TopSpeed Time Attack Treck Across the Country*Destination Miller Motorsports*

[TopSpeedInc]

Well Ladies and Gentleman (mostly gentleman) The trek across the country from Atlanta, GA to Salt Lake City, UT begins! Me and three others are set out to the Red-Line time attack at Miller Motorsports on Saturday.

Redline: Time Attack!!

(The Agenda)
____________

Cobb Tuning Thursday night by 5pm to retune the race car at 5,000ft. +

Miller Friday for last minute tests and setup

Miller Saturday to kick a**

__________________________________________________ _______________


(The Crew)
____________

1) Doug Wilks
founder, owner, tuner TopSpeed in Alpheretta, GA

2) Cicio
friend, logger, photographer(yeah right), IT, helper, tech, driver(the rig that is)

3) Justin
friend, tech, beer drinker

4) Keith
friend, general keep awake and good extra hand


Day #1
________
Monday the day started with some dyno time for the race car. Doug threw her on the dyno and started at his magic! After a few pulls she was sounding good and running strong! We then started loading the rig with everything we would need at the race track. ie....tools/tires/welders/straps/race fuel/jugs/chairs/canapys/extra parts/....and lets not forget.....the race car!



nto the rig goes the clothes/cameras/laptops/food/drinks/sleeping bags/blankets/pillows...you get the idea. Oh and lets not forget the xbox At about 3pm Justin and Keith show up from Jacksonville,FL and we get on the road.

The drive begins, we are all excited and full of energy and high hopes for a great week. We get about 50 miles and realize that the rig is loosing coolant. (not good) After pulling over and looking around we found that it was coming from the overflow on the coolant reservoir (or what we thought was a coolant reservoir. So we do a pressure test on the coolant system (which came out fine) we decided it must be the cap that wasn't holding pressure. So off to auto zone to get a new cap, topped off the coolant, installed the new cap and back on the road.




Yep....we wish it was that easy...5 miles down the road here comes the coolant again. Doug decided there was no way we were gonna make it on the rig (we all thought it had a blow head gasket) So we turned around and headed back to TopSpeed.

Our plan "B" was to get in the dually pickup....hook to the smaller trailer and get back on the road. (none of us were very excited about taking an almost 40 hour drive in a extended cab pickup BUT we were going to do it)

Doug and I decided to get on google and see if I could find a 24 hour truck service station to at least get the rig diagnosed before starting the LONG trip in the little pickup. We were 3 miles from getting back to TopSpeed when I finally got ahold of a nice mechanic, coolant reservoir he said? Thats not a reservoir, thats an expansion tank..you never fill that all the way up!

We are race car guys we informed him....we fill our coolant to the top

So AROUND we turned again and RE-started the journey. (it was 10pm by this time)

So after Doug and I taking turns driving through the night, the morning finds us in St Louis, MO! The rig is running great, and the crew is pumped and ready for action.

I will be updating and responding to this thread when I am not driving, and Doug will be when I am. So ask questions, make comments and wish us luck!

Subys FTW!

[TopSpeedInc]

Well I guess not all of us are ready for action!

[00CelicaGT]

LOL THIS IS A GRAET IDEA! U GUYS SHOULD DO THIS FOR EVERY TRIP U GUYS TAKE. WELL GOOD LUCK AND MAKE SURE U TAKE LOTS OF PICS.



P.S. U SHOULD COLOR ON THE GUYS FACE SLEEPING AND POST PICS BUT DONT TELL HIM LOL.

[OTG Signs]

That trailer is looking good!

[Ronsam2006]

Trailer graphics look amazing! Nice work on that

[TopSpeedInc]

Ok guys, sorry I have been absent but I have been driving while Doug slept.

We are now in Lincoln, NE. Tom Tom (GPS) Led us a CRAP way and got us stuck in the middle of downtown! Doug and I had to do a mid role driver switch because he is way better than me with the rig in traffic!

Here is what we think of tom tom.......................

[TopSpeedInc]

Thanks for the complements guys!!!! We are getting alot of good feedback on the road!

[OTG Signs]

I never looked at the toterhome when I was doing the trailer install... is it a manual tranny?

[HachiDori]

yeah, tom tom makes your drive around the town and then leads you across the street from where you started. I know.

Moar pics of the race car. Shiz sick! good luck guys!

[TopSpeedInc]

YES ITS A MANUAL 10 SPEED!

Ok guys. Sorry its been a little while, but here is the update..WE HAVE ARRIVED!

We pulled into Miller Motorsports this morning at about 8am. The reason I haven't been on here updating is because I took the wheel of the rig at about 5pm lastnight and drove through the night while Doug slept so he could be fresh today for meeting/greating/tuning!

I drove all night long through the mountains of Wyoming and Utah. (that was fun)

We got here thismorning and I was just too tired to post. I caught a couple hours of zzzzz's and then went and took a shower in the Miller shower facilities. (very nice by the way)

There is a group of guys here (mostly WRX and STi guys) that rented the track for the day, so after watching and meeting a few of them we decided to unloade the trailer and set up the pit area.

Well that got the attention of every Subaru guy on the track in about 3.6 minutes. So we answered some questions and talked to a few of the guys while they took pictures and drewled over the car.

After doing some posting and playing some xbox me, Justin and Doug have a pretty heavy $5 bet on who is going to take who in go-cart racing

Later tonight we are dynoing the race car and then I think headed to Cobb for a bbq tonight. If there is anyone in the area that is going please let me know. I would love to meet some of the community up there. (plus we kinda need a ride since all we have is a 75ft rig and a race car )

Well I am out for now.

