2011 In Review

[CH.Detailing]

Thankfully the weather didn't wait too long before warming up, and we were blessed with high turn out numbers for the rest of the year.

Porsches are always very plentiful at these gatherings, but this is the only GT2 RS I've come across so far! And a daily driven one at that. Dry carbon has never looked better!

This Shelby Comp Coupe was also an unexpected attendee, I've seen a few Cobra's before, most of them replicas, so this was pretty unreal to see!

There are also the inevitable (yet subjective) ugly duckling in attendance, and this S2000 stands out most fondly in my memory.

Thankfully there were plenty of gorgeous ones to balance out the show.

This '55 Chevy is also fairly extraordinary. Tube framed, tubbed fenders, with a blown and sprayed big block making just short of 4 digit power figures. Impressive to say the least!

 

[CH.Detailing]

That's it for now, I'll continue my retrospective tomorrow.

 

[CH.Detailing]

I've been battling a cold for the past few days (still am), so please pardon my lateness in continuing this thread.

Towards the end of April my Dad called me up asking if I was interested in going to a hot rod show in Iowa, I hesitantly agreed. I'm not too big on hot rods or muscle cars, I'm not knocking them and don't have anything against them, but I can't say I would go out of my way to see a bunch of them.

After a two and a half hour drive we rolled into Maquoketa, Iowa. I tried quizzing my Dad during the drive on what exactly this event was about, but he was hazy on the details and could only tell me it was called Vintage Torque Fest. I didn't know what exactly to expect as we pulled into the parking area, and my expectations weren't all that high, what with Maquoketa being a middle-of-nowhere sort of midwest town. I was very pleasantly surprised.


Ruthless.

You think your race car is gutted? No. THIS is gutted! Floor pans are for the weak.

Sure, four piston brakes aren't all that remarkable, but these calipers are as big as your head!

Your 375's are nothing compared to this. Nothing!

The owner of this monstrosity lives in DuBuque, and claims he drives it to work nearly every day during the summer! That is some serious dedication and pride! This is the result of some serious homegrown ingenuity, and is the spawn of a Model A Tudor Deluxe and a straight six, turbo diesel school bus from the 70's, laid down nicely on some air bags. Both cars had been rotting to death in a field until they were "rescued", cobbled together, and given new life, very similar to Dr. Frankenstein's monster. This fantastic abomination is a definite head turner, hopefully the townspeople give chase due to curiosity and leave the torches at home.

We stumbled upon the "Franken-rod" in the parking area, among several other cast outs, that weren't allowed into the show itself because they were too modern!


This behemoth of an International was another of the cast outs.

Everything is better with a turbo!

Super classy Impala wagon laying on bags, with an LSx under the hood!

The ever present and awkward Edsel. I want to say it's a shame that they didn't sell more of these... but it's not.

Cadillac Fleetwood, laying low.

These guys literally build a car from whatever scraps they can drag out the field, or haul home from the junkyard. It simply doesn't get any more grassroots than this!

I'm no expert, but I believe this is a GM LT1. A relatively modern drivetrain for such an old car!

Boom! HVAC ducting for a weather proof intake. Home brewed ingenuity at its finest.

 

[CH.Detailing]

This is taking a lot longer than I had anticipated. Heading down to Chicago for a few days to actually do some detailing, at this rate I'll have my year in review done in a few weeks!

 

[rzatch]

Looks like you had an eventful year for sure. That ice racing is crazy.

 

[CT3]

You opened my eyes to a different type of racing. For now I'll stick to the Tahoe and 4WD!

Do you do any other type of racing?

 

[CH.Detailing]

Besides autocross and ice racing, no. Although I'd like to do a couple track days this year.

 

[CT3]

Besides autocross and ice racing, no. Although I'd like to do a couple track days this year.

I'd like to get out to the track too, once I get something built that is worthy of it.

 

[CH.Detailing]

Back at it! Took a break from school/work to make more progress on this thread, before too long and I'll be doing a '2012 In Review' thread.

