It’s been a while since we had an update on this car and a lot of people were starting to wonder what happened to it. Between the many obstacles to overcome, developing some custom parts, going back and forth on decisions, the owner of the car (and myself) having two having kids, this became a sideline project in the shop. Our usual chats shifted from the K20 swap to sharing our experiences raising two young children. Although progress was made slowly throughout, I wanted Part 3 to be the final part of the blog.
The team arrived back in Colorado Springs on Saturday, June 15th and we were greeted at COS airport by some really cool window artwork promoting this year’s race. After leaving the airport, we immediately headed over to our home-away-from-home: Winslow BMW of Colorado Springs and we were met with another fun surprise; this year’s “Signature” car, a BMW Z3M coupe and “Parade of Champions” car, a new BMW i5 M60 electric performance sedan. The liveries for both cars were unique for the 102nd Running of the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb. Legendary PPIHC Hall Of Fame Inductee, Clint Vahsholtz, was this year’s driver of the “Parade of Champions” car; which meant that after the race on Sunday he would lead all of the competitors down from the summit of the mountain back to the start-line. It’s an incredible honor, and I can think of no one better for the job considering Clint has raced Pikes Peak 30 times. And out of those 30 times, he’s won his class 24 times and he was King of the Mountain in 2020. Wow!
Following several successful planned test days at our home track of Sonoma Raceway in April and May, we finally arrived at the first Official Test Weekend ahead of the 102nd Running of the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb (PPIHC). This weekend took place on Saturday and Sunday June 1st-2nd, and as a rookie I was informed by the event-organizers that my performance across both days would be evaluated in order to make a final determination of my eligibility to race on June 23rd. No pressure or anything, but game on.
Over the 2023 winter holiday break is when things got really serious for our Pikes Peak car. We used the downtime to get a lot done, including a full rebuild of our Drexler rear diff.
It’s been over 3 years since I put the Honda K24 into our Lotus Exige and it was the first car that I made an engine harness for. Although the harness was reliable and never gave me any issues, I felt that my harness building skills have improved much since then. What I really wanted to do was get rid of all of the unused wiring and the mess under the dash.
This event marked our second attempt at the Sonoma 4-hour enduro, part of the NASA Western Endurance Racing Championship series (also known as WERC). Last year, we attempted to run this race with 2 cars (my ST4 Honda S2000 and Liam’s ST4 Honda Civic). Unfortunately, both cars had to retire early because of parts failures. I broke two differentials (my main and my spare) and Liam lost a gearbox.
July was a nice break month for us. With no racing on the calendar, we used that time to do a few things: Sourced (thanks, Graham) and began building another duplicate J32A2 engine with Supertech valve train (thanks, Martin), P2R fuel rails, and other performance goodies; Rebuilt a spare AP2 transmission with fresh OEM gears that we sent out for WPC coating treatment…
We left off in March after having just picked up our new (to us) J32A2 engine, and as promised we've been busy getting it ready for the demanding rigors of race conditions. We were thrilled to receive high-performance valves, springs, and retainers from my partners at Supertech Performance in order to do just that. These awesome parts allow us to rev the J32A2 engine well beyond it's OEM redline limitations, but safely.
One of our really good customers invited us to participate in a car show he helped created years ago. From a shop called Weksos Industries, no longer running but which primarily focused on the sale of aftermarket car accessories, evolved one of the biggest and most well-known car shows in the nation: Wekfest, which is now hosted all over the map, including Hawaii, Long Beach, Japan, Chicago, Seattle, New York, and of course, San Jose....
Barely 3 weeks have passed since our last race, but it was once again time to pack our bags and head up to sunny Sonoma, CA for Round 4 of the 2017 NASA Super Touring Series (June 17-18). This weekend was special for a variety of reasons. First, it's rare for NASA to repeat racetracks back to back during the season. Second, it was Father's Day weekend. And third, it was the first time my good friends, Graham Downey and Liam Downey were returning to NASA Pro Racing after a 6 year hiatus...
Hey guys, Tom Tang here. I’m excited to write the first of many blog posts here on the Trackspec Autosports website. As you may have seen or heard, I’ve teamed up with Trackspec for the 2017 season and together we are campaigning my Honda S2000, “Irene,” in the NASA Super Touring series (in ST4 class).
The team hasn't been to Buttonwillow Raceway in a really long time, since March 2016 to be specific. We also rarely do trackdays on a Sunday, but yesterday, May 14, 2017, was a great day with OnGrid. This event was special because it was the first time that our Trackspec Autosports Honda S2000 “Irene” was debuting after a complete refresh during the off-season.
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