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Enjoy, Tim got a bunch of parts from us and glad to see the car in someone who appreciates it. Enjoy and welcome. Regards
: Greetings! After numerous requests and inquires at Battle of the Imports yesterday and today here in the Chicago area I have registered on twinturbo.net. I am indeed the friend of Tim Liess who bought the Cheetah Z. I am an apprentice mechanic at Sound Performance in Bloomingdale Illinois, the shop that built this incredible car.
: Background: : I got into Imports back in late '95 when I bought a 94 Twin Turbo Supra. I had this car modded by Hahn Racecraft back when Greddy was offering the Profec A's. (shudder) The poor car never ran quite right even after the best efforts of HRC. In '97 I had the car repainted from factory black to a deep Yellow. After I had it repainted, Larry Prebis of Sound Performance got his hands on the car and worked his magic. With some drag radials I was consistantly in the 12's with a best of 12.375 @ 116. The car did run an 11.919 @ 115.15 with a high stall converter but ran into fuel cut problems since it had a misdialed HKS FCD. I never got the true potential out of the car as the 60' on the 11.91 was 1.839 and later that night I ran a 1.729, (2) 1.711's and a 1.709. You can do the math on that one! : After ripping off some low 1.7 60' times in the Yellow Supra I got the desire for more power. I contracted the hillbillies at the 2 man shop of Powerhouse Racing. What a major mistake! They had been working on this Red '98 Supra, you probably know the one, the infamous 1042 rwhp Supra. I bought this car and it was truly THE biggest POS Supra's I have ever seen. Very poor install, after promises of PMR (That's Powermouse Racing) of cleaning the car up to a state worthy of a Supra. I got 7 runs in the car off NOS since I had never driven a single before and on the 7th run, while doing a burnout with the bottle on and ready to go, the POS Level 10 transmission went out on me. I called them from the track and the first thing they asked was, "duh well when can you get the car back down to Texas?" I was like WTF! Sound Performance can do the trans swap and is a Level 10 distributor themselves, why does the car have to come all the way back down to Texas for this? This is when I started to smell a rat and had to put together a plan to sell this lemon back to the orchard it grew in. : I sold the car back to Powermouse and cut my losses. I can assure you that this car made NOWHERE near 1042 rwhp and that Powermouse contracts out a tech from motec to tune the car for 12 hours before it made it's infamous 9.91 @ 143 mph run. It was making at best 850 rwhp. I also paid NOWHERE near $100,000 for the car as I understand it has been reported. I will tell you straight up I paid 70K for it in May of 1999. 1998 TT Supra's with the mileage it had were still selling for close to 40k so 30k extra for a race motor, single kit, ported head, direct port NOS, Level 10 & converter, Alpine TV, amps etc, and the rather expensive Motec seemed like a good deal. Lordy was this car fucked up. Had a welded rear end, totally not streetable despite the claims on their website, the cam position sensor was dented on the underside causing it to have an rpm spike at idle, it would DRAIN A NEW BATTERY after only (2) 1/4 mile runs and I ran a best of 11.50 @ 128 mph at 22 psi no NOS on a Turbonetics T72 Ball bearing turbo. : Just wanted to let all of the twinturbo net members know the REAL story behind this car that has been built into such a legend. It never made the rwhp claimed nor was it streetable whatsoever. : With that off my chest, would just like to give a shout out to Tex and John Song my new Chicago Z buds and I will do my best to learn about the Z and give my input as I can. Larry and I have some plans for the Cheetah this winter and I will keep twinturbo.net up to date on it's progress. Like more could be done this car, WOW! It is so beautiful, is there any information about production numbers with colors? I think Tim told me that there were very few Yellow Z's made. : I did finally dyno the car on Friday before the Battle of the Imports race here. On the NOS (spool up kit which cuts off at 15 psi) and 1.5 bar of boost we maxxed out the injectors in the car at 511 and 514 rwhp. The EGT's were right on at 880 C on 100 octane pump race gas. At Battle this weekend I ran an 11.89 @ 120 mph on the 18 Kinesis rims with Yoko Nexus street tires. On the following run I turned on the bottle warmer and almost put the car into the wall! I decided the car would be much more consistant in the bracket racing A class so I left the NOS off and just ran 1.0 bar of boost. Ran a 12.96 @ 113 on the run I determined my dial-in. I got down to the Final 8 cars, had 3 to 4 car lengths on a BPU Supra but left off JUST alittle too early and lost the race by .012. I even tree'd the guy and had .1 to play with. Man can bracket racing be fusterating. : Well, long Intro but I hope it clears up concerns about the myths floating around out there on the 'net and that the Cheetah is staying in the family here in Chicago. Once Tim gets back up on his feet and can knock out some beautiful paintings I hope that he will be able to buy it back from me. I got too many damn cars as it is! But I couldn't ask for a nicer car that I can drive to work every day. I have a lot more respect for the Z now that I own one of my very own. : This forum software kicks the crap out of Supraforums, I think I will be posting here A LOT more than here. I love being able to view and edit my posts in a full browser window! : Sincerely, : Timothy W. Maxwell
: [ www.sound-performance.com ]
: HOME OF THE FASTEST STREET SUPRA ON THE PLANET! 9.54 @ 144.6
: 630.893.5002 - feel free to call me anytime at the shop for your Z concerns! :
 2000 ZCCA Gold Medallion Recipient for Concourse Excellence
Member - Professional Detailers Assoc and the ICA |
21:46:10 10/01/00