One of my favorite shops in the area is run by Kelly Moss Motorsports in conjunction with Level 5 Motorsports. They are a full service race car and street car shop that runs in the Intercontinental LeMans Cup, the American LeMans Series, the Ferrari Challenge, Grand-Am, and IMSA GT3 Cup. These guys do it all, no project is too big or small.

Early on in the year the Madison Sports Car Club (the autocross body that I run with) help a season opener event and dyno day at the Kelly Moss facility and it was really a treat to be given free roam over the shop during the off-hours. The overwhelming feature of the shop is the shelves packed full of race cars, classic cars, and dominating street machines.

As you can see there were plenty of projects in various stages of completion laying about on the shop floor. Everything from a custom frame for a Chevelle to an entirely carbon 996 Porsche body was being worked on.

This is the aptly named "Flaming Woody", every piece of sheet metal on the body has been replaced with carbon fiber, all the work was done entirely in-house. Pretty impressive!

Even the dashboard was custom molded from carbon!

For such a light weight car, the brakes were still absolutely massive! The rotors themselves were easily larger than the wheels I run on my Sentra.

Given that they run in the GT3 Cup it wasn't all that surprising to see several racers scattered about the shop. Not only do they prep their own cars, but also prepare several others teams cars, as well as offer transport and track side coaching and assistance. Like I said, these guys do it all!

All of the GT3 Cup cars are required to run the same spec BBS wheel, so I expected to see quite a few, but there was a side room that had literally dozens upon dozens of sets of wheels with fresh race rubber at the ready! These guys don't show up unprepared.

As you would expect the interiors of the cars are very stripped down and spartan, you won't find anything but the bare essentials. The weights you see in the driver's seat is to help the team get the proper corner weights dialed in, the weight is to simulate the driver without requiring him to sit there for the entire process!

The Level 5 team was working on a couple of their Ferrari Challenge cars as well.

It's not everyday that you can get so up close and personal with these sorts of cars, so it was taking every bit of my will not to hop behind the wheel and go "Vrooooom vrooooom!!" :lol:

Over in the prototypes and development wing of the facility we came across one of Level 5's Lola Spyders that they run in ALMS. The car was sitting naked, which offered an interesting look at all the ins and outs of the race car. The body is made entirely out of carbon and light weight composites, with only a simple metal skeleton structure for the suspension to attach to.

EDIT: Now that I think about it, I'm not sure if I should post these pictures given that the car was in the 'prototypes and development' wing. Oh well, the 2011 season is over anyways, I'm sure they won't mind! :bigups

Even the brake ducts were formed from carbon! Take a look at those rotors, super thick and designed for long stints on track. The rotor venting design seemed a bit odd to me, but I suppose it increases the rigidity of the rotor and makes it hold up better to the extreme heat and abuse it gets subjected to.

Super trick inboard double wishbone suspension and a MIL-spec electrical harness, this thing means business!

At the back end you'll find this twin-turbo Honda V6, similar to what you might find under the hood of an Odyssey mini-van. Similar, in the sense that your child's plastic toy hammer is similar to a heavy duty pneumatic jackhammer. This engine has received the full race car treatment and now belts out an impressive 450 whp! Let's see your mothers mini-van do that!

There was a good amount of street monsters lounging about as well, such as this Audi S4. The car was making 600awhp on pump gas at the time, but was back in the shop to be retuned to run on E85 as well as get a methanol injection setup installed. Remember, it's a street car.

 

[CH.Detailing]

There was also a stunning 993 Turbo hiding off to the side of the shop. The maroon body and charcoal wheels really did well to understand the menace this car has.

There was a minty white classic 911 sitting on the bottom row of the rack, I really dig the yellow headlamps! (I'm absolutely awful at pinning down model years for early 911s, so I won't even try.)

Sitting front and center was a very nice 356 soft top.

Judging by the interior, this car definitely sees plenty of road use!

Another older 911 was up on the lift having some engine work done. Can you tell they work on a lot of Porsches!?

