AWD Tuner Shootout Spring Mountain
09-24-2007, 08:59 PM
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AWD Tuner Shootout Spring Mountain
What a weekend, for those of you that are not aware of this event it's the annual AWD Tuner Shootout put on by the guys from Boostlab networks (owners of EVOM and I-Club, etc) ran at Spring Mountain Raceway in Pahrump, NV.
For the GST crew this event started with the rig and car leaving with Tommy the principal car mechanic on Thursday night, the rest of us met at the shop at 6am and caravan'd the long boring 8 hour drive, all was going great until we hit the rain on the I15. After slowing the pace a little driving through the flooded roads to Pahrump we finally get to the track at 4:30pm and sign in. I have never heard of it raining in the desert but apparently it does and it proceed to **** down on us while we unloaded the L and started to put up the awnings to keep the somewhat surreal elements from us.
With the rig all situated we proceed to do some real work at the Saddle Rack blackjack tables
Saturday rolled around and we woke up to nice bright clear skies and a river running through the track, following the drivers meeting it was determined the track would be running a little behind to allow the track workers to clear the river following turn 4.
Our plan is typically always the same for a new track to us, go out there with the car running low boost and rpms and have the driver learn the track with this in mind we have a suicide seat in the car now and proceeded to load it up with willing wictims all day while Brian setup about learning the track. Things were going as planned with Brian turning 2:57's while keeping the rpm's below 6k and with passengers until the final session where he took his brother and business partner Mike (Calculated Risk) out for a spin to go over the handling when coming down the back straight the car just shutdown. Seeing this from the stands the crew ran out to push the stricken car into our paddock area and quickly accessed the damage, a broken exhaust cam pulley which took out the timing belt as well.
As the crew lead by Tommy Wu and Mert Solis quickly started to remove the damaged parts the decision was made to see if we could get lucky and avoid any interferance and simple put a new cam pulley and timing belt on. This was done and at around 8:30pm the car was fired up and found to be running ok with just a slight lower idle vacuum (a couple of tweaked valves). At this time we heard a sickening thud from the other side of our rig (we paddocked next to our friends from Speed Element) the sickening thud would turn out to be what we at GST are convinced the end of the Speed Element crew taking the modified title (they ran a 3:08 on the cars second lap EVER on track!!!) Look for this car in future as it's going to be one serious car!!!
The following morning we decide not to run the practice as we're not sure how bad the valves are and how many laps we may or may not get in, we watch the AMS car go out and get our stop watches ready to see what they are going to run. The AMS car barely completes a lap and comes in with a small puff of smoke and we all look at each other puzzled as to what they have going on now (they had some oil pan issues on the Saturday) one of the AMS crew comes over and asks if we have a spare turbo as their's just failed, unfortunatley we run a GT30 and they run a GT35r so there was nothing we could do but furtunately they had sold one of there kits to someone in LAs Vegas that they were going to tune and this guy would uninstall his and drive it out to them.
The First session comes up and Brian runs a 2:49.xx and reports back that the car has plenty left in her so things look good. We run the second session and Brian drops half a second but is not experiencing a slight clutch slip but nothing serious. As we get near the 3rd and final session Aaron from Speed Ventures asks us if we mind delaying the final round if the AMS crew need the time to get the newly awquired turbo onto the car, the resounding responce from the team is hell no who would want to win by default??? we're happy to wait. It turns out the crew from AMS needed no extra time as they busted out the install with 10 minutes to spare.
Both cars head out on track with our car set to lead out, from the get go something was apparent to us Holy **** that AMS car has some power (as a motor guy and engine tuner I had power envy for sure!!) The first two laps pass with AMS leading us by 1 second so it would all fall down to whether Brian could pull one out of the bag on the last lap, it was looking good with Brian making up some time on the first 3 sections of the track as he rounded the corner for the back straight it was looking like we would be in the 2:47's when he went for 4th the clutch slipped, grabbing 5th the clutch slipped... we managed a final lap of 2:48.81 with the AMS car running a 2:47.63.
All in all a great weekend for us, we had a couple of issues as did everyone else and in all honesty the AMS car had a limited time on track so would probably have gotten a little faster than they ended up with anyway. It was good to see how our L stacked up against what we see as the best and fastest team we have ran up against to date and even though we got beaten we're happy with how our car performed and even as I type the revisions to the chassis and power train are being made for the Superstreet finals where we aim to really show what this little car can do.
We have some in car of the final session which can be downloaded from here http://www.gstmotorsports.com/host/v...nalsession.wmv check for the clutch slipping on the exist onto the back straight.
We would like to thank all of our sponsors and friends for their support during this event and to congratulate the whole AMS crew on their victory and wish them good luck at Summit Point this weekend.
