DAMotorsports presents RAVEN!!

[DAMotorsports]

February 26, 2013, marks the day of the beginning of a very anticipated project. A little back ground on us before we get to the good stuff. We have been Honda drivers since 2007, Honda Challenge with the National Auto Sport Association (NASA) to be exact, our passion and love for cars goes way back to the dipper ages, but we have been professionally working on cars for 15 years. Fast forward to February, our team got a hold of 2013, Raven Black, manual transmission, Scion FRS; 0 miles, straight from the port. Thanks to our lovely contact at Toyota of the Desert (68-105 Kyle Road Cathedral City, CA 92234), Cynthia Tinoco. We had been shopping around different dealerships and we would find a manual car but the color did not seem to fit our style, or we would find the color but it was automatic. Finally, we just decided to talk to a sales representative, but ended up getting hooked up with the sales manager, and we told her exactly what we were looking for and she made it happen for us.

Given our racing background we knew we needed baseline numbers. For this we turned to Bisi Ezerioha from Bisimoto Engineering for some base line dyno pulls, and by March we had our driver Jeremy Croiset, do some test runs at Willow Springs Raceway. Our bare bone stock FRS ended the event with a 1:38:01, but we knew this car, dubbed ‘Raven,’ had so much more in her and we wanted it, we wanted more power!

After attending a car meet hosted by Eibach Springs at their facility, we knew that our ultimate goal of reliable, consistent power would be obtained with an AVO Turbo World turbo kit, and of course, for a smoother ride we needed a set of Eibach Springs R2 Coil overs. Our team had an opportunity to talk to Paul Hansen of Avo, and Tanner Hallihan of Eibach and quickly found two companies we wanted to work with. We knew we wanted our car to be more than a “park-and-jeez” show car, no offense to anyone with the totally awesome show builds, we wanted to push the limits and make her a combination of a daily driver, sexy enough to still be part of some car shows, but what we really wanted was for the car to be a TRACK BEAST!

Now that we have talked about the performance aspects of the car, lets talk about what makes her sexy. Like we mention she is Raven Black, we decide to keep the stock color because it really was a deciding factor at the time of purchase. We installed a TRD body kit, to maintain the perfect body lines that the car already had and to gain some aerodynamic performance. Speaking of aero, since we knew we would be trying to reach high power, we installed a Rocket Bunny wing. As we researched we all agreed that wing was definitely made with the shape of the car in mind, it looks so good and we had to get our hands on it; problem is, the wing itself is so big and so heavy, and without the ability to change the angles of attack, sadly it does not work for our purposes. The bunny tail is still on the car because we love it so much but we did have to go a different direction with it. We partnered up with A-Spec Racing and came up with our very own design for a wing that fits our needs and still looks good. We are patiently waiting for the design to come to life and can’t wait to share it.

Let’s talk WHEELS! I will start by reenforcing that we are not hatting on the show cars because we have attended several, and luckily that’s were we have meet some of our sponsors. While attending T.O.R.C in Long Beach we met with Jim Wang from WedsSports who assisted us with obtaining a set of their newly released SA-15R wheels 17x9.5 with a 48 offset. With big wheels, come big tires! We wrapped our Weds with Hankook RS3 275-35-18 for a meaty squared set up.

A few other changes to Raven are, JDM clear side markers, a full LED lighting kit by Gluxlite, blacked out taillights done by us, color matched headlight done by us also, carbon fiber wrapped hood and trunk, and we can’t forget the stickers +5 HP per sticker!

So we are not heavily modified, but we like it that way! We have not been stopped by the cops yet. (*knocks on wood*) Raven is our daily driver, we are lucky enough to not live in a stop-and-go traffic area, also no huge potholes on the streets, for the most part. We are still working on obtaining a bigger break kit, with our race background you would think that would have been one of the first things we would work on, it wasn’t until the recent 86 Challenge at Fontana Raceway that it really hit us, but we will get to these part in a bit. We have also been working on our own design for an exhaust. Can you tell that we like to take the easy way out and just design our own things, that or Honda Challenge runs strong in our veins, we call Home Depot the Honda Challenge parts store...can you guys imagine why? Again we will share advances as we progress with our many projects. Everyone on our team wishes we could completely dedicate ourselves to working on cars and Raven all day, but sadly we have full time jobs and sometimes its impossible to come home after 10-12 hour work days and still have energy to work some more.

