SGSash

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Hey guys,

I've had a long blog going on Ziptied, a drifting site, for many years now and the guys over there love the development we do, but mostly the crazy racing stories. Over the years we've gone from a 1997 Nissan 240sx, of which I first started racing, to the now more suitable to this website - a Koni Challenge 350z. The 240 was where I got my start in racing, and let's start with a little background on that car.

I was young and uneducated in the world of racing, not coming from a karting background or having parents that brought me into the sport, so the learning curve was a brick wall at my first race weekend:

Mosport Grand Prix track, for my first time, in the rain, without rain tires. Oh, and it was my first time in a wheel to wheel racing situation.



Talk about throwing me out to the dogs!

Thankfully with some drifting experience I didn't end up in the tire wall, but there were some very hairy and wild slides down some of the fastest most treacherous corners in road racing - specifically Turn 2 and 4.

The track dried up for the first race and once things got settled it wasn't too bad. I started passing a few cars and my confidence was on the way up. Until of course the car started overheating, and while nursing it around the track I got taken out by Andrew Wojteczko, a professional Speed World Challenge driver (we would later become best friends).

BAM, he slams into me seemingly out of nowhere, I'm spinning towards the tirewall at the outside of Corner 1 and finally stop, stuck in the grass where I sit. Almost in tears wondering what I've gotten myself into! What ended up happening was Andrew thought I was letting him by the inside because I was going so slow on the straight. Being so focused on my first race I wasn't checking my mirrors and the mis-communication ended in a lot of bent sheet metal and broken parts. Mostly for Andrew - he bounced of my heavy Volk racing 2pc wheel and my car suffered absolutely no damage other than being thrown off the track so violently!



I would go on to win my 3rd race and finish 3rd in the championship that year, learning an incredible amount at each and every race, about both driving and car preparation.





That was 2006, 2007 would be an even more exciting year with tons of professional car prep, I started to really take racing seriously! I'll post that story a little later on.

Kiriller

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Love your cars =) Keep em coming

RandomHer0

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I think I read that entire thread on ziptied last year, its such a great read...

Parker01

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This is awesome stuff, I look forward to reading more!

SGSash

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Thanks guys! The Ziptied story sure does take a long time to read, the 350z blog is even longer now, it's pretty wild.

So lets get to 2007. As I said before I started to take racing a lot more seriously and my goal for the year was to win the GT class of the new sports car racing series named the Castrol Canadian Touring Car Championship. This was its inaugural year so it would be pretty impressive to win in the first year.

The rules were quite open, but being restricted by budget I stayed with a stock engine and kept the boost down, creating around 320whp. Lots of downforce with a custom flat bottom+diffuser we made, plus lots of downforce and grip from the big sticky RA1s meant it was still a contender even against the Vipers and Corvettes.

Here's a video from testing before the season started:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqy6gGgeA88

It was an up and down season but we qualified first and won the first race of the season, smashing my previous best lap time of a 1.30.9, with a 1.27.4! Carrying on that momentum we went on to have a wild season, winning races, but also finding myself overly aggressive and just simply trying way too hard. I'll let the pictures tell this story:







At Shannonville, I was upset with the fact that my car was seconds behind the pace that I had tested at, and I was determined to find the speed. While passing lapped cars over-aggressively I had an incident with a WRX. I can't find the picture of the impact at the moment, but I will update the thread with it on Monday. Here's the aftermath. My intercooler was broken and without boost the car was a slow 130hp sitting duck. I was running 2nd and would fall back to 13th, having to make my way back to 3rd the next day for the second race - but not before searching all of Belleville for an aluminum welder that could repair the intercooler (on a Saturday night), tugging the rad support with my jeep, and spending all night fixing up the damage.




At Calabogie, on the final laps of the race, after fighting for first for the entire time, I see an opportunity for a pass. The corvette and I were approaching two slower cars, the vette had to slow up because of one of them and I was able to get a run on it coming into the braking zone.

