Hi all,

I will be in the states in a couple of weeks for work, turns out (by co-incidence) it is in alignment with the MR2 national meet so I'm going to take a couple of personal days and head on down to Texas to scope out what the MR2 scene in the US is like first hand.

The event is called NA2009. At first I thought it was a meet up for non turbo cars but actually all MR2's are welcome and they also co-inside it with a Celica GT4 meet (they're called Alltrak in the US). The event has drag racing (1/8th mile), a track event, show 'n' shine, and an in house dyno day at ATS racing. There's also one day there where they're doing jet skiing at a lake! wow life is different huh?

Anyways, it will be my pleasure to attend and they were asking for help so I have volunteered as a judge for the show 'n' shine. Which means hopefully I can get some good insider pics to post back up here!

I'll update this thread as a bit of a blog to keep as a momento of the event. If anyone needs anything brought back from ATS then let me know.

cheers,
Quandry.

Good catch, looking forward to the pictures

Enjoy and whatever you do, don't forget to bring the camera !!!

sounds good, enjoy

any idea how many mr2's they're expecting?

Cheers Mark, no idea just yet, I don't think it will be like the MR2 record in the UK (as it's a loooong way for the guys on the west coast to drive to Texas).

Well today I got my flights finalised which is great, I also rang the event hotel to try and get a room booked, but they are fully out of discount rooms. I asked ATS if they'd help me out and lean on the hotel a bit so here's hoping...

One thing I'm not looking forward to is driving on the right! never did it before, but I will be turning up in Dallas on my own, after about 11 hours of traveling, it will be like 2am in the morning (our time), then I need to get in a rental car, drive for 40 minutes though a major US city on the wrong side of the road!

Should be quite an adventure

sounds like fun!

Ok so this is the event hotel


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The Holiday Inn, Denton, Texas

Thanks to ATS I got myself a room secured there and now I just have to figure out how to get there from the airport...

Anyway on to more interesting things, the itinerary for the event is:

Thursday - Jetski's at the lake (I won't make it there in time)

Friday - Dyno tuning and prep during the day, night time is drag racing at North Star Dragway

Saturday - Track day at Eagles Canyon and Show 'n' shine, awards and dinner

Sunday - Dyno day/Open house at ATS

Here's some details on Eagles Canyon raceway
Eagles Canyon Raceway
7629 North FM-51
Decatur, Tx 76234
Google Map

Youtube video of the track:


Overhead View of the Raceway:

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you lucky bastard!

An American track with corners, and in the South no less!

Wow only a few days to go and I'm flying out

The weather report is predicting between 26-31c lately in Denton

If I was you, I'd get onto MR2oc.com and see if you can ride shotgun with someone on the track ?

he he, didn't think about that. Good one! I will see if it's possible, although I think the show 'n' shine is on at the same time and I'll be one of the judges...

I did tell Aaron however that I'd be happy to drive one of their cars at the drag night

Well guys, if anyone has any picture requests, put them in here and I'll see what I can do!!!

Ok so I made it to Atlanta, pretty uneventful flight. I've a short wait here and then I am flying on to DFW. I'm pretty knackered already, and there's another 3 hours before I will land in DFW, get the rental and hit the wrong side of the road

Lookout Texas, here I come!

Just made it to the Holiday Inn Denton. Pretty swank place (for a Holiday Inn). I landed up getting a Ford Mustang as a rental ($10 upgrade). Despite being a Ford, it's a real nice car! The GPS didn't know the way to the hotel (just my luck), but I found my way to the area and then gave them a call and they were able to talk me in from there. So all in all, successful mission and looking forward to the coming days.

Quandry wrote:
Well guys, if anyone has any picture requests, put them in here and I'll see what I can do!!!

How about a pic of that mustang sitting in the middle of a row of mr2's?

Any pics will do me - shiny fast MR2's

Actually, if you happen to see any 2GR MR2's, any pics/vids appreciated.

All and any pic's welcome, bring them on. Ye Haa!!

I want to see a picture of you being extremely obese.

Well day 2 is just about to begin, so here is an update of all the activities of day 1... which sure didn't disappoint

Because of the timezone difference I was up early, well before the 10am start for the Dyno tuning day. So I setup my laptop and read some comments posted on MR2OC about the meet.


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It turns out that the lake was shut on Thursday due to bad weather so I hadn't missed anything after all. I don't know where all the bad weather went as when I got to Texas the heat and sun turned on a charm.

After a decent breakfast in the hotel, I headed out to the car park to scope out the Mustang in the day light


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Most people will know this badge

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ATS are only a 10 minute drive from the hotel, but none the less I waited for the traffic to die down rather than tackle 'the wrong side of the road' in peak hour

I knew I had gotten to the right place when I found a yard full of spare MR2's and Celicas hanging around for parts/modding/testing

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Over the course of the day, quite a few MR2's turned up, and also some other quite interesting Toyota's


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Here's something I hadn't seen before, a MK1 race car converted with a MK2 front end :ohmy:


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ATS 'threw it together' for a racing class that only lets you spend $500 on the car + modifications :ohmy: It's not in great shape, but I think they just did it as a spare time thing for the hell of it.


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only the bare necessities


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it has a 5sfe for a power plant and apparently is like a go kart on steroids with that power on the track.

One of the cars I really liked was Richard's SW20. The paint job is really nice

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ATS dyno'd the car and made some fine tuning adjustments to the ECU.