Mike
For the GST crew this event started with the rig and car leaving with Tommy the principal car mechanic on Thursday night, the rest of us met at the shop at 6am and caravan'd the long boring 8 hour drive, all was going great until we hit the rain on the I15. After slowing the pace a little driving through the flooded roads to Pahrump we finally get to the track at 4:30pm and sign in. I have never heard of it raining in the desert but apparently it does and it proceed to **** down on us while we unloaded the L and started to put up the awnings to keep the somewhat surreal elements from us.
With the rig all situated we proceed to do some real work at the Saddle Rack blackjack tables
Saturday rolled around and we woke up to nice bright clear skies and a river running through the track, following the drivers meeting it was determined the track would be running a little behind to allow the track workers to clear the river following turn 4.
Our plan is typically always the same for a new track to us, go out there with the car running low boost and rpms and have the driver learn the track with this in mind we have a suicide seat in the car now and proceeded to load it up with willing wictims all day while Brian setup about learning the track. Things were going as planned with Brian turning 2:57's while keeping the rpm's below 6k and with passengers until the final session where he took his brother and business partner Mike (Calculated Risk) out for a spin to go over the handling when coming down the back straight the car just shutdown. Seeing this from the stands the crew ran out to push the stricken car into our paddock area and quickly accessed the damage, a broken exhaust cam pulley which took out the timing belt as well.
As the crew lead by Tommy Wu and Mert Solis quickly started to remove the damaged parts the decision was made to see if we could get lucky and avoid any interferance and simple put a new cam pulley and timing belt on. This was done and at around 8:30pm the car was fired up and found to be running ok with just a slight lower idle vacuum (a couple of tweaked valves). At this time we heard a sickening thud from the other side of our rig (we paddocked next to our friends from Speed Element) the sickening thud would turn out to be what we at GST are convinced the end of the Speed Element crew taking the modified title (they ran a 3:08 on the cars second lap EVER on track!!!) Look for this car in future as it's going to be one serious car!!!
The following morning we decide not to run the practice as we're not sure how bad the valves are and how many laps we may or may not get in, we watch the AMS car go out and get our stop watches ready to see what they are going to run. The AMS car barely completes a lap and comes in with a small puff of smoke and we all look at each other puzzled as to what they have going on now (they had some oil pan issues on the Saturday) one of the AMS crew comes over and asks if we have a spare turbo as their's just failed, unfortunatley we run a GT30 and they run a GT35r so there was nothing we could do but furtunately they had sold one of there kits to someone in LAs Vegas that they were going to tune and this guy would uninstall his and drive it out to them.
The First session comes up and Brian runs a 2:49.xx and reports back that the car has plenty left in her so things look good. We run the second session and Brian drops half a second but is not experiencing a slight clutch slip but nothing serious. As we get near the 3rd and final session Aaron from Speed Ventures asks us if we mind delaying the final round if the AMS crew need the time to get the newly awquired turbo onto the car, the resounding responce from the team is hell no who would want to win by default??? we're happy to wait. It turns out the crew from AMS needed no extra time as they busted out the install with 10 minutes to spare.
Both cars head out on track with our car set to lead out, from the get go something was apparent to us Holy **** that AMS car has some power (as a motor guy and engine tuner I had power envy for sure!!) The first two laps pass with AMS leading us by 1 second so it would all fall down to whether Brian could pull one out of the bag on the last lap, it was looking good with Brian making up some time on the first 3 sections of the track as he rounded the corner for the back straight it was looking like we would be in the 2:47's when he went for 4th the clutch slipped, grabbing 5th the clutch slipped... we managed a final lap of 2:48.81 with the AMS car running a 2:47.63.
All in all a great weekend for us, we had a couple of issues as did everyone else and in all honesty the AMS car had a limited time on track so would probably have gotten a little faster than they ended up with anyway. It was good to see how our L stacked up against what we see as the best and fastest team we have ran up against to date and even though we got beaten we're happy with how our car performed and even as I type the revisions to the chassis and power train are being made for the Superstreet finals where we aim to really show what this little car can do.
We have some in car of the final session which can be downloaded from here http://www.gstmotorsports.com/host/v...nalsession.wmv check for the clutch slipping on the exist onto the back straight.
We would like to thank all of our sponsors and friends for their support during this event and to congratulate the whole AMS crew on their victory and wish them good luck at Summit Point this weekend.
Mike
09-24-2007, 09:19 PM
#2
Chicks dig me. April Fool's!
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Great story. Always good to hear about the L. You should put an L sticker or decal somewhere, just so people would know they are getting beaten by an L.
09-25-2007, 11:14 AM
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Mike
