- When it comes to import drag cars they don't come much more recognisable
than the Titan Motorsports Copper Supra.
This is a car that has set records right from day one.
It's well know all around the world and TItan and Nero here from Titan
Motorsports have continually rebuilt this car to make it more relevant
to modern technology.
We're here with Nero to talk a little bit about the history of the car.
As well as to find out what's gone into the current iteration of the build.
So Nero let's actually start with the start and you guys have been into 2JZs
and Supras right from the day they were released on the showroom floor.
Can you tell us what records this Copper Supra is best known for.
- You know it's had worlds quickest Supra, world's fastest Supra,
Pro Street Tyre champion, quickest IRS car at one point, quickest six
speed factory Supra transmission car.
It's gone through a lot of variations over the years and kind of each time
the goal is to obviously have a superior competitive platform.
- Now we've obviously seen the drag racing times move very very rapidly,
particularly over the last few years, we've now got a number of 2JZ powered
imports in the 5 second bracket.
And at this point, this particular car is still a 3/4 chassis car so it's got a bit
more weight than some of these full tube frame cars.
You're not really aiming for that 5 second zone with the car but can you tell us
what the car's competing in its current build.
- I mean the car was rebuilt to be, fall in the X275 rules.
And so in the US here we have like a lot of different variations where we can
run the car and a lot of times that boils down to chassis setup,
and turbo size so if we put like the small turbo on like we had on this weekend,
it's legal to the X275.net rules.
If we wanna go to import versus domestic we can put the bigger turbo on,
if we wanna come here like the TX2K, we're allowed to use the bigger turbo
so we have a lot of flexibility with just changing a few little parts.
- Now that X275 class, one of the key parts to that is you're restricted to a 275 wide
radial drag tyre so that's kind of seen as a levelling of the playing field.
But you also mentioned the turbo size limitations.
What compressor wheel are you allowed in that X275 class?
- You're allowed a 88 millimetre turbo.
The rules really start at almost 85 millimetre and they move up and
there's weight additions as you go up in turbo size.
- So what sort of weight do you need to be when you're running that turbo?
- Typically with the 88, 2800 pounds.
- Alright so I wanna go back a little bit again, because you've been in the 2JZ
scene since day one and obviously now we're seeing a lot more competitors
running the billet aluminium blocks.
But can you tell us where you've seen the limitations of the cast iron block?
- Well it's pretty funny because at first we ran a normal cast iron block.
We bored it out 20 or 40 over and ran it just like a normal street motor.
Then we obviously always had head stud limitations, head gasket issues,
as I'm sure a lot of your fans have experienced as well as us.
And so we went to running a half inch head stud.
And that solved a lot of those problems and then you pushed the horsepower
boundary to 1200 to 1400 and you start cracking cylinder liners.
So when you started cracking cylinder liners, you had a drag car we started
doing a half fill, running the water on the top half of the block and through
the head.
- I'll just come back to that, so when you're saying a half fill there,
just for those who aren't aware, you're talking about basically filling
the bottom half of the water jacket there with a grout or essentially a
concrete compound and it sort of improves the rigidity of the bore
and helps stop that cracking.
- Yeah so running literally concrete on the bottom half.
Preferably obviously a concrete that's suited for motorsports and doing
this kind of application.
I can tell you when we started doing it first, actually here at Texas 2K,
we blew the head gasket in testing and we had to go to the Walmart parking lot
and literally buy concrete, mix it up, pull the head off and slowly fill it and
let it settle overnight before we put it all back together.
- We needs must, you do what you have to do but when we say concrete,
there are actually specific block filling compounds and the important part
here is these block filling compounds actually replicate the thermal expansion
rate of cast iron so you're not getting distortion as that block heats up.
Now just wanna come back to the head gasket sealing because in import
drag racing as you've kind of just alluded to, this really is the limiting factor of
how much boost and then how much power you can make.
As you raise the boost pressure, that combustion pressure tries to essentially
lift the head off the block and it leaks out into the coolant passage.
Of course if it gets severe you end up torching the head in the block.
So you've just mentioned there you've gone to a half inch stud to help alleviate
that, are we allowed to know a little bit about the head sealing technology
in terms of what gasket you're running or is that sort of Titan Motorsport secrets?
- So over the years we've run different combinations so the factory MLS gasket,
we ended up having machined and we found that you have to machine it
a very specific way where you don't build a lot of risers into that head
gasket when you machine it.
Otherwise the head basically lifts anyway, it sits up higher.
So we initially started doing that and then over the years we started o ringing
a block and just still running the factory MLS gasket which was a great combination
to run on a street car that's making 1500 to 1800, 2000 horsepower.
And then once we were starting to get to that area, that 2000 plus horsepower,
the range we were again starting to hurt head gaskets quite often.
