Castrol Syntec Top Car Challenge - Track Day

The next morning we got to the track early and went to work right away. We attached the hose to the front bumper with zip ties and snaked the other end to right before the oil cooler and using the aluminum fairings and a bunch of duct tape, we had our ghetto air diverter. Now it was time to set up the KW Clubsports for the track. Billy knows Buttonwillow like the back of his hand from his many racing events here, so he has a particular setup in mind. When we jacked up the rear of the car to get to the compression adjustment, it was horror. This is when we found the cause of the cracking noise the day earlier. The endlinks were sheared off and now I was up the creek with no paddle. Where the hell was I going to find endlinks for a 350Z in the middle of po-dunk nowhere? Taylor and I went around to the other teams and asked if they had any spare endlinks that we could use. This is where true sportsmanship comes in. Martin's AMS Evo 8 also had issues with their endlinks, they removed it from the car during the dyno, and forgot to tighten them back up from the drive up from Riverside and they fell off. So he had a set of stock Evo 8 and a set of adjustable endlinks express mailed from Chicago to Buttonwillow and it would be there that day. He graciously offered the set that he wouldn't use to us. It was definitely worth a shot since something was better than nothing. When the package arrived, they ended up using the adjustable endlinks and I prayed that the stock Evo 8 links would fit, and you know what? It did! Wow. Can you freakin' believe that? At least something was going my way.

It was like 106° F when we started the time attack practice. Billy had gotten the car adjusted the way he liked and it was time to see what we could get with a blown piston ring and the heat soak. After a few laps, he immediately came in and reported that the car was overheating and the temps were very high. He also said that the fuel pressure warning light on my Defi VSD X was displaying low fuel pressure. We called off the rest of the practice and tried to address the issues as much as we could. Howard raised the fuel pressure on the auxiliary FPR near the fuel tank, and I turned down the boost to be on the safe side. We were running at 18psi, so I turned it down to 14psi. I played MacGyver again and with the help of Chris Marion of KW, we rigged up a mesh in front of the intercooler to so that we could shove ice cubes in front of it and behind the radiator. By now, we were desperate to keep the temps down. When it was our time to do the actual lap, our strategy would be to do one warm up lap, one flying lap for the time, one cool down lap and pit in for 15 minutes to ice everything down and go again for it again. We knew what the competitors were getting and I was confident that Billy could get the Z in those time ranges. So after the flying lap was completed, the lap time was pretty impressive and the Z pitted in for our 15 minutes of ice down. All of us on pit lane were shoving ice into the bumper. Everyone thought the car was on fire since we were frantically running around and throwing what seemed like water into the engine bay. The heat from the engine was melting the ice cubes almost as fast as we were packing them in. As soon as we reached the 15-minute mark, Billy took off and did the warm-up lap and soon started the timed lap. I was keeping time on my stopwatch and watching the time corresponding to where he was on the track and he was BLAZING. At the pace he was at he was going to beat the previous time. He disappeared from view as he rounded the chicane and I was waiting for him to come down the straightaway but nothing. When the stopwatch continued to count up and there was no Z in sight, I knew something was up and our chance to beat the previous time was done.