The Cape Fear Z Club turned out a great dyno day! Beautiful cars, beautiful weather, great food, and great friends all came together to make it an awesome event. Here are the pics, enjoy!
Category: Past Events
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M.A.D. Mayhem Dyno Day Event
We can’t thank everyone enough for coming out to support our troops, the Wounded Warrior project and for celebrating Armed Forces Day with National Speed. The event was the largest event so far this year and we can’t wait until next year to do it even bigger! A huge thanks to Machine Gun for coming out and putting on a great show!
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Cape Fear Corvette Club Dyno Day
Here is the evidence of another great dyno day! The Cape Fear Corvette Club brought out some gorgeous rides for a great day at National Speed. Great weather plus great people equals one great event.
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Ecotec Dyno Day and Cruise-In Recap
On February 10th, National Speed was happy to have the East Coast Cobalts here for a Cruise-in and Dyno Day. Lots of ECOTEC powered goodness was here in various flavors, whether it be Naturally Aspirated, Supercharged or Turbocharged — We had it all. Seriously, you haven’t seen this much Cobalt since the last time you looked at the Periodic Table.
Around 8-9 Cobalts were in attendance, as well as 1 HHR SS provided by Marine Chevrolet of Jacksonville, NC. The free food started rolling around 11:00 and so did the rollers on the dyno. We served around 75-80 SpeedBurgers throughout the day and kept everyone happy in the rather warm weather.
Austin Daniels won the dyno competition with 279HP and walked away with a T-shirt, Trophy, and the satisfaction of having the quickest Cobalt in the parking lot. Although…I think that guy in the wheelchair with a Nitrous bottle on the back could’ve taken him. Power/Weight ratio FTW!
The East Coast Cobalt organization are a great group of folks that show a real enthusiasm for the car culture. We hope to host more events from them soon, and for those in the club that are currently in the Marine Corps, we salute your service!
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Domestics vs Imports Dyno Day
There’s nothing better than hanging out with a group of car aficionados killing time and talking shop. Throw in a smoking hot Dodge Viper SRT10, 600 horsepower Nissan 350Z, and a slap-your-momma C6 ZO6 Corvette into the mix and you’ve got yourself one hella good Dyno Day. It just goes to show that in the presence of true automotive greatness, even Domestic and Import owners can get along.
Not pictured: the 300 plus crowd of people staring open mouthed and drooling.
Oh wait, there they are…
The crowd gathered around the dyno looked like a zombie horde in search of a shopping mall to feast on. Ham-fisted Dawn of the Dead reference aside, the dyno saw some serious action with Jason Pipkin’s Supra rolling out with a crowd pleasing 762hp, James Smith’s Corvette putting down a ballin’ 801hp, and Chris Crawford’s Trans Am throwing down 827 galloping horses. Actually, 827 is more than a gallop…I couldn’t go that fast if you shoved an ACME rocket up my ass.
Special mention to National Speed’s very own Chris Polanski and his’96 C4 Corvette which pulled a blistering 906 horsepower on the dyno. Unfortunately, you work for us Chris so no prize for you. Maybe next time.
Chris Crawford (left) and Jason Pipkin (right) took home trophies for highest horsepower.
As always, thanks to everyone for coming out. Domestic vs Imports was one of our must successful Dyno Days yet and we hope to see you back at the shop on February 7th for the ECOTEC Cruise-In and Dyno Day.
Click to Biggie-Size.For more pics of Domestic vs Imports action click here.
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National Speed: Mustang Dyno Day
It may have rained cats and dogs, but it’ll take more than a few inches of falling kittens and man’s best friend to put a stop to National Speed’s Mustang Dyno Day. Sponsored by Chris Durham and the awesome folks at the Wide Open Throttle Mustang Club, we ended up having over thirteen ‘stangs on our dyno with David Crawford and Ryan Strickland taking home trophies and t-shirts for Most Horsepower (forced induction and Natural). Awesome job guys and props for the sweet rides.
