Lone Star Drift: Round 1

Well, the battle has been fought.  After finishing the LS swap (to be discussed later) around 8pm, the drift car was loaded and on its way to Houston for the 10 hour haul.  And that was just the beginning.  In order to pass tech, the doors, hood, trunk, and many other panels had to be reassembled on the vehicle.

LS motor...pushing the smoke.

With some help from friends, "Kim" was assembled and passed Tech inspection.  With that behind the team, it was on to learning the new motor, and its relationship with the car.  Kim's new heart was incredible.  The amount of smoke and grip that it put out was sheer giddiness.  Still, there was a lot of learning to do before qualifying in a few hours.

At the end of Day 1, Axle qualified 9th out of 50 drivers.  We were all excited.  That was a win, considering such little seat time.  Day 2 came with more learning.  And although we qualified well, we still had a series to compete in.  Where we finished that day would tell us where we stood starting out.

Top 32: Stephen Bayles.  We have seen Stephen compete before, and he's no noob when it comes to drifting.  His tenacity doesn't make our first round an easy task.  But with some careful and aggressive driving, Axle was able to walk away with the win and moved up to Top 16.

"Axle" Riser vs Stephen Bayles

Top 16: Travis Heath.  The battle with Travis is actually kinda funny.  Several years back, Travis was a spectator with aspirations of drifting.  Not sure what to do, he asked Axle during an event what he needed to do to start getting into the sport.  With some friendly, advice of getting a 240, setting the suspension correctly and learn how to drive the stock KA motor...Travis set out to do just that, and he did a fantastic job.  Although Axle won this round, Travis didn't let it go without everything he had.

Top 8: Ian Trinidad.  We had been at an event with Ian before.  I recall best at our final Round in 2013 at the Texas Motor Speedway.  Ian is no doubt a fighter, and wouldn't prove to be an easy battle either.  His car was set up well.  And most believed him to be the top contender for the competition.  How could you blame them? He was, of course, the top qualifier for the event.  However, Axle pulled another W, advancing him to the Top 4.

Top 4: Randall Waters.  Newcomers this year put Team MSA in a world of unknown.  Who were these drivers, and how well do they drive?  It doesn't help that we sat out last year to regroup.  This round ended our climb up the ladder.

The fight for 3rd or 4th place: Harrison Johnson.  Another unknown driver to Axle and Team MSA, it was a go for it.  Axle was on our last set of tires.  During the lead run, the tires had already gone slick.  And with the LS motor behind it, "Kim" spun out, almost causing a collision.  Harrison responded correctly, and both cars were saved.  Being the match went to Harrison, Axle did a crazy burnout, accepting Team MSA's placement at 4th.

Satisfied, this doesn't leave Team MSA at the top of the board, but it doesn't leave us at the bottom either.  Now...time to gear up for Round 2.  We didn't have time to cosmetically prep the girl, so we will use this time to do that.

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2015 Season...you have been warned.

The new 2015 season presents us with many changes and challenges.  MSA will be going full throttle, removing the LSA motor from a 2012 Cadillac CTS-V and bringing it back down to an LS3.  The lightweight V8 and the reliable 6 speed twin disc manual transmission will leave us with much to grin about. There have been other changes during the offseason and our leave of absense in 2014.  We will rewind back to those in another blog.

The Lone Star Facebook page has been steadily announcing the return and introductions of new drivers for the season.  Although, we are confident in winning, we are not so overly confident to not take these threats seriously.  For the bio's of those drivers, click here to view the Facebook page.

Did I say we are going full throttle?  We are bringing in a more professional vibe this year, looking at bringing in sponsors from the Formula Drift world, down to the ProAm series.  There is a lot of heart and love in these serious that make it not only competitive, but fun.  The friendly competitive nature of all drivers involved is a relief.  Don't get me wrong.  There are jabs and blows, but in the end, everyone laughs and congratulates one another.

So bringing in the theme of MSA's logo - the gear - we have integrated gears into a splash design.  The kit itself is being discussed but due to costs, we may forgo the idea of running Rocket Bunny fender flares for the common over fenders.  The decision hasn't been finalized, but it's in the works.

We hope to see you at one of our 6 competition events.  Otherwise, you will find us at a few exhibition events, such as LS fest and Import Face Off.  We will throw in some love also for our great friends in Tennessee at Traction Optional.  (We will talk more in depth about those guys later.)

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MSA Drift Car "Kim": 2013 PowerCruise video

MSA's practce "fun" day at the Motor Sports Ranch Houston with the crew at the 2013 PowerCruise. Despite our travel woes (story here), the event turned out to be a great practice for Axle.  The goal...to get as close to the tire and concrete walls as possible.  That meant, skimming the paint off the rear bumper during initiation of the slide.  Watch the video to see how well he did.  While you're there, subscribe to our channel...  We'll have more videos of our events as we go through the seasons.