This is how it went:





Corvette hit me, I hit RX7, RX7 spun infront of me, I hit RX7 again, my rear knuckle bent (from the corvette hit) and I had -5 degrees of toe out, the car was un-driveable. Even after the Vette spun it was able to catch and pass me, as I was limping to the finish. I still finished 2nd! But then was nearly disqualified as the valve stem broke from being hit, that particular tire lost all of its air and as a result the car was below legal ride height. Thankfully they let it slide and I still got my 2nd place finish.

At the Toronto Indy - or the Steelback Grand Prix as they called it in 2007, I finished the first race in 2nd. It was a ton of fun being in front of a huge crowd and my first time racing on a street circuit. The brakes couldn't stand up to the abuse however and I was overheating them after only 2 laps. It was REALLY hot and street circuits put a ton of abuse on the brakes. It's basically drag race - stop, turn 90 degrees, drag race - stop, turn 90 degrees etc.

This is a promo video the series put together, with a ton of footage from the Steelback race showing how wild it was:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T33Ks...eature=related

Finally, some footage that my friend got of the monitor during practice:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlA1_0Ci1Uw

The second race wasn't quite so wonderful. Rain was on and off all day. Summer rain. The kind of rain that pours down with the intensity that rain tires aren't even a question as they are a certainty. But the same kind of summer rain that seems to stop out of no where and evaporate instantly. Always when its too late to go back. That wouldn't be so much of a problem as the fact that we had to jack the rear suspension almost a full inch to stay at legal ride height with the smaller rain tires. This caused the small amount of toe in to become a large amount of toe out and the car became a wild drifting machine. The rear tires melted after 2 laps and after making a kamikaze pass for 1st, I slowly watched my lead disappear as I would slip and slide all the way back to something like 8th place by the finish - almost crashing like 76 times.

Here's are two videos from the Honda Canada guys (this car was actually tuned at SG) that shows just how wild the 2nd race was, with a ton of incidents and you can see just how loose the 240 is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AN0n...eature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGU92...eature=related



More pictures to follow.

When it comes to 2007 destruction we can't forget about the BMW driver who tried to take me out entering corner 3 at Mosport. There is a video on youtube a fan took (and sent to me) that shows how blatant and ridiculous this move was. I had a run on the guy and was about to pass him and I guess he wasn't a fan of that idea.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNqUgoG28x8

So the lead we had going into the final races kept getting smaller and smaller as these crazy events seemed to occur on an almost weekly basis. At the final event the car was in rough shape, and without the funding to properly fix everything there was nothing we could do but patch it up as best as possible. I made a goal for the season to do a 1:26 and that was all I wanted to achieve that weekend. Unfortunately, trying to attain my goal in the practice session I slid off the track at turn 2 and went into the tire wall.

It was a real mess. In qualifying the car was bumperless and raw, running a lot slower due to the lack of front downforce and the incredible drag associated with having the nose bare. I forget where I qualified now, but all I remember is going through ride height check after the first race and being just a tad low because of the damage - one of my side skirts was hanging down a little bit. By now you've probably realized that the ride height rule and I didn't get along. Well this time it got me Disqualified, and it meant winning the championship was most likely impossible. I would have to finish something like 5th in the final Sunday race, with this beaten falling apart race car, and since I was disqualified, I would have to start from the BACK!

Well, when it came to Sunday the gods were with me. Everyone was driving like a maniac and as a result, it was full course yellow with a pace car, over and over again. This was wonderful for me. It bunched the pack back up every time which made passing easy, and it gave the car a chance to rest. The diff was making a ton of noise and it turns out the impact with the wall had also damaged a wheel bearing.

I didn't finish on the podium that race but they called me up anyways as the champion of the series and had me tell my weekend's tale to everyone. It was quite emotional and one of the most intense weekends of my life.

It feels really good looking back though and knowing we did it, with such a tiny budget relative to the other teams, not to mention the little stock two litre turbo that could!!

I'll update this post with a few more pictures later on, right now it's time to find out if Canada is going to win us one last Gold!

Kiriller

iTrader: (2)

Nice post again, great to see actual sponsors/shops actually taking part in local races. Keep it coming, this is always a great read =)

SGSash

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Where I went wrong was in thinking that I could step up to the world of pro racing. The amount of money we're talking about at this level is absolutely ridiculous. My 2007 budget was in the range of $20,000 all in, including entry, car development, tires, fuel and everything. That works out to about $1,250 per race weekend and $10,000 in car development.