My absolute favorite car of the evening was this blue 993 Turbo track weapon. I spent a solid 20 minutes just staring at it, trying to figure out how I could get it out of the shop without anybody noticing. Thankfully (unfortunately?) I couldn't come up with anything feasible.

The car has a huge amount of presence and is very aggressive looking while also being highly functional, I was very much in awe.

It was rolling on some 2-piece BBS's wrapped in some sticky Hoosier rubber.

Judging by the massive aftermarket intercooler the car makes some healthy power numbers and assuredly makes good usage of those insanely wide tires!

The front reveals some extra chassis bracing and some inboard mounted Moton ($$$$) external reservoirs for the dampers. The carbon topped box at the front is I believe a reservoir for water/meth injection, but could also be a battery box I suppose. Either way, it's cool!

The inside of the car is just as serious as the outside. The car features a complete welded in cage, Momo wheel, TraqMate data acquisition, carbon dashboard, a few extra warning gauges, and some enveloping seats similar to what you'd find in a Lotus Exige. The interior also revealed an electronic boost controller and a wideband display, giving a few subtle hints at the added power this thing must put out. Just the thought makes me giddy.

As far as the actual dyno night itself was concerned there weren't many exceptional cars on display. Given that it was a local non-SCCA autocross club there was a good amount of beaters that risked their lives just to make a single dyno run. A couple of the highlights was an '02 WRX that put down 380awhp, an '06 Subaru Forester that put down 420awhp, and a Cobalt SS that put down 240whp. The highlight of the night was a 2010 Nissan GTR that decided to give the rollers a spin. The car was completely stock and put down an astonishing number to the wheels, given that the offical number at the crank is 478. Apparently Nissan developed a pretty efficient all wheel drive system, or they just lied.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BoOv9JSgXc&feature=BFa&list=UUctcCAwuLhKiVhbQzpejrnA&lf=plcp]2010 GTR - 460 - YouTube[/ame]

 

[CH.Detailing]

Plenty more yet to come, bare with me.

 

[LegacyGT]

Amazing pictures and year review! Really really good, a lot of different things you are doing there, and doing well.



:cheers:

 

[CH.Detailing]

I just realized I never finished my post from Vintage Torque Fest, so we're gonna back up for a second here.

One of the coolest things about the day was that Mike and Frank from the Discovery show American Pickers were there hanging out! It's not exactly a celebrity spotting, but it was still pretty damn cool! That's my Dad on the left.

Now, I'm not much of an old school V8 guy, in fact, I know basically nothing about any of these cars. I can spot an LT or LS but that's about it! :lol:
With that said, I still had a great time checking out all these cars. Some are just junk piles, and while others might appear to be junk piles a closer look reveals that the car is really a product of a carefully tailored aesthetic.

A staple of any good rod is that it needs to be low and it needs to be loud, as well as having a distinctly unique look and sense of style.

Everyone seemed to have a pile of rusty parts for sale, which was probably why the Pickers were there.

The first "spider web" grill that I saw seemed pretty cool to me, but as I began to notice more and more of them the novelty soon wore off.

I spotted this truck that had the "spider web" in place of the window, and I liked that a bit better. Although it would suck to get caught out in the rain!

Don't let this pristine engine bay fool you, the entire exterior of the car was all rust and splotchy flat black. It's definitely a different sort of style!

This car was my favorite, it nailed down the rough rat rod style while still maintaining a high build quality. I have a feeling this car was not cheap to build!

I really liked this car as well, get a load of that ornament!

The interior was just as rough as the exterior, simple sheet metal floor and trans tunnel, no seats, a shifter taller than the car, and the fluid reservoirs tucked away under the driver's feet! Not exactly a grand tourer but it definitely gets the job done.

Hidden under the converted-keg gas tank is the air tank and compressor for the suspension, which offers the added benefit of air tools on the go! :rockon

 

[CH.Detailing]

There were plenty of trucks on display, with plenty of different styles. No two cars at the show were similar, which really goes to show the different expressions and personalities of the owners.

Some were a bit rough and simple, like this big Chevy.

