Can you make a 911 better by shoving an LSx in the back of it? What were the cars that Dave, Gavin, and I spent time wrenching on, are working on, and would like to turn into future projects? And just where the hell is Pizza Dad? All of those questions, and an actual reader email are in this week’s episode of the CAMcast!
Stream the episode above, go grab it on iTunes and other fine purveyors of podcasts (please rate, comment, and subscribe while you’re there!), or download it here. We’ll be back next week with a new episode, and a new voice! We welcome Dan Chilinski, owner of Old Man Yellow, and driver of a twin engine Toyota in the 24 Hours of LeMons.
*Article, Photos, Videos, and Audio clips are copyright of CAMautoMag.Com and their respective owners.
We here at CAM want to say thank you to all of our Veterans for their service. What better way to show our appreciation than to show off some fine builds from some vets and active duty servicemen?
Clint Stoneham’s RB powered Z has been featured not once, but twice!
Mouse’s yellow Mustang is another great build that went one quite a journey before appearing on our slice of the internet.
We’ve known Broderick Jones for a while, and we were ecstatic to be able to feature his unique Galant.
Nik Preusser didn’t have to take either of his cars to a different spot when we shot his features. We shot his Scion xB and his Jetta Sportwagen at the same mill.
Thanks to these five, and to all the veterans out there for serving this great nation.
*Article and Photos are copyright of CAMautoMag.Com and their respective owners.
It was a wonderful weekend at Miller Motorsports Park, or so I’ve been told. I missed out on Saturday because my car decided it didn’t want to have any oil in it, but I made it out on Sunday! And Sunday was a day where at least on championship would be decided.
The GTSU championship was a tight battle between Les Long of Air Power Racing, and Derek Wolthoff and Allen Turner of Makes & Models. A second place finish for Les and a fourth place finish on Saturday for the Makes & Models team seemed to have tighten up the race. Fortunately for the R8 pilots, Les parked his 911 GT3 Cup on Sunday. Les’s absence allowed the Derek to wrap up the title! He took first place over the upstart DXDT Racing team. All was well, until he rechecked his math and realized that he actually had it locked up on Saturday. He’s a racing driver, not a mathematician! Congratulations to the Makes & Models team for their GTSU Championship.
Shawn Tatum took the win in GTS4 on both days, and has been alone in the class since August. Does that matter? Not when his Tatum Racing prepped Cayman looks that good.
The GTS5 results were the same on Sunday as they were on Sunday: Darrell Troester, in his 996 GT3 Cup car, held off Karsten Nossack, in the Nossack Food Group 996 GT3 Cup car, for the win.
Dan Worley took home ST1 wins on both days, and had one hell of a battle with Matt Guiver on Sunday.
Mike Mielke claimed a win in ST2 on Saturday, but didn’t start the race on Sunday. I’m not sure why…
Damnit Mike! Put the steering wheel back on the car!!!
Travis Tidball, in the JDP Motorsports/RaceCo/DigiCert Corvette Z06, out drove the field of Mustangs (and pair of M3s) to collect a pair of wins on the weekend.
And in SU, Jeff Kearl had to deal with some hot hands on Saturday. Madison Snow brought out the UIS 911 GT3 Cup car, and Vesko Kozarov was out in an M3. Jeff beat the both of them, and earned himself a win on Saturday. He was the lone SU competitor on Sunday, but after Saturday’s battle, he earned himself a free pass.
You can’t throw a stone without hitting a Spec Z car in the paddock these days. It’s insane how fast this group has grown! On Saturday there were 13 cars in the field. 13!!! I remember vividly when there were only a handful of cars in the class.
Arthur Golebiowski continued his season long battle with Tom Kaminski on Saturday, with Arthur taking another win. Way down in 12th was the #22 Lyfe Motorsports Z. It only completed 4 laps. Sunday the tables were flipped!
And by “flipped” I mean Cole Powelson won, and spawned the hashtag #ColeonPole. Nothing was really flipped beyond the #22 climbing out of the bottom of the standings… Don’t know why I said that, I’m sorry.
Jim Miller and his Boxster cleaned up in GTS2 all weekend.
Mayor McCheese, AKA Blake Troester, out dueled Carol Nichols for the win in GTS3.
