Matt Powers 2012 Formula D ride Part 4

Matt Powers' 2012 Formula D ride Part 4

By Mike Kojima

When we last left off Costa Gialamas and his crew were pounding away to get Matt's car done by the Formula D season opener at Long Beach.  Due to some last minute delays in getting sponsorship dollars in place the work to construct the car had gotten a late start leaving the GTI Technical Innovations crew little time to build a complete car.  It was a huge challenge to get a sophisticated competition car built in just a few weeks but Costa and the gang buckled down and dug in.  Here is part 4 of the build.

Editorial sequencing fell by the wayside in the rush so some things are out of sequence and some things simply did not get documented because of the time crunch.  Nevertheless we can still bring you much of what it takes to build a competitive drift car. Enjoy!

Read Part One Here!

Read Part Two Here!

Read Part Three Here!

Matt's powerplant of choice is basically the same engine he used last year.  A 7 liter LS7 equipped with a Katech off road racing cam and valvetrain with a FAST LSX intake manifold and big throttle body.  The engine also has an ATI balancer and a drysump but the rest is stock Chevy.  Matt's engine produces around 530 wheel hp.

With a low profile due to the drysump, Matt's engine is set pretty low and rearward in the chassis, much lower than in Dai Yoshihara's car for instance.  This is good for CG location.  The engine mounts are GTI fabricated custom parts.

A G-Force GSR 4-speed transmission is used.  The GSR is dog shifted and has a fully supported internal linkage for fast shifting. The GSR packages easier in the S chassis due to its central shifter location so it is the transmission of choice.

A top hung Wilwood pedal assembly is used with backwards facing cylinders.  This makes it much easier to fit the LS engine in the engine bay as far rearward as possible.  A lightweight Woodward Precision Power Steering steering column is also used.

Here is another view of the Woodward steering column and Wilwood pedal assembly fabrication.  In the rush to complete the car the photography sometimes got left out so we apologize about the picture quality or if some steps of the car's construction got skipped.

A closer look at the pedals and steering column.

A Speedway Engineering front swaybar is used.  It can be quickly and easily changed for a different wall thickness part for fast tuning.  A Parts Shop Max lower arm and TC rod give extra angle and allow for another point of adjustment.