TweakIt Racing's LS1 FD NASA TTS/ST2 Track Car Build

[Brent]

Originally Posted by Brent Dalton

Here's a video from the Chin event the weekend before Road Atlanta playing with one of my track buddies in his C5:


Soooooo... Road Atlanta with NASA-SE on Aug 6-7.

We have 10 cars in my class and a little over 50 on grid(that means 50 cars on track at the same time). There are a couple of guys in my class that I think are going to be a handful. One of them is my buddy Alex in a 996 GT3 that is really well set up suspension wise and he is an incredible driver. The other is David White, who is a pro grand am driver for bimmerworld, and is driving a purpose built M3 that is built by Randy Mueller.

First session out on Saturday is the warm up session, I have some pretty old tires on and manage to run a 1:35.1 with traffic. That puts me 3rd overall, and P1 in my class. The next session out is the money session as it's not going to get any cooler(about 90 degrees outside by this point). I had changed tires to a better set, went out a session with my student, and then suited back up and jumped in my car dripping with sweat. We get out on track and one of my Corvette buddies is in front of me. We are moving pretty well and on pace for a 1:32 when he blows turn 5 and gets out of shape. I back out of it to give him plenty of room. He recovers and we both continue on. I ran a 1:33.6. He came over after the session and apologized a dozen times about messing up my lap. Really not a big deal. It's part of it and I'm sure I've done the same to him on more than one occasion. It just so happened my GT3 buddy was with us in the paddock as well talking. We get the time sheet and he ran a 1:33.4... he kindly thanks my Corvette friend for messing up my lap and giving him the lead I went back out a couple more sessions and tried to get my time down, but with the heat, around 100 by this time, everybody's lap times were going up. That ended up sticking. In my class Alex in the GT3 ran a 1:33.4 for 1st, I ran a 1:33.6 for 2nd, and David in the BMW ran a 1:33.8 for 3rd. Always good to have some really close times!

I hit the awards ceremony and dinner, drink a couple of beers, head back to the paddock and sit around with a bunch of friends and tell lies and drink a couple more. Earlier in the evening I had put a set of sticker Hoosiers on(always the fastest when they are stickers) for first thing Sunday morning. Since we didn't have a warm up session on Sunday, the first session is a timed session. It would be significantly cooler(75-80 degrees). The cooler air and sticker tires, I knew I had a 1:32 and my mind was telling me a 1:31. I made one final check before calling it a night and heading back to the hotel to get a good nights sleep.

As I'm heading to the track Sunday morning, it's starting to sprinkle. I go to the driver's meeting, the instructor meeting, and the TT meeting. I do one final check on the car and head to grid. I finished 4th overall the day before out of the 50 car field so I'm sitting in a good spot on the grid to not hit any traffic for a couple of laps. I have a very well prepped C6Z, a GTR race car, and a GT3 in front of me. We go out on track and run our warm up lap. We come down the hill full song and take the green flag... to be greeted by a waving yellow in turn 1. A 350z had forgot to latch his hood(honest mistake) and as soon as he pulled out on track it flew up. The caution turned into a full course caution. We stayed under a full course caution for 3 laps. When we finally went green again, we had already caught the slow cars and had very thick traffic. We only got 2 green laps. No one got a clean lap. Oh well, so much for the sticker tires and cooler weather. If that wasn't enough, in one of the 2 green laps, I ripped my shift knob off and it went flying. :P

The next session I go out and run a 1:33.6 again. However, that was with engine trouble on the back straight. I had lost power towards the end of the back straight(turn 9) and carried it all the way through turn 12 and across the line for that 1:33. It def. would have been a 1:32, but it was not meant to be. That ended my day. I ended up with several 1:33's throughout the course of the weekend. Here's a couple of laps from one of the sessions playing with a GTR with alot more hp than me:


So the aftermath:


So, I pulled the valve covers a week or so ago before I took the car out of the trailer and found this:


Valve was still in the hole so I was hoping I might get lucky.

I found all parts:


The root cause of everything was the roller shaft breaking on the rocker(pictured above). Which caused this:


and this:


The good news is that there was no damage done to the block. I can basically pick up a set of pistons and another set of cheap heads and be up and going if I so choose. Not sure if that's the direction I'm going to go though. Looking at all my options currently. Giving some serious thought to a LS2 or LS3. I'm looking into possibly getting an engine that is going to make a ridiculous amount of torque that I can choke the hp down in. I have plenty of time to figure it out.

Spent the rest of the day just messing around at the shop hanging out. Dan and Brian were on the dyno getting the car ready for Nationals in a couple of weeks:


Brian painted a bunch of stuff this morning, to include Dan's hood... and cleared all the new carbon fiber parts our friend Jason made for his S2000:

Rear 1/4:


Trunk:

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