As I’m sure everyone knows by now there was a fatality from the weekends racing & my sympathies go out to the family of this young man.
It’s an unfortunate situation to lose a fellow participate at any event, especially one that in the years that I have competed puts a lot of emphasis & requirements on safety, both in regards to competitors cars being fit for purpose & the track side safety personnel.
Obviously an event like this is very special to us racers/gear-heads as it gives us an outlet & something to look forward to every year so that we can achieve & set new goals for ourselves. Even passengers get to experience what it’s like to be in a 1000+ whp car, the experience is something they don’t forget I’m told. 🙂
This year we went to the event with 3 cars with the hopes of achieving 200mph (322kph) for all 3, I got there with my own car running 324kph on my first run sunday morning, my Dad managed to run a very ugly 321 before the incidents occurred & the event was eventually cancelled.
My Dad was already waiting in line for his 3rd run along with my older brother Greg just a few cars behind in my car since “the spare” broke the torque converter bolts on the saturday & we were unable to repair it that night, however before it broke it was just as quick (actually quicker over the 400m) then even my own thanks to it’s smaller turbo’s providing much quicker spool up.
With the event cut short & my early run achieving a decent enough standing, albeit nothing greater then some of the previous day’s 800m speeds achieved by other competitors it was a somewhat hollow victory taking out the 3rd fastest overall & fastest v8 trophies.
Anyway, I’ve uploaded a majority of trimmed down camera footage to youtube already and have them in the Racewars 2019 playlist.
RACEWARS 2018 – event has come and gone & people definitely stepped it up this year with 11 cars going over 300kph over the standing 1000m.
For the Team of TorqueUP cars that attended, there was breakages just before & at RW18 so while we did get some fantastic results. We will be back again next year targeting 200mph (321kph) in a couple of cars.
Breakages: The 1st casualty came in with my vy ss ute a week before RW with the reluctor wheel slipping on the crank, effectively stopping the motor from running at all. It’s now getting dialled back into the correct position and tig welded into place.
It had gone repeatable 750+ whp with a stock 6l80e on a measly 12 psi of boost thanks to a couple of GTX35’s.
However with such little time to pull the motor & fix, we chose to replace it with a N/A 416ci LS3 that was then tuned up to 480whp. We didn’t change diff ratios so it was always going to be a struggle for it to pull high top speeds with the long gearing. But it made it through the event and drove back on to the trailer.
My own drag car with its new All Fast Converter was looking good and very fast until it snapped the input shaft around lunch time Saturday, so we made the decision to come back home (380km trip each way) and swap in a spare t400 gearbox. We left RW at a little over 1pm and were back on the road heading back to Albany just after 8pm.
Unfortunately, the 2nd gearbox was just as weak as the 1st and on the first run Sunday morning on the shift into 3rd it broke the input shaft again, effectively killing any chances of a return to the track.
My Dad’s drag car killed an alternator on Saturday too, but it’s had 3 years of hard living, so we had a spare picked up and delivered to home for me and my brother to bring back when we returned the previous night and was installed first thing Sunday morning.
With my own car out of action it allowed me time to spend tweaking the boost/tune on my Dad’s & other customer cars.
Now the good news: The stand out of course was my Dad’s drag car, it too was also sporting a new converter from the team at All Fast, identical to my own & with the same tyres & gearing. It proceeded to run a 301.95kph pass over the rolling 800m so it was looking good for the 1000m standing starts.
1000m Results: Run 1: 308.89 km/h – 18.891 s Run 2: 308.80 km/h – 19.857 s Run 3: 310.67 km/h – 19.069 s Run 4: 311.38 km/h – 18.971 s
Now the thing to take into consideration is that after Run 1, I jumped in and did a pass under my own racing number, well 2 actually but I aborted the 1st run after I smoked the tyres through 2nd gear and ended up in the far-right lane. The good run netted me a 314.96 km/h – 18.593s pass.
My older brother then had a go with run 2 with Dad following up with runs 3 & 4 for the day.
The next big heavy hitter was my friend Roger in his 2010 Camaro, with the car left alone until Sunday for the 1000m event, he did multiple high 280’s then mid 290kph passes before one his precision turbo’s gave up a seal again and proceeded to dump oil straight into the exhaust.
