[Chris@VargasTurboTech]

Nov 4:

I grabbed a flight from Phoenix to Oakland to spend a day at the VTT facility and then head down to NFZ. Tony picked me up a little before 9 am in the white VTT car. After getting some food we headed over to the shop and Tony showed me around.



After a quick tour, he demonstrated and explained some processes he uses for balance -it's very similar to turbine engine balance with a few key differences (which make sense). For fun and last minute tweaks we tossed the car he picked me up with on the dyno. 760 something whp. (That explains the "brisk" acceleration on the way to breakfast.)



Unfortunately while tweaking that tune the car threw a code for camshaft correlation -no good! We know the fix but it would have taken too long for us to run the car the next morning. At this point we decided that our best course was to change plans and bring the blue car with the automatic transmission and GC lites and just have some fun. This was the Texas car Tony bought used and had reported to have an engine issue but was running fine.

The GC lites aren't quite in the same punching class as the GC's but they can more than get the job done. The spool is ridiculous, they have very little lag, and they did 650 whp on a tired motor -more in them with a healthy engine. On this particular car we made 622 whp targeting 24 psi flat across the rev range.

Car Config:
-E90
-Stock motor
-VTT proprietary fuel system
-Doc Race intake manifold with PI
-Automatic transmission (this is the Nizpro transmission in it, but it has not been calibrated)
-GC lites
-VTT rear inlet
-Custom front inlet
-Turndowns (not a full exhaust)

Nov 5:



Saturday morning Tony picked me up at the hotel at 3:45 am and we were on our way by 4. The drive from the VTT headquarters to the NFZ track in Minter was about 4 hours -plenty of time to hash out new strategies and plans. We figured we'd do a couple shake down runs and then turn things up and have fun.



After warming things up, our first real run was at about 10 am on the 622 whp map -24 psi flat target. Ambient temps were a nice cool 64 F and we ran 164.47 mph.



The next few runs we fought some misfires and started to have trouble with the flash tune. When I say we started to have trouble, I mean we'd change load target and boost would be identical -like the ECU wasn't really listening to the retune. This eats up a lot of time; you wait in line to race, do your run, drive back, pop the hood, spray the intercooler and radiator with ice water, and start checking the logs, reflash and repeat.

By 2 o'clock we had sorted through a handful of misfires and various limp issues. We ran 166.17. Ambient was now up to 72F -still nice and cool compared to the near-100F temps we dealt with in Arizona. The 166.17 mph was done on 26 psi tapered to 24.5 up top.

The Good:
Finally on our 9th run of the day at nearly 4 o'clock we got the engine to listen to us. We ran 27 psi tapered to 26 psi up top with an ambient of 75 F. This was good for 167.5 mph but now we would be fighting the clock for runs -NFZ shuts the track down at 5 o'clock.



The Bad:
We then got a little aggressive with the boost and Tony desensitized the knock sensors. He went out to give 'er a go. I was talking with Steve from Fuel-it when a nice lady who works for NFZ walked over "Are any of you from VTT? There has been an oil spill at the end of the track and he needs you to come pick him up."

The Ugly:


So what happened? Tony told me it was making great power, felt like it was going to go sideways in third with drag radials and he thought this was going to be the magic run. Wellllll... that rod knock that we heard about from the original owner went from a "might have" to a "definitely did" partway through that run. We put a hole in the side of the block, but since Tony is a savage and stayed in it, we pressurized the block with 30 psi, blew off the oil cap, and he got oil sprayed all over the windshield at 160+ mph. The Fire Marshall said it looked like a giant fireball under the car when he went screaming by.

Funniest quote of the day: Tony holding some random chunks of engine, talking to himself after the motor blew up "I guess I'll have to void my own warranty for foreign object ingestion".

We trailered the car, boxed up our parts/tents and drove back to Haywood. Got back to the hotel about 10 pm and flew back home to PHX in the morning. Long but fun weekend!

All in All:
I had an absolute blast. Plus I got to do my favorite BS trick, which is torque the @#$( out of Tony's soda bottle cap rendering it unopenable without tools.



It was fun finally meeting and talking with both Ando and Payam of BMS, as well as Jesse at Pure, and of course seeing Steve from Fuel-it! again plus the multitude of guys that swung by to say hi and get to know us. By the way Steve was there helping Tony and I push the car back on the trailer -thanks again Steve!

All things in perspective we're happy with our performance, no one got hurt, the parts we blew up we were going to replace anyway, we met good people and we had fun. We're going to call that a good day. We're happy, tired, and looking forward to the next one!

Chris

P.S. Have some videos still processing... will update later.

[pits200]

Glad to hear everyone was ok after a failure at those speeds. Is this the car with the tranny upgrade?

[RCOLEMAN545]

Looks like a fun trip! Built motor for the blue car?

[lightmanek]

This is how you test the limits of your car! Knock it out at 160MPH (pun intended)

[Chris@VargasTurboTech]

Originally Posted by pits200

Glad to hear everyone was ok after a failure at those speeds. Is this the car with the tranny upgrade?

Yes -although it's not done being calibrated.

Originally Posted by RCOLEMAN545

Looks like a fun trip! Built motor for the blue car?

Yes sir! It was planned and already in the works... so it's not so much of a loss, more of a delay for further testing.

Originally Posted by lightmanek

This is how you test the limits of your car! Knock it out at 160MPH (pun intended)

Haha! Yes, we test hardware hard. Tony is a competitor to the core and takes a sick delight in pushing hardware to the limit. If it dies, it dies. All good in the pursuit of more power/speed/special of the day.

Here is the vid of the run that blew up:

Chris