Performance Racing Industry: What’s New and Cool 2024 Edition

The Nexus R5 was a pretty impressive unit when it first came out, combining both a full-fledged ECM and a power distribution system in a single box. For those who don’t need to run a full pro-mod’s worth of electronics or just want an ECM, Haltech now has some Nexus S-model options.

The S2 and S3 are for controlling up to 4- or 8-cylinder engines, respectively, with many of the same high-end features as the R line, simply without he power distribution system. Supporting dual drive-by-wire, wideband, data logging, and even onboard WiFi, the Nexus S2 and S3 are powerful and competent ECMs for driving just about any engine application. I can’t wait to see what plug-and-play or patch harness solutions that Haltech comes out with for these Nexus S ECMs.

The market is littered with subpar and non-motorsports-grade quick-release adapters. Do you really want to be stuck behind your steering wheel when it hits the fan? MPI has now come out with a line of quick-release hubs in various configurations to support nearly any use case, including an electromechanical option for those with steering-wheel-mounted displays.

Having dealt with quite a few mediocre solutions previously, these really caught my eye. The action on the 6-bolt unit was really quite impressive.

These LaneGuard systems from AirLift immediately caught my eye. The premise behind the system is pretty simple, but it actually is really unique. If you’ve ever driven a car with a vehicle detection sensor that displays a light in your side-view mirror, these systems are exactly like that, but for your trailer.

With both a one- and a two-sensor system, the LaneGuard sensor detects when a vehicle is behind and/or on one side of your trailer, and displays a visual warning light via a very bright orange LED strip that is attached to the front wall fo your trailer where it is in plain view.

While the single sensor system works great for highway situations offering both blind spot and lane change assistance, the dual sensor system can also help with cross-traffic detection in parking lot-type situations.

I still want a camera system for my trailer, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t also want a system like this in addition.

At first, this just looked like a fancy billet oil cap, and I didn’t understand why Turbosmart was making a big deal of it. Then I realized that it’s actually a modular cap with a threaded hole in the center that can accept a variety of threaded adapters to connect plumbing to it.

Now, Turbosmart claims that this allows for you to use it for crankcase ventilation, but I’m not entirely sure that simply slapping a hole in your oil cap is going to do the job you want in that arena. I’d like to see some real-world testing on such a solution before committing to it.