It put down 340whp - yes at the wheels

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One of the guys that came down on a 13 hour drive (I think from Washington?) had a big trailer for his car and also brought a bbq. So Richard took me for a drive in his 2 and we stopped in to Target to get some food. I also grabbed a big hat and some sunblock as it was getting hot at this stage.

Although we were confined to traffic, there was a highway stretch in there and let me just say that Richard's 2.2l 3071r powered 3sgte did not disappoint.

One other car I got to see there was a Turbo'd Civic built by Mitch of Dedicated Motorsports. Despite having the engine at the wrong end and missing the crucial 'T' badge, I have to say this is one heck of an impressive Honda.


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He has a stock bottom end, no VTEC, and a medium sized turbo (can't remember the name at the moment) but it's about the size of a CT20b.


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This little car is very light and the acceleration is intense. I am not sure that it's possible to put much more power down through the front end without getting some stickier tires, but the 280whp he has is pretty scary on the street :ohmy: oops, I mean impressive :cheer:

I then took a peek over at Matt's SMG sw20. This car is really really clean. I hope to get some more pics at the show 'n' shine, but here's some of his wheels... Mickey Thompsons on the street? gotta love Texas...


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and the wheels look even better than the photo in real life... :ohmy:

A MK3 track car turned up for the dyno session. He's had a sports kitted 2ZZ swapped in and wow does that thing rev!



Very nice guy to talk to and I'm looking forward to seeing this on the track later today.

Another car that went up on the dyno was an SMG Mark2 with RX7 headlights grafted in to a Bomex bumper


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This two has a menacing sound to it from the Berk exhaust and a GT3076 lurking under the engine bay lid. His engine is quite new and it was getting a 1,300 mile tune up:



Straight after this video disaster struck! the next run had a lot of black smoke and the car died half way through a pull. The guys spent a lot of time testing leads, ignition, fuel injectors, this and that, only to find that the exhaust cam had snapped in two! :blink:


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The cams are Kelford and thankfully ATS had a new set on the shelf. They were able to get the car back together and through in a few dyno runs (360whp at 1.4bar) while the rest of us headed to Northstar drag track for the 1/8th mile runs.

Matt had told me earlier in the day that his car had dyno'd 700hp at the wheels earlier in the week. It sure is the meanest SMG I've ever seen, and is really quite understated without the body kit etc.

Here's a vid of Matt taking the car down from the trailer, the noise coming from his precision (brand) turbo is pretty impressive, it almost sounds like a black and decker leaf blower - and that's at idle!



Matt has a little camera that sticks to the outside of his car for the runs. Can't wait to see the footage from that!


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Matt's best run of the night was a scorching 6.87@105mph. He consistently ran in the 7's throughout the night and drew cheers and claps from the crowd - and the people that worked there! it seems that they are not used to seeing an 'import' move that fast as the drag scene is mostly dominated by v8's. I am more used to quarter mile time's so I didn't really know how fast this was, however as the night wore on, we saw full drag prepared v8's (with powerglides and nitrous!) putting down between 6.2-7.2's so he's really up there! Here's the run:


What was even more surprising was that not only was Matt's car smoking a lot of V8's but there was a whole swag of MR2's out there tearing up the tarmac. I don't know all the names, but this is what I noted:

Red MR2 - first run 8.03 went on to a best of 7.8
Blue MR2 - 9.07
Supra - friend of Hoang from ATS 8.90
Black MK2 (Jason I think) - 7.9
Red MR2 (Texas Ace) 8.74 and even quicker runs during the night
SMG MR2 9.173
SMG MR2 8.14

Mitchels Honda put down 9.30 and then went on to a best of 9.0 at 85mph. He suffered from traction problems and has scope to improve with the right wheel/tire combo.

It was a great end to Day 1. I am not sure if Day 2 can top this! but I guess I will see as I am writing this just before breakfast, and then heading to Eagles Canyon Raceway :cheer:

I almost forgot, this car was quite incredible, it's a chopped drag car from the 30's, has a Corvette LS1 V8 with Nitrous!


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From memory it was putting down very low 8's and maybe high 7's

Unfortunately my other pics of it didn't turn out as my camera is not great in the dark (or my skills rather)...

There was also a Police interceptor, although I don't remember seeing this run. It is good however to see the police putting effort in to keeping racing off the streets, and on the track.


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Wow !!!!!!!!!

That was all in one day??? looks like your having a great time, can't wait for the next report

Hi guys, yeah that was all in one day, it's like an MR2 orgy over here I am just back from the track day/ show and shine and am preparing pictures from today. There's a few people going over to ATS tonight for a couple of cans and a banter. I am dead tired but what possible excuse could I have for not going?

Here's some pics that I forgot to post from yesterday too:

Collection of 3sgte blocks that will go off for xray, cleaning up and preparation to be reborn.


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Scott tells me that sometimes they get heads and blocks that can not be used due to excesses in journal tolerances etc so they send them off to scrap metal recyclers.

They also have some GenII/III engines sitting about just in case someone just needs an engine in a rush and is happy with a transplant without the rebuild.

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This is Hoang and the guys putting the new cams back in to the car that snapped one.

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Scotts GenIII swapped engine bay. His whole car is very impressive. So neat and tidy all throughout. A real inspiration.

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Scott runs a GT3076 and put down 512hp on race gas. I got a ride in the car today and also took some video footage of the experience. It was just amazing, unfortunately the footage does not do the real life feeling justice but I think you will be impressed by the sounds anyways :)

Scott's engine bay is a work of art !