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  • Ben's S2000 Build – Part I

    I became employed by National Speed back in February. That was the first time I’d seen Ben’s 00 Honda S2000. The car was bone stock and made for the perfect daily driver…until Ben tore it apart piece by piece. Apparently Ben not only enjoys tuning cars, but also taking them apart. To be perfectly honest, I think he might be out of his mind when it comes to “modifying” cars. We’ll get into the nitty gritty later on, but for this post I’ll give you a rough overview of what Ben’s S2000 has gone through.

    The S2000 under the knife

    It all started with “removing the air conditioning.” The compressor was broken which meant it was time for Doctor Ben to put the car under the knife. This would be the first of many “procedures,” and before you know it the entire engine bay was completely gutted. Since then the car has turned into a huge project. Ben wants over 600 horsepower, which’ll help push the car around race courses like VIR.

    Out on the track

    As of this week Ben’s decided to completely remove the interior and re-wire everything in the harness. From the looks of it he’s managed to make the car run off four or five wires. I’m telling you, this guy has some serious A.D.D. The second it looks like the car is about to go back together, he finds something else to improve.

    The engine bay in process

    Some of the highlights of this build are:

    • Turbonetics GTK 650 with tangential divided T4 turbine housing turbocharger
    • National Speed sidewinder turbo manifold (t4 divided)
    • National Speed intake manifold
    • MoTec m800 standalone
    • Spoon sports hardtop
    • D2 suspension

    The mods list is long and I could go on forever, but I think you get the picture. Ben is crazy.

    This won’t be the last blog about Ben’s car, and honestly, I sometimes question if he’ll ever be officially “done” with it. I mean seriously, who does this kind of thing to a perfectly good car? Not to mention this is his only car, so if you ever see Ben on the side of the road please be nice and give him a lift. I swear the guy has voices in his head telling him not to stop until it’s an all out racecar. But then again if that gets him a good time at VIR maybe that’s not such a bad thing.

  • How to Drive Your Car for Miles and Miles

    I once had a friend in college that drove an ’89 Civic with 250,000 miles on it and the sucker ran like a dream. No engine sputtering, no squeaky brakes, not a peep. Other than a busted lime green paint job and hemorrhoid-inducing seats, you’d swear the thing was mint. So when he told me that he’d never had any work done to it other than basic maintenance, I thought he was talking out of his ass rear exhaust. Not even Einsteen could figure out how to get 250,000 miles out of a twelve year old Civic.

    But sure enough my friend was telling the truth. Come to find out, if you take proper care of your car and alter some of your driving habits, you can drive until the wheels fall off. The trick is having a car that you actually want to drive for that long.

    1. Read the manual: Everything you’d ever need to know about taking care of your car is the in manual, and yet most people don’t even read the thing. Big mistake. The manual is the key to unlocking your car’s longevity, and contains valuable info about proper scheduled maintenance. If you’ve misplaced your manual click here for an online library thanks to the good folks at Edmunds.
    2. Change the oil: Probably the single most important thing you can do for increasing longevity. Without it your car’s a ticking time bomb, so defuse the situation by changing it as instructed. To find out how often you should change your vehicle’s oil, see tip number one.
    3. Watch the heavy foot: Accelerating fast and stopping quickly will put a lot of wear and tear on your engine. It’s also bad on fuel consumption, and with gas prices hovering at $4.00 a gallon, you may want to watch the peel-outs…no matter how much fun they are.
    4. Stick it in the garage: Keeping your car in a garage will help cut down damage caused by the elements, plus it’s much more effective than throwing a cover over it.
    5. Wash and wax: Nobody wants to drive an ugly car, especially if you’re going to be driving it for 200,000+ miles…so make sure you wash and wax frequently. And don’t forget about the interior! Vacuuming the carpet and scotch guarding the seats will make a difference.
    6. Get some fresh air: Most people know to change their oil frequently, but a lot of drivers forget about changing the air filter. This allows your engine to “breathe” easier and thus last longer, and it will also improve your fuel economy (click here for more tips on saving gas).
    7. Fill ‘er up: If you’re storing your car for an extended period of time remember to top off the tank. If you don’t you risk the chance of getting moisture in your fuel injectors.
    8. Cool Off: Maintaining the proper coolant level is almost as important as changing the oil. If you don’t have the proper coolant level the damage to your engine could be catastrophic overtime.

