One of the few good things about GM

And I am sure the government has ruined it as well.

So many things I hate about GM from swinging from the nuts of unions to wasting time making hybrids that get worse mileage than any car I have ever owned.  Oh and the styling…  Short of the Corvette and the new Camaro, GM has historically had terrible styling.  Especially on wheels, interiors, engine bays, bodies, and chassis.

So what is this “good thing” about GM in the title?  Their dedication to racing and racers.  Now as I mentioned earlier, I am sure since they became Government Motors, that has all changed. 

Semi truck stuck? Call a Subaru.

Subaru STi helps a truck in Holland (I think) get unstuck.

COBB Tuning BOV

Reason for this post:

• I want people to know how great this product is.
• I wanted to clear up some details for customers that were incorrect from the manufacturer.
• I was hoping Cobb would explain what makes this product so great but honestly I don’t think they know since everyone involved with the design (me) is gone.
• I want to explain some of the thought that went into a product that from most manufacturers has little to no thought put into it.


BPV ? BOV

Local Motors at SEMA 2009

Local Motors is a new car company started in Massachusetts.  Basically they have a forum full of wanna-be designers who submit designs and the forum votes on what they like.  Then the winner is what gets built.  They eventually want to have micro production facilities in every region building a design for that region.  Currently they have the one in Mass. and they are opening one in Phoenix some time next year.

Pfadt Race Engineering at SEMA 2009

Let me start this series of SEMA posts by saying I HATE MY CAMERA!  But budget does not permit me to upgrade to DSLR just yet.  But man, all the pictures I took at SEMA look like I had smudges on the lens and like a dog crapped on my sensor.

Well, this year SEMA was pretty lame.  Not many new products.  Not much effort put into the cars for the show.  Of course there were exceptions.  But overall, SEMA 2009 was lame.  I will be making a few posts covering some of the stuff at SEMA.  But of course, even being lame, SEMA was absolutely HUGE.  I even hit the APEX show this year.  It’s basically the budget version of SEMA that your SEMA pass gets you into.

For SEMA 2009 post #1, I will cover Pfadt Race Engineering.  They are a local company, and everyone over there I have ever dealt with was great to talk to.  Aaron Pfadt is the owner.  IIRC, he used to be an engineer at GM a while ago.  That explains his focus on GM vehicles.  He started by making Corvette parts.  Now they are making some Camaro parts as well.

HKS carbon fiber time attack Altezza (Lexus IS)

Here are some pictures I took at the 2000 SEMA show. On a side note, I will be hitting up SEMA again this year so I should have some pictures for you from that event. The subject of these pictures: The infamous HKS Altezza time attack car with full carbon fiber wide body on it.  Info on this car is a little tough to come by.  Superstreet did an article about it.  As with most of their articles, they have some pretty good studio photo shots and just enough data to whet the whistle, but not enough to full inform people about the subject.  You can read the article here

Carbon fiber HKS Altezza Time Attack car at SEMA 2008

Random Photo, R35 GTR sunset at Buttonwillow Raceway

Here’s another photo I took that screams “GET A BETTER CAMERA!”  But I still like it.  It’s the Cobb R35 GTR in the sunset at Buttonwillow after we blew up the drive shaft on it.  It was the weekend of the Super Street Time Attack.

R35GTR Sunset photo

Reminiscing Part 4

Here is my last reminiscing post for a while.  This is another project that was pretty fun.  BTW, we both showed up on comparably worn out tires and Sam Hubinette did just as many donuts in our car as he did in the Techart.  But I guess when a car 1/3 the price whoops you, you have to have some excuses…  Especially when the whooping was that extreme.  I designed the coilovers that were on the GTR.  They are just coilover sleeves for the stock Bilstein shocks.  I think most people’s (including mine) favorite part is when the Porsche guy is talking shit on the GTR, but Trey from COBB is very respectfull, then the COBB car absolutely dominates.

Here you go, the COBB Tuning GTR vs. the Techart Porsche GT3.

Reminiscing Part 2

OK, so Nukabe came to us at Cobb and wanted us to make a supercharger for an Eclipse they had been taking to various shows around the country.  Rather than buying a new supercharger, Trey was tired of the Tribeca and ready to trade it in on something new, so we pulled the Rotrex off the Tribeca to use for the Eclipse.

The Tribeca was pretty easy to design the supercharger mounts for since it had a good amount of hood room.  And there was quite a bit of unused volume under the hood.  This is not so much the case on the 4^th Gen Eclipse.  There was just mm’s of clearance to some parts on that car.  There was very little room anywhere under the hood on this car.  I decided to run a shaft drive to operate the supercharger.  And I think it turned out pretty clean.  I went through quite a few rapid prototypes that I made in my office to ensure exact alignment of everything.

COBB Supercharged Eclipse

Reminiscing part 1

I have hit a bit of a boring time on my current project at work.  So I was feeling all nostalgic about my past projects.  So here is a project from a few years ago.  I had to design a supercharger for the Subaru Tribeca.  It utilized a Rotrex supercharger, Audi BPV, Bell Intercooler, and the rest was all custom.  We improved power at the wheels by about 70 HP on just 4.5 psi of boost.  It ran flawlessly.  We drove it to all the shows it did.  No trailer queen here.  It ended up having a better power to weight ratio than any CUV/SUV in it’s class.

Supercharged Tribeca