LONG overdue update on my PES Supercharged R8

[gigharbor1]

Holy cow. I am a member of 6speedonline and I post there often but I have been delinquent in posting here. I apologize for the long delay in this update. I'll summarize here, and follow up more as I think of things.

I picked up my car from PES on July 13 with the supercharger and water/meth installed and ready to go. I had 5300 miles on the odometer. My transport back to WA canceled on me at the last minute, so I decided to start driving. I got through Chicago around midnight and stayed in Rockford, Illinois for a few hours sleep. 900 miles on day 1. I left Rockford in the morning, got through Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, and made a dent into Montana when around 11pm I got into a nasty lightning storm and started looking for places to stop and sleep. Hardly any towns around, and the ones I found were sold out of hotels. I tried to push to Billings, the biggest city, when around midnight I had just gone over 1200 miles for the day I went around a turn and hit an adult raccoon running across the road. The impact cracked my right front bumper, pushed the PES heat exchanger and radiator into each other, and caused total coolant loss. I had to pull off the road, luckily an exit 1 mile away for Custer, Montana, but with a population of 140 and no one in sight. I didn't have cell phone coverage, and waited and waited. Around 4 am the state patrol came by and called a tow driver. The tow driver got me loaded around 6am and I convinced him to take me all the way home to Seattle. We huffed it the final 900 miles from 6am to 10pm on July 15.

Today the car has 9400 miles on the odomoter (4100 miles on the car with supercharger since July 13). I've been on the track 5 times with it, including this past Wednesday letting one of the top race car drivers in the Pacific NW drive it for 30 minutes hard. And it was serious driving, full drifts around the turns at Pacific Raceways, all-out, redline driving. I had to get new rear tires after this (no joke).

The car pulls strong, it's very fast, it never lets up. Huge increase in torque over the stock V8. The sound is insane with the Stasis exhaust. The oil temp even on the track on hot days does not exceed what it was doing when stock (250ish degrees - the third notch on temp gauge). It is a hit at track days. I will dyno it for y'all when I can find a dyno locally that can accomodate the 4 wheels.

There is a V10 on the roads locally up here, and when he's done with his engine break-in we will hopefully get together and do the ultimate comparison.

I promise to check back to see if there are any replies.

Roman

[gazza1]

I'm jealous as hell..wish we had a dealer here in Oz that could sell me one , install and provide the critical after install support.

Would not hesitate!!!!

[Davey_Dee]

Hitting a racoon was a bit unlucky

[gigharbor1]

Hitting a racoon was a bit unlucky

Depends on how you look at it, Davey. I thought so too, until the tow driver told me that most of his business is cleaning up elk hits

[Davey_Dee]

Well if that happened it would be more than a cracked bumper! I guess you were...lucky

[gigharbor1]

Yes...as bad as it ended, it could have been worse. The tow driver was the only one for 50 miles, and his father was the hunting buddy of the policeman that stopped for me. So he had his home phone number. And him agreeing to take me home was fortunate too. I don't know if you know Montana, but it's not exactly the R8 tech capital of the world.

[AnOutsider]

Amazing man. I'd love to see that V10 comparison!

[R84ME]

Depends on how you look at it, Davey. I thought so too, until the tow driver told me that most of his business is cleaning up elk hits

This is no lie. My uncle worked for GM & delivered many a Cadillacs in the Denver area. His biggest risk delivering a car to outlying areas was running into deer, and he hit a lot!

[gigharbor1]

Amazing man. I'd love to see that V10 comparison!

I haven't met him, but the V10 owner said he'd be up for it. I'm not big on doing video of myself, but maybe I can put something together when this happens.

[gigharbor1]

I'm jealous as hell..wish we had a dealer here in Oz that could sell me one , install and provide the critical after install support.

Would not hesitate!!!!

I happened to be talking with Tony at PES a few min ago, and he said he would come out to Australia to train an installer for this. I know he and Patrick have been traveling to train installers and just did one in Panama.