If you are one of the afflicted you know about the desire to
turn your ride into the vision you have in your head. The wish list, the do nows
and the save fors, maybe it’s a never-ending ongoing list that gets longer
every time you read about what others have done. Maybe you have a very specific
build with specific intentions, either way, getting there is half the fun, the
other half is appreciating what you have created.
So far Heavy Metal Affliction has featured cars from the
community and most of the work has been done by the owners in their own or
borrowed shop space. This week we are going a different direction and exploring
what can be done by experts, with the best of resources, and in some cases
budgets that seem to have no limit. When budget is not part of the question and
the goal of the ultimate car is purely sought after, the results can be out of
this world.
Speedware Motorsports has been tricking out cars for over 18
years, they have a history with air-cooled Porsches as well as anything exotic and provide everything
from ground up fabrications to servicing daily drivers. They can build a
one-off creation that comes from an owners mind, or make recommendations to get
your car ready for some track time. Their experience, expertise and passion for
what they do makes them a top candidate for taking your ride from stock to
wherever you want to go(if you live in the Redmond, WA area). Speedware
Motorsports has done work for some famous people over the years. When I was
visiting, I ran in to former CART driver and kart chassis designer Alex
Zanardi. Now if a guy like this gets his
cars serviced here, you know the quality of work is superb.
I was lucky to spend some time with Shaun Duncan, President
of Speedware Motorsports, he told me about various builds they have done,
showed me around their 25,000 foot facility and shared some of their history.
The inspiration for the business came about when he was having
a hard time finding parts to upgrade his Lotus Super 7 that he raced at the time.
It has since evolved into a complete design and fabrication facility with state
of the art equipment and a running inventory of over $500,000 in racing gear
and parts. Check out the Speedware
Motorsports site and online store for everything from hats and racing
gloves to complete wheel and suspension setups, brakes, racing seats, and more.
They also have a super cool gallery
of just a few of the projects they have done. So, even if you are building your
car in your own shop, they can offer you the right top shelf parts.
Over the next few weeks we will be sharing some stunning
photos taken of incredible cars under the care of Speedware Motorsports. Follow
us on
Twitter and like us on
Facebook (if you haven’t already)
to catch these photos. Trust me, they will be worth checking out. So is this
week’s featured ride, Shaun Duncan’s 1975 Porsche Carrera.
As one might imagine the owner of a shop like Speedware
Motorsports is somewhat afflicted by a love for cars and customizing them. Shaun
has owned many cars over the years but his favorite is his 1975 Porsche Carrera.
He has owned this car for some time and is the second owner. When he got the
car, it had a tired but original 2.7 liter flat-six in it. That was replaced
with a euro 3.0 liter, which is a much stronger and more reliable engine to
begin with, then balanced it, added a cam, and tricked it out. The sound is amazing
coming through stainless SSI headers and stainless Monty twin-exit exhaust. A
lightweight flywheel and that cam make for quick throttle response.
This era of 911 has an extremely long throw shifter and
somewhat clunky gearbox, so Shaun upgraded to a Quaife gearbox and high
performance clutch to get that power to the wheels smoothly and quickly.
One of Speedware Motorsport’s specialties is brakes, suspension, and wheels, so it was only natural to add Koni top adjust shocks with 22mm and
28mm torsion bars. In the braking department he went with correct Brembo large
red calipers. The car rolls on color matched BBS LM forged wheels.
Inside Shaun has been through four sets of racing seats, but
for now has settled on state of the art Sparco carbon DTM RS seats. The
original door panels have been swapped out for RS America black door panels.
It looks gorgeous as you can see in these photos, and that
is the original paint too. The car has never been wrecked or damaged.
There is more to the
car, but let me just leave you with the notion that pretty much everything has
been touched on this car to make it faster.
If you want to discuss this article check out the
HMA
thread. A unicorn to the first person that can tell me what car that last motor pic is from. If you have a ride you would
like us to feature post it in our
request for
community rides thread.
Next week HMA will be taking a break to focus on E3, but we
will be back with more hot rides from the community the week of June 4.