Evergreen Performance Systems, Inc.

We had four of our five EPS Team cars run at this year's Enduro Race.

The two Shelby GT350’s and the K Mustang Coupe are among the over 20 cars that we have done ground up restorations on at EPS in Evergreen, Colorado for vintage racing. The 1965 Coupe belongs to Walt and started out with Walt as an SCCA A Sedan in 1967. It was restored for vintage racing first by us in 1988/89. The 1969 Boss Mustang was a very substandard race car that we started working on in 2004 and built into a race winner.

We developed and built all of the 289 cid engines in the Coupe and Shelbys. We are pleased that the two Shelbys, #189 & #289, came all the way from south Texas to race with us.

What is neat is that all 5 of the cars and their engines are built to comply strictly with their applicable 1960’s SCCA rules. They race as pure Vintage Race Cars and not as so called “improved” cars. It hasn’t hurt their performance.

At right are the cars with drivers and crews:

Top row, left to right: Eric Deitz with Mighty Falcon crew, Chad Flesche (an all-around great, valuable helper on all cars), Chip Hane, Keith Davidson, Walt, Jeff Garrett (who is a valuable help and building a '67 Vintage Race car with EPS help and parts), Tony Penn (a Brit over to help with Mighty falcon).
Lower row, left to right: Brad Leach, Roy Allen, & Charlie Jones.

And now down to the nitty gritty. All of the cars practiced on Friday lapping day. Qualifying was the Saturday first session.

The EPS cars qualified 1,2,3,4. They were, in order, Brad, Charlie, Chip, and Roy. Chip ran the Coupe for just 5 laps to get a good time before a water leak caused a problem.

After qualifying, Chip & Jeff took the Coupe back up to Evergreen to cure the water loss problem.

The Enduro started Sunday morning behind Brad with a field of 46 cars. It was 1 hr 45 min with 2 required 10 minute pit stops. While Roy, Charlie and Brad drove the whole race themselves, Chip decided to let Keith drive the center portion of the race.

With the water leak fixed, Chip was able to start the Enduro. The lead was shared between the 4 EPS cars and the Shelby GT350 of Pat Hogan and Jim Valdez. While running, Chip was aware of a charging problem. After 22 laps, Chip came in and turned the Coupe over to Keith. The photo below shows that pit stop with Charlie in front waiting for Walt to send him out at the end of his 10 minute stop.

At right, Jeff is adding fuel while Chad is checking the front tires. Notice the Anderson plug jumper plugged in the Coupe to make sure it restarted. It did and Keith got about 6 laps running before the battery went dead. The problem turned out to be the voltage regulator. That won’t happen again as Walt has changed the electrical system design to include two switchable regulators.

Brad had a similar problem, but his was the alternator. It was very old and the screws had come loose over the years. No more! The alternators, in addition to the red lock tight we have been using, will now have the bolts safety wired. Brad ran about 15 laps before he came in. A group push got him going again for about 20 total laps before his battery went dead.

So that left it up to the two Texas EPS Shelbys to carry the torch. Charlie took over the lead at lap 33 and held it until lap 36 when Roy took over for the last 4 laps, with Charlie close behind. The two cars ended with just a 22 second gap between them.

Among our group, the cars hold the A Sedan 67 & 72 and the B Production lap records.

It was a great time for all! This was the second year for Team EPS at HPR, and we are all looking forward to next year. There was great camaraderie. The Texas guys really know about that, providing margaritas at various times for the whole group!

Each year, Keith Davidson heads up the planning and puts together this race. He did a great job again this year. His primary guest was John Morton, best known for his successes with the Datsun 510 pro TransAm series cars. John and others did a fantastic job at the dinner Saturday night. John, in particular, had a lot of great stories. Most of which I had never heard before. There is a race group for just Trans Am type sedans. Our Coupe was on the EPS rotisserie getting freshened up, so our representative was Brad Leach with his ‘69 Boss car.

As in the Enduro, Brad was on the pole.

During the race, Brad and Pat Hogan in his Rusty Jowett Camaro went at it tooth & nail. Pat was only .38 seconds behind Brad at the finish.

This was Brad’s first win. He was kind enough to say after the race, “EPS did the initial construction and set up of my ’69 Boss 302 race car in 2004, and I have relied on them exclusively for on-going enhancement, tuning, maintenance, and track support ever since. Their stuff really works. You can feel it in the seat of your pants, and you can see it in the lap results. Thanks Chip & Walt!”

Like at HPR, the two Sedans hold the 67 & 72 A Sedan records and the #289 Shelby holds the B Production one at Pueblo.

This is second oldest event in the US. It is second only to the Indy 500 and has recently included Vintage Road Race & Rally cars. Keith Davidson’s EPS Team ‘63 Vintage Road Race Falcon has participated for the past three years. It has won its class in both 2009 & 2010 against some serious professional rally cars. At least one had a NASCAR motor.

The course runs from about 9,000 to 14,000 foot elevation. The road surface consists of asphalt, gravel and dirt. There are virtually no barriers and many serious drop offs of thousands of feet. Practice is divided into thirds of the course.

We were pleased to be invited to support Keith at the initial registration/ tech session and testing from 12,700 feet to the top at 14,000 feet. Practice started at dawn, so we had to be on site before dawn in the dark.

As dawn arrived, we pulled the cold motley crew together for a photo.

From left to right: Rodney Woolnough, Chip Hane, Grant Woolnough, Keith Davidson, and Walt Hane. Rodney & Grant came up from Tasmania just to be here with the Falcon racing Team.

On his way to the top, Keith passes some very sharp drop offs. Glad the EPS suspension works well!

It was quite an accomplishment for Keith to win this event, considering the fact that he is running a low compression period 10 year old EPS 289 engine and stock drive line. Some of the pro drivers had navigators, but not Keith.

Congratulations, Keith!

Well, that is a sample of some of this year’s EPS team racing. Great people and great cars, and a lot of fun!

Let’s get on to some other new items.

SuperFlow Technologies Group of Colorado Springs developed this system for us. It was their first dual, switchable engine & chassis dynamometer system.

It was sure wonderful to rid ourselves of the old pencil recording dyno system and have 9 pages of data in the computer. All of the data can be printed out line by line for each run.

We normally sample every 100 RPM. With a few key strokes we can plot any data. This allows us to plot “before” and “after” test data. We can instantly get average horsepower, torque and other data between any two RPM points. The engine dyno is used mostly for engine break in and R & D development, but it also allows us to check engine components for proper operation while running under simulated racing conditions. Can’t do that at the track! While all of the engines running in cars now are old designs, three new design engines are in process. These take advantage of a lot of recent development. It is tough meeting vintage period rules and still being able to make significant improvements. Thanks to the dynos, we are doing just that.

The photo at right shows the system setup to use the engine dyno. It can be turned around in seconds and set up to run the chassis dyno in the same building.

At left is a photo of one of our 289 engines set up for testing on the engine dyno. Notice the thermocouples that provide recorded temperatures of each of the 8 cylinders. Also the headers are real tri-y type that have been designed to bring the most out of our engines in the important RPM band. This dyno is great for optimizing all of the individual component’s performance.

The Chassis Dyno, shown below is basically a tuning device. We use it on everything from street cars to open track cars, such as the 427 original Cobra below left, to all out race cars like the A Sports racer Lola below right. We have a lot of experience with Holley & Weber carburetors. We have also done a lot with street and SU carburetors, like on British cars.

Well, I think that about brings you up to date. I hope we can bring you another newsletter soon with information on more of our projects and EPS activities.

Best Regards and good motoring from Chip & Walt at EPS!