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UPP helps power 2nd fastest car to the top of the Pikes Peak!
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With "Hell Week" behind us we finally have a chance to relax and soak in our accomplishments.
A couple days before the race Le Mans champion Romain Dumas came to us with a damaged intercooler. Another shop had attempted to repair it with JB Weld, but this just wasn't working. So he entrusted us to build him a new intercooler.
The day started like any other day during Hell Week, up at 2:00 AM to be on the mountain by 3:00 AM for practice.
We received the cores overnight by noon on Friday, with the hopes of being able to have one last practice for Romain on Saturday morning.
Thus we began:
We were required to make an intercooler that would fit, with little to no modification, mount up in the same location, using the same inlet/outlet locations......without the car.... Oh, and the core sizes were completely different! Going from a 3" core to a shorter/fatter 4.5" core made things a bit difficult.
We worked through the night and by 6:00 AM Saturday morning we did it.
We even incorporated additional supports internally to keep from blowing out the sides again.
Needless to say, it worked. Romain Dumas ran the mountain in 8:51 winning "King of the Hill" for the 100th running of the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, the 2nd man ever into the 8's, and the 2nd fastest ever on the mountain.
Here you can see a clip of him running, with the UPP custom intercooler just under the scoop.
In addition to building Twin Turbo setups, we are very well known for our roll in the Pikes Peak Hill Climb. This year we were happy to be part of 9 teams on the mountain.
With this year behind us we're already looking forward to next year. With a couple of the open wheel cars looking to go UPP Twin Turbo, and hopefully, just hopefully we can get a Twin Turbo Corvette on the mountain as well.......(Cough Jeremy Cough).....
Cracking work! Can you give any details of the setup? Guessing a turbo'ed K20? What were the dimensions of the intercooler?
I want to say they were 2x 12x18x4.5 cores. It was big...and heavy...We told them they were going to need to adjust their suspension because of the added weight! lol
Boosted K24, only ~600whp. Just a really light car and a good driver.
Yeah the Norma are very good cars. Very nice aero as well even in stock form. I wonder how long it's going to be before we start seeing formula type cars with fully bodywork at pikes? It surely can't be long. The single sweaters have been dominating the hill climb events in the EU for many decades. Would love to hear a cosworth DBF v8 with no silencers screaming up the hill in a light weight single seater!
Looks more like a 24x9x4.5 core to me. That's still pretty big and probably bigger then What some have on their corvette! but then you need all the help you can get at that altitude!
06-29-2016, 03:14 PM
UPP helps power 2nd fastest car to the top of the Pikes Peak!
but then you need all the help you can get at that altitude!