His car runs a built 6l80e with twin 6266’s on a forged ls3 with another All Fast converter.
Next was another customer with a little MP1900, 6lt Monaro taking out the 8 cylinder blown class with a couple of 260kph passes.
The last, but definitely not least cars were Driven to/from the event being that of Rick & Rob with their Blown Ls7 Corvette/Camaro, being stock’ish factory LS7’s they are not exactly happy to take a lot of boost (fuel supply limited also) so both run a max of about 6psi.
The Corvette did a couple of 252kph runs before a rear tyre puncture called the end to his racing & Rob in his Black Camaro also did a PB of 252kph just behind Rick’s Z06.
As for the ute, well it kind of got parked after we had done the 300+ runs, with less than half the power of the drag car, it’s a pretty boring & slow run.
It’s been a couple of weeks since the Racewars 2017 event in Albany & boy was it a great weekend.
Along with my dad & brother we had 3 cars entered, They were:
VE SS A6 with Cam’d & Magnacharge’d 2300 – My Dad’s
VE SS M6 – 402ci LS2/ETP Heads & Harrop 2300 – Brothers
VX Drag Car – 410ci Twin Turbo/TH400 – Mine
My Dad’s car performed flawlessly all weekend & became the stand in when my brothers car died, but there was still a decent photo taken of them together before it did, lol.
Now with my brothers car, Â about the 4th or 5th run on the saturday the engine developed a severe miss and shake when running, after pulling the plugs out and finding 1 of them severely damaged (Cylinder 2) we put it on the trailer.Â
We didn’t know how bad the damage was going to be until we got it back home and pulled the heads off anyway.
However during the weeks since racewars & between working on it, it was mentioned online that during cleanup the racewars crew had picked up the head of a valve albeit squashed and bent off the runway.
Considering the state of the plug, we were pretty certain it was “ours” & then as sure night comes after day, That’s exactly what we found when we pulled the head off the drivers side. Valve stems still in place by the new springs at least…
Wait a minute, something doesn’t look right….Along with the combustion chamber for that cylinder, the piston had taken a beating. Luckily the bore doesn’t looked to have sustained any major damage, but we haven’t gotten the block off for machining/honing for the new pistons yet so the verdict on the block is unknown.
The annoying thing about all this, is before the event I had just spent a bunch of money on the new valve springs/seats/retainers as the old springs had been on for nearly 8 years or so & since the motor is mine it had been used in 2 of my previous car’s so it was well over due for freshen up.
The pistons i don’t really care about as we had already planned on changing them out after racewars anyway.
So with saturday kinda starting out pretty shit with my brothers car & me originally only planning on doing limited runs in my drag car to save it for the 1000m stuff. I ended up using it a lot more with some passenger rides & testing for the 1000m.
With my brother in the car for a couple of 800m roll-on’s we hit a high 292 & 298 so i was pretty confident of going over 300kph on the sunday. My “idea/plan” leading up to racewars was to get my 300 or more and then put it straight on the trailer, that way i wouldn’t be getting “greedy” with it especially since i still needed the car to compete at another drag racing event on the 22nd of April (3 days away as i write this).
On the Sunday for the 1000m standing starts & with the passenger seat removed the car seemed worse for traction especially for the first 300 meters, I was having to get off or feather the throttle but the 1st run got another 298kph at-least.
Thankfully the 2nd run at 2:29pm got slightly quicker at 302.58kph & with that it went straight on to the trailer.
That is.. When i made it back to the pits… as my battery had gone flat on the return road with the fans on. Â As it turns out my alternator even before the event had started to show signs of being on the way out.
1 run fueling would be leaner then what i was commanding in the tune, the next run it would be fine or richer. So i started logging the ecu battery voltage and sure enough the voltage wasn’t consistent.
So i have now put in a new alternator and ran a new sense wire all the way to the battery in the rear & I have 14.6 volts at the battery with the car running vs 12.3v previously which is no good for my fuel pumps & the tune!
Obviously it would worsen depending on how long the car was running for, which at the Motorplex isn’t really that long at each event, but the 8-10 minute drive back through the dirt at Albany was a bit too long to be driving all the electrics.
