Our Project 996tt is still under the knife getting it’s power plant upgrades and new clutch installed. We thought we had everything we needed, but a $10.00 fuel fitting has put us a few days behind, the new fitting should be here tomorrow so that we can finish the installation and fire the car up in the next 1-2 days. A big thanks to Tony @ EPL for helping us with the fuel system and working on a prototype tune for the big injectors we’ll be running.
In the meantime we received a truck shipment from MA Shaw today that included our new wing and carbon fiber hood. The factory 996TT rear wing has a hydraulic system that raises and lowers the wing to provide down force at higher speeds. While the system works great, it does so at a cost of weight. We’ve been looking for ways to save weight in every portion of our building, so we opted for a new wing. We called MA Shaw in California to build us one of their track wings and lightweight hoods. Their wing is very similar to what you would see on a factory cup car, however it’s slightly smaller in size, and incorporates ducting for the air intake. We opted for GT3RS carbon fiber end plates to give the wing a bit more of a street look as well. We estimate a weight savings of 25-30lbs with the hood, and another 25-30 in the rear as well while improving down force. We also go the last of the parts needed for our GT2 front upgrade, I hope to tackle that tomorrow. Once the latest round of upgrades are complete we will re-weight the car and see where we’re at, more horsepower and less weight is never a bad thing.
On February 8th we will be hosting a BBQ Meet and Greet at Orlando’s newest race track, the Central Florida Road Course. The event will be hosted from 11-5 at the road course which is located. Food and beverage will be provided. No alcoholic beverages are allowed on site.
– Parade Laps paced by a Titan car
– Open Session for qualified drivers and those who have completed driver training. (The next training/evaluation course is January 31st, take the course and gain access to the track at our event)
For More Information on the Course / Training Courses and for additional directions and photos visit http://cfroadcourse.com
If you plan on attending or have any questions about the Titan BBQ event please email wes@titanmotorsports.com
Tim Switzer of Switzer Performance Innovations has been building some of the worlds quickest and fastest Porsches for the past few years. His Project Sledgehammer 997TT has been an inspiration and performance target for our own project car. In his quest to build some of the baddest Porsche’s in the land out of his Ohio workshop, SPI also builds some incredible products that they offer to the public. I’ve had the SPI Exhaust on my yellow car for over a year and absolutely loved it, the section welded tips are a work of art. The car sounds unbelievable and drone is non-existent at cruising RPMs unlike many other exhausts for the Porsche.
This week we received a set of SPI headers to go on our Camouflage project car, these headers are designed to fit cars still utilizing stock Borg Warner turbos (both K16 and K24). They offer a more free flowing design than the factory manifolds and feature beautiful laser cut flanges and welds. Like the SPI exhaust, these headers are a work of art and I can’t wait to see the anticipated increase in spool and flow our K24/18Gs will experience.
After months of stockpiling parts and testing the stock turbochargers, we had some extra time in the shop this week to begin upgrading Project Porsche. Here are some of the upgrades she’ll be recieving this go around.
If all goes as planned we should also begin initial testing of our Motec PNP kit as well. We’re still waiting on some body panels and suspension, but our goal is to have everything done and the car at Daytona running next week for Rolex 24 Hours.
This weekend I had a curious passenger in my yellow Porsche. After having a nice brunch at Dexters in Winter Park with my Fiancé, sister and the bosses, we walked outside to the cars and I caught a glimpse of something on my wheel. After a closer I realized it was a nice 3-4 foot black snake hanging out around my nice Brembo Brakes and HRE P40 wheel. We tried to scare him off with a stick, but he kept moving around the wheel. I figured the best way to get him off would be a spirited drive, so we headed off to Lolicup for the 370z Tour stop and headed inside for some Bobba Tea.
After a while we came back out to the cars, to my surprise the snake was not only still hanging around the car, but he had managed to find his way to the front of the car now and was poking out the radiator grille of the GT2 nose. We tried for a bit to wrangle him out of the car unsuccessfully, so it was off for a spirited drive home, hopefully he would find his way off the car along the way. I got home to find the damn snake still poking his head out the front grill. In an effort to keep my fiancé and dogs from having a nice black snake in the garage or sneaking his way into the house I parked the car out front and tried to get him to come out of his hiding spots, again to no avail. Frustrated I went inside and watched some football for an hour and came back out to have round 2 with Mr. Snake. I caught a glimpse of his tail poking out the hood release area, used my remote to pop the hood as I used a prong style “nuts and bolt retrieval took” to snatch his tail and yank him out of the car and into the yard. The battle was over, the car made its way back into the garage, and my fiancé could now sleep easy with no worries of a snake in the house. For me it was just another fun Sunday adventure driving my Porsche.
With the PRI show in Orlando this past week, we had the pleasure of hosting an open house for the great vendors who serve Titan Motorsports. The open house was hosted at our new location which is currently under construction on Boggy Creek Road, and displayed a handful of street and race cars. This state of the art 25,000sq/ft facility is being designed and built from the ground up with extensive planning to ensure growth for each of Titans divisions for many years to come.
The exterior shell has been complete for some time, however permitting for the interior buildup has held up construction progress. As these conflicts are now resolved, we are getting much closer to moving to our new home, and look forward to posting many more updates as construction continues. Our current expectations anticipate a smooth transition towards the end of quarter 1 in 2009.
We reached a major milestone in construction this week with the hanging of our massive new sign. The sign features 42” tall brushed aluminum letters which are backlit by thousands of amber LEDs. A big thank you to Nick and the crew at Diamond Electric for creating such a master piece and having it hung in time for our open house.
It’s finally time to begin installing parts on the camouflage Porsche. Our original plan was to install the complete K24/18G kit this week along with the clutch, however scheduling conflicts made us decide to hold off another week. Instead we sent the factory ECU off to Tony @ EPL to reflash with his modified K16 Map which includes both a brake boost feature and 2 Step. We expect to have the ECU back on Friday in time for another trip to Bithlo for some additional passes down the 1320.
Since we had to wait on the ECU to be flashed (in the coming months we will have in house programing available for all EPL products), we decided to remove some more weight. We removed the factory tank of an exhaust which weighed 57lbs. We opted for AWE straight pipes weighing in around 7lbs for the pair, an overall savings of 50lbs off the back of the car!!!
While we where at it we removed the factory battery (stock is 52lbs, the one removed was aftermarket and weighed 41lbs). In place of the factory battery we installed a Deka / East Penn ETX-30 battery and made a custom bracket out of aluminum to hold it in place. The new battery was 21lbs total, saving us another 20lbs off the front of the car. We will be using a trickle charger when the car will be without use for an extended time period, however we opted for the ETX-30 rather than the ETX-14. The 30 is about 10lbs heavier, but should offer a bit of security should the car not get driven for an extended period of time.
Total savings for the day was 70lbs. We’ll be off to the track on Friday with less weight, extra power, and hopes to get kicked out for going 11.5X without a cage. After that it’s more power, less weight, the perfect combination for a better overall car.
I Just returned from the SEMA show to find a good bit of progress to our Porsche Project. We are fortunate enough to have a small body shop located behind us called Pars Autobody. While I was away at the show they handled the wet-sanding, prepping, and painting of the door jams on the car. If all goes as plan she’ll get a nice coat of olive drab camouflage tomorrow night, with more pictures to follow.
