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I have to start this thread by thanking my team from the bottom of my heart for all of their hard work and dedication. My company would be absolutely nothing without this group of amazing guys that call TSM their home. The unity of my guys is what makes things like this past weekend at TX2K possible for our customers and myself. So THANK YOU to my guys... Rob, Justin, Billings, Brandon, Chris, Ryan, Mike, and Miller:my staff… the TSM team… without them I would not be anything.
While I am in the process of thanking people, I just want to recognize how amazing our industry is. I think that too often in this market we as shops/vendors, and you all as customers, get too consumed in the fluff. In my opinion, vendors trying to push their products by using forceful marketing tactics is becoming too prevalent in our industry. Politics have somehow become a major part of high performance cars and I, for one, really don't like it. This past weekend at TX2K I experienced my favorite part of our community and I am compelled to point that out. Shops coming together to provide support to one another as well as each other's customers in order to give everyone the chance to enjoy their cars to the fullestis what happened this past weekend and THAT is what I love about our community. I will explain later in detail what I am talking about.
TX2K, as always, did not disappoint this year. There were some scares of rain in the schedule, but in my opinion, the event turned out to be a perfect mix. I feel bad for the vendors that made the excuse not to come based on weather because this was one of the best TX2Ks yet. However, you know the Texas rush....some of them were just using a little rain scare to justify the fact that they didn't have cars ready
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The weather for both days of the roll race was amazing. I think everyone would agree that the event at the Royal Purple Drag Strip was done very well for its first year. Peter always does a great job accommodating anyone and anything within reason while still sternly sticking to the rules laid out for the competitors. He is like the giant boulder of TX2K that also happens to be flexible when it needs to be! Like a bendy rock! I'm going to have to get him to teach me that trick.
We had three main cars competing this year. Quite a few more were scheduled to be there, but some customers had other things come up and others decided to play it safe due to the rain scare. We brought the TSM 4.4 Alpha16 Shop car, as well as Unabomber's 4.4 Alpha12, and Achenator's 4.1 Alpha12. Both customer cars ran the roll race Thursday and Friday, but couldn't stay late enough to complete the drag race eliminations Sunday, leaving only the shop car to run on the final day. We also had a GT800 car that we built quite some time ago competing in the Sport class.
On Thursday, all three cars qualified for the roll race. Unabomber was working throughout the day to get his start speed nailed down and was able to qualify P1 @ 174mph in the Super Sport Class. Achenator was coming off of the line very well, so he was able to maximize his speed and qualified at 177mph which put him toward the bottom of the ladder in the Unlimited Class. The TSM shop car was able to qualify 6th in the Unlimited Class which I was very happy with, given the fact that I certainly wasn't putting the car on kill mode to do so.
Roll Race eliminations were Friday and yet again we had a beautiful day for racing. Unfortunately, Achenator had to race a 190+mph car in the first round and lost by a little over a car length. That is the problem with having a REALLY fast little turbo car in the roll race, you will most likely qualify for the big boy class and then get your ass handed to you buy a forward facing turbo car with no AC and a full cage or something LOL. Meanwhile, in the Super Sport Class, Unabomber simply went round after round after round, taking a beating and smoking the competition. He even was able to hold of Mullet in his 2000+HP Ford GT just cause his car lays the power to the ground so, so well! He qualified P1 at 174 and went pass after pass in the 176-178mph range all afternoon! I'm pretty sure he ran over 25 passes Friday between elimination and re-runs due to false starts. Needless to say, he had a blast! At the end of the day he took down his last competitor to take P1!!!!!! Super Sport Class victory was TSM's and we were all crazy happy for Brian! His TSM 4.4 A12 has just been racking up the accomplishments this year with a 206.99 in the half and now a P1 in Texas... lots more events to come this year for Brian and his car! Don't forget about the GT800 car of Nico's that qualified last ... He fought his way up through the class and found his way to the finals against a GTX35R car!!! We were all super proud of him and Rob was track tuning the car through each elimination. He ended up taking P2 but only because he fouled on the third run due to not being able to pace his opponent. Very very impressive to come within 2mph and take P2 to a GTX35 car in the Sport class... Awesome Job Nico!
As for the shop car unfortunately during the first round of eliminations the TSM car encountered an issue. Even though it ran flawlessly the day before, for some reason we were faced with something of a breaking up issue in the higher RPM ranges. Unfortunately, this happened in the first round of competition, so I was forced to pull my foot out of it not knowing what was going on. The gentleman I was racing was absolutely awesome and even came to me asking if I felt it was unfair or if I just had an issue with my car. By that point my team was already elbow deep in figuring out the issue.
