TiC repeats RTA East Coast Championship

For the second year in a row Turn In Concepts is the Redline Time Attack East Coast champions. This year was more difficult than 2009 as TiC stepped up to Modified class where the competition is more fierce and the cars are a whole lot faster.

Sebring International Raceway was the location of the East Coast finals, and the victory was hard fought for the team, but the payoff was worth it. Let me walk you through the events of the day.

Saturday morning was nice and sunny. And hot. Ben from Wales Garage was there to say hi and lend a hand should we need it. I believe he said something along the lines of "Yep, and it's just gonna get hotter."

First lap of practice Tony W. heard a pop and fearing the worst brought the car in. A quick look under the hood revealed that the powersteering/alternator belt had snapped. At this point we weren't quite sure what caused it to happen, and we didn't have a spare. We thought perhaps it was just due to age and stress. Sadly, as you'll see, that would not be the case.

So, off we ran to the local Autozone to pick up a belt. In fact, we grabbed two just in case.

We got back to the track and installed the new belt in time for the next practice session.

Tony W took her out on the track, did one lap, and pulled in. Tony B stuck his head in the window.

"It won't rev past seven, and when it does it just shuts down."

That was a bit odd so we pulled her in to take a look.

A quick pop of the hood, and at first glance nothing looked odd except for the new belt slipping off the crank pulley. That was weird so we had him crank the motor.

That was the first sign of bigger problem. The pulley was wobbling, and not just a little. It was enough to start to run the belt off. Perhaps the pulley was dead. That would explain the belt slipping off.

Ben popped his phone out of his pocket. "Hey, see if you can find a crank pulley. This one is dead."

At the time we didn't know who he was talking to, but the person on the other end would prove to be our guardian angel for the day as the events unfolded.

We pulled the pulley off to inspect, and it looked mostly ok. So, for fun we had Tony W crank over the motor. THAT was where we realized that we had big problems. The snout was dancing and jiggling like a belly dancer on meth.

Crud. That's all we could say. Well, there were other choice words, but this is a PG-rated show.

We had a quick conference. Ben, standing in the huddle said something along the lines of if we could find a new crank we could just rebuild the motor.

Well, we figured the day might be over anyway so why not give it a shot. It wouldn't make any difference at this point if the heart went home in under the hood or in a box so why not.

It turns out a Subaru motor comes out really quick with a floor jack, someone bench pressing the motor up, and three guys to lift it out. Once we got it out we set it on one of the spare wheels and went to town tearing it down. We've done it enough that about half an hour later we had the block split. Ok, maybe a little longer since we had to borrow a thin wall socket for the block bolts from Sharif at Forged Performance.

That led to more discoveries. The crank had snapped between number 1 rod bearing, and the front main bearing. It wasn't a bend, it wasn't a crack. It was broken. Instead of one crank we had two pieces; one big and one little. Not good. Not good at all.

On top of that it also took out the rod bearing, the front main bearing, and chewed up the block a little bit.

So, Ben whips out his phone again. "Hey, on top of the crank pulley, find me a snout sprocket, the crank, a set of rod bearings, and a set of main bearings."

It was getting to be quite a shopping list, and we asked him who he was talking to. Turns out it was a good friend and customer of ours, Drew. You guys may know him as T3h_Clap. He's the guy that runs a pretty sweet blog talking about all sorts of good Subaru stuff. If you don't know it hit up [url]http://www.t3hclap.com[/url].

While we waited for his call on parts status we started to gather some things we needed. Off to the car parts stores. We picked up scotchbrite to clean the block, two cases of brake cleaner, a whole mess of paper towels, and some quick setting RTV. Oh! And we picked up an engine stand. We figured that would come in really handy.

Ben went to town with some lube and the scotchbrite cleaning up the marks on the block. The rest of us killed a good number of brain cells cleaning all the parts with brake cleaner.

A little while later Drew called back. The awesome owner of Real Street Performance (Jay) actually answered the phone on a Saturday, and actually had most of the stuff we needed. He was able to hook us up with the crank, the sprocket, and the bearings. Chi, the dude who owns Dynasty Auto, and also very awesome for answering the phone on a Saturday was able to hook us up with the crank pulley that we needed (we no longer trusted the one that was on the car).

So Drew was on his way down to the track, and was about two hours away. We begged him to hurry. In the mean time we sat back in the heat and waited.

Late afternoon Drew rolled in with his lovely fiancé Abby. We took the parts and started building the motor from the bearings up. Oh, did I mention we were in the pits doing this? Not exactly what we had in mind when we drove all the way to Florida for some fun.

We slapped a set of rod bearings on, and tightened them down, and found another problem. They were too tight. So we pulled out the scotchbrite, and some WD-40, and we all sat around in a circle thinking of happier things while we scrubbed the bearings to open them up a bit. Not exactly the most precise work we've done, but it needed to be done. We kept test fitting the bearings until they felt right.

Then we ran into yet another problem. No ring compressor. We asked around to see if anybody had one we could borrow for a few minutes, but that didn't work. Off to town we went, and the nice manager over at Carquest was able to help us out.

Once we had that done we started to put the rest of the motor together. While we had it apart we took to opportunity to show off our nice new Kelford cams that they were nice enough to make for us. Lots of lift, and appropriate duration and centerline for the WRX heads we're still running. They really were nice folks to work with on that, and I strongly encourage people to look into them if you're looking to do cams on your own car.

