GTLive – Redline Miller Motorsports Park, UT

This is an event that will live long in my memory as one of the hardest working times we have had at any event to date, for the sake of some background on the activities I will start the event diary 21 days prior to us actually leaving for Utah so as to give everyone a clearer picture of the “whys” of what transpired all weekend.

Following the Modified Tuner shootout last month in Phoenix, AZ and Gary’s first time out in the car we knew we had to get some chassis setup time on the car to get things to his liking and enable him to have more seat time so we booked a couple of test days at Infineon Raceway Sonoma, CA.

What we learnt during our two days at Infineon was two things, we still had under steer and we also had some pretty serious cooling issues when running extended periods (think 10+ laps). We all agreed we needed to do some serious radiator ducting and blocking off to fix this. On our way back to the shop Tommy (Car chief and lead tech/fabricator here) and I both concluded that the amount of work in ducting and such was nearly as much as it would be to design and build a v-mount setup (something Tommy had wanted to do to the “L” for the longest of times).

With the car back at the shop we worked up a parts list required for the building of the v-mount and I set about acquiring them. With the parts in hand Tommy spent the weekend working on laying the new cores in place to see if everything would fit ok prior to cutting out the front end of the car. I assisted Tommy with this by going to Lake Tahoe with my wife for a vacation (things would go much smoother for him with me out of the way  )

I arrived back from Tahoe on Sunday early evening and instead spending the remainder of fathers day with my wife and kids went to the shop to see what Tommy has created, as I flick on the lights I am greeted by the “L” on a lift with a v-mount setup sans piping to either the radiator or intercooler “Damn Tommy must have been on a mission to have not only worked out all the dimensions but to have also got it all mounted and secured!” (I found out later he had about 30 hours in it over the weekend!)

With our evenings the following week dedicated to finishing up the v-mount as well as our 33 item punch list from testing we had a busy week which boiled over into the weekend.

We finally got everything buttoned up on the car roughly 30 minutes prior to our departure for Utah on Thursday night.

With the crew on the road at a later than desired time of 9pm Thursday night we all agreed that stopping somewhere in the middle of the trip would be a good idea, we met up with one of friends and long term customer Earl at the rest stop at the top of pass heading into Reno at around midnight and pushed on as far as Lovelock, NV finding a casino motel by the name of Sturgeons to crash at around 3am. So far so good!

Armed with a handful of sausage and egg McMuffins the team set about leaving Lovelock around 8:30am Friday morning. No sooner had the McMuffins been scoffed I heard yelling over the radio from Tommy who was in Earl’s car following me “pull over!!”

Turns out all the yelling was regarding one of our tires on trailer which had grenaded showering Earl’s car with rubber shortly followed by plumes of smoke. As we set about locating the spare I suddenly remembered being told by Gary (Sheehan our driver whose rig we were using to tow with) that he had a spare wheel but the tire was shot, “oh snap”

Armed with the spare Earl took off up the freeway to locate a tire shop, turns out the nearest one was in Winnemucca some 35+ miles from where the rest of us now occupied our time seeing who could throw a stone into a bucket on the side of the I80. A little over an hour and half later Earl pulls off the side of the freeway on the other side and runs across and hands us the spare shod with a new tire.

Ordinarily this sort of thing would not be an issue but we had dyno time arranged with Cobb at Miller and the two hours we had lost would put at the track around 6:30pm, A quick call with Christian from Cobb confirmed this was no big deal “phew” would hate to not at least check out the car at Altitude on the dyno prior to running it on the track!.

The rest of the drive goes without incident and we arrive at Miller Motorsports Park shortly after 6pm.

With the car out of the trailer I headed over to meet the guys from Cobb, I was greeted by Christian, John, Tim and Doug from Topspeed and a little under 10 minutes the car was strapped ready to roll on the dyno.

After around 10 pulls it was apparent to me that we had more going on with our boost than just the difference in Altitude so with the car off the dyno I headed back over to our garage area to meet up with the rest of the team which now included another of our customer and friends Paul, his wife, Joel Gat and our driver Gary Sheehan.

Given our less than Stella boost profile it was obvious we had some intake leaks going which we initially though were due to our newly made v-mount setup and all the new piping and such built for it so we set about going through everything to find the leaks. Nothing was too obvious and without a form of pressure tester or a TIG welder to fix anything it was really an exercise in futility. Doug from Topspeed offered up his TIG welder unfortunately we could not find anywhere to power it (220v) or any welding rod.

We decided that even with the suspected leaks the power we were making was still enough to make a go of the event so we moved on to finishing up the final setup work on the car.