I didn't feel like it was a spark or fuel related issue because that wasn't the way the car laid over... it was literally like it hit a brick wall. We decided that the smart thing to do would be to change injectors and coil packs for the purpose of narrowing down possibilities and just make 100% we were going in the right direction. Well the only problem i was I didn't have coil packs or extra injectors with me in the trailer. Not to fret, because my COMPETITOR AMS, who we were parked next to, offered up anything they had in their trailer to help. WOW! My car and Gidi's car were in the same class the following days for the drag race, yet they were still more than willing to give up any spare parts they had to get me back in the game. Eric, Martin, and Ivan were so awesome all weekend,giving advice, parts, and spares in any way they could. I'm pretty hard headed so I didn't take some of the advice, but that doesn't mean they didn't offer
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With all new coil packs, plugs, and injectors, we drove out to Mexico to do a couple pulls and see how she felt. Rob, my tuner, came back shaking his head.....same issue. So we went back to work...digging through log after log comparing runs from good runs to the runs where the issue occurred. My team put their heads together and between my technicians and Rob my tuner they decided there had to be an issue with crank/cam timing losing sync under high load situations. This made sense, I knew it wasn't a typical spark or fuel breakup, certainly was something more violent than that. So we went to work checking cam position sensors, cam gears, oil control valves and all the other things that were "easy" to get to trackside. All looked in order!
It was getting late Friday night but with 100% chance of rain Saturday morning I wasn't too worried about fixing the issue that night. The next step was to pull the bell housing to see if there was something causing the crank position sensor to lose pickup. I wasn't about to do that track side in the dark on jack stands, so we called it a night and went to dinner. Saturday morning we got up and went to work, after Cracker Barrel of course
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I rented a bay at a local shop and my techs dove into pulling the bell housing to check the pickup and flywheel. Just to give you all an idea of how great my team is: every single member came to the shop where the three technicians were working to support them all day long. Sales, media, shop hands, all of them were there asking if there was anything they could do the whole time. I keep mentioning how awesome my guys are, but seriously, I am blessed.
Low and behold, about an hour into looking the guys found a major crack in the factory flywheel due to the extreme torque of the 4.4 Alpha16. Crap! We didn't have an extra flywheel and the crack was causing the crank position sensor to lose pickup on the trigger wheel. So I got on the horn. I called Zohair from BL, Eric from AMS, and several other friends I knew there... all of them were very willing to help, but none of them had spares either. Do you know how cool it is to be able to call all of your biggest competitors and ask them to bail you out of a jam and every single one of them is willing to bend over backward if they could? Awesome!! Well during the mix I called Lucas from English Racing / ETS to ask if he had one. He replied,
"Yep, I have an upgraded Tilton one in the trailer and it is yours if you want it." He called over to [email protected] to make sure it was ok and immediately I had a text from Michael asking how they could help. Talk about being humbled… I have ETS and AMS, the two biggest names in the industry, offering to help get my car back up and running without one hesitation... amazing!
As you can see the pictures of the flywheel below, the thing was screwed. Upgraded flywheels needed for the high HP builds from now on, for sure. We ran to the track to meet the guys from ER/ETS and pick up the Tilton flywheel,made quick work of the installation, and loaded her back in the trailer, ready to rock!!!
Sunday morning the car rolled off the trailer ready to rumble with the fastest cars in the country. I took the first hit feeling confident she was good to go and boom (not that kind of boom) - 8.17 off the trailer first pass! It's ON! We followed it up with two more 8.1x passes and qualified P1 for the highest competitive class in the event. We were up against all of the fastest 15" tire cars that were there, but I was confident we could hold our own. Round #1 ended up being a solo run as the other competitor had car issues. My tuner Rob came to me and said, "If we are gonna run a 7 at TX2K this is the time." So I gave him the go ahead to throw a couple pinches at the car to see what she could really do.
As far as competition goes, turning the car up in the first round when you have a bye run is usually not the correct strategy, however, we all know that in the GT-R world sometimes a fast time means as much or more than winning. So screw it .... let it eat! Now as for power we weren't swinging for the fences, but we were definitely looking for a solid bounce off the wall triple
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The car tore off the line and felt really good...1.32 to the 60ft mark, which was our second fastest of the day, and on the two three shift I thought to myself,
"Holy crap this thing feels like it is trying to tear the track apart!!!" Of course, knowing we were going for a low 8 second pass, the whole staff was in the lanes watching the car run. The entire pass felt amazing, but when the car shifted 4-5 I could feel it fall over a little... oil pressure and temps still looked perfect so I kept my foot in it, but I could tell 5th gear wasn't full power. Honestly, I pulled back around thinking I just got robbed of a really good pass because my butt dyno told me the car wasn't working 100% in 5th. I pulled off my helmet and turned on the AC in the return lane, not thinking there was anything to hurry back around for. I proceeded to the time shack. When I pulled up the guy looks at me and says,
'Holy hell this thing is fast!!!" I looked down at the slip and read.... [email protected] .... I about jumped out of the car!!!!