The Unfair Advantage Audi (still not sure what the advantage is) claimed PTE wins on Saturday AND Sunday, a feat that can only be accomplished on a weekend.
The #54 Spec E36 collected a pair of wins on the weekend, but with two different drivers at the helm. Saturday was Jeff Kearl’s win, and Sunday’s victory belonged to Rhett Longman. “Rhett Longman” sounds entirely made up. I’m gonna need to see some ID…
Tyler Dahl had a battle with Allen Anderson in Spec Miata. When the dust settled, Tyler emerged victorious.
Greg Valdez and Shawn Murphy wrote another chapter in their TT1 battle. This weekend they traded victories, with Shawn winning on Saturday and Greg on Sunday.
TT2 belonged to Rhett Panter on Saturday, then he punched a hole in his block. Not bad considering that motor had 5 years of good, hard use on it. With Rhett on the trailer, Sunday was all about Robert Poirer and his red Mustang.
Travis Tidball took TT3 both days, because why wouldn’t he?
What’s this??? Brendon Stewart making a return to the NASA Utah competition??? You bet your ass it is! And he made his homecoming quite the spectacle.
He didn’t burst into flames, he didn’t slam into a wall, he just took TTB in a FRS with some coilovers, slicks, heavy wheels and fresh OEM brake pads. Seriously, just the parts I mentioned. Toby Crawford has a supercharger in his BRZ, and Dave Wann is in the best Miata ever: a Honda S2000 built to TTB spec. Brendon may be some sort of savant behind the wheel. I want to see him in a TTU car, see what happens.
Kelly Fisher took the win in TTC behind the wheel of the ProTintUtah.com GTI.
It’s not quite a Mazda, and it’s not quite a Maserati, but it’s good enough for Tyler Nisonger to win TTE.
Lyfe Motorsports focusing their efforts on the World Time Attack Challenge GTR and Spec Z efforts has left a vacuum in TTU. Their only consistent competition, the Makes & Models Audi R8 LMS, rose to the top spot, but behind them are a host of occasional others. On this weekend, the Makes & Models crew took home the win (and championship) on Saturday, while Wade Hall and his obscenely powerful Mustang claimed a gold bottle opener on Sunday.
And there we have it. This was the final points weekend for Thunder and Lightning, and we’ll discuss the champions in a later post, but suffice it to say everyone earned their class championship. The next, and final, event is the legendary Tresduro! Last year the drivers ran on the Outer Loop, East and West tracks all in one day. This year is a bit different. They’re still running on the East and West tracks, but this year they’re going to be running on the Full Track! And for TT and Open Wheel, this will be their last chance for points. The second annual Tresduro is happening on October 24! Be there and watch the last event at Miller Motorsports Park!
What started as a humble swap meet, hosted by a humble online retailer, has grown into a sizable meet at the physical home of a porperly big online retailer. Thankfully, RallySport Direct maintains the feel of a shop run by a bunch of your friends and they have dropped the whole swap thing from their annual meet.
And thankfully their neighbors are ok with having the meet attendees borrow their parking lots. I wound up in one of these parking lots, and after receiving some puzzled looks from some mark 4 Supra owners (I’ll have some thoughts on that in a later column), I grabbed my friends Bobby and Brad and we wandered through the meet.
One of the first cars we came across was Alex Prasop’s Honda Del Sol. He’s had this car forever, and he’s put hours and hours of work into this. Some people may look down their nose at a humble little Honda, but a lot of those people are the kind of folk who will create a scenario to show off their friends’ high dollar cars and act offended when people call them a WASPy a**hole.
While most people are content with bolting on overfenders or flares, Alex was not. He made his own fenders, along with doing his own engine swap and shaving and wire tucking his engine bay. If I were given the choice between this, a well worn Honda built by an owner who is very passionate about his car or a new AMG Merc built by someone with more money than taste, who only cares that his car is cost prohibitive to most enthusiasts, I’d take the Honda.
That said, I wouldn’t say no to a 911 or a Gallardo. A classic 911 or a loud, brash Lamborghini are always head turners, and seeing them come out to a meet and them being driven by cool people (especially the 911, thanks for holding up for some pictures!) makes them even better.