Once we had the motor back together it was time to drop it back into the car. We were without a hoist, so we went looking. Turns out Chris Rado's team had one. We borrowed it quick hoping nobody was looking, and returned it in about half an hour. Thanks World Racing!

We hooked up all the odds and ends and hoses here and hoses there, and cranked the motor. It fired. To say she was a bit pissed at us is an understatement, but she ran. We took her for some laps around the paddock to make sure everything was ok, and called it a night at about 10:30 or 11:00.

Sunday morning started bright and early. We had no idea how long the motor would last, so we opted to go nice and easy on her during practice, and then give her all nine yards in the first lap of the first session.

Tony W pulled out for practice, and after a couple of laps pulled back in.

"'Something is wrong. The backend is all over the place and its acting weird. Oh, and she's running way too hot."

Now what? We pulled into the pit again, and started inspecting all the bits and pieces. Turns out we had snapped a front axle. Not at the CV, but a clean break through the shaft. Fortunately, we've done that before so we carry a spare. We popped it in, and since we were trying out a new radiator that wasn't working we dropped in the other one we usually use hoping to cool things down a bit.

So much for practice time.

The odds were really against us, and we didn't know what else this day held so we really wanted to get the first hot lap done fast enough to put us in contention for the rest of the day.

Tony W took the valiant steed out for the first competition session and put the hammer down. He came in on the first lap with a 2:16.5xx. Not too bad, and it was to be the fast lap for that session. We were the front runner for our class. Things were looking up, and we actually had a shot at FTD.

Then Chris Rado went out and pulled a 2:16.5yy. Between all the confusion we couldn't figure out if our xx was faster than his yy or if it was the other way around. We were driving ourselves insane.

So, new plan. Go faster. Always a good plan, but as we all know not that easy to do. Tony did it. He flew by and pulled off a 2:16.359! A new FTD, but would it stand? Turns out it would. World Racing was having some problems with the car which would force his retirement for the day. We were ecstatic!

Only one other time in the history of RTA had a Modified car posted FTD. That was this year at NJMP. We beat the rest of the field as well on that day, except for one. So on that day we had to settle for second fastest, but not at Sebring. The day was ours, and I'll confess we were as proud as peacocks.

Our little Scooby seemed to feel it too as she calmed down a bit, and held together enough to run the super session. We filled up the tank with a whole bunch of fuel and lined up with the other fast drivers for the day. Tony was bent on the clearing the field enough that he wouldn't have to go full tilt the entire time due to heat concerns.

The pack was off, and after the first corner our lead opened up and just kept growing. Around and around he lapped and with each corner he pulled further out in front. He finished just in time because as he pulled into the pit our ride started to sputter and cough.

We all thought that she was done. Our little Scooby, and her pit built motor gave all she had to give and that was it.

It turns out that she just ran out of gas. We couldn't really do anything but laugh and shake our heads.

We cleaned up a bit, and lined up the cars for the photos, trophies and champagne. I think we were all in agreement that it made for a nice ending to a very tiring and stressful weekend.

So there you have it. TiC is RTA East Coast champs two years in a row. This time we had a lot more help than we did last year. Because of this we at TiC would like send out a very warm thank you to the following people:

• Ben at Wales Garage for his skills with a wrench
• Drew of t3hclap.com for his time and patience for gathering parts
• Jay at Real Street Performance
• Chi at Dynasty Auto
• Sharif at Forged Performance for letting us borrow that socket
• Chris Rado and the guys at World Racing for letting us borrow that hoist
• Kelford cams for those sweet cams that let us finally top those damn annoying GT-R monsters
• James Schadler for his fine fab work (even though he's a team member he still gets a nice thank you)
• Fuji Heavy Industries for building a car we're obsessed with
• Subaru of America for bringing over that car we're obsessed with
• Subarupartspro.com (we'll be calling soon about a new shortblock)
• MSI for making some of the best true race parts out there
• Blouch Turbo for their very nicely performing turbo
• P&L Motorsports for their rotated turbo kit piping
• Kartboy for all his bushing goodness
• Whiteline for even more bushing goodness along with some sweet anti-roll bars
• KillerB for his killer oil pickup (by the way, it still looked great when we tore down the motor)
• Wheeldude.com for the Rotas (We like them. They have worked wonderfully for us, and we're not exactly easy on parts)
• Deatschwerks for the great injectors we're using
• Continental Tire for making a great tire, and making them available to us
• APR Performance for their great wing, and support
• Frenosa for their brake pads we've been testing this season. They really have performed wonderfully, and I can't wait to get them on the market
• DCCDPro for the center diff controller. LOVE IT!! Anybody racing should really talk to him about a center diff controller.
• Stoptech for their awesome calipers and rotors. They make look pricey at first, but we actually saved money in the long run by going with these.
• Dan at Race Tuned for his awesome tuning, and patience to work with us and be there with support at all sorts of odd hours.
• Oakos for a great deal on a set of headers we needed quick. We've always liked these guys, and I must say they have never disappointed us
• A very special thank you to all our customers. When it comes down to it you guys are the reason why we get to go racing. We really appreciate it, and hope that we can continue to meet your needs.