And we started running a copper gasket, the o ring in the block.
- So that's essentially the sort of top fuel top alcohol technology.
An o ring with a receiver groove, is that what you're saying there?
- Correct yes exactly.
- Alright so let's talk about the turbocharger, you've already said you're running
an 88 millimetre turbocharger, although changing that depending on what
you're actually, what competition you're running.
But again being that you've been here from the start, like this is something
we've seen a lot of advances in the turbo technology.
How has that affected what you've been able to do and particularly at the pointy
end, how has that helped competitors run into that 5 second bracket?
- Well it's been a beautiful thing to be in the turbocharged game for the last
15 plus years.
Before you were limited with a lot of basically truck turbos that were
modified, there wasn't a billet compressor wheels and so forth, there was just cut
down rebalancing machined pieces that were nowhere near the efficiency
of today I mean you couldn't even qualify with two of the turbos that are
2, 3 generations old on the car versus the one big turbo that you could run.
But the engineering that all these manufacturers put in has been
extraordinary.
They've picked up so much aerodynamics.
Some of that's obviously gonna suit different testing through different
machining operations, different technology that's available to us now.
And continue to make the sport grow and continue to improve, even turbocharge
power on OEM side.
I mean now you see, when we started, very few cars came with turbo,
it was like a high performance thing only and now almost every car out there
has turbochargers because it's more efficient, makes great torque,
and those advancements with the OEMs allowing, almost always having
turbochargers is that had a lot more RMD exposure for the manufacturers.
- In terms of this particular car, what sort of boost levels are you running
and what sort of power is it making?
- Se we haven't exactly testing out the power, we think we're right around
2000 with an 88 millimetre maybe completely wicked up.
If, most of the time, X275 type trim, you're probably gonna be more like
1600, 1700.
And again it just boils down to finding that package to make it very efficient
because everybody's limited to the same thing.
Now with the 98 millimetre, we can be making 2500, 2600.
It's got a lot more breathing room, it's a lot more efficient for that package.
- In terms of that tyre though, the 275 radial, I'm assuming it's safe to say
that you're basically traction limited down the track in terms of how
much power you can actually put to the ground?
- Yeah so like it's an interesting deal because the drag radial is extremely good.
In a lot of ways it works better than a slick.
But it's got a narrow window so if you put too much in it, it spins the tyre
and it's much harder to recover and pedal the car to get it A to B.
Where a slick car you can kind of work your way through it and probably
take a quicker run if you have an aborted run.
So setting up the car, the setups are completely different for an X275
tyre and also depends on where you're racing as its track rep's different
So there's a lot of these radial specific events now where their track rep
is killer because they're doing it specifically for radials versus for like
a slick or a street tyre.
- But ultimately with that X275 tyre, you're kind of walking a knife edge
to kind of get the car to perform how it can without overpowering the
track and ending up going into wheel spin.
- Yep exactly, exactly.
Or lifting the front nose up so high that you have to abort the run.
- We've seen that a lot here this weeked too.
OK I wanna just talk about the electronics package controlling that because this
is again another area we've talked about turbo technology and the engine
technology, the electronics is another area we've seen massive advances over
the last couple of decades.
So what are you running in this car and how is that beneficial to you?
- So we run a FuelTech FT600.
We've talked to FuelTech over the years and the guys there are hardcore drag racers.
The owner's a drag racer, all the partners are drag racers.
They really, that's their focus and so they built the product that originally was
really just a Brazil based item for a lot of drag racers there that was user friendly
for somebody who wasn't just a full time tuner, was just an enthusiast,
a package that was easy to use and a lot of the controls, or almost all of them can
be used through the interface, the screen interface that's included
with the ECU.
So it kind of gives you 2 pieces in one box.
It gives you a screen and it gives you a standalone computer.
- It is quite nice with that FuelTech, we haven't had the opportunity to use
one but we've had one through our shop and that touch screen does give
you the ability to make adjustments without needing to pull out a laptop.
And particularly if you're stuck in a staging lane for maybe an hour,
the track can change quite dramatically so it means you don't have to go scrambling
for the laptop to make those changes.
And are there any drag specific, obviously you've just mentioned they
really are focused quite specifically on drag racing although it's not the only
thing you can fit the ECU to but are there any of the sort of drag specific functions
that you're making use of here that you think will really benefit the car?
- You know so with the development we're then starting to put the FuelTech
ECUs in the V8s.
Those guys have developed a lot of packages, lot of anti lag technology,
cut strategies, timing cut strategies, even almost like a traction control
type device.
And then when we went to kind of a medium sized motor, smaller motor,
some of those strategies had to be changed and we worked in
conjunction with Anderson and the team at FuelTech to basically
figure it out, make it work, make it efficient, make it consistent.
