Prepping the OG Murder Nova to Film Another Season, Testing At The Track, and ShopTruck Update!
Today we join Shawn Ellington in his garage as he gets one of the most popular cars out there the OG Murder Nova ready for a brand new season of racing.
With him of course as always is Phantom and they are about to show us what goes into getting a working car ready for a new season.
Once again Shawn has chosen the OG car for the season and while he still has the possibility to switch cars in between rounds, the fact is that it will cost him spots on America’s List if he does, so chances are he will keep working trying his best to improve the OG Murder Nova so he can avoid switching cars mid-season.
First to get upgraded are the front and rear springs and according to Shawn the new front springs while softer should provide more grip.
At the same time, they decided to go with stiffer springs in the back, which then in turn gets the car sitting way too high in the back for his liking and for it to go faster than it did.
However, as Phantom likes to say, as soon as they had the car about 99% ready they decide to once again change the setup of the rear.
The whole process while tiresome is completely necessary because while these machines are robust and powerful, the fact is that small changes can make the world of difference in any direction so these guys really have to make sure everything is where it needs to be to get the most out of the car.
Every one of these little details like spring stiffness can alter the way the car transfers weight to the rear tires ergo providing better grip or at times, the unwanted opposite.
It’s really funny to hear him talk about how much weight needs to be thrown in the trunk and how the springs are to be set up and do all sorts of measurements only to declare that “Who actually knows what these things do once you let off the button”.
The thing that might strike you strange for this video is the fact that just because of a fitting, Phantom needed to take out the entire transmission. You would think that a race car that has been constructed to be easy to tear down and fix, would not have such a terrible flaw but it apparently does.
The next thing after all these changes is of course testing it all out in order to find out whether the car actually got faster or slower and these guys are doing it at the track.
With them is Daddy Dave with the super clean and super loud Goliath and they are both testing at the track and yet the same night they are going to be racing on the road.
It is always best to test and prepare for the surface that you are going to race on, however, at times the consistency of the track can be the better place to set up the car, especially with such huge changes like totally different spring compression ratio at all four corners.
Many times before we have heard how dedicated these guys are to racing and once again Shawn reminds us of this by telling us that he is missing his son’s game just so he can be here and test, in order to get the OG Murder Nova back up to speed as fast as he can to the best of his abilities, that folks, is a real honest dedication to racing.
We are not going to rob you of the fun which includes estimating if the run was good or not just by watching the video, as they put down a “lap” after “lap” of testing over and over again so play the video and see if you can guess if the car did better or worse before Shawn and Phantom tell you how happy they are with the new setup, enjoy.
