Category Archives: 1320 Racing

Matt Lennen- 1320 Racing

Editor note:  Racing isn’t always good news.  I have serious respect for folks who not only send us their reports when they are winning, but also when things aren’t so good. 

Since the last email there have been some interesting developments.  We made the 1000 mile trip down to Palm Beach, FL again for the NSCRA round 4 race on October 23rd.  Started out strong qualifying #1 right off the trailer with a 9.06@153mph.  The day was downhill from there however, as the track prep was just not up to par.  The next pass we ran was the first round of eliminations, maintained our position as the fastest in the class with a 9.18@145mph, had to lift at the 1000ft due to the poor track conditions.  There were quite a few cars into the wall, one Extreme class car actually rolled at the 1000ft, and we had a scare ourselves on the last pass.

The second round of eliminations the car left the line hard, but right past the 60ft the tires hit ice, the track was slick and tires lost traction; immediately throwing off smoke as they spun up to 150mph in the blink of an eye.  The back end swung out and I had to let out to recover, by the time I realized nothing had broken, it was too late and we were out.

We were sure to put on a good show while we were running, the car has become very recognizable.  We got some good media coverage from Nyce1’s and GRS, waiting for videos to be posted from them.  The stands were packed at this event, and I believe it was one of the best spectator turnouts we have seen so far this year.  Our video can be seen at www.facebook.com/1320motorsports.  These pictures have gone somewhat viral due to the extent of the damage.  We literally snapped the block in half at the #4 cylinder.  The cause for this appears to be a drivetrain malfunction.

With the MIR World Cup Finals race coming next weekend we have been busy here.  We are trying to get a motor back in the car, we are only being held up by one part at the moment.  If we can get that part, we will be good to go.  We picked a bad weekend to pop the motor, quite a few of you are out at SEMA this week, luckily we have been able to get ahold of almost everyone we needed to.

Jim Justice has been working hard to get the motor/head ready to go.  Brian Crower has been kind enough to send us out a fresh set of rods, Wiseco has supplied a fresh set of rings, Mark @ Real Street Performance has come onboard and supplied us with a set of bearings, Ferrea has sent us some new replacement valves, and Boost Logic is helping us repair the damage to the transmission.  We’ve also got some OEM parts coming from Curt @ Elmhurst Toyota.

An in-car video of the pass where the motor let go is already up at photobucket.com/1320ms-October2011/ 

Matt Lennen and 1320 Motorsports

We made the 1000 mile trek down to Palm Beach, FL on the 14th for NSCRA round 3, taking place on the 16th.  This was a “night” race, with qualifying starting around 1pm.  We were out at the track all setup, through tech and ready to go at 10am – leaving us some time to talk with the media guys out there and let them know to keep an eye, and a lens, on us.  Made the first round of qualifying, with a 9.6@117mph – had to let out of it at the 1000ft mark because the car kicked out sideways – this still managed to leave us in the #1 qualifier spot.  We werent sure why the car lost traction at 140mph, but the next 3 RWD cars that ran the same lane all lost control at the same point on the track, so we knew something was up with the track surface.

Talked to some of the track officials and asked them to check it out, they found water coming up through the track surface and we were told it would be cleaned up for the 2nd round.  Unfortunately before the 2nd round began, a huge storm blew through, dumping down several inches of rain over about 2 hours.  The track officials tried to dry everything up, but due to the altitude of the track, ground water levels were now higher than the track surface, and water was continuing to come up through the cracks in the concrete making it unsafe to run on the track.  The event was called due to rain.

We werent leaving Florida empty handed again, and were determined to at least get some decent coverage out of the 18 hour drive there.  We arranged to meet the NSCRA team back at the track for a Wednesday night test and tune.  The plan was to make the first 8 second pass in a True Street trimmed car.  They came out with cameras to take some video footage which will be released along with an article on the car this week on the NSCRA website (www.nscra.com), and we are told they will be posting it to over 100 forums as well.

8’s were in sight, however the officials at Palm Beach International Raceway had done next to zero track prep, as there were only about 4 cars running this test and tune.  The track was cold and slick, but as more proof that we have got the traction issues worked out, still managed to cut several 1.45/1.46 60fts.  Made a total of 5 passes; the first pass out a 9.09@154mph, with a steady misfire and letting out of the throttle a hair up at the 1000ft mark with the car swaying hard due to the slick track – this is a new record time for a “True Street” car, and for a Supra driven by a factory auto transmission.  Second pass out was a 9.19@153mph, with some wheel spin before the 1/8th and easing out of the throttle again to regain traction.  Third pass was a 9.07@154mph – again having to let out of the throttle just a little bit before the 1000ft mark due to hard swaying on the slick track.

The last 2 passes were useless, with track temperatures dropping quickly due to ambient air temp falling and no cars running on the track.  The track was just too slick at that point and wouldnt hold any power.  The end result was setting the bar for the True Street class, a new record for a Supra w/Toyota Auto trans, and we’ve been looking into if this is a new 26″ tire record for Supra’s.

