REconstructing Chris' Motor - Part 3

Yesterday and today have been two crazy days, so here's a quick update on where we are at with Chris' car!

Chris, Pepsi and Gio are currently going on about 36 hours of straight working. There were two scheduled tunes today for customers so we lost some time on Chris' car there. The last tune of the day is pulling off the dyno as I type this and now it's right back to Chris' car.

He says the car is about 80% done and should fire up early this evening. A few last minute issues came up last night that made it not possible to finish. Now that the rest of the world is back open he can get the parts he needs. The car still needs about 2 hours of assembly, a tune and, last but not least, a scale and align. Ohhhh, a new windshield may be helpful as well!


We are all keeping our fingers crossed that he can get the car up and running tonight in time to head out to Spring Nationals tomorrow.

REconstructing Chris' Motor - Part 2

Last night was a late one and Chris is back at it again, working on the engine. All the machine work is done on the shortblock and everything is balanced and blueprinted as well. The final steps of the shortblock build should take place this evening and into tomorrow morning. Fingers crossed it all goes smoothly, as we are set to leave for Englishtown late Friday night!


Next up on the agenda we have one final check of all measurements and clearances along with a final cleaning. Then we will proceed onto the assembly of the shortblock.



We have been in time crunches before but these past two weeks have been super hectic! With the ENTIRE motor going we were basically starting from scratch. Add to that some collateral damage and we had a pretty big up-hill battle against time. Late nights, persistence and skill played a part in the reconstruction, however without the help we have received from some people this reconstruction would still be at stage 1!

We would like to thank the following people who allowed this rebuild to be possible:
-John & Ron from Race Engineering
- Vince Tiaga for the Arias Pistons on super short notice!
- Zeek from Ferrea
- Chris Harris from Xenocron for coming through with the head studs a few other much needed miscellaneous items
-And last but not least, Lars from Scorpion Race for being the baddest f*cker around!

HOPEFULLY (!) by this time tomorrow, in between the general work schedule, Chris should be degreeing the engine and getting it ready to be dressed.

REconstructing Chris' Motor - Part 1

Before we get into the motor update, we would like to thank everyone who has sent words of encouragement and support our way via facebook, email and calls. We are truly honored to have so many people interested in the happenings of the car. Your words of encouragement and positivity are definitely pushing us to come back better than ever! So now onto the progress of the car...

The head is fresh out of the CNC and all of the parts for the head have arrived from Ferrea. Be sure to keep checking this blog for the exclusive drop of the NEW NRG Tech CNC Cylinder Heads coming very soon!


It's 1:30 pm and Chris is about to start cutting the valves and setting up the shims for the valve train. Between his daily work on customers projects he believes he should have the head all together and setup sometime later this evening. Customers projects are first and foremost always, so Chris has had to walk away from the head numerous times in the past few days.

After the head is together, the transmission will come apart and be inspected, along with the clutch.

Along with updating you on the status of Chris' car, we will be featuring information on the parts and products he is dealing with throughout the rebuild. Please feel free to email us any questions you may have about the products mentioned here. Also, if there is a specific product or service you would like to learn more about, drop us a line and we'll write up a post about it!

14th Annual Spring Nationals - May 1 & 2

The 14th annual Sport Compact Spring Nationals event is quickly approaching. The two day event held at Raceway Park, Englishtown, NJ is always packed with fast cars, great teams and tons of excitement. Along with the regular classes, we have Team Puerto Rico vs Team Dominican Republic vs Team USA competing for $8,000 in the Q32 class. An estimated $30,000 in cash prizes will be paid out.

Along with some great drag racing, you can expect to see a fully loaded car show, both Saturday and Sunday. This is an event not to be missed! We are hard at work on Chris' car and will be there ready to put down some serious numbers.




Check out the NYCE1s trailer for Spring Nationals 2010 (and our customer Alberto Rodriguez's cameo interview!)

Deconstructing Chris' Motor - Part 1

As many of you know, Chris hurt the motor pretty badly at Honda Day this past Sunday. Within the next 2 weeks he will be rebuilding and getting ready for Spring Nationals at Englishtown. We would like to share our progress with all of you for a variety of reasons. First and foremost, we've had many inquiries as to what happened and what will be remedied. We would like this blog to serve as a means to answer your questions. Secondly, we feel that in this industry you must constantly learn in order to grow. We are more than happy to share our knowledge and findings with you all.

