Current:
We've been working with Nissan Motorsports and Grand Am to get the NISMO bodywork approved, and it was last month. (Pics to come). We are actually now making the bodywork ourselves, and supplying it to Nissan Motorsports (we're now a vendor to Nissan). If any race teams out there want the NISMO Race Bodywork, they should contact Paul St. Clair at Nissan Motorsports. The front and rear bumper covers are made of carbon fiber and Kevlar. This stuff is seriously lightweight and super strong. It will take a major punch, which we need in Koni Challenge! The side skirts are all Kevlar, and we knocked 15 lbs out of the side skirts alone! The rear wing with most likely be in fiberglass, but we may make it in carbon fiber. We have the bodywork on the car, and it is ready to go for Watkins Glen! The car will look SHARP!!
We found that our engine builder put our cams in wrong. The exhaust cams had 6 degrees of difference between them, which is HUGE. And the intake cams were 12 degrees off from where they should be. We're re-dynoing the car later this week, so we'll see how much HP we produce now. We expect a big jump. Hopefully we're not disappointed.
Watkins Glen is our next race. Look for special events prior to that race on NICO.com and NoHotWireRacing.com!!
Past:
We're getting prepared for Miller Motorsports Park (Sept. 12- 14), and there's a lot of work being done in the next week. We're pulling the motor out of the car, and sending it back to Hasselgren Engineering for an ECU swap. Currently we're running the Bosch MS 4.0 ECU in the car with a custom milspec wiring harness. The MS 4.0 doesn't have the memory or physical outputs to control the cams, so we've been running without variable cams until now. We've been giving up a serious amount of peak horsepower and power under the dyno curve. We're updating the engine for the Bosch MS 4.3 ECU which will allow us to control the cams so we can gain the horsepower we've been missing.
For the remainder of the year, we've brought on another sponsor, TorVec, Inc. TorVec is the inventor of the Torsen (spelling?) diff. They're providing funding to run Ken Dobson in our car at Miller Motorsports Park. Ken is a pro driver who's raced World Challenge, and Grand Am for years. He races a 350Z in SCCA T2 and is a long time Russell driving instructor at Infineon. With Ken at the wheel, it really gives us our best shot at running well. The Car and Driver editors are all booked, so they're leaving the driving duties to Ken and I.
Our primary goal for Miller is to get the car to be fast. If we can get the car to be fast, we want to finish as high up as possible. If we can get the car on TV, so much the better. If you're in the Salt Lake City area on September 13th or 14th, stop by and say Hi! If anyone has experience working on 350Zs in a racing environment and wants to crew, please email us! rich@nohotwireracing.com. We'll be a little short handed at this next race.
THANKS ALL!! Wish us luck! We're going to need the GOOD kind this time!