Fast forward again to July 12, 2013, a day before SpoCom to be exact. We had one of the most horrible/exhausting days EVER! A day before that we had gotten word that out turbo kit was detained at customs, IT CAME ALL THE WAY FROM AUSTRALIA!!! So on the 12th we decided that we needed to “divide and conquer.” Half of the team drove to Los Angeles to the DHL port to will call the kit and the other half drove to Barstow to pick up tires because our tire shop decided that we only needed 2 tires...yeah! We will never know the thinking process behind that. With everything that could go wrong, going wrong, we pulled through and did the turbo and coil overs install in 7 hours. After not sleeping for 25 hours and several Monster energy drinks later we debut our baby at SpoCom in Anaheim. Oh did I mention that we mounted the tires 20 minutes before the doors closed for registration, all while driving around like idiots trying to empty our gas tank in an untuned car, fun times! The response we got from the spectators was truly overwhelming, our long sleepless night had paid off at that moment. We had a blast at the show, although we really hope we don’t have to do it again.

Now, to the reason we finally stopped procrastinating on our build thread, 86 Fest! Raven looked naked next to the MotoIQ’s and Evasive Motorsports Scions at the Turn 14 booth but non the less it was incredible being part of the booth. While at 86 Fest we were also part of the 86 Challenge hosted by Speed Ventures, again, at the Fontana Speedway. By this time our girl had already been tuned by HGMotorsports, 4122 Sorrento Valley Blvd #101, San Diego, CA 92121. Also, for our own records we went back to Bisimoto for some extra dyno pulls, for comparison purposes. Our second time on a track, turbo kit is making 233HP, 186 torque on 5lbs of boost, coil overs, better tires, no wing. We are classified as a Super Modified vehicle and excited as can be to see what numbers we can pull; our driver Jeremy rips the throttle and heads out the pits for the first lap, usually not a slow lap but this was our test run since we were not able to make the actual test runs because the morning of, we were still unsure if we were going to actually run the challenge, (car show placement was not ideal for coming in and out to the track). Our car took 1st place with a 1:58.782! With only 3 laps the entire challenge, we are more than pleased with what Raven achieved. You guys will see why we need a bigger break system if we are planning on continuing with racing, and aiming for more power. Trust us, its just never enough.

Our experience with our build so far has been AMAZING! We are a shop based out of our home garage, all the work that has gone into creating Raven has been done completely by us, of course with the exception of the tuning. All of the sleepless nights, scorching hot days, and extensive hours put into research, are all so worth it. Our team of three, four counting our driver, is always so proud when we talk about our car because our heart and souls have gone into creating her. We all agree that if you are in it for the fame, you are in it for the wrong reason. You gotta be in it for the love of the build, which is why we always appreciate all of the cars, because everyone has their OWN vision for their OWN build. We would like to take the time to thank our sponsors because without their support we would not have gotten this far.

Thanks for still being here after all of that, and enjoy the pics! All the way from the beginning. #tbt

Alejandra Ornelas

[DAMotorsports]

Fresh off the boat!
And later out on our driveway getting the clutched adjusted and the boys playing under the hood and with the exhaust

[DAMotorsports]

2nd Stage:
Window tinting, body kit, wing, PLASTIDIP wheels, painted calipers, and hand painted emblems.

[DAMotorsports]

Baseline dyno and first track day

[DAMotorsports]

Turbo and Coil Over Install

[utekineir]

any update on the seat brackets?

http://www.ft86club.com/forums/showp...8&postcount=88

[DAMotorsports]

Continued

[DAMotorsports]

Spocom...that last one goes out to Bob

[DAMotorsports]

Last one... At 86 Fest and during the challenge

[DAMotorsports]

Dyno charts, just in case anyone is interested. First one is without the turbo

[Kakawate]

Car looks great bruv!

[ZionsWrath]

Nice car but hit up a nude beach and tan them legs before posting full body shots ^_^