RallySport made their name slinging Subaru parts, and if you’re in need of some I recommend pointing your internet their way. That being said, most people lower their Subarus and do their best to keep them clean. Not these guys. They’ve lifted them, put on massive offroad tires, added offroad lights, and the Legacy even added a snorkel. These cars aren’t parking lot queens, or track day terrors. They’re ready to get dirty, and stay dirty.
The Subarus weren’t the only ones in the dirt game. They were accompanied by this 4WD Civic Wagovan! Underneath all that glorious mud was some red paint, but it didn’t look bad covered in Earth tones.
In the same lot as the dirt crew was this bagged Mustang GT. Not something you see everyday, especially around here, but a lot of the new muscle cars look great when they’re on the ground. Bagging these big pony cars is something that needs to be done more, and this guy needs to drop us a line because I want to know more.
Over in the feature lot, or at least the lot closest to RallySport Direct itself, was this 4 door R32 Skyline sitting on a staggered set of Super Advans. If you look closely, you’ll see that there isn’t an RB under the hood. Nope! It’s an SR20! Too many doors, not enough cylinders, and all sorts of awesome! Sign me up, I’ll take two.
Next to my new favorite Skyline (sorry Brody), was another SR20 powered oddity: JR Crosby’s Lotus Super7. I’ve seen theis car a few times over the years, and I still can’t get over the looks of the Ur-kit car.
As long as I’ve been aware of the car it’s always been orange, and it’s always had that SR. The Shelby wheels are new, as are the Nankang tires (which is obvious just looking at them). Despite being insanely easy to look into the cockpit, I’ve never done so. So, I did. The well worn Start button tells you that this car has seen its fair share of road time. The gauges are laid out in a very sensible fashion, the tachometer and speedometer are right above the steering column, with oil pressure and temperature, water temperature in a row to the right of them. Below that trio is the wideband and the boost gauge. It’s sparse, but utilitarian, probably something Colin Chapman would approve of.
Lyfe Motorsports brought out pretty much everything except the GTR they’re prepping for World Time Attack; which, if you follow them on Instagram or Facebook, is a bare shell that doesn’t have a roof.
They did bring out their other GTR, the one that has been dominating Global Time Attack and will be racing to the clouds at Pike’s Peak later this month. This 1000+ horsepower beast is all business, and, as you can clearly see, they associate with only the best of companies.
And then there’s this yahoo…
The Brett King Design livery looks good on his still full interior TT1 car. Yeah, full interior. Headliner and all. He drives this thing to work in Wyoming, because why not?
While people were fawning over the turbocharged V6 in the Lyfe GTR, the old guard of turbo V6s rolled through. A pair of Buick Grand Nationals came through and turned all the heads. Seeing one at an event like this (something import heavy) is awesome, a pair is mind blowing.
This is always a great event, it’s well run and they bring out a lot of representatives of the part manufacturers they sell, and they give away a lot of awesome stuff too. We’re looking forward to next year, as we always are.
Nothing lasts forever. Memories fade, seasons change, and projects run their course. Such is the case with La Flama Blanca, Dallion Felton’s Evo X street car/RallySport Direct’s project car. After two years and 80,000 miles, it was time to say goodbye. So I made Dallin, and his little doge Hiroshi, drive to an office park so I could say goodbye to the car. And also to play with his dog, but mostly to say goodbye to the car.
The car looks mostly the same, sans all the vinyl decals.
It still has the APR splitter, vortex generators and GTC 300 wing. It sits on the same red 18×10.5 Volk TE37RTs, and it still has the Ohlins coilovers. To be honest, this thing is pretty much the exact same as it was back in February. That’s not a bad thing at all. Back then it put down a healthy 293 horsepower and 289 lb/ft of torque, which is pretty good considering what power adders were installed.
Fairly simple straight forward things: Tomei Titanium cat-back, test pipe, Big Mouth downpipe, and upper intercooler pipe. A Mishimoto intercooler, oil cooler, and radiator are things you would find on a lot of street driven Evo Xs, as are the AEM intake and TurboSmart blow off valve. The biggest changes are ones you can’t see.