The cheapest pro series you're looking at $20,000 PER RACE. And that's on the low side of the average team budgets! Guys spending a million a season is not uncommon.

My first taste of pro racing was in a rental ride with Andrew's IS300s. Remember the guy that smashed into me on my first race ever? Yeah. That car. We tested at Shannonville and I was right on pace with him, it was a ton of fun running two identical cars wheel to wheel, at night, sparks flying off of the corded tires and just having a ton of fun racing each other.

The actual race weekend wouldn't be so fun. The series was Speed World Challenge touring car, and I was up against some of the best drivers in North America. Randy Pobst, Ian Baas, Chip Herr, all those dudes. For some reason at that point in time I just remember being so intimidated by it all. By the drivers, the cars (even though they were slower than my GT car), the series, and mostly - the money.





Andrew lost an engine in practice, and literally moments after losing his engine I pumped the car into the tire wall at corner 5a. If you can try too hard, this was the definition of it. I wasn't running in the top 10 like I wanted and I was pushing as hard as possible to get up there. Andrew and most of the crew headed back to the shop to swap the engine, and I was trying to find a way to go a second a lap faster so I could run up front (after fixing the damage I did, of course).

Qualifying was wet and a disaster, RWD touring cars in the rain are quite the experience. Sliding everywhere, sharp as a razor. We weren't too far off the other RWD cars, but the Audi's and Acura's were leaps and bounds faster.

My self-esteem was falling and my anger rising. I wanted to be winning again. The race started and I had a fantastic launch. Jumped 3 cars right off of the start but crashed into 3rd. I'd later find out the transmission had an issue with 3rd/5th, but either way I managed to hold a spot or two. Driving like an angry maniac, I ended up punting Nick Esayian when actually trying to pass him, and it was very similar to the RX7 incident at Calabogie. He spun 90 degrees blocking the road - at which point I had to punt him, downshift and carry on my way. Frustrating for him no doubt. After that I was seconds behind the rest of the pack and it didn't look like there would be any catching up.

A full course yellow came out that allows Nick Esayian to catch back up - very very angry with me. On the restart entering corner 5, the same corner I hit him, he totally and intentionally took me out. It was incredible. The best part is it's on youtube. Check it out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JSnmfMEiEc



After that hit the race was pretty much over for me. That would be the start of my Pro Racing career. I would learn it's nearly impossible to make a living as a driver and would quickly lose motivation in my dreams to become a racing driver.

I don't want these introductory blog posts to be too much about myself as a driver, but more of the car development and current racing accomplishments. So to quickly summarize the other points, after getting the 350z we did two more pro races, the first of which that didn't go so well, however still finishing the 3hr at Mosport.

The second at Trois Rivers in Quebec. It was an incredibly fun weekend, but I again ended up putting the car in the wall in Qualifying trying too hard, again by braking too late! We fixed it but a compression rod bent and the car was never the same. We still ended up finishing 13th which was a great accomplishment and the best part was having all of my best friends there supporting the team and just having a silly good time being budget amidst multi-million dollar operations.




James says "Get that camera the F out of my face"



What I learned racing with the pro's has single handily taught me the most I know about building and preparing cars for real track abuse. The level these cars are built at rival those of military jets and spacecraft. The reason is the fact that when it comes to endurance racing, a failure of any part means you're out of the race and out of the championship. So after spending my life savings on three pro races, and realizing I wasn't going to get anywhere without winning the lottery, I decided to go back to doing what was I had the most fun at - going as fast as possible, with the least rules possible!

More on Kels and the 350z development next!

Kiriller

iTrader: (2)

lol great entry, never knew pro racing is THAT expensive, but kudos to you sir, i wish i had money to donate/go to your shop to do major upgrades to my z, unfortunately or fortunately... i have to save for my near future

SGSash

iTrader: (3)

Once we left Koni Challenge it allowed me to take up more of a run in a series that is more open to development, and that really made for a great deal of fun. Some of the best, most exciting racing and development would follow in 2009.

