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After our local sports car club meet a select group of us headed out to 441 for some street racing. We had about 15 cars; Single turbo supras, DSMs, Z31's, a few domestics -Mustang & Corvette C5's & C6's, a few ricers with some tricked out hondozes - ooooooh, and of course myself representing the TTZ's. We took them out to the state reserve, Payne's Prarie, where there is an area on the side of the highway for pulling over and walking out on a big bridge that goes over the prarie for about 300'. Its a scenic spot and legal to park there and get out of your car. It is located right smack in the middle of the prarie and there is about half a mile, maybe more in both directions to the edge of the basin. There are no streetlights in this area so sitting with all of the car's lights off makes us pretty unnoticeable. But to be safe, we sent our scouts to each end with walkie talkies. Just as we were about to start, we see a set of what we thought were truck headlights, but turned out to be a charter bus and it pulled in to the prarie dock where we were but about 300' away. Sav, one of the originals of the club was like, "Hell no! I'm going over there to tell them to leave!" So he runs over. I was figuring they would tell him to piss off and we'd find another location. In the darkness of the night, we can see all the people piling off the bus and Sav comes running over and tells us, "Dude, they're all drunk!" Apparently it was a rolling bachelor AND bachelorette party on the same bus and when Sav told them we were doing some street racing they were like, "Hell yeah!" and we could hear the noise of the crowd grow as they started working their way over to the cars. I was the first to race, against the single turbo Supra who ran 12.6's at 108 two weeks ago when I laid down my 12.7 @ 110. Sav stood between us and initiated the go. I blew his doors off on the launch which was his demise all the way to 120MPH but that two car lengths I had on him started to shrink at about the 1500' mark. I shut it down, I beat him in the 1/4. We came back to the site and popped our hoods to let them cool down and Holy sheeat! His single turbo was GLOWING like a MOFO! Not just barely red, I mean hardcore cherry red! Just then I looked over at my engine and sure as hell, an even brighter glow is coming from BOTH of my turbos! Remember, there are no streetlights out there and all you got is the dark of night. I couldn't believe it, I never thought they got THAT hot. It took 2-3 minutes for them to stop glowing and another 3 minutes for the coolant to stop percolating. You can hear percolation back there at the turbos because they are so damn hot and obviously it boils the coolant over. I have NO coolant leaks and I am NOT low on coolant either. Glowing hot cast iron will boil any liquid that comes into contact with it. I WAS hearing percolation from the coolant system. I kept turning off the engine so I could hear how long it took for that to stop - all in all it was 7-8 minutes before it was OK to leave the engine off. AFter seeing all of that and how long it took for it to cool, it amazes me that turbos last as long as they do! BTW: I tossed in a TT flywheel and new clutch last night before the meet. My all time record now is 3.25 hours for the install, with a 25minute pizza break and some bullshitting. :) The TT flywheel fits in the NA bell housing with no interference. However, you need to put one standard washer (2.5mm to be exact) on the starter bolts to space it away from the bell housing. No grinding is necessary to make it fit, it fits just fine. Anyway - back to the story. We're out on the highway doing some street racing (virtually NO traffic at ALL), there were probably 10 cars/trucks that passed during this whole time we were there and of course we didnt race when there were headlights on this stretch of road. It is a divided 4 lane highway with turnaround medians - no curbs. The people with the charter bus loaded back up and took off - now it was just us out there.. A little later on I ran again against a highly modified DSM GSX (4wheel drive) and he handed me my ass, but broke something in the process, second gear wouldn't go in after that run - damn DSMs. Well, as the two of us were coming back and we pull in, something had developed... Three marked ASO's (alachua county sherriffs) blew by the site in a fly-by and stopped their cars down at the south end of the prarie and shut their headlights off. One of our scouts was down there and he was radioing to us that they were just sitting there - waiting. Then, at the same time, more ASOs (marked AND unmarked) blew in from the south in another fly-by and parked in the median at the north end of the prarie. Again, our other scout told us they had stopped. So here we are on the side of the road with cops 1/2 mile on either end of us, ready to bust. They obviously thought they were going to outsmart us. So we tell our scouts to come back to us. :) Apparently when the cops saw that we had actually *though* about this and saw our scouts cranking up and pulling out of the wooded areas in sports cars, they knew their gig was up. So in another fly-by probably at about 90MPH in a 55, they blow by us and over the intercom we hear "Leave the area now!" as if we are under some marshall law or some shit. Most of us laugh, it was kinda like watching the litte fat kid run away crying because someone had pulled a prank on him.. :) So we just decided that it would be best to leave anyway, they knew we were there and we weren't going to race there any more.. But as we are heading north back into town, sure as hell, again they thought they were smart... We were all lined up, 15 or so of us, doing exactly the speed limit. Just shy of Williston road (which marks the south most point of Gainesville) in the median between two sets of bushes/palm trees there sat two ASO cars. Once you got up on them you could see them clear as day but if you were hauling ass you wouldn't see them until it was too late. But we were all doing the speed limit and as we passed several people waved at them. :) It was a blast last night - I'm still amazed at the glowing turbos though.. :)
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