Those big changes? A set of 1300cc fuel injectors from Injector Dynamics, a Cosworth high volume fuel rail, a TurboSmart fuel pressure regulator, and an AEM E85 capable 320lph fuel pump cradled in a Cobb Tuning fuel pump holder. Oh, and a Cavalli Stage 2 Turbo. The ball bearing, single scroll turbo has a 58mm inducer and 56mm exducer, and fits like the OEM turbo. Despite fitting like the stock turbo, it makes more power than the stock turbo. How much more? With a fresh tune on 91 octane the car put down 330 horsepower and 277 lb/ft of torque. On a tune optimized for E70 (ethanol, corn fuel, stuff you can’t get at a pump in Salt Lake County as far as I know) it made 408 horsepower and 345 lb/ft of torque!
Those are respectable numbers for a street car! And there’s more room for the next owner to turn up the heat. The turbo can move enough air for 600 horsepower. And yes, I said next owner. By now the car, and many of its parts have found new homes with other Evo Xs. Fear not, Dallin is on to bigger and better things.
After years of evolution and months of planning, the 2015 iteration of the Import Spring Showoff opened up at the Maverick Center last Sunday. And much like every year prior, this one saw massive growth. Over 2000 cars and over 8000 people came to the show! And in that mass of people and cars there were some seldom seen gems
Gems like Corbin Lines’s 1986 Dodge Omni GLHT. Not as highly sought after as the Omni GLHS’s, but still packing all the same goodness, Corbin’s weighs a scant 1980 lbs and makes over 500 horsepower to the wheels! All that power with that lack of weight makes the car useless on the streets, but a monster on the track.
There were plenty of FD RX-7s in attendance this year, but none quite as wild as this 2JZ swapped example. Some call this blasphemous, but the big Toyota mill fits so well under the hood of the sleek Mazda.
The matte purpley Scion is packing a nice sized Borg Warner turbocharger, a nice wrap (hence the color) and took home the Favorite Scion award. The red car is well on its way to becoming a challenger for the award next year, sitting nicely on a set of Work Emotion XD-9s.
Jon Truong’s custom widebody WRX made its debut. The metal work on the fenders looked amazing, and allows the massive CCW wheels to tuck nicely into the wheel wells.
Lyfe Motorsport brought out the big guns, and the biggest trailer at the show: their massive four car hauler. Inside the hauler were the two Spec Z cars they prepped in 30 days (!), a 996 Porsche 911 GT3 Cup car, and their venerable R35 GTR with it’s new wrap from Envision. In addition to the cars that had to be hauled to the show, Shawn Murphy drove his freshly wrapped STi down from Wyoming and parked it in the booth.
A sea of people and cars filled the enormous parking lot, vendors lined an entire row, and plenty of deserving builds drove home with awards. It was an impressive show on all fronts, and we can’t wait until next year.
Words by Michael Chandler, photos by Michael Chandler and Gavin Pouquette
WE’RE BACK RACING!!! Yes, our long local nightmare is finally over. The 2015 NASA Utah season opened up this past weekend on the Outer Loop of Miller Motorsports Park, and it. Was. Glorious! Let’s kick off our coverage with the TT groups, where the action was.
Joe Sim brought out the Turbo Labs turbocharged Acura NSX and ran a blistering 2:00.305 to take the win in TTU. The NSX made an appearance at Round 6 last year, and was even running around at GT Live back in 2007 and 2008! Coming in second place was TW Racing in the familiar Audi R8 LMS. Can the former GT3 car out pace the local legend? Will we see more of the NSX period? And what about the Lyfe Motorsports GTR? Will it defend its title as TTU monster? We have the better part of the season to find out!
After a late night tuning session at Ziptie Dynowerks, Greg Valdez took his WRX STi atop the podium in his first TT1 event. Shawn Murphy, who had an impromptu barbecue on the front straight last year, came in second and retired early with car troubles. Third place was occupied by Dave Gilliland.
Alex Whetman broke the Focus of Doom, but won the TT3 class in the process. The 2:06.2 he ran was a full 4.7 seconds faster than the second place Team Emerald West Porsche 911! Jon Carver put his #49 Corvette in third.
In TT2 we saw a battle between Robert Rathbone’s 911 and Frank Wilson’s C7 Corvette Z06. In this battle, the Porsche pulled out the win.
Paul House came out for one TT4 session in his Spec Z, and won himself a nice bottle opener.