    The average life of most U.S. driver’s automobiles is 100,000 miles. If you follow routine maintenance and give your car some tender loving care, there’s no reason you can’t double that.

  • 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.

  • 5 Ways to Drive Further on a Tank of Gas

    It’s no secret that gas prices are gouging you at the pump. Every time I stop to fill up I half expect the attendant to blindside me with a shotgun and ask me to empty my pockets. At this rate we’ll be paying $8.00 a gallon and selling our souls for a gallon of diesel.

    Okay, maybe that’s a slight exaggeration, but if you’re anything like me you’re tired of paying out the nose for gas and ready to stop the bleeding. So I decided to do some research and talked with our technicians to find out how you can make your car more fuel efficient and save a buck at the pump.

    1. Keep your tires properly inflated
    This one seems pretty obvious but you’d be surprised how many people forget to keep their tires properly inflated. Not only will it give you better gas mileage but it’s safer and your car will handle better.

    2. Change your oil
    The more your oil gets heated and cooled down causes the viscosity to increase meaning the engine is having to work harder. Change your oil to alleviate unnecessary stress on your engine and your wallet.

    3. Tune your car
    Most cars are generically mapped. There are programmers out there that will remap your ECU to more efficient settings. A glorious byproduct of this is an increase in horsepower!

    4. Install an air intake system
    These systems allow for cooler air to be supplied to the engine as well as eliminates the accordian style plastic hoses with smooth metal piping. This makes it easier for the engine to breathe.

    5. Install a cat-back exhaust system
    These eliminate a lot of the unnecessary bends in your factory exhaust system allowing your engine to easily expel spent gas and exhaust pressure. Think about it like this: imagine you’re breathing through a tiny stirring straw and you switch to a McDonald’s milkshake straw. It’s going to be a whole lot easier to breathe, right?

  • Geek Your Ride

    “What the hell’s a gigawatt?” Children of the 80’s rejoice. If you’ve ever roared down the highway at 88mph hoping you’d travel back in time (I can’t be the only one that’s tried it) now is your chance. Thanks to the enterprising geeks at Diamond Select you can turn your car into a time traveling De Lorean straight outta Back to the Future (Huey Lewis not included). Feast your eyes on the electronic splendor of the Flux Capacitor, 100% guaranteed to not get you any dates.

    And just when you thought it couldn’t get any better (or worse depending on your love of all things 80’s), MIO Technologies is set to introduce a Knight Rider GPS system featuring the original voice of KITT later this year. I can imagine few things sweeter than driving around and hearing, “Michael, you can’t possibly be thinking of eating at Denny’s again!” No word yet as to whether KITT will drive the car for you. If it did I would buy five of them.

    At some point I need to have a serious pow-wow with Shane, our vendor relations guy, and see if he can get me some of these puppies. James would probably confiscate them, though. That’s the danger of having a Chief Financial Officer that’s a closet David Hasselhoff fan.

    James Moncure, Chief Financial Officer, age 8

    Just kidding, James. Everybody knows you’re really a huge Transformers geek. Now if I could just get his friends at Hasbro to release a body kit that would transform my car from a Ford Focus into a towering Optimus Prime, my life would be complete…or at least nerdier.

  • 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.

    Driving Responsibly to HIN

    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.

    Wee!

    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.

    Scott and Jessica Barton and HIN

    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).

    Vroom!

    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!

    Hot.

    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.