The work that was done on the car totally transformed it from a modified sports car into a real developing GT car. Lap times at Mosport would go from 1:33s to 1.28s in one season, with the help of re-valved Koni's, Solid front spherical bearings we would make, as well as some supplied by SPL, more power thanks to our headers and 3.5" race exhaust - which the whole world seemed to find out about, and last by certainly not least, an APR wing and carbon splitter we would build in house.

I'll let the pictures do the talking with just a little bit of narration:


First Shakedown of 2009, Mosport DDT with 280whp thanks to over enlarged heads that would result in less power than the stock heads!

Mosport DDT Shakedown Video:
A few photos of the headers and exhaust that I had built:









Heatsheild for the headers:


Chilling in the pits, doing 1:32s that day with ~310whp @ 3160lbs race weight (passenger)



No reason to wear a fire suit just because it's a race car!!

Then it was splitter and wing time. Wood template comes first:



Then I made the same piece out of very stiff but very light foam that we would wrap with two layers of carbon top and bottom and then vacuum bag:







The APR GTC-300 (best looking and performing wing under $1500 hands down):



All the downforce resulted in excessive body roll with the low spring rates and relatively low roll centres, not to mention she's a heavy *****. On it's first outing I would grind the splitter into the ground and almost entirely destroy it. Gotta love racing! Put 40hrs into a project and ruin it in exactly 30 seconds.





I had the Koni's re-valved for stiffer springs, 1200 front and 1000 rear to be exact, which for you JDM kids works out to 21 / 17 - yes I'm serious. Went to CSCS and took Unlimited RWD with relative ease, but wasn't as fast as I was hoping. Turns out the tires were totally shot and flat spotted.





I found some time to make a few trips down the strip as well, and with a horrible launch (worn r-comps and solid suspension!) on a hot day still managed a 13.0 with all the drag from the splitter and wing.



Video is here:
These are the compression rods I designed and had machined that used an Aurora inner bearing, and the SPL solid lower control arm bushings and outer tie rods with bump steer shims:







All this development just in time for one of the coolest dudes from Japan to come down and share the car with us for the 2009 War Bonnet 3hr Endurance race...

Venom8.1

iTrader: (5)

I love these works ^_^

SGSash

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Ok, we're almost caught up to the present - I promise!

The final big race of last year was the War Bonnet 3hr enduro with Yuke Taniguchi, organized by Speedstar! Albert and I got together and it was a fantastic experience. The car worked wonderfully all weekend and Yuke, who is the owner for Yuke's video games (makers of D1 Grand Prix and some very famous wrestling games) was a great guy and a really good driver. He's raced in professional series in japan like Japanese Le Mans, and has won the Super Taikyu championship more than once! He even raced in World Touring Car in Europe! So inspiring to have a guy like that driving my car.

The car went its fastest ever in qualifying, I did a 1.28 and the previous best was a 1.30. 2 seconds just from the great weather conditions, the fresh tires, re-valved dampers and solid front suspension. The car honestly felt perfect that day.

We qualified 1st and ended up 1st in class after the three hours, almost winning first overall behind an angry and violent Viper that actually ran out of fuel on the last lap and coasted to the finish - he had to be towed in!

You can read all about it in the next issue of Modified Mag, I wrote an article about the race and last I heard it's gone to print!

I'll let pictures tell the rest of the story:

























The next post will cover the development we've done since then, and what we're working on for 2010!

SGSash

iTrader: (3)

Well now I can finally bring everyone up to date on the work we've been doing as of recent. There have been a few posts here and there throughout the My350z website, but I'll try to keep an ongoing blog in the East Canada thread, because you guys are the ones I care about most (awe!). And because we'd love to have you guys come out to a race or two this season!

So for the winter I had a ton of plans, not all of which have seen fruition yet, but hopefully throughout the summer if we're not too busy we'll be able to do more development.

The first thing we did was some intake testing that saw huge gains, you may have read about this in the NA section of the forum. That lead to this intake and youtube video:





Previous power vs current power:



And a video of it all:


The next step to make some more power was to start a build with custom JE pistons, Eagle rods, a revup oil pump an ARP mains. Here are some photos of the build, which I'll hopefully finish in the next few weeks. I already had the heads finished, but have since decided to change valve springs and I will also need to clearance the heads for JWT C9/10 cams, which means tearing them entirely apart.





