This Ford preferred the look of patina with vintage lettering (my personal favorite).

Not surprisingly there were quite a few jalopies, or works in progress.

Some trucks were serious Frankenstein-type creations, like this one, powered by a heavy duty turbo diesel straight six out of a Caterpillar!

Homebrew flat black was a fairly common color choice, but this bad boy pulled it off very well. The chopped cab, simple bumper beam, peek-a-boo aluminum radiator, and air bags really came together to create a wholly unique and menacing machine.

This Chevy was another nice flat black truck.

This truck went in a different direction from most, and decided to lift it instead of slam it. I wonder what sort of fuel economy this thing gets, if any!

Toyota was probably the only import included in the entire show, although it's not exactly standard. Under the hood is a hopped up LS2!

I was really diggin' this old panel van, with another panel van behind that has been converted into a trailer! The trailer was tastefully plastered with vintage centerfolds on the inside, classy.

Not to mention it would also be the ultimate tail gating setup!

Nearly every car had some quirkiness to it, but there were some that very much over the top! This car is a great example of a solid restoration with a horrendous result.

This zombie Plymouth really appealed to me, the firewall was smooth as could be while the rest of the car was a breeding ground for tetanus. The textural contrast was not something that you see very often.

The interior was even more curious than the outside, Excalibur was used as a shifter handle, a silver dinner fork was used for a gas pedal, and a porcelain bathroom knob was used as a dash control. Homegrown ingenuity at it's finest.

'Elvis' here was another show stealer, the flamboyant pink paint job turned a lot of heads. Or maybe it was the two foot flames that were shooting out of the exhaust.

Flame jobs weren't that prevalent (thank goodness!), although the 'real' flames on this old Merc lead sled weren't too bad.

Flat and classy, I can dig it!

This raw metal clear coated finished was also the only one of it's kind on display.

There was also a dirt circle track where the cars could head out and turn a few laps on, some people preferred to do a slow cruise while the hoonigans in attendance were putting their hot rods sideways through the banks! It was quite a show. In addition there were a few live punk and hardcore bands playing indoors where they were housing the choppers and motorcylces, which I unfortunately don't have any pictures of. It was an awesome show and a great experience and I am greatly looking forward to this year's event, taking place again at Maquoketa Iowa on May 4th and 5th, hopefully I'll see some of you guys there!




Vintage Torque Fest

 

[CH.Detailing]

Shortly after the dyno night and social that the Madison Sports Car Club held at the Kelly Moss shop, we had our first autocross event for the season. Since my Sentra was still, err, not driveable, I decided I would just hang out and take some pictures. After the first couple of heats I was very fed up with just watching, so I quickly gutted my Subaru and took it out for a few runs!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/c_harrison/sets/72157626618865841/with/5727029269/

 

[CH.Detailing]

I really do enjoy all forms of automotive sub-culture, case in point, this meet held by the good folks at JDM Chicago. These guys are pretty big on stance. What is stance you may ask? Simply, it is the triumph of form over function. It is getting your car as low as possible, usually with a bit of forward rake regardless of drivetrain layout, and running oversized wheels with very narrow and stretched out tires. This S2000 offers a perfect example of the best (or worst) that stance has to offer.

It's important to realize that this is the static ride height. You may find yourself wondering; how could that car possibly get around without scraping the ground or bottoming out!? It doesn't. When you become this dedicated to the form of your car you end up sacrificing almost every aspect of it's function. Potholes, inclines, and speed bumps become your worst nightmare.

This MR2 is equally as horrendous (or... awesome?) as the Honda, but don't let that roll bar fool you, it will never see any sort of motorsport competition necessitating such a thing. Equipping your car with high profile parts or suggesting that it's track oriented is also a big part of stance.

Sometimes it may even be necessary to risk the welfare of your stance in order to complete an aesthetic, such as on this Scion.

This toaster does a better job of keeping close to the core idea behind the stance movement with it's ridiculous wheels and suspension setup. It does get some bonus points for being turbocharged!

