Our race weekend started Friday morning at 4am.  We had the trailer loaded and ready to go Thursday night with help from all of our crew members.  We were fortunate enough to have a friend let us borrow a 16 passenger Ford Van to transport all of us on our trip down to Fontana.  By 6:30am we were on the road with 3 vehicles, 2 trailers, and 17 people.  After passing through Oregon we were met by the Siskiyou Mountain Pass with a peak elevation of 4300ft.  I was very impressed by how the truck and trailer did through the mountains as we are roughly 23,000lbs total weight.

Once entering California we were met with the first Exit Sign…..#897.  As we were making our way down through the exits Chad Barber from CTR Dynosports called and we decided to make a stop by his shop in Modesto, CA.  As expected Chad and company were working on projects getting ready for the race on Sunday with a car on the dyno and others being prepped.  After stretching our legs we headed back out on the road, next stop Autoclub Dragway.

Approximately 24hrs later (8am Saturday) we finally arrived in Fontana and pulled into the Autoclub Raceway complex to start our race weekend.  Spent the day making some test passes and adapting the tune to the atmospheric conditions down there, as well as rounding up a much needed electric water pump for the Sipes car.  ‘Bisi of Bisimoto Engineering was kind enough to open his facility to us, show us around, and provide the needed water pump to get the Sipes car running.  We finally got it back in the car and made a test run – and stripped the teeth off of 4th gear!

Somehow we had failed to bring any backup parts for their tranny, and now we were desperate.  A few phone calls later and we hooked up with the Jerry of JerryBuilt – he welcomed us down to his place in L.A. to get it fixed.  So we all packed it in for the night and split up.  A few of us went out to Jerry’s to fix the tranny, a few went out for food/drinks, and a few went over to ‘Bisi’s facility where he offered to safely store JFK’s car for the night, then went out to eat as well.

We were having tranny issues with JFK’s car as well, as stayed up to 3:30am doing what we could with the tranny in the hotel room, but lacked the parts needed to correctly fix the issue.

5:30am Sunday rolled around and we were up & at ‘em. Ran over to ‘Bisi’s to get the car, then headed to the track.  The day went well overall, we worked through some more teething issues with the Sipes experimental airbox and JFK’s D16 tranny.  We just kept going despite the issues we were having and did what we could with what we had.

Kevin qualified #1 in Outlaw Comp with a new personal best of 9.36 @ 166mph, and ran the event taking the win.  The car ran flawlessly all day taking #1 qualifier, top speed, and the win in the final round. We made some good progress with the setup this weekend - look for faster times soon!

The Sipes qualified #4 in Street Performance while working through the airbox issues and having to adapt the tune to the air down there, and ended up taking the win in their class as well making passes in the 10.8 range at 125-126mph!  Fortunately the transmission fix from the night before held up, thanks Jerry (and congrats on the 10.55 @ 129mph run)!

JFK made one qualifying pass, the tranny wouldn’t go into 2nd still, and then the rotor in the distributor exploded at the top of 3rd gear. He hit the brakes and moved to the shoulder, coasting through the beams with an 11.7 @ 87mph, which was good enough to qualify for Quick 16.  We fixed the rotor, and he then limped his way through the rounds launching the car in 2nd gear, and somehow managed to pull off the longshot with a hurt car, taking the win in Quick 16 as well!

After the event, we all went out to celebrate at the Outback with ’Bisi & Hedi, Lisa & Gary Kubo, Hideki from Toyo, and few other friends and had a great time, then hit the road for another 24hrs on the road back home.

It was a nice dry drive all the way until we hit the Washington border, then it immediately started pouring rain -  WELCOME HOME!!!

Overall, it was an amazing weekend for us, and bringing down 3 cars to take 1st place with each car was just awesome!

-SpeedFactory

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We are proud to have had the opportunity to work with Chad Barber of CTR Dynosports and Lisa Kubo on her new Outlaw S/C Integra for 2009/2010!

Ricky went down and fabricated the turbo manifold, downpipe, dumptubes, charge piping,  and traction bar on the car.

Check out the pics, the car is gorgeous! Good Luck Chad and Lisa!

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New T Shirts Available Now!!!!

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