We raffled off over $1,500 in giveaways including contributions from Superchips, SCT and Shooter’s Choice. Local rock station 103.7 The Bone was on hand with fresh pizza, wings, and classic tunes to keep everybody company (can we please put a moratorium on ‘Freebird’ though? Love the song but if I have to hear it one more time). Along with all of the awesome Mustangs we also had a Ford GT in the garage that drew plenty of stares. If the keys had been in the ignition I’m not sure it would still be here. Don’t get any ideas though, I’m stealing it first and heading for Mexico so stay outta my way.
For more information and pics of their Mustangs head over to Wide Open Throttle’s forum and check ’em out. And if you’re interested in starting your own car club we’ll help you get started. National Speed will set you up with a website, provide forum support, club event ideas, and a meeting space in our Speed Lounge. Leave us a comment if you’d like more info.
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Diesel Dyno Day
Saturday, September 20th marked National Speed’s first annual Diesel Dyno Day. In between coughing fits from all the smoke and chomping down on juicy burgers we ended up dynoing over ten massive diesels with John Porterfield taking home the most horsepower trophy (826.84) and Nate Eix claiming most torque (1020). Congratulations guys, but I still don’t think you have enough under the hood to take on my Ford Focus…Please don’t run me over.
The Speed Girls made their debut at the event, raffling off prizes, giving away free t-shirts, and keeping our technician John company. He needs that kind of ego boost. Just kidding, John…but not really.
Towards the end of the day smoke was flying everywhere with several of the trucks making over 800 horsepower and two of them maxing out the dyno’s torque reading. It was an awesome event with some serious diesel power on display. We really gave the dyno’s ventilation system a workout.
To see more pics from National Speed’s Diesel Dyno Day click here. Thanks again to everybody for showing up and making it a great event. We’ll see you guys at the next one!
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Scott Goes to Mustang Week
From July 22nd to July 26th a massive herd of Mustang enthusiasts got together for Mustang Week. Here at National Speed we do a significant amount of work on Mustangs so we decided to participate by attending the car show on Friday and the “cruise-in” on Saturday. I couldn’t imagine these events taking place in a more appropriate town than good ole Myrtle Beach, so with National Speed’s Chief Technician Bobby along for the ride, we headed out to the Vegas of the south.
Waking up at 6am on a Friday was a little rough for me, but I eventually managed to fall out of bed and get ready for the car show at Colonial Mall. We were there early, VERY EARLY (Myra instructed us to be there at 7, so we had no other choice) so we set up our tent, sat back in the chairs, and waited. We didn’t have long to wait though, within a couple hours the parking lot went from this:
To this:
At the National Speed tent we chatted up hundreds of Mustang enthusiasts and passed out info about the shop. We also gave away free t-shirts and raffle tickets for the chance to win an SCT tuner. A few of our customers/friends were at the show and we got them into the “restricted” area to park their cars next to our booth. I’d like to thank Dave Crawford, Chris and Crystal Durham, and Dave Tilley for displaying their cars at our booth and helping us out all weekend at the tent!
At the end of Friday an estimated 4,000 people had attended the event and over 500 mustangs were present in the show area. I’ve never seen a group of a specific model cars that size in my life.
After a very long day in the sun, we packed up the tent and prepared for a night on the town. We kicked things off by meeting up with Chris and his wife Crystal for dinner at Joe’s Crab Shack where we ate some delicious seafood and drank some exquisite brewed beverages. From there Bobby and I decided to stop by a random restaurant on the beach. It had seating right off of the strip so we of course sat there to watch the Mustangs drive by while quenching our thirst and chatting with some tourists.
Saturday morning came entirely too early and we were off to the Colonial Mall to do it all over again. This day was not a judged show, but a “cruise-in,” which is where everyone parks their cars and walks around checking out each other’s sweet Stangs. All of the vendors were set up again in full force and we passed out another 75 free t-shirts within the first couple of hours. Saturday topped Friday’s numbers; there were an estimated 5,000 people and 750+ mustangs at the Colonial Mall!
