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.

After a few crazy weeks of traveling, we finally got the Porsche paintjob completed.   4-5 hours in the paintbooth behind our shop, probably 15-20 cans of Krylon camouflage and enough fumes going to my brain that I’ll be high for weeks.  Overall I am very happy with the end results, and the opinions of those who have seen the car have been 50/50.  It’s a love hate relationship but that’s exactly what I wanted to achieve and either way it draws 100 times more attention than the factory silver.

This weekend the Titan crew was invited to attend Le Belle Macchine d’Italia at Daytona International Speedway.  Lamborghini of Orlando invited us to the event which included both an instructed driving session, and individual ride-arounds in the latest offers by Lamborghini.    Bottle, Nero and Eric made the trek out to the track, arriving a bit late they missed the scheduled rides around the 2.5-mile trioval with 31 degree banks.   They did however get plenty of great photos of the track day, including a very expensive mistake in one of the few Maserati MC-12s here in the states.  The pictures do the talking, enjoy.

This weekend Nero and myself had the pleasure of heading to Las Vegas for the annual SEMA show. SEMA is an industry event that encompasses the aftermarket performance industry. After 3 days of walking the show and meeting with suppliers and contacts in the industry, I was exhausted. The gallery below has some of our highlights from the show.

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Check out this great looking Porsche Carrera RS clone that stopped by the shop while I was away at SEMA. Everyone in the office could not stop talking about how great the car sounded after we installed a new custom exhaust. If the car sounds as good as it looks I can understand why they where so ecstatic with the results, I just hope I’m here the next time the car comes by for more work. I also wouldn’t mind taking pictures of the exhaust, as the only pictures of the car are while it was on the ground!

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.

Many people know Titan Motorsports from our history of drag racing and modifying Toyota Supras for straight line performance. While the Supra and quarter mile does play a significant role in our day to day operation, outside of work we are always looking to have additional fun driving or improving on our personal cars. Recently we have begun tuning European cars for our personal enjoyment and have been bit by the road course bug. As a result we have been enjoying DE or Drivers education events on our weekend, looking to improve on the most important aspect of a modified vehicle, the driver.

This weekend I had the pleasure of driving to Savannah, GA for a Driver’s Education event with the Porsche Club of America Citrus Region. Roebling Road is a 2.02 mile road course in Bloomingdale, Georgia. It is a great track to learn on as it has plenty of runoff and only 1 wall should a mistake occur. The PCA offers instructed driving sessions in a lead follow format that allows you to push the limits of your car, while minimizing risk of damage. It’s a great learning experience mixed with classroom education and on track driving with a qualified instructor sitting riding with you at all times, allowing you to learn the track lines and your cars limits. Once you have been signed off after a few events, Solo driving is available in a number of groups from intermediate solo to advanced solo.

I attended the event in my fiancés SMG BMW M3 (e46), which I had tracked once before in Sebring. This was my first time at Roebling and I was fortunate enough to have a great customer of ours Joshua Barnes as my instructor. Joshua has been driving Roebling for years in his Supra which we have modified to compete with Porsches. He is a great driver, and an even better instructor. From the first lap to the last lap I saw constant improvement, and by the end of the weekend I was maintaining great speed and had a great idea of the race line. I also had the pleasure of taking a few laps in the passenger seat of Joshua’s Supra. The car performs unbelievable and outperformed most of the Porsches and other prepped race cars on the track (with the exception of a Zotz prepped older RSR style race car with 14” slicks on the rear). Anyone who does not believe a Supra can handle the twisties needs to take a good look at Joshua’s car, and if you’re at the same event maybe even a ride. It’ll change the way you think about a race prepped Supra, and when you’re ready we can even build one for you.

A special thanks to Barbara for the great hospitality all weekend, Lauren and John for the great pictures and company. We are hoping to do another event at Roebling early in February, and I would love to see more of our friends and customers get involved and experience how much enjoyment and personal satisfaction a great day at the road course can bring.

If we’re going to have water bottled for us, we might as well have a water bottle as well. These bottles are great for bringing your favorite beverage to the gym or track. We will be throwing these in at random with new orders, if you’d like one just let us know in the comments field and we’ll include one with your next shipment.

Standard Issue Diverter Valves where designed with the Porsche 997TT in mind, using a side vacuum pipe to allow for easy routing inside an already crammed engine bay. These units are a direct bolt-on to the factory VTG turbochargers allowing for easy installation. These valves dump charge-air back into the air intake system and keeps external noise to a minimum. Featuring a piston design which is superior to the factory rubber diaphragm, this DV allows for quicker throttle response, higher clamping load, and more reliable control of boost pressure.

The units are machined from billet aluminum and come in your choice of stealth black anodized or machined silver finish. As with all Standard Issue products we pride ourselves in function over form, with products guaranteed to perform.

Purchase them online at Titan Motorsports :