Pulling back into the trailer was seriously a high moment in my life. The whole team cheering, AMS guys with HUGE smiles on their faces, all of the the GT-R Heritage guys there congratulating, John Shephard from Shep Trans giving me high fives... it was an absolutely amazing feeling! The first Alpha16 in the 7s and Quickest Motec car in the world. I can't thank all of those guys enough and I am still at a loss for words. (I know you can't tell but it has taken me a whole day just to write this thing)
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I will say, though, that it turns out my butt dyno is pretty spot on. When we pulled the logswe realized that because of the engine torquing over, it pulled the fitting lose a little bit to the top of the wastegate... on the 4-5 shift the car lost boost pressure from 41ish PSI down to 33psi for the entire gear. I posted a picture of the log below just so you guys can see what I am talking about. Not a big deal mechanically, certainly an easy 3 minute fix but that just means there is lots more MPH and a little more ET in the TSM A16 Shop car for sure
![]()
So until next time I guess ....
Gidi and I both hit our extravagant goals for the weekend by running 7s,English Racing/ ETS ran a 7.49, and countless customers recorded personal bests! What an awesome time and a great event!
Speaking of Gidi, it was time to go back to work! The little Alpha16 that could wasn't done working yet
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I told him at the beginning of the day that it was going to be him and I in the finals, and there was work to do to get there. We both progressed through eliminations .... low and behold it was him and I... Alpha20 vs Alpha16... Shop owner vs. AMS self driven customer car... friend vs. friend in the TX2K final race! We lined up like gentlemen. There was no light trickery, no jump starts, just two friends racing each other is how I felt. We took the hit at almost the exact same time and each of us had a clean run. At the end of the track, Gidi had wheeled through some pretty good wiggles for the last couple hundred feet but his Alpha20 was just too much for me to pull back down. We crossed the line about a car length from one another... Gidi P1 @ TX2K15 ....TSM P2 in the highest competitive class of the event!!!!
All in all I could not be happier. Of course I wanted to win... I'm a competitive guy and a shop owner, however, I could not have lost in a better way and could not be happier for my friend Gidi after all he has put into our sport/community over the years. We ran our first 7 second pass,he ran his first 7 second pass, we finished 1-2, and both of us left the event on cloud 9!!! In fact, I drove my car back to the hotel giving rides to people who had never been in a high HP GT-R before LOL! Gotta love that!
I wanna wrap this up by saying thank you to the following people for their help and support during this event / build:
AMS Performance
Shep Trans
PPG Gears
English Racing
Extreme Turbo Systems
Mickey Thompson Tires
Injector Dynamics
Motec
Here is a video we did for Brian's P1 placement as well as the 7 second video and some pictures from the event... enjoy
![]()
[media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmNqQ_2MOLY
While I am in the process of thanking people, I just want to recognize how amazing our industry is. I think that too often in this market we as shops/vendors, and you all as customers, get too consumed in the fluff. In my opinion, vendors trying to push their products by using forceful marketing tactics is becoming too prevalent in our industry. Politics have somehow become a major part of high performance cars and I, for one, really don't like it. This past weekend at TX2K I experienced my favorite part of our community and I am compelled to point that out. Shops coming together to provide support to one another as well as each other's customers in order to give everyone the chance to enjoy their cars to the fullestis what happened this past weekend and THAT is what I love about our community. I will explain later in detail what I am talking about.
TX2K, as always, did not disappoint this year. There were some scares of rain in the schedule, but in my opinion, the event turned out to be a perfect mix. I feel bad for the vendors that made the excuse not to come based on weather because this was one of the best TX2Ks yet. However, you know the Texas rush....some of them were just using a little rain scare to justify the fact that they didn't have cars ready
The weather for both days of the roll race was amazing. I think everyone would agree that the event at the Royal Purple Drag Strip was done very well for its first year. Peter always does a great job accommodating anyone and anything within reason while still sternly sticking to the rules laid out for the competitors. He is like the giant boulder of TX2K that also happens to be flexible when it needs to be! Like a bendy rock! I'm going to have to get him to teach me that trick.
