July 28th, 2015 UPDATE:
Been awhile since our last post, we have been working hard here at the shop finalizing our AFCO shock setup on the TA and working out the tune on the new LS3 swap motor. The past month has been chuck full of a couple local autocross events and then we raced in the USCA Event #4 at MIS and just recently wrapped up the USCA Motor State Challenge this past weekend.
LS3 Swap:
This swap has served to be a great upgrade form the OEM LS motor giving us the extra horsepower on the road course sections of these events and has helped also put the power down out of the hole when autocrossing to. We still need to finish our tune on the car to get it really dialed in, but we really like the extra power the motor is giving us.
The swap was fairly simple install. We actually would like to do it again, especially knowing some of the untold items out there that were needed to make the process a lot smoother. Our plan is to do a build blog on this, all in time - we are a small group here carrying a lot of different jobs at the shop
AFCO Racing (our tuned) DBL Adjustable Shocks:
We are really happy with the performance and the support we are getting from the AFCO Racing team. We are breaking ground in the street car performance with the shocks were are tuning and developing with AFCO. The TA can really dance out on course and with a few clicks it offers a beautiful street ride. These were the goals we were trying to hit with our mission to develop these systems. Our goal is to have an August release on the system we are running on the TA with separate shocks to full car packages available.
The system is using OEM mounted point to give us the optimal ride frequencies for our customers. The shocks will have non-adjustable, single adjustable, and double adjustable options. More on that when we finalize a couple more things...
Past Racing Events:
The local autocrosses were very helpful for some testing on the products we are working on. John had won his CAM class in most of them.
We also was able to make our first Optima USCA event at Michigan International Speedway. Missing NCM event #3 due to not getting the LS3 swap complete, we were really looking forward to event #4. Our performance at event #4 was really good and we learned a lot about a couple issues we were having with the tune on the engine and got us some more road racing time on the car setup. The shock system did what we asked of it and more. We placed around mid pack giving us motivation to improve at the next event! We even met some old autocross friends and saw the awesome collection of LPE. This was a very fun event and look forward to future ones.
This past weekend we raced at the USCA 7th Annual Motor State Challenge at Gingerman and Tire Rack. We improved on our road racing and made very little adjustments from our last road racing event. We still have some durability items we need to finish up (diff cooler, accu-sump, temp gauges) and also put some more seat time for John to get improved lines in the car.
The last day of the event was the autocross at Tire Rack test facility in South Bend. Autocross is one of our stronger parts for our team and we knew the TA was ready to rock 'n roll. We had a slow start getting the Driver Mod to kick in, but when it did - we were able to lay down a smokin' time on our second to last run. The previous runs were good, just ran a dirty with cones.
Jeff Schwartz had amazing run on the road course in his C7, dominating everyone on times with a 1:39.626, a second faster than Jim McKamey. Jim threw down a smoking run of 35.965 in the first heat of the autocross that surely secured the FTD. This then was over taken later by HoosierPE owner John Fehring. When we heard John's 35.866 was the FTD for the autocross, we knew we made it in the trophies for the event. Then were heard the news that Jeff Schwartz, Jim McKamey, and John were all tied up on the event points. We all had 21 points!! MSD events rules handle tie-brakers by the autocross ranking. So.... that smoking run John did, gave him 1st in autocross in the MFG Late Model Class and secured the deal for overall winner of the event in the class.
It was amazing weekend and a much needed win for us. The next few weeks we have a big schedule of events of autocross with SCCA. Local Hoosier Challenge at Grissom AFB in Peru, IN this weekend and then the Speedway CAM East Challenge at Grissom again the following weekend. We have registered for the Ohio Muscle Car Challenge to. Then here comes September and the SCCA Solo Nationals Championships! Stay tuned for more updates and here is a quick video of our FTD run this past weekend - #shavingcones!!
Cheers.
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