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Formula D Pro/Am Round 5 preparations Part 1

So Round 5 will be our biggest event yet.  After not qualifying or placing in Round 2 from our transmission failure, we had to play catch up.  We have so far qualified mid range and finished 1st in the other rounds.  How we qualify and finish this round will determine the winner of the overall series.  We are currently 2nd in points standings.  However, if Tim (the current leader) qualifies higher and finishes slightly lower than us in Round 5 (say we get first and he wins second), he retains the overall points leader position, winning the series.  SO...game on.

We've been discussing a few things, and I won't disclose everything that's going on.  We have a "secret weapon" that we hope will give us the edge we need.  It's not something I'll disclose until the event, but it'll be pretty neat.

With our engine seeing compression as low as 112, we were averaging about 120.  Those are on the very low end of the spectrum, so we knew that it was getting weak.  The fear was that we would go out on the track, and the engine would just give up.  We definitely didn't want that to happen.  So the search began.  We ended up with CP Pistons and Eagle Rods, both of which received great reviews and had good prices.  Oil pump, water pump, and a few other goodies that came when we bought the engine will be swapped just in case.  We didn't want to get in a situation where either of these components failed during competition.  Although we had 10-15 minutes between runs to "fix" the car, we didn't want to be in that situation again.  Our manual boost controller was a great tool, but it still allowed for boost spikes.  So an EBC (electronic boost controller) is being installed for more control over the boost spectrum.

As of today, the motor is out.  Rods, Pistons, and the "secret weapon" have arrived.  ARP head bolts are on their way.  So to the machine shop the engine will go...

Overall, this will be a fun event, and we'll see what happens.  We are all on edge to see what will happen, and I'm sure our competitors who have read or seen our Facebook posts are all curious to see what we are doing.  Our little 350hp (estimated) SR20DET has done well keeping up with these 2JZ and other motor swapped cars with double our power.  We shall soon see who will be the victor in this year's battles.  It certainly has been an exciting one, and no matter the results, we plan on entering this series for the 2014 season as well.

Bryan Lin
CEO, The Motorsports Authority, Inc. | MSAStore.com | BCRacingDirect.com

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Rewind...Power Cruise USA - Motorsports Ranch Houston: Drifting

What an eventful day.  After our travel woes, we finally made it to the event.  By the time we arrived, we were down a few cars.  Several had started to break misc parts and were no longer operational.

MSA Drift car getting prepped

Axle started the car and got on course.  It was interesting fitting the drifting between the "cruises" around the track and the short drag race events.  But it offered enough diversity to make it entertaining. The course was very large. Axle had enough areas to allow cool down periods for the car.

MSA Drift car testing out the track

We thoroughly enjoyed the track, but because of our tardiness, we were only able to make a few laps around the course during Day 1.


Day 2 proved to be more eventful. They shorten the track for the drift events to a more manageable area. Because of how the track was set up, it was difficult as a spectator to see the cars at all times and the shortened track was a huge improvement.

Being a "fun" track day event, Axle decided to see how far he could push the limits.  His goals were to see how much paint he could scrape off the corner of the car on the concrete dividers without damaging the car. He was successful. We ripped many of tires apart, including a time where he didn't notice the tire was gone and continued to drift the course.  One of the attempts was perfect. The car just barely kissed the wall.  However, the barrel on the other side of the turn was not so lucky. The impact smashed in the rear corner, sheared the retainer tabs, and popped off the rear fender flare. Shortly thereafter, a tire blew.  Despite what happened, it was an amazing watch for the spectators, and a much better setup for photos.

Overall, it was a good time. I will be posting our video of the event soon.

Bryan Lin
CEO, The Motorsports Authority, Inc. | MSAStore.com | BCRacingDirect.com


Notes from the driver...

Drifting at MSR Houston in the middle of summer is a huge treat and a bit of a nightmare at the same time. Road courses are a blast. Unlimited course design, unique corners, tighter limits... makes for some wild moments. On the flip side, road courses beat up a driver and car. Flying off track (you have to push to get better), rumble strips (I broke a wheel), and concrete walls... tire slaying heat, engine and fluids get too hot too fast. The organizers had us run the full course on day one, and it was very taxing. We had some fun, followed some friends around the track. Blasted the corners as best I could having "slept" in a well worn chevy passenger seat the night before. The next day however, was the real fun!

