Project Infiniti G20 Racecar: Even More Power

Our cooling modifications proved to be too effective with the 40-50 degree temperatures seen at Las Vegas Motor Speedway for the final MPTCC event of the season. With coolant temps never exceeding 140° F during the practice session, we resorted to blocking off the upper portion of the grille to keep temperatures in what can be barely considered the normal operating range, but still too low at 160° F. However, since our car is rarely raced in such low temperatures, we will wait and see how it does on a 100°+ F day in the dead of summer before making further modifications to our cooling system.

Project Infiniti G20 Racecar Speed Tape Grille Block

To counter the cooling system's over-effectiveness in 40-50 degree weather, we blocked off the upper grille with 200mph tape.

The added power made it really easy to recover from mistakes, and the flames shooting out of the exhaust (just visible is a blue flame under the car) from the purposefully sabotaged tuning were certainly entertaining. No SR20 sounds cooler than a boosted one with a divorced wastegate.

Unfortunately, our transmission was not happy with all this torque and years of previous abuse (this gearset came from another turbo SE-R before it found its way into our car). At the end of lap 3 of the LVMS event, after working my way up from dead last to within 1 second of Brian Smith in the APD car and Dai in the Dog Car, I put the hammer down in 3rd gear only to be greeted with a free-revving engine, the shifter popping out of gear, and the sounds of a fork in a garbage disposal. There is almost always a period after something happens in racing when you think the problem will fix itself. Having experienced those sounds on more than one occasion, I immediately knew what the problem was, quickly gave up hope, and immediately pulled into the pit. We had completely stripped the teeth off of third gear.