In yesterday's blog we discussed what happened on the run at Honda Day. Here is a great picture sequence of the run.
















That brings us to yesterday, Chris got the car completely apart last night and after inspection of everything it seems as though it was simply fatigue failure. The rod seemed to have let go. As we have mentioned previously, this motor has been through the last two previous seasons with NO problems. The poor thing simply gave out! Along with the rod problem, the piston hit the head and collapsed the chamber. So, long story short, we need an entirely new engine!





Chris was here till 2:00 am last night going over everything with a fine-toothed comb to make sure that this does not happen again. He really feels as though it was just a parts failure and that the engine had a long and happy life :) This short block had about 200 hits on it between the track and the dyno testing over the past 2.5 seasons.

Next up for Chris and the car are a few late nights, some overnight shipments and most definitely a few more records coming up. Stay tuned for more info on the next stage of the build!

By the way - To see ALL of our photos from Honda Day follow this http://nrgtechracing.com/galleries.htm

Atco Honda Day Recap

This past Sunday's Honda Day at Atco Raceway was a perfect way to open up the season here in the Northeast. We were especially excited to test out some new parts we are using this season. We'd like to thank the entire staff at Atco Raceway for hosting such a great event and a huge shoutout to OGS for another killer event. Hopefully we can expect to see the same huge turnout at the next Honda Day event in August.

This was Chris' first time out with the car since last season. It was also his first time testing with the AEM and the Spec carbon carbon clutch. We were all anxious to see how the first pass in qualifying rounds would have us faring.

First pass Chris came out with a 8.89 @ 173, a great way to both start the season and allow us to take a sigh of relief! Everything seemed to be running great on the car and we were the number 1 qualifier going into the 2nd qualifier.

We missed 2nd round of qualifying because we never heard the announcement. Not too big of a deal but Jonathan Reynolds was able to just best our first round time, knocking us into 2nd qualifier going into round 1 eliminations.

First round is up, and we have a bye. Second round comes and we are up against Gary Eng. Unfortunately, Gary didn't make the call, so we essentially had another bye and were able to cruise down the track. That brought us into the finals against Jonathan Reynolds.

The car left the line with the BEST 60' it has ever had @ 1.481. However, as soon as Chris hit second gear it was over. We can't say for sure exactly what happened at this point. In the upcoming weeks we will be diagnosing the exact cause of what went wrong. As soon as Chris felt the car go, he put the brakes on in order to not oil down the track and delay the rest of the event.

No one likes to see a motor go, especially during the final run of an event. That being said, we couldn't have asked for more out of this motor. This engine has been together for what would have been its 3rd season. It has gone through 2 previous seasons of record breaking runs and LOTS of wear, with few to no problems. It was really a dream motor. In the next few days we will be tearing it down and figuring out what finally took it down.

Chris is wasting no time in preparing the repairs to the car in order to attend Spring Nationals at Englishtown May 1st and 2nd. He has already started ordering the necessary parts needed to get the new engine together and ready. There is a lot of work to be down from now to Spring Nationals in two weeks. We also plan on installing the new DriveShaft Shop Pro Axles in the car this week, as we did not have the time to get them in before this event. There will be many late nights at the shop for sure, but we will be there and have some more power with us as well!

Chris wasn't the only Team NRG Tech member racing yesterday. Jose "Pepsi" Bello had a great day in the All Motor class. His first pass of the year was a 10.50 @ 127. Pepsi hit the first round with a 10.47 @ 131. In the second round, after having dialed the car in a bit, Pepsi had his BEST 60' and 330 to date. Sadly, a missed shift ruined the run and he aborted shortly after. We expect to better the All-Motor record in a few weeks at Englishtown.

All in all it was a great day at the track. Racing is a constant battle. There will always be broken parts, lost races, missed shifts. We are continuing to test and learn and get better every time out!

Continue to check back for more updates on the status of the motor and our continuing journey into the 2010 season.