VQ35 Dyno v1.0

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Groove Armada

Saturday was a long day. It started with the alarm clock blasting at 5:20am. I had to go to the Performance Nissan meet to work the Cosworth booth at the Orange Show in San Bernardino, CA and meet at Ken's house at 6am. San Bernardino sucks ass. We rolled in at 7am and the bullshit rent-a-cop, wannabe security people decided to do a full on vehicle search on our van. Good thing they didn't find the 10 kilos of coke I brought to a car show. They made us throw away our water, sodas, and food because you had to buy everything from a wannabe King Taco stand called Taco Rico or some bullshit. How fucking dumb is that? Anyhow, so we set up our little display booth and waited for people to come...

C-West S2000 Sweeps Redline Time Attack

C-West USA, Design Craft (Gary Castillo who has had my S13 to build a cage for two fucking years and hasn't touched it yet), BC, and Greddy teamed up to modify the original C-West dry carbon S2000 for US time attack competition. This is the original car that used to compete in Japan, but it was sent over to the USA for C-West USA to use as a demo/marketing car. Two years ago it ran the (then) Primedia Time Attack at Buttonwillow and ran a 1:53:xx. At the time the engine was 100% stock, but the car was lighter than shit thanks to all the dry carbon parts. A 1:53:xx is very respectable for a car that made no more than 240hp at the crank. It won it's class back then with Tarzan Yamada driv...

RB26DETT Valve Springs

Since the BNR32/33/34 Skyline GT-Rs were only really available in Japan and a couple other parts of the world, previously you only really had the JDM engine parts to choose from. Now that I work at Cosworth, I hope to change that. Although we are buried with all kinds of other work, I try to squeak out RB26 parts when I can. So far I've managed to help crank out new con rods, bearings, head gaskets, and now valve springs (more coming soon!). It takes a bit to convincing to get the OK to design RB26 parts. The RB26 is now an old engine and we are only designing parts for the RB because it has such a huge following worldwide.

Having measured and analyzed nearly every Japanese ca...

The Boiling Crab

A couple weeks ago I met up with the XS and ARK Design posse to grab some food down in Wetminta. Oh sorry, for those of you who don't understand the Vietnamese accent, that's Westminister in Orange County, CA. Troy suggested we go to the Boiling Crab. I got there first and there was a crowd of people waiting outside so I put my name down. The cute waitress said it would be an hour or so. Damn I was thinking this shit better be good. So after an hour of shooting the shit with everybody and like 10 cigarettes later, we got seated and ordered up some crab, lobster, shrimp, crawfish, corn, fries, and oysters in various degrees of...

Ouch! Damn I Didn't Know It Hurt That Much!

I imagine that would be the response of anybody who bought the Nissan Z33 race car. After getting reamed in the ass for US$284,000, you will definitely know how much it hurts. While the car is super clean and is super sano by anybody's standards, at that price you can buy a Porsche 997 GT3 Cup Car. In fact, you can buy a used 997 GT3 cup car with spares. I have a pretty good idea of how much time, TLC, and money it takes to build a car from the ground up, but $284k for a 350Z is flat out rediculous. I guess if you have the cash then it's no big deal. Its all about the economies of scale and I guess I'm just not a part of...

Prodrive & Cosworth

For those of you that have followed WRC rally, Le Mans, touring car, or are just a Subaru geek, then you will know the name Prodrive. I am not talking about the Pro Drive in the US that manufactures Honda axles and oil pump rotors. I'm talking about the Prodrive in the UK that builds WRC race cars, upgrades for Aston Martins, Subarus, and wheels and accessories. Cosworth has now teamed up with Prodrive and is handling the distribution of Prodrive products. It is a perfect match for tw...

FIA Group A Racing

Being a fan of the BNR32 Skyline GT-R, I always like to check out old pictures of the cars in their heyday. Whether in motorsport trim, street tuned trim, or early JDM fashion trim, I just dig the BNR32 GT-R. When you look back at the way the cars were modified on the street in the late 80's and early 90's, you see a bunch of the cars with 16" wheels. You were straight ballin' back then if you had 17's! I always thought the BNR32 GT-R in Group A racing trim looked the best. Group A was the predecessor to JGTC or Super GT. It was much more raw without any help from aerodynamics. The BNR32 GT-R more or less dominated, but it raced against BMW E30 M3s, Cosworth Sierra RS500s, Toyota Supr...

2JZ Power

Yesterday morning I continued the tuning on Sean's Supra, but I ran out of time and couldn't finish. Previous to Sean's car and back in 2000, the most power I made on twin HKS 2835 turbos was about 730whp on C16 fuel if I remember correctly.That was a long time ago and XS has built many Supras since then. Sean's car surprised me with 780.08whp on unleaded race fuel at 2.0kg/cm^2 or 28.4psi. No need for super high octane leaded race fuel yet. A stock 2JZ-GTE head flows like the terrible piece of shit it is, but the XS ported head and V...

Piece of the R35 GT-R Pi

The inside of a proper race car is always cool. There are tubes everywhere, carbon fiber everything, sequential or paddle shifters, Alcantara suede dash and coverings, super low seats mounted way back in the car, real deal motorsport dash and displays, Tilton or AP pedals, etc. Things are looking good inside the new R35 GT-R Super GT race car also.

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