Richard Thiessens took some time out of coordinating HPDE instructors to take the class win in TTB.
TTE is looking to be a hotly contested class. Ben Lamberson and his Audi barely squeaked by Jeb Brown’s Subaru for the class win.
We had some new faces in Open Wheel! And those new faces actually won! In Super Formula David Lockwood in his sharp, livery free car took race one; and Terry Biner, in the familiar Rodizio Grill car took race two.
Formula is also seeing a new face. Literally. Bruno Carneiro (who is fifteen years old. 15!) has jumped from karts into a Formula Mazda car prepped by Ian Lacy Racing, and won race two after finishing behind Troy Duffin in race one. Steven Costello took third in both races.
Bruno and David weren’t the only newcomers to the Open Wheel group. Askew Motorsports was out in a Radical for qualifying and a few laps in race one. I, for one, would like to see Formula and Super Formula grow as fast and as large as Spec Z has.
Speaking of Spec Z, it is huge! There were six competitors for Saturday’s race, and a total of seven cars registered for the day. In the race Arthur Golebiowski topped the podium, with Tom Kaminski in the Dip Kings 350Z in second, and Chad Aalders in third. Shay Chappell, last year’s TT3 champion, has left his Porsche 911 Turbo at home and hopped into a Spec Z. Shay can wheel, as is evidenced by his championship, so he won’t be in the basement for long. With fellow newcomers Richard Fitzgerald and Askew MotorSport, this series is only getting more contested.
In Spec Miata, David Sherman qualified on pole with Mike Ferrara and Allan Anderson behind him. In the race David Sherman brought home the win, with Mike Ferrara and Allan Anderson behind him. In other news, David Dingman was back out on track in a blue and yellow Miata! David’s a great guy, and we’re glad to have him back out on track.
And in the last Spec class, 944 Spec, Samuel Kapp and Otto Silva began what is always a season long battle for the championship. These guys duke it out every round, and it’s always a good clean fight.
In GTS2 Chris Haunold, in the red #9 Porsche, beat out Jim Miller, in the red #9 Porsche. Oh man, watching that red Porsche cross the finish line after seeing the red Porsche retire with mechanical issues was something else. Red Porsche.
Bill “Wild Willie” Noblitt jumped from PTB to GTS3 and took the win over “Good Guy” Gus Stribakos in another all Porsche battle.
They may have been the only ones in their respective classes, but Todd Green (#58 Paul Mitchell Miata) and Douglas Turnquist (#421 Porsche 944) took their wins and battled with the entire Lightning race group.
Bad Luck Brendon Stewart detuned his Evo so he could drop down to Super Touring 3 and have some competition. Long time ST3 competitors Travis Tidball (whose blue Corvette is getting wide) and Gary Free (in the Race Co FR500S Mustang) put up a fight against the newcomer, but in the end they couldn’t stop him. Brendon won the battle, but lifted the cylinder head in the process.
Les Long ran away from the GTSU field, and the rest of the race group in fact. He posted a best lap time of 1:59.411 during the race.
In GTS5 Russ Timmons held on to a lead of less than a second over Darrell Troester to take the class win. Chris Vivolo and his blue and white 996 911 rounded out the podium.
Byron Smith pitted his BMW against the 370Z of Lara Tallman. It was a close battle, one in which neither driver could put much distance between the other. By the time the checkered flag dropped Byron was ahead by 0.593 seconds, and took the win.
Unfortunately not everyone had playmates within their class. Dan Worley in the Tatum Racing LSX Porsche 944 claimed the ST1 win. Mike Mielke showed up to ST2 just in time to take over as lone ranger, ironically while driving a Ranger. And in GTS4 Shawn Tatum held court (see what I did there? HILARIOUS!) in the Dell & Schaefer Porsche Cayman.
And that’s all she wrote. It was a solid opening to what’s going to be a great season. A great season that has an event every month through October! There’s no excuse to not come out and catch one of these events, and there’s plenty of time to start working your way through the HPDE program so you can start competing with the a fore mentioned drivers.
The next event is April 24-26, and it’s on the West course. It’s longer straight sections favor the higher horsepower cars, so be prepared to see some blistering lap times in the Thunder race group. Grab some friends, pile into the car and make your way out to watch some racing!