1320 News

st a quick update on our 2011 progress..

As I mentioned in the last email we were having some traction problems, it appears the majority of that problem was the 28″ tire we were running had a 1″ smaller tread patch than the 26″ tire we ran last year.  We switched back to that 26″ tire for the NSCRA race on May 22nd at Palm Beach Raceway.

Fixed all the ignition issues with a set of Super Spark coil packs and rewired all of the coil wiring on the engine harness.  Unfortunately we had a lot of rain here and did not have a clear day to test the car before we headed to Florida for the race.  We headed down to Florida on Friday, the evening of the 20th, arrived at Palm Beach Raceway around 8:30pm on Saturday the 21st to make a few test passes and see how the 26″ tires were behaving.  Only had time to make 2 runs, and only captured 1 useful data log from the 2 runs.

The first run was just a quick test to feel out the track on low boost.  The second run left soft out of the hole and feathered the throttle a bit due to track conditions, put down a 9.4@151 with only a 1.6 60ft and boost still not turned up all the way (had to adjust the controller for the weather differences).  The datalog from the second run revealed that the car had shifted into overdrive right at the end of the pass.

Sunday morning we were the first ones in the gate, began unloading the car around 7:30am.  When backing the car off the trailer we noticed the reverse gear was almost completely gone, this gear uses the over drive clutch in the transmission.  Quickly identified the problem as a burnt overdrive clutch from the test pass the night before.  Overdrive is the smallest clutch in the transmission and this is exactly why it should not be used on a high HP, wide open throttle 1/4 mile pass.

Attempted a quick fix by flushing a few fresh quarts of fluid through the transmission and planned to baby the car until the finals.  Unfortunately on the first pass Sunday, 1st gear let go right around the 60ft mark, backed off the throttle to make the car drop into 2nd, and ran a 12.8@149mph.   The 1/8th mile on this pass was a 9.3@96mph, thats picking up an astounding 53mph in the 2nd half of the 1/4.  While this number must be skewed, it still shows the car is pulling stronger than ever.

We made the best out of our time in Florida, stopped and talked with every sponsor in Florida, and at Goodridge on the way back up to NC.  We met all of the Florida media groups and have them paying close attention to the car now.  We also met with the guys who run NSCRA for an entire day, they took photos of the car and will be publishing an article on the NSCRA website about it (this site gets over 100,000 indivual views a month).

The problems in the ECU with regards to shift points have been resolved, the car will not shift to overdrive again.  A new transmission -and- a spare are on the way.  And we are aiming to have the car ready within the next few weeks.

The next race on the Schedule is NSCRA Round 3 back at PBIR on July 16th, however there is another race before that, June 25th at Englishtown Raceway, Sport Compact Summer Slam that we will be aiming for.

Matt Lennen Update

Hello again – just another quick update, we literally just got back in from testing at Maryland International Raceway.  Ran tonight from 8pm-1am, track condition was excellent.
 
Our second track appearance drew the attention of everyone at the track.  Made a handful of passes tonight, just about all of them on the lowest boost setting – when I tried upping the boost the car started misfiring pretty bad.  I’ll address that this week with some new coil packs and replacing old questionable wires on the harness.  No crazy times yet, as I was fighting traction issues all evening.  The powerband on this car is absolutely outrageous.  Again the track condition/prep was excellent, the power just kicks on so fast its overpowering the tires, this is NOT a bad thing, in fact the problem for most factory automatic cars is just the opposite – we just need to figure out how to get that power to stick to the pavement.
 
Ran a handful of 9.4-9.6 passes, all with weak 60fts – 2 of these passes are notable:
9.45x@149.xx – 1.56 60ft – 28psi boost (lowest setting, ~800whp)– feathering the throttle
9.55x@150.86 – 1.57 60ft – 28psi boost until the 1/8th mile, 38psi after (manually operated switch to turn on boost controller) – 50% throttle until the 1/8th mile, 100% throttle after, breaking up bad/horribly misfiring the last 1/8th.
 
The previous best was 9.308@146.94mph with a 1.45 60ft, at 36-37psi boost (when the car dyno’d 762whp) – the 9.45 run would have been ~9.25 with last years 60ft, and probably into the 9.1x range without the feathering of the throttle.  The 9.5 run is pretty crazy considering the 50% throttle, breaking up, and weak 60ft.  We’re up 4mph with much lower boost.  I was able to get some good log data from these passes to look over this weekend.
 
The next day at the track will be in one week, a private rental at MIR.  The rental runs 9am-5pm, and followed by an open test and tune 6pm-1am – we will be there until we find the right combo for the launch.   I will be taking care of the misfiring issues this week and testing a few different sets of tires.  The factory automatic transmission record for the Supra is 8.9, that is about to be crushed.