A good nights sleep did amazing things for my driving, and the course was shortened to a noodly shaped rectangle right in front of the stands. The first turn is identical to one in an iconic Japanese race track, theres a nice big slightly banked sweeper, and then a wall. I haven't had a comfortable opportunity to scrape a wall up until this point. The only wall you can scrape in Memphis is 100+ mph, and I love this car too much to try that mid season. Driving this smaller course in front of the crowd was great. It was a good opportunity to focus on a smaller set of corners, really get to push the limits. I got my wall scrape, but it wasn't enough, I had to try a couple more times and eventually knocked the bumper off. Tires were only lasting 4-5 laps at this point, I stayed on the gas all day!

 All in all it was a great time. One track I definitely want to go back to, just not too soon. Some local chinese topped the day off and we got back to the hotel for some shut eye. The return trip was uneventful. We kept the radiator full, and the throttle down. Enjoyed coming home after a good nights rest, we rarely leave an event in the daylight.

Axle

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Rewind...Power Cruise USA - Motorsports Ranch Houston: Travel Woes

What a good time this was. However, just like the other Drift events, travels to this one was no smooth ride.

The Power Cruise originated in Australia with a very large number of people showing off their vehicles is a variety of ways - drifting, car show, short drag races, and burnout competitions. In addition, those who wouldn't normally have the opportunity to drive on a race course are able to during the events (with a specific set of rules, of course).

For once, we finally left at a decent time. We weren't scrambling. We didn't do any last minute changes that made the car unpredictable. The drive down there however, was a different story.

After about 4 hours of driving, we noticed a loud ticking sound coming from under the motor.  Tried to find it, and without success, we decided to continue and hope we found the situation.  We trucked onto Nacgadoches, TX and stopped for gas.  The ticking noise was louder and only occurred under low rpm situations.  So, we looked and looked...checked piping, heat shields...everything looked bolted on securely still.  The next possibility was the transmission.  Out of curiosity, Axle pulled the inspection plate from under the transmission.  After some looking, we finally discovered that a flywheel bolt had come out completely and was being thrown around.  He pushed it out of the way, and we fired it up.  Still the ticking, but it wasn't as loud.  Thinking it might be that one still hitting, we had 5 more left to go and kept trucking.  5 miles later...rev.  Gas and rev.  I've completely lost my torque converter.  Axle pulled the inspection plate off again, and we found the same bolt still there and an additional bolt.  Without any other parts hanging out, we only assumed the remaining were sheared off.  However, with how the Allison transmissions are designed, there was no way of telling without pulling the transmission.

After some thought, we said why not.  We started to pull parts apart and researched what the bolt size was to turn the crank pulley.  With these Allison transmissions, you pull the starter, and that leaves a hole for the flywheel bolts.  You then turn the crank and pull/install the bolts one at a time through the starter.  Our plan was to make sure every hole had one.

Problem 1: We didn't have the correct socket to turn the crank.
Problem 2: Even if we found a solution for the crank, we didn't have flywheel bolts.

It was now 9:30pm, and we were hot...  Pulled along the side of the road between Nacgadoches and Lufkin, we located an O'Reilly's that closed at 10:00pm.  We pulled out the drift car, and Axle and Lindsey drove to the O'Reilly's to be greeted with a few guys that were of no help.  They appeared ready to go home, didn't have the parts, didn't offer any help, and referred them to the Advanced Auto down the street.  Unfortunately, they had closed at 9pm.  So at this moment...we were stuck.

Scrambling to find out how we would make it to Houston, I was able to get of the shop guys to bring a truck down.  The truck had a water pump leak and bad U-joints, so I was scared if we would make it there and back.  However...we've made it this far, let's go.  He arrived around 8am.  We unhooked the trailer, pulled my truck forward with a tow strap, and hooked the "backup" tow pig onto the trailer.  Called the wrecker and they brought out a flat bed.  I have to admit.  Watching my truck with a 7"ish lift on a flatbed was interesting.  We went on to the nearest GMC dealership and dropped off the truck.

Then on to Houston.  I leave out some of the other details...but in a nutshell, I couldn't find a rental to get my guy back home.  He couldn't stay the entire time, so as a last resort and only option....we rented the smallest Uhaul I could find.  It was quite entertaining to rent a Uhaul just as transportation.  But that's what needed to be done.  We finally arrived to MSR Houston approximately 3-4pm and tried to finish out the rest of the day.  By that time, several of the driver's were done and out with car issues.  It was a bummer, but we made it safe.  Next >>>> The drifting.

Bryan Lin
CEO, The Motorsports Authority, Inc. | MSAStore.com | BCRacingDirect.com

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Rewind...Formula D Pro/AM Round 3 - Gulf Greyhound Park

Got ahead of ourselves. Here's a rewind back to recap what went down before and during Round 3.

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