Anyway I hope you enjoyed reading & watching my sum-what summarized view of the weekend from a racer’s perspective. We’ll be back in Albany again next year with hopefully a couple more of our own 300+kph capable car’s…
Went out for some testing during the week with the new gearbox/converter & diff gears in my drag car.
Still launching without the 2 step & trans brake.
5 runs in total with 2 being low 9’s for the warm up run & then a shutdown when it got a bit skate.
3 best runs were: 8.963 @ 249.63kph (17psi) 8.826 @ 252.95kph (17psi) 8.697 @ 257.37kph (20psi)
Drag car still runs stock IRS with a Harrop Enduro cover/gforce1320 stub axles & stock driveshafts & was doing consistent 1.4 – 60’s all night.
Looking forward to changing the diff out for Motul Racewars 2017 to see if it will crack the 300kph mark over the standing 1km & maybe even take out Cash Days 1/8 Mile Racing
After test driving my own tuned 2017 Model Colorado with some towing duties, my Dad decided he needed to upgrade from his ZD30 Patrol too, So he went out & purchased a run out 2016 Model before Christmas & so I spent some time on Christmas eve on the dyno.
With just under 100km’s on the clock it was loaded onto the dyno for a couple of baseline pulls before flashing in my new calibration. Power is slightly lower compared to mine but that’s probably due to some slight hardware changes between the years. (mentioned futher below)
So what sold my dad on the Colorado over his existing Patrol? well he simply put a caravan on the back of my car and drove the same hill with a decent grade and noted the speed & throttle difference.
The patrol needed 3rd gear and was maxed out at 65kph with the pedal on the floor. The Colorado? well it did it in 4th gear(auto) & he was having to back off at 85kph so as not to break the speed limit. A pretty convincing test for him.
The main hardware difference between the new 17 model is a 2.75~3″ exhaust stock compared to 2.25~2.5″ for the 16. However the 17 model get’s a DPF (Diesel Particulate Filter) after the catalytic converter (which is easily removed and tuned around).
Along with the new engine ecu calibration, I also have a new transmission calibration better suited to towing also loaded in.
With the fitment of a new 10.5″ Circle’D Converter replacing the old 9.5″ Dominator to my VX Commodore drag car, I ran a new PB in both time and MPH over the 1/4 with no changes to the tune.
Unfortunately it was my 1 and only run as the drivers side stub axle broke coming out of the burnout box, putting a premature halt to the nights session.
Not too shabby considering that both my VX and my dads VT (which does 9.3’s) are still running stock stubs and axles. So a new one will go and I’ll start to put some more boost in.
I purchased myself a new toy the other week, a 2009.5 Special Edition SSV Ute with the ambition to run at least one or two 9 second passes down the 1/4 mile with the stock 6L80e automatic trans.
Luckily for me it had already had a good load of money spent on it by the previous owner so the mods list is below:
Harrop FDFI 2300 supercharger & OTR
Comp Cam’d- unknown specs around 228/237 ?
Pedders Coil Overs
Pacemaker 1 7/8 into twin 3″ custom exhaust -nice and quiet when cruising
3.27 diff ratio with trutrak
Mod Plated
TCE 3200 converter (already replaced as it had burnt out the lockup material, more on this later)
trans cooler
20″ rims
I entered my new Drag car for the Holden vs Ford Drag racing event on the Anzac long weekend. As it’s a new car and still requiring Tech inspection, I wasn’t able to do too many quick runs, but for it’s 2nd event debut I am extremely happy with it’s progress.
The car is a Twin turbo 410ci Darton Sleeved LS2 in a VX Berlina Shell
Mon5ta owner Matthew took his LS1 Mazda ute to the Norwest Nats on October 11th for what’s hoped to be an inaugural event.
Matt managed to drive away with the Win for Naturally Aspirated V8 & 2nd overall for the competition.
Carnarvon Pit Stop
The car will do a few more events before it finally goes “offline” to gets it’s new 6/71 Blower combo, In the mean time he will be debuting another dedicated burnout car, this time utilising a Manual T56 gearbox.