Woods Racing

You got yourself a new car, it’s got some muscle, you want it to go faster, I hear ya, that’s what I do. We modify cars, make em faster, make em safer and we get you what you want however fast you want to get there.  More importantly, I’m also a planner. People pay me to plan their builds. And it’s important. I want to talk to you about that today because lately I’ve seen a rash of good cars gone bad.

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I’m going to use this Firebird as a prime example. Planning and circumstance are to blame here. We’ve had this customer for about a year now with a hopped up 95 Trans Am. It first came to us after he was buying Amsoil for his dirtbikes and after finding out we sell more than just oil he brought his car to get checked out.

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This is a heavily modified T/A LT1 plant. All forged, all the right parts in the motor. So it seemed anyway. When it first came in, it wasn’t running right. Now, when a car comes in lacking power, with a heavily built motor, it’s hard to figure out why. Who knows what was done to it. I saw the build sheet and specs of the motor, 30 over, Scat Racing this, forged that, pretty impressive. But..why was it slow?

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The exhaust was surely not the correct application, there was an oil leak, and the spark was not near what it should have been. We strapped it on the dyno at Technika Motorsports and it punched out a 323hp/320tq. Not bad, but stil under powered for the build. This should have easily seen north of 400.

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So back to Woods Racing it went. We brought in our welder Justin to help fix up the welds on the exhaust and we looked at CAI options. The ground was fixed and it picked up. It still pinged, and just wouldn’t run right.
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Then came the fatal part.
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Clang!, snap!, pow!………….oil and coolant now lubricates that part of  Mother Nature’s lil section of earth.
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We towed it over to the shop and got it on the lift. Wasn’t long..(about 2.2 seconds) to figure out what happened. Snapped a connecting rod and left a couple holes in the oil pan, a hole in the block, and a lot of money down the drain.
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You can see the hole in the block above.
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Now, this of course is over the past few months. And at the beginning of this build, there we’re a lot of things that I would have done differently.
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First off, supporting mods. You can build the biggest, strongest, baddest ground pounding motor you can, but if the supporting mods like intake, exhaust and suspension aren’t there, what good is it? Sure, sounds wicked, but you’ll do an 1/8th mile in 13 seconds while leaving an 1/8th mile of rubber.
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Second, many people worked on this car, so by the time it came to me, it was a puzzle. What did they do here, why is that there? Many questions like this were asked.
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Third, there was no planning. The amount of labour that went into this car could have easily been cut in half by timing things right. For example, the motor mounts needed to be changed…when the engine was out, would have been a fine time to change em!
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Now, yes, it’s easy to say well, “I ran out of money”, or “I was told too many different things”, or “I figured it would have been fine”. These are all things that your planner can figure out for you to save you time, and most importantly…money. When you’re putting money like this into a car, the last thing you want to hear is me on the phone telling you that you punched a rod through the block.
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Now the block is a paper weight and there’s a rolling chassis outside.
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This happens all of the time, and can be avoided. There’s a reason you brought the car to a race shop, let them handle it. Any good race shop will sit and help you plan a build, and if they don’t it’s a good time to search for another.
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A couple other points I want to make before I go:
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Be honest, if you blew it up, tell us how. No one wants to admit that they scrapped an engine while ripping it on the way to work, but, we’re gonna find out anyway, and it’ll save you precious hourly rates if you just pipe up and say what happened.
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Don’t be shy to ask questions, even if you are fairly informed and educated on the subject, there is nothing wrong with asking a question. Shops will not look down on you if you don’t know what that does, or what this will do. We take pride in our work and take pride with helping our clients. Any shop that won’t take the time to answer the questions or be-little a customer shouldn’t be open.
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Tell us what you want. Just spit it out! 400hp? Ok…here’s how you get there. A reliable daily driver with a bit of guts? Come on in! A track ready beast that will make Honda fan boys re-think their tuner status? Got you’re ticket right here buddy….Even if you’re ex girlfriend has a new boyfriend that has a beefed up Camaro…tell me what you want and I’ll build you a Mustang to embarrass it. Just tell us what you want. It makes everyone’s job easier.
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Help us help you. We’re here for you, you came to us in the first place for a reason.
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Cheers everyone! Have a great weekend!

Nov 19th by Bannon