Talk about a lot of dome! These pistons should be good for 12.3:1 compression, which should add a few ponies across the board!

SGSash

iTrader: (3)

The next thing I worked on was the rear suspension. Previously it was rubber bushings everywhere, and after the help of SPL Parts and some custom machining on my part, the suspension is now fully solid, with the rear springs converted from 5" OD to 2.5" ID. The rear spring rate is now 1350lb/in which is designed to help cope with the extra downforce I plan to be making in the near future.

I designed and machined the solid subframe bushings to raise the subframe to be flush mounted with the frame. It's possible to get the subframe higher but machining to the entire subframe would be required (See the Fontana Nissan Rolex car).

SPL provided their solid monoball kit, traction arms, rear mid-link and rear camber arms. The only bushings left are in the upper camber arm on the inboard side. Hopefully we'll swap those to sphericals one day soon!















The rear suspension was modified a little bit to work with the anticipated high downforce we'll be running. Larger rod ends to support the higher chassis load on the toe arms, and the SPL mid link spring seat was flipped over and machined to allow more perch to perch space for spring travel. I had to custom work some springs to achieve the desired rate as nothing else was available that I could find on the market. After testing the rates we found both modified springs to be within 4lb/in of each other!

mw9

iTrader: (51)

Holy crap, nice pics and info. love the cars

Reality350

iTrader: (25)

@Sasha
-Those are some monster gains from the intake. Were those final #'s, after a retune?
Regardless.. very impressive gains across the power band.

-Also, did JE ever explain to why it was necessary to notch the custom pistons?


Intake looks dam impressive.. GJ

SGSash

iTrader: (3)

Thanks!

JE makes the pistons for an empty head, so they wouldn't even know or care about the spark plug interference. Since there are so many different plug options out there, they don't want something like that holding back their piston design

That being said - I would have much preferred a piston designed to work with the stock spark plug the first time, but maybe one day when I can afford to switch to the Nismo SpecII heads.

SGSash

iTrader: (3)

These are the plugs I plan on using. They have more clearance to the combustion chamber, and are still the long reach type:

nissannx

Wow! I'm looking forward to seeing this out on the track!

SGSash

iTrader: (3)

Well, as much as I try I cannot avoid drama forever. The high comp engine is running, alive and well - sortof. It runs fantastically, passed the leak down test with flying colors, doesn't puff or smoke or make any strange noises

BUT

The ECU is having an ignition sync issue I am having trouble solving, I've spoken to Motec USA both East and West as well as anyone I could think of that might have an idea as to whats going on with no avail. I swapped crank sensors and things were OK but the ignition breakup returned and started to continually get worse, pull after pull on the dyno.

After re-pinning the ECU to try a new method of referencing and syncing, I took the car for a quick blast around the shop and my RPM read out on the dash went to zero and the car died.

What happened you ask? Well friends, it appears as though the flywheel has managed to reach out and take a bit out of the crank angle sensor. Yes. There is a 1mm groove through the crank sensor that looks just like the flywheel. Why? How? What's the Cause? All questions no answers.

Transmission is off and everything looks fine and dandy. For a flywheel or engine to flex enough to not only hit but put a large groove in the sensor that is 1mm away to begin with is quite an amazing feat - but I don't see how its even physically possible.

The good news is I got my 1550lb springs installed on the front of the car, I was able to make the 60mm springs work with the standards Eibach 2.5" spacers.

Hopefully the issue is small and can be resolved so I can get out ripping. It's already May

Oh, and to put icing on the cake, the high compression made absolutely no difference on the dyno. Yes none. The dyno graph looks identical to how it looked when the old stock engine was fresh. So many questions, so few answers.

Oil Temp Sensor Install In Pan:



Head Clearancing for big boy cams in the future:





(It was not a good girl, it was a dirty, dirty *****)

Parker01

iTrader: (1)

Man there is so many goodies in here! Well now that I have consumed all that time I better get back to work. I hope I run into a track day with you, I would love to watch you pass me knowing there is not a hope in heck of keeping any sort of pace with you .

Following the development of your car rich with the killer pics and stories is great, keep the updates coming!