- Now you just mentioned traction control and I just wanna touch on that
a little bit.
And again with the X275 tyre being on that tightrope there with traction,
is this something you are using?
Obviously you're launching on the front wheels in the air so a
conventional wheel speed based traction control strategy will never work
but we are seeing a lot of the cars use a profiler for driveshaft speed versus
time, are you using anything like that?
- Yeah we'll use various timing cuts depending on how we feel the
track's gonna be.
We're still learning that package.
I know some of the cars, especially the radial, the bigger tyre cars which are
way more susceptible to almost flipping over, some of them run a height
sensor on the front of the car which when it starts to lift beyond a certain
amount or a certain degree, starts to do again a timing cut strategy.
So there's a lot of different configurations available.
I think it just boils down to what the team's used to and what works for them.
A lot of it also boils down to chassis setup.
If you don't really have a good chassis setup, and the thing often wants
to try to flip itself over, obviously you're more concerned with that
ride height sensor than you are with maybe doing it a different way.
- Now another aspect that I wanna touch on here that is unique here at TX2K
in the 2JZ class is I think you're the only competitor running a clutch
gearbox, you're running the air shifted Liberty 5 speed there.
Now there's some advantages and disadvantages compared to the rest
of the competitors running the likes of a Turbo 400.
Particularly in setup with that slider style clutch, can you talk to us a little
bit about that.
- So we've had Eric on our team for well over a decade and he's a clutch guy,
that's his thing, he's a clutch chassis guy.
So it only was natural for us to take kind of our promod program
that had a clutch, a slipper clutch with a Liberty into this platform,
which is a new venture, nobody else was running a liberty to my knowledge.
But it gives us a lot more control, I mean obviously we have a more narrow
window and these 2Js don't make the torque that a big V8 will.
But so it gives us the ability to really control our power.
It also gives us the ability to change gear ratios a lot more if need be
for different track conditions.
Where like with Turbo 400, Powerglide, whatever ratio you've got in there,
you're kind of stuck with that for the day and also you don't have a lot
of extra converters, you've gotta try to change a car to work versus changing
the power application.
- Safe to say though with the slipper clutch and the Liberty you're really,
your set up has to be on point if you wanna get a time out of the car?
- Yeah I mean it doesn't matter what car it is, it has to be on point or you
have to be able to run the car in a certain window that you've figured out,
the car runs well in.
A lot of that boils down to really the power plan and the tyre and so forth.
We also like it because it's more efficient.
So when you're in a class that's turbo restricted obviously you're trying
to make the most amount of power to the rear wheels as possible and
you are giving up something with a converter car.
- Yeah it's important to mention there that even with a tight converter,
we've seen some data from teams here and at the deep end of the track
they're still seeing slip between probably 3% and 4% if it's really good and it's not
unheard of to see 6%, 7%, 8% or even more slipping and that's worse in the first
half of the track so what that means is you're not actually transferring
all of that torque to the rear wheels.
Another thing I'll just point out for those who aren't aware,
that Liberty air shifter transmission, while it is a manual transmission,
it is purpose built for drag racing.
So it's essentially able to select 2 gears at once on the upshift and then
the lower gear drops out.
The problem with that is that the driver can't really pedal the car,
if he gets out, the gearbox tries to jump into neutral, is that the case there?
- Yeah it will.
- The air shift though does tend to hold it in the gear a little bit better than
the manually shifted Liberty?
- It will try to hold it in the gear.
We used to, back in the day literally when we had a shifter, they would
physically hold it in gear and it would be pushing against you trying to
force itself out.
So yeah there's a little bit of trickery there I guess to try to be able to make
a run that's an aborted run.
I mean quite often depending on how bad the run is, it may just
drop it out in neutral and you're just kind of coasting.
- Alright now given the current setup of the car, in the X275 class where you're
running 8th mile restricted on the turbo, what sort of ET on the 8th are you
expecting the car's capable of?
- I think it's easily capable of going into the 30s.
- We're talking 4.30s here?
- 4.30s, yep 4.30s, I know that to go to some of these big events like the one
we're going to next weekend, Sweet 16, some of these big payout events,
I think you're gonna have to run at least a few 4.30s to be consistent.
That all boils down to track rep.
At the last Lights Out race, 4.39 was the number 1 qualifier.
So I expect that to be much lower, a lot more people in the 4.30s this
coming weekend.
- And here at a 1/4 mile event where you aren't restricted on turbo,
are you still running that 275 radial, what sort of ET and mile an hour
are you expecting the car's capable of?
- I think here if we can make a good run, car's capable of going about 6.80 at 215.
- Look Nero it's been great to get some insight into a car that I've definitely
followed for my whole career.
We wish you all the best for eliminations here at TX2K and thanks for the chat.
- Yeah thank you very much.
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