We had three main cars competing this year. Quite a few more were scheduled to be there, but some customers had other things come up and others decided to play it safe due to the rain scare. We brought the TSM 4.4 Alpha16 Shop car, as well as Unabomber's 4.4 Alpha12, and Achenator's 4.1 Alpha12. Both customer cars ran the roll race Thursday and Friday, but couldn't stay late enough to complete the drag race eliminations Sunday, leaving only the shop car to run on the final day. We also had a GT800 car that we built quite some time ago competing in the Sport class.
On Thursday, all three cars qualified for the roll race. Unabomber was working throughout the day to get his start speed nailed down and was able to qualify P1 @ 174mph in the Super Sport Class. Achenator was coming off of the line very well, so he was able to maximize his speed and qualified at 177mph which put him toward the bottom of the ladder in the Unlimited Class. The TSM shop car was able to qualify 6th in the Unlimited Class which I was very happy with, given the fact that I certainly wasn't putting the car on kill mode to do so.
Roll Race eliminations were Friday and yet again we had a beautiful day for racing. Unfortunately, Achenator had to race a 190+mph car in the first round and lost by a little over a car length. That is the problem with having a REALLY fast little turbo car in the roll race, you will most likely qualify for the big boy class and then get your ass handed to you buy a forward facing turbo car with no AC and a full cage or something LOL. Meanwhile, in the Super Sport Class, Unabomber simply went round after round after round, taking a beating and smoking the competition. He even was able to hold of Mullet in his 2000+HP Ford GT just cause his car lays the power to the ground so, so well! He qualified P1 at 174 and went pass after pass in the 176-178mph range all afternoon! I'm pretty sure he ran over 25 passes Friday between elimination and re-runs due to false starts. Needless to say, he had a blast! At the end of the day he took down his last competitor to take P1!!!!!! Super Sport Class victory was TSM's and we were all crazy happy for Brian! His TSM 4.4 A12 has just been racking up the accomplishments this year with a 206.99 in the half and now a P1 in Texas... lots more events to come this year for Brian and his car! Don't forget about the GT800 car of Nico's that qualified last ... He fought his way up through the class and found his way to the finals against a GTX35R car!!! We were all super proud of him and Rob was track tuning the car through each elimination. He ended up taking P2 but only because he fouled on the third run due to not being able to pace his opponent. Very very impressive to come within 2mph and take P2 to a GTX35 car in the Sport class... Awesome Job Nico!
As for the shop car unfortunately during the first round of eliminations the TSM car encountered an issue. Even though it ran flawlessly the day before, for some reason we were faced with something of a breaking up issue in the higher RPM ranges. Unfortunately, this happened in the first round of competition, so I was forced to pull my foot out of it not knowing what was going on. The gentleman I was racing was absolutely awesome and even came to me asking if I felt it was unfair or if I just had an issue with my car. By that point my team was already elbow deep in figuring out the issue.
I didn't feel like it was a spark or fuel related issue because that wasn't the way the car laid over... it was literally like it hit a brick wall. We decided that the smart thing to do would be to change injectors and coil packs for the purpose of narrowing down possibilities and just make 100% we were going in the right direction. Well the only problem i was I didn't have coil packs or extra injectors with me in the trailer. Not to fret, because my COMPETITOR AMS, who we were parked next to, offered up anything they had in their trailer to help. WOW! My car and Gidi's car were in the same class the following days for the drag race, yet they were still more than willing to give up any spare parts they had to get me back in the game. Eric, Martin, and Ivan were so awesome all weekend,giving advice, parts, and spares in any way they could. I'm pretty hard headed so I didn't take some of the advice, but that doesn't mean they didn't offer
With all new coil packs, plugs, and injectors, we drove out to Mexico to do a couple pulls and see how she felt. Rob, my tuner, came back shaking his head.....same issue. So we went back to work...digging through log after log comparing runs from good runs to the runs where the issue occurred. My team put their heads together and between my technicians and Rob my tuner they decided there had to be an issue with crank/cam timing losing sync under high load situations. This made sense, I knew it wasn't a typical spark or fuel breakup, certainly was something more violent than that. So we went to work checking cam position sensors, cam gears, oil control valves and all the other things that were "easy" to get to trackside. All looked in order!