  • Military Appreciation Day

    Saturday, July 5th, National Speed had its Military Appreciation Day in honor of America’s Armed Forces. The event was a great success and we raised over five hundred dollars to be donated to the Wounded Warriors Project. They’re an amazing organization that touches the lives of many. So on behalf of National Speed, we’d like to say thanks to everyone for coming out and supporting a good cause!

    Also, please note that we will continue to sell the National Speed Wounded Warriors t-shirts at the shop and all proceeds will go to the Wounded Warriors Project. So if you missed out on Saturday’s festivities and would like to purchase a t-shirt you still can!

    We raffled off some killer prizes, which wouldn’t have been possible without the generous donations of Go Auto, Hooters, Lucky 7 Tattoo, Corbeau, Competition Clutch, Black’s Tire, and Carolina Tint. Special shout out to the good folks at Rock 105.5 and to the Red Bull Girls for providing us with awesome music and sugar to get us through the day.

    The Hooters Carwash was a lot of fun and at the end of the day the girls washed 17 cars and helped raise fifty dollars in donations for the Wounded Warriors Project. Great job, girls!

    Our tuners, Ben Salasko and Taylor King, were hard at work and managed to get 20 cars on the dyno, including Matt Adams and his Mazda Miata, once again taking home the lowest horse power of the day award. Awesome job, Matt! This is the second time Matt’s been honored with this prestigious award. Come to our next dyno day event and see if he can go for a three-peat. We know he can do it!

    The big winners of our dyno horsepower challenge were Joe Sikes and his twin turbo 2006 Pontiac GTO for most overall HP (588!) and Nicholas Gesar and his 1999 Ford Mustang for most all motor HP (282). Enjoy the trophies and wear those “Rock the Rollers” t-shirts with pride. You definitely earned them!

    Tony Hawk even stopped by for a while. It was a pretty big deal. Actually that’s just John, one of our performance technicians. But he does look a little bit like Tony Hawk, don’t you think? (just say yes, he needs the ego boost).

  • Real Men Drive Wagons

    So it’s been brought to my attention that perhaps my Smurf-blue Ford Focus station wagon isn’t the sweet ride that I once thought it was. Never mind the fact that it gets excellent gas mileage and has surprisingly good pickup (when the air conditioner’s not running). Some people can’t see the forest through the trees. Not me, baby. I see potential. Where you see a rain-damaged, wet-dog-smelling rust bucket — I see a customized speed demon waiting to hit the streets. And to prove just how badass my car really is, I’m going to pull back the curtain and reveal the splendor of the Ford Focus.

    Anybody can have a computerized GPS system, but real pimps roll old school.

    The global GPS unit is a custom fabrication and a big hit with the ladies. “Hey baby, hop in my Focus and I’ll show you the world.”

    The install phase of the rain defense mechanism (r.d.m. if you want to get technical) was a bit rushed but I think you’ll see that the results more than speak for themselves.

    Not only is it eye-catching and incredibly practical, but the kids are guaranteed to love it! I’ve already decreased water damage by a whopping 15% and gotten offers from Dora the Explorer about potential sponsorship opportunities. Fingers crossed!

    Pretty sweet, huh? That’s a stock Focus engine. This baby can go from zero to sixty in 35.9 seconds and if you look closely you can see the push to prime button. Little known fact: the Focus SE also doubles as a handy lawnmower/mulcher and for a small fee I’ll cut your grass.

    For future modifications I’m thinking of taking Papa Smurf to a whole new level. We’re talking twin turbos, maybe upgrade the motor from a Craftsman weed eater to a full-on power mower, or get real crazy and install some fully-functioning rear windows. The possibilities are endless. And Papa Smurf deserves your respect.

  • A Blog is Born

    What happens when you take the madmen (and women!) of National Speed, stick them in a cubicle loaded with Red Bull and Nerf guns, throw in hot cars and tell them they can write whatever they want? You get this. The official National Speed blog.

    Don’t say we didn’t warn you.