I very nearly bit the bullet on this STi-swapped GC8 before I purchased my current WRX wagon, but I didn't want the hassle of sorting through another person's zip-tie engineering. I do like the car a lot, although I would like it a lot more if it lost the scoop and switched to a front mount intercooler!

Touge Factory had their Evo X on display. Although the car gives the appearance of an aggressive time attack machine, the aero is in fact for aesthetic only. The wonders of stance!

This Z33 was very fresh, and not overly done, I'm a fan.

This Skyline turned a lot of heads when it made it's appearance, and the crowds quickly swarmed. It's not every day that you get to see a legendary beast from Japan such as an R34 GT-R! Alas, this wasn't one of those days either.

Contrary to what the badging says, this car is actually a GT, not a GT-R. So instead of a badass AWD twin turbo 2.6L straight six with a 6-speed, this car is RWD with an NA 2.0L straight six with a 5-speed automatic which boasts the lofty title of being the most fuel efficient skyline ever produced.

A stock Elise, nobody seemed interested in the slightest. Not low enough, brosef.

To wrap it up, something classy.

In summary, I'm a hater, so sue me. :nana:

 

[CH.Detailing]

Next I spent a few days hiking in Colorado, unfortunately a bunch of cars kept racing up and down the mountain, it was super annoying. You can read about that trip in it's entirety at the link below,

http://www.autopiaforums.com/forums/general-car-guy-discussion/37822-my-pikes-peak-adventure.html

Here are some of the highlights, sans commentary ('cause I'm lazy).

 

[CH.Detailing]

I also wandered around the north woods for a bit and got stuck in the middle of this super busy highway, you can read, er... watch, about it at the link below,

http://www.autopiaforums.com/forums...events/36915-alms-road-america-8-21-11-a.html

But here is a brief visual recap..

For those of you who have had the chance to go to Road America before, you can appreciate just how big that track is. For a photographer, it is like running a marathon to make sure you get to all the different corners at the right part of the day to get the right kind of light. I was exhausted at the end of that day! But also very satisfied at what came out of my SD card.

:bigups

 

[CH.Detailing]

I think just a couple more things to cover and I'll finally have 2011 wrapped up!

 

[CH.Detailing]

First off, I'd suggest you click 'play' on this video I took as the cars headed back to the track and use it as background music while you read through the rest of the post. Go on.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSL_IOtISJc&hd=1"]Kohler International Parade - YouTube[/ame]

Here we have "The Hawk with Brian Redman" formerly known as "The Kohler Vintage Invitational with Brian Redman" formerly known as "The Brian Redman Challenge", an annual event at Road America, which brings some of the biggest crowds of the year. This year seemed to draw an even bigger crowd than usual, and it was hard enough just to breathe let alone get a clear shot of the cars.

At times the crowds of people could be simply overwhelming!

Each year this event brings together some of the most amazing racing machines from days gone by for an epic weekend wheel to wheel debauchery. Unfortunately I didn't go to the race itself this past year, but just went and hung out at the concours held in downtown Elkhart Lake.

As a photographer, my mind is always fixated on getting the best possible angle for a shot, and at times I would have to wait nearly ten minutes to get that necessary split second gap in the crowds to get my shot. These Lolas are some of the fastest things out there, and its always a real treat to get to see them up close!

Not at all of the racecars were completely serious, for example, this rare Bocar and it's Playskool styled steering wheel.

As a Nissan fan, Datsuns rank highly on my list of desirable cars, so I was a bit bummed out that there were only a few in attendance this year. It's not uncommon to see a veritable fleet of 510's and B210's, which wasn't the case this year.

If you're a Trans-Am junkie there is always plenty to see, as the Penske team will usually have a large commemoration for Mark Donahue.

If Trans-Am is too raw for you, then there were some more adorable offerings as well, like this pair of Austin-Healey Sprites.

It seems that no matter what event I go to Porsches always have the highest attendance numbers, and this was no exception.

The designers of the Ford GT truly did an amazing job of recreating a retro design without losing the essence of the original, the likeness is uncanny, and rightfully so.