To top it all off Steve Saleen made an appearance and signed autographs. Although I‘m not a Mustang owner, I do have a lot of respect for Mr. Saleen so I had to get an autograph. But even better than getting the autograph was the debut of the new Mustang Saleen prototype. Between Mr. Saleen making an appearance, and the revealing of a never-seen-before Mustang, I realized how big an event Mustang Week has become. Not only did Mustang Week exceed my expectations, but I had an absolute BLAST and we here at National Speed look forward to being involved even more in the event next year.
Disclaimer: this post was edited because Scott is too awesome. All records of his night life activities have been deleted to protect the innocent.
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Scott's Hot Import Night
For those of you that may not know, Hot Import Nights (HIN) is an automotive lifestyle event that tours the country. The HIN Nightshift event takes place from 4pm – 11pm and includes a huge car show, music performances, drift demos, Freestyle MotoX, vendors, beautiful models and much more.
Did I mention the beautiful models?
Anyways, back on topic, we somehow managed to all pile into the cars and made the four hour trip to Concord. Luckily, Shane, our vendor relations guy here, knew of some “back roads” that we used as a shortcut during rush hour, so we missed all of the Charlotte traffic and got to the event much sooner than expected. Of course we drove the speed limit the entire way and slowed down through each banked turn, like any responsible driver should.
We pulled up to the Cabarrus Arena casually late at 5:15 or so, and the place was already packed. From the highway we could see the MotoX guys flying through the air surrounded by hundreds of cars and thousands of people. Within the first five steps my shirt is drenched in sweat. The temperature was pushing 100 degrees and we were not stoked to say the least…but at least sunset was only a few hours away. Thanks to Brent from American Tire (thanks for the free tickets man!) we got in as vendors and were free to do whatever we wanted. Well, not really, but it’s a nice thought.
Once inside we walked around for a few hours checking out the cars and vendor booths. The model tent seemed to be the place to be, which is a given. One model that really stood out to me was Jessica Barton. For those of you that don’t know, she’s a smoking hot blonde with a great personality and a 9 second Supra. What more could you ask for? I introduced myself and we spoke about some top secret National Speed business (sorry, I can’t release any information about the convo). Of course I had to snap a picture with her! And for anyone that’s interested, here’s a link to her car, driven by her, down the track.
This was my first HIN experience and I’ve always been skeptical about the events, but I had a great time checking out the show cars and badass women. Some of the cars had insane amounts of time and money poured into them. A few cars that really stood out was the 700+hp Civic and an 800+hp Lexus, both which were also all-out show cars. There was also a 1000+hp 240sx that was very impressive, and a V8 twin-turbo Lexus SC that was at the NOS energy drink tent (tuned on MoTec, might I add).
I didn’t get to watch much of the drifting, but the few minutes that I saw were quite entertaining. It was nice to see some of the locals out there getting sideways. A few of the drifters are members on a forum that we sponsor (ImportsNC.com) and they put on a helluva show. Speaking of ImportsNC, they had a huge presence at the show, sporting their own tent and of course the beautiful Team RPM models. National Speed hosted an ImportsNc meet/dyno day not too long ago and it was nice to see some familiar faces. Click here for pictures and information about that event!
I’ll try to sum up the rest of the day in this paragraph. We left the event, sat at Hooters for about an hour eating and drinking responsibly, and then realized we had no place to stay. Our group got split up and I ended up sleeping on the comfortable, concrete floor of a hotel. I don’t think I fell asleep until approximately 4am thanks to the energy drinks, and if I’m not mistaken, Taylor, one of our tuners, was up until sunrise. The next morning came way too soon, and we piled into Taylor’s Civic and headed home. I think I had a panic attack for the last two hours of the trip due to the bumble bee sound of Taylor’s Honda and his amazing driving skills, but we made it home safely and it was all well worth the drive.