As we setup the setup pads and started to put on the front bumper/splitter we noticed we were missing the brake duct block off plates, as we went through all of spares boxes and packed equipment it became obvious they were still in Hayward at our shop.

While some of the guys scavenged around for some material to make new one’s from I set out making a template from our freshly devoured Domino’s pizza boxes. With no ABS like material around at midnight at the track Larry Miller himself came to our aid (not sure if he knows about this but hey thanks anyway Larry!) turns out that those big black Rubbermaid trash cans are not only flat black but make awesome block off plates! A quick touch of death wheel action and some drilled holes and we were in business.

About an hour later when the cleaners came through it was somewhat priceless the expressions on their faces as they pointed at the spot there once was a trash can and looked around bemused as the rest of us tried to contain our laughter.

With the alignment finished up by Joel and Tommy at around 1:30am we decided it was time for us to locate our hotels as we needed to get some rest prior to being back at the track at 6:30am.

With the team armed with fresh coffee we waited inline at the main building at 6:30am to get our paddock passes and event entrance tickets, I will have to say this it seemed like nobody knew what the hell was going on as we got shuffled from line to line trying to get back into the track.

With the time now 7:15 we finally got though the main gates and Gary headed off to the drivers meeting while the rest of us worked on getting the final pieces sorted out for the car to be on track for the first practice session at 9am.

With Gary in the car and on his way to the hot pit entrance the rest of the team headed for the hot pits. We had no real expectations of our first session as we had just swapped our brakes out in the front and Gary needed to bed the brakes in. With Gary out on track bedding the brakes in it become apparent that the cars coolant temps were running pretty high and this was without pushing the car at all.

With the car back in the garage I went over the data while the team looked over the car, it would seem we’re running up close to 250F not good!!

As Gary started his driver download with Tommy and Joel it became apparent the car was still suffering huge under steer, while the three of them setup about making some chassis changes for the next session I got stuck into ducting the radiator out of the bottom of the splitter (it would seem my new favorite tool “Death Wheel” and I would have some work to do  ) It was at about this time we added a new member to our team for the weekend. While I was laying on my back under the front of the car covering myself in pieces of alumilite a unfamiliar voice asked if I needed anything, without being able to see much more than a pair of feet I replied “I could use some thin aluminum sheet to duct out to this hole in the underside of the splitter” All I heard was “ok be right back!”

As a couple of minutes passed and I removed more material from the underside of the splitter the same pair of feet arrived back at the front of the car and a large piece of aluminum was thrust under the car “will this work Mike?” followed by a big bald head peering under the car. Hey I know you! “What’s going on Dustin?” It would seem my new helper was none other than PDX Tuning’s Dustin who happened to be out at the track for the weekend hanging out with the Cobb crew.

With the chassis setup changes in place to help combat the under steer and Dustin and I’s ducted radiator system connected the car and Gary headed out on track for our second practice session, Gary soon got into his groove running mid 1:38’s all while running low boost and low rpms, unfortunately Gary was still having to back off due to climbing temps – back to the drawing board for Dustin and I.

With Gary again downloading to Tommy and Joel it would seem that none of the chassis changes were effecting the under steer leading the team to start believing we needed to change the diff settings.

Dustin and I continued working on improving the flow to and from the radiator while Tommy, Joel and the rest of the crew worked on going over the car and checking the alignment settings.

The third practice session was much the same as the second with Gary dropping a couple of tenths and still fighting terminal under steer and increasing coolant temps (the ambient temps were now at around 94 degrees with the track temps much higher).

With little time to work on anymore cooling solutions the team came up with a strategy for the timed session, Gary would have to go a little easy on his warm up lap then full tilt for his first timed lap before backing off and using the 2nd lap as cool down so as to bring the engine temps down enough for a hot lap on his final timed lap. The strategy paid off and Gary was able to run a low 1:38 on his final lap which was good enough for first place so far in class and 2nd overall (given our issues with handling, coolant temps and loss of power it was unlikely we would have anything for C-West’s awesome S2k) We knew we would have to be faster tomorrow as due to braking issues the crazy fast GC8 of Topspeed had yet to really run and we knew they would be very fast once they got new brakes on their car.

With the car back in our garage spot the crew worked till 11pm addressing the cooling issues, firstly as much frontal area as possible was exposed by opening up the front bumper more. We then stripped Joel’s STI of its rear IC spray reservoir and nozzle mounting the nozzle to the front of the splitter and wired into our transmission coolers fan switch we now had a radiator mister which seemed to work very well. With this all in place and the crew all feed with help from Paul and his wife’s trip to Panda Express we all decided to call it night.

