By Mike Kojima
MotoIQ Garage has taken over the development of Dai Yoshihara's engine program for the last two years from a famous high dollar engine builder. The previous engine had decent power but the reliability was lacking. We were experiencing some sort of engine related issue every few events and halfway through the season, the engine performance would degrade and a fresh engine would need to be installed.
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by Mike Kojima
So the rush to freshen Dai's car for 2018 by Eimer Engineering continues. In our last story, the chassis had gotten acid dipped and the cage and a few other things had gotten some working over for improved stiffness and increased simplicity.
Now the car is getting reassembled for a quick shakedown run at Irwindale and some more extensive testing at Willow Springs this week. So let's take a look! There are a lot of right ways to build a car here and anyone can benefit from looking at how our car is put together.
The C7 Corvette's interior is a huge step up from its predecessors. Previous iterations of the venerable Corvette might have been awesome cars, but the interiors were plastic clad and had the look of a cheap rental car. Not so with the C7.
by Martin Gonzales
We've had good experiences with companies from down under such as Whiteline, Turbosmart and PE Racing so we were anxious to try out the suspension offerings from another Australian company, Pedders. Although the name Pedders is probably new to most of you MotoIQ readers, they have been around for a long time, 67 years, in fact, being founded in 1950.
When we did our baseline test of Project C7 at Buttonwillow Raceway configuration 13 CW, we were pretty impressed with the stock Z51 Stingray's on-track performance. We felt the chassis was set up pretty well for the wheel and tire configuration that came on the car, and the whole chassis calibration was matched to the amount of tire the stock car had and the power level of the engine.
Setting the gap on your piston rings is an important step to building an engine that performs at its best. Getting your piston rings to have the optimal seal is perhaps the most critical aspect of good engine building. Of course you want to spend time assuring that your machine work and cylinder wall finish is correct for the type of rings used but a lot of people neglect blueprinting the ring gap.
by Karla Pestotnik
One of my uncles who lives in western Nebraska just bought a brand new Silverado to replace his old Silverado that he bought brand new when I was a child. However, he didn’t get rid of the old Silverado- he still has it. When he first bought the old Silverado, he was so proud of it. It was the first vehicle that he and my aunt were able to buy brand new. As humble, hard-working Americans with three kids in an area and a time where you could buy two or three houses for today’s cost of a new, decently optioned full size truck, this was a big deal. He let my cousins, my sister, and myself stop for ice cream while driving us home when he first got it- being the cool uncle that he is and as long as we promised to not spill any of it in his truck. Well, I was the one that accidentally spilled a drop of ice cream on his brand new bench seat in his brand new truck. Little eight-year old Karla felt so terrible, and honestly, I still feel bad about it today- the little ice cream stain is probably still there. It's possible that perhaps karma will have revenge on me if I end up taking his grandson out for ice cream when he is old enough.
by Pablo Mazlumian
We test a new exhaust system and drop some weight in the process. We've got dyno graphs and videos in this one. Plus, we check out dad's new 8-Series BMW and drastically change its looks with a simple wheel upgrade. Check it out.
In part one, we had installed Hellwig air springs, rear anti sway bar and Bilstein 5100 series shocks on our workhorse 2014 Chevy Silverado truck. We were super impressed with what the rear suspension did to make our towing experience more pleasant and much safer. However, due to time constraints we did not have time to do the front suspension.
There has been a war brewing in the past few years, not in the Middle East, but in the half ton truck market. In the past, a half ton truck was just that, a lightweight truck, one up from a mini truck that was capable of towing an open trailer with a little bit of stuff in the bed. A towing capacity of 5000 to 7000 pounds was the norm and old half tons were barely adequate for the upper ranges of that weight limit.
by David Zipf
IndyCar's new oval aero packages are here! In February Chevy and Honda both unveiled their road course aero kits, which have been used at the first four IndyCar races in the 2015 calendar. However Indy runs on huge superspeedways and if you know anything about IndyCar, you know the granddaddy of all IndyCar races is the Indianapolis 500. On Sunday May 3rd, the first public test of the new oval aero kits happened at the Brickyard and MotoIQ was there, spying on teams and getting the scoop on these new aero kits.
