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All posts for the month November, 2011

Road Atlanta Nov 2011 Coverage

Posted by Reid on November 29, 2011
Posted in: Shop News.

For the second weekend in a row the Forged Performance Motorsports Team made the short 45 minute trip to Braselton, GA for the final Chin Motorsports event at Road Atlanta for 2011. This marks the final track day that we will be attending in 2011 and we can’t think of a better place to cap off the year than Road Atlanta. We checked in Saturday morning and the team immediately begin unloading and setting up our paddock area. As the cars made their way to tech inspection, I had a chance to setup my gear and prepped for a couple days of media coverage. Along with our shop cars we had two Nissan 370Z’s, a street driven GT-R, and Roy’s always impressive Lexus LF-A. This outstanding collection of hardware attracted crowds all weekend long.

Throughout the day, the Forged Performance cars performed marvelously, which gave me many opportunities to capture some great shots and video clips. As the day came to a close we were informed that Chris Harris, a “bloke” from the UK that writes and tests “motorcars” for the British magazine EVO would be the guest speaker at that evenings dinner party.

Chris is a well known international race car driver and journalist with loads of experience on dozens of European circuits and has the dream job of testing some of the best supercars in the world and getting paid to write about it.

We assembled our team and made our way over to a local Mexican restaurant for dinner, drinks and a Q&A session with Chris. After everyone was done eating Chris made his way to the front of the room and introduced himself with a little background on his career as a driver and journalist. He told us that we was very impressed with Road Atlanta and marveled at the danger and hazards that the drivers must contend with. The Q&A session got very interesting with some intense questions about the differences in tracks from the UK to the States, how manufacturers do business, Top Gear UK, and most notably, some of the debauchery Chris was involved in while testing a Bugatti Veyron for 24 hours. Details? We were sworn to secrecy.

Sunday we continued to enjoy dry and cool track conditions. Perfect for very fast lap times. At 10am Sharif announced that he was taking Chris Harris out for a ride a long in the Lexus LFA. Chris and Sharif agree on many things, including that the Lexus LFA is the best OEM driving experience of any production car in existence.

Hearing this I grabbed my camera and headed out to set up to get video of the exotic supercar getting hammered around Road Atlanta. Keep an eye out for that video! As the final 2011 Road Atlanta event for Forged Performance came to a close this Thanksgiving Weekend we always reflect on how fortunate we are to have such great customers and friends to share these experiences with.

You can see additional photos on the Forged Performance Flickr Page

MVP Track Event: GT3RS, GT-R, Viper and Aventador Wallpapers

Posted by Reid on November 23, 2011
Posted in: Shop News.

Last weekend the Forged Performance Motorsports Team visited Road Atlanta for the MVP High Performance Driving Education Track Event. Our weekend started off Friday afternoon by loading up our enclosed two car hauler with a pair of Nissan GT-R’s! In addition to the familiar Forged/Catesby OLOA GT-R, we also brought a brand spanking new 2012 Black Edition that had just arrived from a dealership in Texas. After this track test, the car was put back on a hauler and shipped to the customer down in Florida. You have to admire a man that knows how to properly break in his brand new GT-R with a thorough track test and looked to Forged Performance to setup his GT-R, also for OLOA 2012. It’s good to see people from all across the country using our track experience, coaching, and services to help them be successful on the track AND the street. Look for Sharif’s upcoming track writeup shortly as we didn’t change a whole lot on this particular GT-R but the laptimes were impressive.

After two days of intense 3 lap blasts of testing in both dry and wet conditions we were able to ensure that both GT-R’s were more than ready to tackle the extremely hard conditions of the One Lap of America race. While we were “at work” we still managed to meet with many friends and customers and thoroughly enjoyed our weekend doing what we are passionate about. I also managed to get photos of many of the very impressive high end sports cars that called Road Atlanta home for the majority of this past weekend. Porsche, Ferrari, Lamborghini, GT-R, Z06 and Viper were all seen on track.

You can always stay up to date on future events that we will be attending by clicking the “like” button here: Forged Performance Facebook Page

And if you are interesting in getting involved in track days and motorsports activities, don’t hesitate to email or call any one of our staff. We know just how to get you started…from Novice to Expert.

You can see additional photos on the Forged Performance Flickr Page

Nissan GT-R:
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Porsche GT3RS:
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Dodge Viper:
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Lamborghini Aventador: As requested, these have been removed.

Black Friday Super Sale!

Posted by Reid on November 22, 2011
Posted in: Shop News.

Forged Performance wants to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving. In the spirit of the holiday season we are kicking up our Black Friday sale by several notches.

We are going to make this so easy that even a caveman can do it. 10% off our entire online store for the next 4 days…period. No gimmicks, no exclusions, no selected items, or prohibited brands. It’s 10% off everything!! This can translate into hundreds and even thousands of dollars in saving on all the top brands we carry. We’ve never done this before, and we are probably going to get in trouble for it so act fast!