It was getting late Friday night but with 100% chance of rain Saturday morning I wasn't too worried about fixing the issue that night. The next step was to pull the bell housing to see if there was something causing the crank position sensor to lose pickup. I wasn't about to do that track side in the dark on jack stands, so we called it a night and went to dinner. Saturday morning we got up and went to work, after Cracker Barrel of course
Low and behold, about an hour into looking the guys found a major crack in the factory flywheel due to the extreme torque of the 4.4 Alpha16. Crap! We didn't have an extra flywheel and the crack was causing the crank position sensor to lose pickup on the trigger wheel. So I got on the horn. I called Zohair from BL, Eric from AMS, and several other friends I knew there... all of them were very willing to help, but none of them had spares either. Do you know how cool it is to be able to call all of your biggest competitors and ask them to bail you out of a jam and every single one of them is willing to bend over backward if they could? Awesome!! Well during the mix I called Lucas from English Racing / ETS to ask if he had one. He replied,
"Yep, I have an upgraded Tilton one in the trailer and it is yours if you want it." He called over to [email protected] to make sure it was ok and immediately I had a text from Michael asking how they could help. Talk about being humbled… I have ETS and AMS, the two biggest names in the industry, offering to help get my car back up and running without one hesitation... amazing!
As you can see the pictures of the flywheel below, the thing was screwed. Upgraded flywheels needed for the high HP builds from now on, for sure. We ran to the track to meet the guys from ER/ETS and pick up the Tilton flywheel,made quick work of the installation, and loaded her back in the trailer, ready to rock!!!
Sunday morning the car rolled off the trailer ready to rumble with the fastest cars in the country. I took the first hit feeling confident she was good to go and boom (not that kind of boom) - 8.17 off the trailer first pass! It's ON! We followed it up with two more 8.1x passes and qualified P1 for the highest competitive class in the event. We were up against all of the fastest 15" tire cars that were there, but I was confident we could hold our own. Round #1 ended up being a solo run as the other competitor had car issues. My tuner Rob came to me and said, "If we are gonna run a 7 at TX2K this is the time." So I gave him the go ahead to throw a couple pinches at the car to see what she could really do.
As far as competition goes, turning the car up in the first round when you have a bye run is usually not the correct strategy, however, we all know that in the GT-R world sometimes a fast time means as much or more than winning. So screw it .... let it eat! Now as for power we weren't swinging for the fences, but we were definitely looking for a solid bounce off the wall triple
"Holy crap this thing feels like it is trying to tear the track apart!!!" Of course, knowing we were going for a low 8 second pass, the whole staff was in the lanes watching the car run. The entire pass felt amazing, but when the car shifted 4-5 I could feel it fall over a little... oil pressure and temps still looked perfect so I kept my foot in it, but I could tell 5th gear wasn't full power. Honestly, I pulled back around thinking I just got robbed of a really good pass because my butt dyno told me the car wasn't working 100% in 5th. I pulled off my helmet and turned on the AC in the return lane, not thinking there was anything to hurry back around for. I proceeded to the time shack. When I pulled up the guy looks at me and says,
'Holy hell this thing is fast!!!" I looked down at the slip and read.... [email protected] .... I about jumped out of the car!!!!
Pulling back into the trailer was seriously a high moment in my life. The whole team cheering, AMS guys with HUGE smiles on their faces, all of the the GT-R Heritage guys there congratulating, John Shephard from Shep Trans giving me high fives... it was an absolutely amazing feeling! The first Alpha16 in the 7s and Quickest Motec car in the world. I can't thank all of those guys enough and I am still at a loss for words. (I know you can't tell but it has taken me a whole day just to write this thing)
I will say, though, that it turns out my butt dyno is pretty spot on. When we pulled the logswe realized that because of the engine torquing over, it pulled the fitting lose a little bit to the top of the wastegate... on the 4-5 shift the car lost boost pressure from 41ish PSI down to 33psi for the entire gear. I posted a picture of the log below just so you guys can see what I am talking about. Not a big deal mechanically, certainly an easy 3 minute fix but that just means there is lots more MPH and a little more ET in the TSM A16 Shop car for sure
Gidi and I both hit our extravagant goals for the weekend by running 7s,English Racing/ ETS ran a 7.49, and countless customers recorded personal bests! What an awesome time and a great event!
Speaking of Gidi, it was time to go back to work! The little Alpha16 that could wasn't done working yet
All in all I could not be happier. Of course I wanted to win... I'm a competitive guy and a shop owner, however, I could not have lost in a better way and could not be happier for my friend Gidi after all he has put into our sport/community over the years. We ran our first 7 second pass,he ran his first 7 second pass, we finished 1-2, and both of us left the event on cloud 9!!! In fact, I drove my car back to the hotel giving rides to people who had never been in a high HP GT-R before LOL! Gotta love that!
I wanna wrap this up by saying thank you to the following people for their help and support during this event / build:
AMS Performance
Shep Trans
PPG Gears
English Racing
Extreme Turbo Systems
Mickey Thompson Tires
Injector Dynamics
Motec
Here is a video we did for Brian's P1 placement as well as the 7 second video and some pictures from the event... enjoy
[media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmNqQ_2MOLY