by Erik M Jacobs
Reese Cox cut his teeth behind the wheel of a Corvette, and his experience shows. In 1993, during the heyday of his time as team manager for Tommy Morrison Racing leading ZR-1 Corvettes through the 24 HRS of Daytona and other IMSA series, Reese founded MTI (Motorsports Technologies Incorporated) Racing. The 1998 SCCA World Challenge Rookie of the Year knows a thing or two about making these sleek bowties fast and powerful, and he was kind enough to open the doors of their shop to MotoIQ. Inside, we found a lot more than just some fast coupes.
by Frank Ewald
The lines on this C2 Corvette are stunning. Whether you are looking at it from the front, the back, the top, or the sides this car is an incredible work of art. The one that I am currently looking at and writing about is a 1964 Corvette StingRay and is now a fifty-one year old automobile. While this particular car has undergone a frame off restomod the paint and body have not been touched. The body on this car is in amazing shape and the paint is almost perfect. The only sign that this car has had any changes made are the massive brake rotors and calipers peeking out from behind the wheels and replacing the original drum brakes. That is, until you see under the hood or have the car up on a hoist.
Our government connection West Virginia Legislator Delegate Gary Howell sent us these pictures today. Apparently Gary was eating at a Chick-Fil-A and noticed that a disguised vehicle was sitting in the parking lot. He managed to snap a few pictures before the car's driver sped off in it. If you look close you can see his reflection in the glass! We think that the heavily disguised vehicle is the new 2016 Camaro. In fact, we're just about sure it is.
by Jonathan Lawson
Headed up by Chris Castro, Castro Motorsports has a knack for putting out some high-quality work. If you haven’t seen the airbox on Pablo Mazlumian’s Project E46 M3, take a moment and give it a gander. It’s a beautifully crafted piece of art. Castro Motorsports is full of true die-hard enthusiasts with performance oozing through their blood. They do everything from custom fabrications to motor swaps and big-turbo builds, and speaking of motor swaps, who wouldn’t love flinging an LS3-powered E36 M3 around? Well, drifter extraordinaire and professional stunt man Jef Groff sure doesn’t mind…
When deciding the best way to power Daren McNamara's Formula D S14, Team Falken decided to plow into new territory with not just a turbo, but a turbo V8. Not your typical Chevy LS V8 either, but a blast from the past old school Small Block Chevy. In our last edition of building the ultimate Small Bock Chevy, we looked into the developments that had been made to the venerable 60 year old design to update it to modern standards, particularly the bottom end. In short, the improvements were mostly moving the cam upward to allow for more stroke and to shorten the pushrods for less flex, and a general beefing up of the lower end architecture to support today's power levels.
The Small Block Chevy is a dead outdated hunk of iron that is best left to old guys puttering around restoring muscle cars in their garages, or is it?
The venerable Small Block Chevy was first introduced to the motoring public in 1954 and was installed on the assembly line until 2003 and is still in production as a replacement motor. This means that the good old small block has been around for 60 years, making it one of the longest lived and most produced engines of all time with over 100,000,000 being built to date.
Dai's super small block is in the process of being built for even greater power and reliability in 2016 but it's worth a look back to see the state of tune just a couple of years ago.
by Khiem Dinh
Chevrolet has raced Corvettes in GT class racing in dominant fashion for the past decade and a half. The C5-R began racing in 1999 and was followed by the C6.R. The two cars earned 90 victories around the world including the 24 Hour of Le Mans and won 10 manufacturer championships in the American Le Mans series. Chevrolet recently launched the C7 Corvette to the general public meaning a C7.R race car was also born.
by Sarah Forst
SEMA wasn't the only crazy car event going on in Vegas the first week of November. Round 9 of the Global Rallycross took place at the South end of the Vegas strip and MIQ couldn't miss the action. Though Toomas Heikkinen had clinched the championship in Charlotte, there was a battle going on for the other podium spots. Check out the action!
While Kansas City has had its share of professional racing at Kansas Speedway, the only thing missing was a professional road race series coming to town. With the recent addition of a 2.37-mile roval (road coarse plus oval) utilizing most of the speedway banking on top of the new infield layout, that problem has been solved.
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