Finally more than 4 hours sleep! The Crew arrived back at the track at 7am, Tommy and Joel set about checking the alignment while the rest of us double checked everything on the car adding fuel and a full nut and bolt.

With the Gary heading out on track for our first of two practice sessions the crew headed to the wall to take temps on our scheduled stops. Gary settled into a good paced groove clicking off several sub 1:38 times but was still having huge under steer issues and while our modifications to the cooling system helped they had not fixed our issues with the temps still slowly creeping up.

As we made our way back to our garage area we heard over the speakers that Topspeed had set the fastest time for our class with a low 1:37, looks like things were about to get interesting 

Our time between the sessions was spent trying to dial the under steer out of the car and what seemed as no sooner had we started working when it was time to go out for the second and final practice of the day.

No sooner had Gary begun his warm-up lap and he radioed in reporting that the car was misfiring on right hand turns, we brought him into the hot pits and looked over the car reseating all ignition and fuel connectors before sending him our again “Still doing it guys!” we decided to call the session and get the car back to the garage area as we would only have an hour to find and fix whatever the cause of this issue was, time was of the essence.

No sooner had Gary parked the car in the garage the trio of Tommy, Dustin and Joel dove into the engine compartment to try and isolate the miss, the problem was that with the car idling there was no miss to be found. Dustin located a suspect connection point on the #4 coil pack and reworked the connectors. We sent Gary out into the parking lot to test and unfortunately the misfire was still occurring. With less than 15 minutes to the start of the last timed session we decided to replace the fuel injectors in an act of desperation. With the new fuel injectors in the car off went Gary to the back parking lot again and upon returning reported that he was unable to make the car misfire “Awesome! We’re back in business!!”

With car headed out to the track the rest of us headed to the pit wall to get a good view of the cars on track. As the car started it’s warm up lap we were running with C-West S2K, Topspeed Impreza and the Crawford Performance STI.

With the warm up laps out the way we managed a 1:36.94 on our first lap but due to our cooling issues were not able to push any harder for the remainder of the session. As the results came in we found out that Topspeed had had a issue with their intake manifold thus were not able to produce anywhere near the speed they were capable of, I felt for sure they were going to have something to bring a fight to the S2K of C-West/BC giving us Subaru supporters something to cheer about but as luck or bad luck would have it they were only able to run around 16psi and not able to bring the heat we know the car is capable of. Don’t worry Doug you know your going to be out there kicking some ass on the East Coast with your new manifold!

With the car back in the garage and everyone watching the live timing and scoring on the monitor it became apparent that our time was good enough for 1st in class and 2nd overall just shading the class win over the new 08 STI of Crawford Performance (less than 3 tenths). Gary remained in the car milking his cool suit while the rest of us handed out the beers, as we started looking over the car in preparation for the Super Session (something new to this series where the top 7 finishers in each division get to run head to head for 5 laps) a little over 10 minutes passed when a voice from the cockpit rang out that pretty much reduced everyone to tears of laughter “So how did we do?” it would seem that in everyone’s haste to get into a cold beer and look over the car nobody had informed Gary of our standings other than his best lap time – Priceless!!

The super session itself was also more trying that we had hoped, with Gary rounding the final corner alongside the S2K the green flag raised the cars dove into the first corner three wide with S2K in a Subaru sandwich between us and the Dynocomp car piloted by owner/driver Richard Garcia. As Gary exited the first corner relinquishing the lead to the S2K shortly before taking it back for turns 2-4 he came over the radio reporting the car was misfiring again. We decided to leave him out there and just finish up the 5 laps hoping nothing breaks, our luck held out and the car completed the super session finishing 2nd to the S2K (this seems to be becoming a bad habit!).

I won’t bore you all with the details of the drive back to the Bay Area but within 2 hours of getting the car off the trailer we had troubleshot not only the misfire but also our vacuum leaks. The misfire was caused by the #2 cylinder connector pins making intermittent connection to the coil pack and the leaks were found primarily in one of the brand new IC connection silicon hoses (two small pin holes!)

All in all we had a blast at this event, with all the issues the crew was kept more than busy but on all occasions rose to the task.

GST Motorsports would like to thank all of our sponsors for their continued support, we could also like to thank Dustin from PDX Tuning and Joel Gat for stepping up and working tirelessly on the car all weekend. Lastly we would like to thank Gary Sheehan for not only driving the car exceptionally well but for all of his feedback on setup while testing prior to and during this event, also for putting up with us while we thrashed on the various issues.

Here is our fastest lap during the second timed session,

Here's the in-car from the super session,