This weekend we headed out to Colonial TownPark in Lake Mary,FL for the monthly Cars and Cafe event put on by Orlando Automotive Club. Attendance was slightly down as a result of the holidays, however there was a still great turnout of cars from various marquees. I had my father in town for the holidays and had the pleasure of bringing him out to the event to enjoy all the beautiful cars on such a nice day. This was also the first Cafe meet the Camouflage Porsche attended and it received quite a bit of attention as one can expect. Check out the gallery below to see all the great cars in attendance.

Saturday marked the date for our annual Titan holiday party. This year we welcomed our close knit family and friends to Buca di Beppo in Maitland for some fine Italian dining, followed by a few sessions of carnage at our local go-kart track Lil500. It was a great time to stop and reflect on the great year we have had, and how much we have to be thankful for.

On of the highlights of the evening was when Sally, one of our book-keepers challenged everyone to write a parody of the night before Christmas to present at the party. Chris rose to the challenge with a great story, however Sally took the cake with some clever inside humor. I’ve posted it below for all to review, I also wanted to take a moment to wish everyone Happy Holidays from myself and the gang here at Titan Motorsports.

Holiday Hours : We will be open the 24th, closed the 25th, and be back in full swing on the 26th.

Just in time for Winter, our Titan Motorsports Hoodies have arrived from the screen printer. These high quality Independent brand hooded sweatshirts features a covered zipper with our logo imprinted on the front. The back features our new Titan T logo on the lower right side. These are a great gift for the holidays and available in white or black in all the popular sizes. Purchase online at Titan Motorsports webstore using the link below.

Titan Motorsports Hoodie : BUY HERE

One of our good local customers brought in some Red Bull from Thailand today. I’m not sure it’s legal to sell in the US, and after drinking it I can understand why. I’m a caffeine junky (2 Red Bulls a day), and this stuff had everyone in the office wired and then some. Definitely much more potent than US Red Bull, and rather than being carbonated in a can, it comes in a more syrup like form in a glass container. The extra energy is always great, but I think we’re all in trouble once the caffeine crash happen though…..

We just got finished installing our StopTech Big Brake kit on our project Porsche. We like going fast just as much as anyone, but when you’re adding hundreds of horsepower to a vehicle, it’s always good to plan on upgrading your brakes. Our car had over 60k miles when we purchased it, so the brakes needed some added attention right off the bat. We went with Stoptechs 380mm/6piston kit on the front and their 332mm/4 piston in the rear. We will be using the car for DE events and the Texas Mile so I wanted to make sure that the brakes where properly bedded and will be up the heavy braking the car will experience.

Just as important as upgrading the brakes themselves, is carefully following the bed-in procedure for the pads and rotors. This is a very important step and it should be preformed right after installation to ensure a consistent friction surface and prevent warping of rotors from pad deposits. Before you begin the process you want to make sure the rotors are clean and free of and oil or debris. For non-plated rotors a bath in soap and water, then brake clean should do the trick. For our application we had the rotors zinc coated to prevent rusting of the fins. If you opt to have the rotors zinc plated, drive a few miles with light braking until the plating is worn off. Do not use the brakes aggressively or begin bed-in procedure until this has been completed.

To begin the bedding procedure find a long stretch of level roadway or a skid pad. It is best to perform the exercise at a time when traffic is at its lightest to make sure you can complete the procedure without compromising safety. I was fortunate to have a long 4-5 mile access road for the airport near our new location to perform the bed-in. To properly seat the pads and rotors evenly you will perform 2 series of 10 consecutive decelerations from 60mph to 10pmh. You want to be sure that accelerate back up to 60 after reaching the 10mph decelerating point. You should be using consistent 80-90% braking force and expect some smoke and brake smell from the brakes. Be sure that you do not come to a complete stop during the series of 10.

For this procedure in the 996tt I found 2nd gear to work quite well as it allowed me to reach the designed RPM and still be able to accelerate from the lower RPMS. Complete the first 10 series in sequence, when you are finished be sure not to come to a stop as you want to let the rotors cool completely without leaving hot deposit. Once the brakes have cooled to a near ambient temperature (usually after 10-15 miles of driving at 50MPH or more without using the brakes) repeat the series of 10 stops and let the system cool again to ambient temperature. For higher performance track pads, Stoptech recommends you add 4 80-10mph decelerations to the end of each series. Full race pads should always be bed-in on the track.

Once you have completed the 2 series the rotor faces should have a faint blue appearance covered by a polished, light gray film. The blue tint indicates the proper brake in temperature has been reached and the pad material is evenly transferring onto the rotor face. Perform this procedure at your own risk, don’t necessarily be concerned that you are reaching the speeds exactly, but you want to make sure you are using consistent brake force throughout. Check out the Gallery Below to see before and after pictures of the rotors for comparison.

We are always looking for fun new ways to keep our customers,fans and friends up to date on what’s happening at Titan. I’ve been reading tons online about twitter and decided to give it a shot. Twitter is a free social networking tool that posts and tracks short one liners on what ur doing or thinking.

http://twitter.com/titanmotorsport

I should also note this is my first post using my phone. If all goes well both twitter and the blog will be up to date from anywhere we go, the beauty of technology.

While we were at PRI, our Stoptech Big Brake kit arrived for Project
996TT. The factory brakes on the car felt very tired and needed an overhaul
and some new pads, so we opted for an upgrade. We’ve used Stoptech kits on many
project cars in the past as well as other brake manufactures and they offer a great
overall product. The Kits include 2 piece floating rotors,ST-60 and ST-40 calipers,
stainless brake lines, mounting brackets, and street performance pads. The front rotors
are 380mm, the rears 332mm. They should look great behind the HRE monoblocks, and offer
great braking when we shake down the project soon at the road course.

We also will have the pleasure of testing Tiltons newly released brake fluid, TSR-1 Supreme. This race tested and proven fluid has an extremely high boiling point of 622 degrees Fahrenheit, meets all DOT4 specifications, and maintains very low compressibility at high temperatures. This fluid should be released to the public in February of 2009 at which point we will receive our first shipment as well. Tilton will also be Offering TBR-1 Brake fluid and an all new TCR-1 clutch specific fluid.

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.