I will get some more pictures of the guys out today, and the track loaded for you guys, for now here is the pit area and the race car.

[NAIZBST]

nice

[JITB]

Are you all gonna take some video this time/

[TopSpeedInc]

We are going to take some videos very soon and get them uploaded

[OTG Signs]

See if you can get a picture of the race car off to the side next to the trailer so we can put it on our website.

[bb4pimp]

reps man for a nice build, and good luck on the track

[TopSpeedInc]

Ok, Just wanted to give you guys a little fun update!!

We just got off of Cobb's heartbreaker MUSTANG dyno

Christian and Tim Bailey from Cobb Tuning were nice enough to allow us to utilize there dyno here at Miller Motorsports to make a few pulls to see if any changes were nessessary due to the elevation change.

We only made 3 pulls, each pull slightly adding boost to reach our target boost, and adjusting AFR's as needed.

Car made 528whp 501tq running a 26psi peak falling to 23psi at redline. (mostly due to elevation)

Here are some pictures of the dyno session, video to come soon.

Hitting Full Boost On The Dyno Pull #3 (Last Pull!)




Pull #1 22psi




Dyno Graph FTW




Look At The Power Curve MONEY!

[The BUCKY]

oh so smooth

[NAIZBST]

very nice

[Just_CHill]

oh so smooth

x2

[00CelicaGT]

http://www.autoelot.com/personal/redline/TA17.jpg[/img]

daym u know ur sh1ts fast when u need hood pins fro the trunk.

[Paree4g63]

Good luck Topspeed! Represent!!

[haynbtu]

wow nice subbie!
+1 looks bad@$$

[TopSpeedInc]

Ok guys, one day of racing down!! This has been a crazy crazy day. When I got out of the motor home this morning it was mass craziness. People and cars everywhere!

Last night and this morning Cobb set up there booth and brought all of there new stuff down to the track. I have some pictures I will show you guys!

I have to say that i'm sorry I forgot my fire wire cord to transfer video's so I can't post any of them tell I get home

The racing started this morning pretty early. We were having problems trying to get the car to turn in, it was pushing a little, so the first session was pretty much dedicated to doing that.

Second session came around and the car was working better we got one lap in (a 1.37.7 I think) and at the end of the second session we lost a brake caliper! Not good! NO brakes coming into the last corner. So we limped her back to the garage and found brake fluid dripping out of the inside of the caliper.

We quickly took to taking them off while Doug when to try to find new brakes. Nick from Rally Sport Direct came to the rescue with a nice pair of 6 piston Stop-Tech!

Unfortunately he just didn't have time to go to the shop, pick them up, and get them back before the last session! So we were out for the day. GST took the AWD Unlimited class with a 1-37.4

We have tomorrow left and plan on going out guns blazing!!! We have fresh brakes and have dialed the car in considerably since the first session. We are confident that we can be competitive tomorrow and hopefully lay down some fast times!

So our brakes screwed us over today, but tomorrow its on!

I just want to say thanks to Nick and the guys from RallySportDirect.com because they were very helpful and have been willing to lend any type of hand we need! STAND UP GUYS!!

Also Cobb Tuning, any tools or extra hands we need they have been there for us! Also an A+ bunch of guys! THANKS, we are away from home out here, but we feel like we are welcome with open arms!

Here are a few pictures from the day...little surprise that I have for you guys is that Cobb is running there RIGHT HAND DRIVE 2009 Skyline GTR here this weekend. So I got some pictures on and off track. Let me just tell you guys...that thing is BAD!!!

Here are some pictures from the day for you guys.

Here is Cobb's GTR














Changing the DUMB brakes








Here is a small look around the paddock and some racing

[csmiths]

god you guys are lucky, all of those cars look sick. but i have to say i love the gst suby the best, good luck with it

[TopSpeedInc]

Ok guys! Here is the update.

The final time session just got over! We ended up fourth overal. We ran a 1-37.8, and we weren't happy with it.

We were all a little dissapointed tell we got back to the trailer. Luke the drive told us that it felt amazing going into the corners he could brake deeper and better than he could the whole rest of the weekend, but coming off the car just WOULD NOT make boost. He said in earlier sessions the car was drifting off the corners just laying power down, and in the time session it would not make boost coming out.

So Doug lifted the hood to find THIS!!





Split the manifold at the seem! We ran a VERY competative 1-37.8 probably 100hp down from where we should have been if not more. After pulling the data logs we found we were only running 15psi and 10.5:1 AFR's due to the massive boost leak.

According to Luke, Doug, and Brian (JRZ chassis engeneer) we feel that we could have run deep deep into the 1-35's if not high 1-34's if that wouldn't have happened. Since in practice we posted a 1-36.2 still running a conservative boost level with Luke trying to conserve our one set of tires for the time session.

But no excusses on this side, we will go home, build it better and come back for more racing next time!

Congratz to all the teams this weekend that were able to post good times when it counted. Hope to see you on the east coast!

[dkjohnson04]

good shi**...................sucks about the boost leak though!!!!!

[OTG Signs]

That leak SUCKS. At least you pushed it as far as it could before that! Get back safe guys!

[SandM]

always love to see the topspeed time attack posts. too bad for the problems though.

[yogi08]

great thread. i love threads like this.

[DUBSf22c]

That really sucks/. What will be the plan on the mani now?

[TopSpeedInc]

Its ok guys. It sucks what happened. But during practice right before the boost leak. it was at a moderate boost level. And we were inching on 1st place. and Ahead of GST and the others by over 1.5 seconds.



Ohwell you win some, you lose some. We still got 3rd place AWD.