FORGED PERFORMANCE WEBSTORE

If you have been on the fence about purchasing that turbo upgrade, coilovers, wheels, sway bars, or even complete crate engines, then NOW is the time! Take advantage of our Black Friday Sale up until Friday Nov 25th at midnight.

2012 GT-R Black Edition FP600

Posted by Reid on November 15, 2011
Posted in: Product News, Shop News.

Last week, we were contacted by a return customer that owns a BMW M3 informing us that he has added a 2012 Nissan GT-R Black Edition to his stable. He immediately wanted to schedule a date for his GT-R to be dropped off at our location for round one of upgrades. The car arrived at our shop with a little over 300 miles on the odometer and that new car smell still floating around the interior.

As most of you know, for the 2012 model year the Nissan GT-R received a significant update from the manufacturer. Front and rear bumpers were changed improving aerodynamics and brake cooling efficiency. Extra carbon-composite braces are included from the factory for a more rigid chassis and caster is increased from 5 to 6 degrees to improve the cars stability at high speeds. Combine further OEM suspension tweaks and the fact that the 2012 GT-R roars to life with an additional 45 HP more than its previous sub-generation and you have a factory car that is capable of embarrassing the most expensive and exclusive super cars. For those that want to stand out even further on their commute to work there is the very limited and sought after “Black Edition” which includes 20 inch Ray’s forged wheels and red accents on the beautiful Recaro branded seats and interior panels.

While the 2012 model has many improvements in factory trim over previous years, one thing has stayed consistent: There is more power and trq to be had with upgrades and ECU tuning. The baseline (with mods, no tuning) dyno graph, which you can see below tells a horrid story of erratic air to fuel ratio and sub-par mid range power. Prior to tuning, the car was unable to make a clean pull to redline and started missing at high RPM. Sharif had to abort the baseline runs, and he went straight into the custom ECU tuning that he’s known for. While the car makes strong power from the factory the area “under the curve” is lacking as is the throttle response. This is one thing that the owner wanted to address when modifying his GT-R. The game plan was pretty simple and straight forward, performance oriented upgrades without sacrificing the smooth drive-ability and reliability that comes with a brand new car. With this goal in mind, we added the following to the GT-R’s already potent platform:

• Cobb Tuning Intakes
• AMS Downpipes
• CBRD 90mm Y-Pipe
• Greddy Power Extreme Exhaust
• Forged Performance Custom ECU Calibration using Cobb Accessport

With Sharif leaning on the keyboard, he completely transformed the car from docile to insane throttle response, horsepower, and torque resulting in a net increase of 31whp and even more impressively 85lb/ft of torque. With the higher OEM boost from the factory Nissan didn’t leave as much on the table with respect to horsepower, but left plenty in the torque and midrange department. The all important area on the curve is night and day and translates into one fast GT-R on the street! Keep in mind, our baseline included the bolt on power adders above. A typical bone stock 2012 GT-R produces about 430-440 whp on our dyno and for reference, our Dyno Dynamics reads about 10% lower than most Dyno Jet’s…sometimes even lower. For your enjoyment, we added several different dyno charts that depict power, torque, air fuel ratio, and even boost pressure. You can see it’s quite an improvement.

With this combination we were able to return the car back to our customer with more horsepower, better mid range torque and smoother driveability than what the factory offers. All without changing the character of the car or introducing any excessive noise or harshness to the package.

We like the 2012 BE so much, that Sharif and Ryan and a handful of our customers will be purchasing the 2013 in Jan! 2013 is looking to be an even more exciting year for us!

Thanks for looking.

HP and A/F Ratio of OEM Tune vs FP ECU Calibration:

HP and TQ:

HP and Boost:

#003 Lexus LFA Featured at Road Atlanta

Posted by Reid on November 14, 2011
Posted in: Shop News.

As many of you know, one of our GT-R clients also owns the first retail delivered LFA in the world, affectionately labeled #003. The first two cars went to Toyota insiders. Roy has become a good friend over the years and unlike many supercar owners, he actually uses his cars on track and on the street. His LFA is not a garage queen by any means. Every now and then he gives me the the unique privilege of driving his LFA on track and on one such occasion at Road Atlanta we decided to bring Zak Kerbelis with us to do some filming. It’s not often I am handed the keys to a $400K irreplaceable super car and told to kill it, and fortunately we had Zak on hand to film. By way of introduction, Zachary is only 18 years of old, but has produced some of the most amazing video coverage of Formula DRIFT and has quite a talent for film and video editing.

In addition to Roy, I wanted to give special appreciation to Mark and Maria of Chin Motorsports for graciously providing the track time, and another good friend and fellow GT-R owner Paul McElroy for providing the chase car footage.

Enjoy, and we’ll see you all on the track again soon!

Regards,
Sharif Abdelbaset
Founder-GM-Tuner/Forged Performance