap was a 1:42.6 while running low boost and RPM. The guys and I spent the evening re-bleeding the cooling system and visiting with friends of ours staying at the track (Snail Performance guys, Kyle Lewis, Aaron Hair, etc,)
Friday morning first session rolls around and Jeff and I made the decision to keep the tires from the day before on the car and stick with the low boost/RPM to put down a banker and see where we were and what we needed to adjust. Jeff clicked off a respectable 1:41.5 while battling with some braking issues and keeping the RPM's down.
Typically the money shot session is the one falling between 10am and 11am and the next session for us was 10:40am which we all agreed was the perfect time to switch to the remaining fresh set of C91's and use the Medium boost map. In between all of this and due in part to me finding a leaking clamp on the cooling system we had to bleed our cooling system again which is no small task to do right with the rear mounted radiator, suffice to say I made a complete bollocks of it and our second session was basically a waste of good tires (I really need to stop working on cars and stick to what I'm good at but I'm yet to find anyone willing to pay me to talk shit on Facebook all day :( )
There was a decent gap between the 2nd session and 3rd session so I knew we'd have time to do the proper bleed process for the car, the guys (Keith, Earl, Vince and Zak) all hustled getting the system bleed and last minute pre-session checks done and we were in good shape with about 30 Min's until we needed to be on grid.
Now in the meantime Cole and Kyle from LYFE Motorsports had put the 2nd session to good use and laid down a awesome time of 1:40.4 so we had our work cut out for us or should I say Jeff had his work cut out for him!
Jeff set out on his flier and was really working the car unfortunately he caught traffic coming into the sweeper before the esses and had to abort the lap, Jeff came into the hot pit lane and we decided that it was going to be near impossible to find a hole to put in a good lap so parked the car.
I have to say at this point the mood in our paddock area wasn't the best, my initial thoughts were "Fuck it let's get her in the trailer and get out of here" but after 10 minutes or so to gather our thoughts everyone agreed we owed it to our sponsors and fans to give it another roll of the dice in the last session of the day. The only change we could make was to switch our front tires to the back as we didn't have any others to use.
So the picture looks like this at this point for us,
- Tires are really not in the best shape for taking advantage of their fresh grip
- We're all a little tired and dejected at this point
- The track has a fair amount of dirt and crap on it and less than ideal
As Jeff started his hot lap for our final throw of the dice I just remember thinking to myself "At this point I'll be happy if Jeff's able to stay on the track" When I looked up and saw the L fly through the bus stop and got my split on my watch I didn't say anything to Earl who was stood next to me but recall thinking "This is on par for a sub 1:40 for sure" Given I had thought the same in the previous session I just kept my mouth shut.
I don't know what it is but I have to say I truly hate that feeling when the car disappears from view after hurtling along Riverside, it always seems like an eternity and given we've already caught fire down in the sweeper it really magnifies that to me at least! Finally the car comes back in view and slides round the final corner for the front straight, Jeff holds 5th with the rev limited (8400rpm) just kicking in as he passes start finish, I look at my watch and say to Earl "Fuck me I think that was a 1:39.1?" A split second later Justin Banner's voice Echo's over the speakers announcing the time was a 1:38.967 as far as I could see on the pit wall everyone was going nuts!!!
Well that's about it really, I'll omit the champagne bath, naked pictures of Tony Szirka and the goat and save you the horrible details of them both.
I would like to personally thank Jeff Westphal as always for proving what a not only supreme talent he is but just a nice person to be around and work with, obviously my own guys Earl, Keith, Vince, Aaron and Zak for putting up with me through thick and thin and their tireless efforts. Finally to our fantastic sponsors whom have stuck with us all this time and truly supported us with their fantastic products.
Hankook Tire USA, Cusco, Greddy, Ignition
Projects, AME Wheels, AutoRnD, JRZ suspension, JE Pistons, BC (Brian Crower),
Kognition Designs, Mothers, Kartboy, Huck Gee, Vfiber, Competition Clutch Inc,
Darton Sleeves, Forge Motorsport, Race Engine Development, Injector Dynamics,
Turbosmart USA and Garrett Turbo’s
