I guess I'm kinda new here...

[dyoopties]

My name is Forrest and I am somewhat new here. Some of you may remember when I was a member long, long ago. Another member suggested that I introduce myself and give a little background.

I have only owned one Miata, but I have always worked around racecars. I started working for Don Istook on his SpeedVision GT Audi S4's when I first got to TCU:




Vipers were my bag for about 2.5 years working for Bobby Archer. It was painful (perhaps some of you know what happened to his business) but traveling with and racing in the Viper Racing League was tons of fun:



I then went to work for Soulspeed in Austin while I was at UT. We did performance suspension work, alignments, and built an E36 ITS racecar. We also did quite a bit of setup on this car which some of you may know:



I then went to work for LG Motorsports to crew for their C5R World Challenge car, but that was a disaster. I got out as quickly as I could.

Jim Hall's crew chief called me and invited me to work for Chaparral in Midland, TX. This was the biggest honor that I could have ever received. For those of you who only know the Chaparral cars from Grand Turismo, Jim Hall is one of the fathers of racecar aerodynamics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaparral_Cars

There I worked to rebuild the 2D, 2E, 2F, 2J racecars as they had been sitting in a barn out in west Texas.







We had the cars transported to Laguna Seca for the Monterey Historics race where I piloted this thing for some parade laps:



Somewhere along the way I picked up a 1999 Miata for HPDE events. It was Turbo'd and had some Koni/Ground Control coilovers and was the most fun street car I have ever owned. Unfortunately it was stolen back in 2006, but thanks to blackzx3_13 and this board I recovered it:



I parted it out and sold some of it but gave a lot of it away to different members in thanks for their support. I then sold the car to Gary at TDR and I believe that it is now a Spec Miata.

Since then I have opened a track prep and performance performance shop in Fort Worth called ProTuning Perormance where I am currently building an E36 M3 track car and my business partner has a 450+ whp Toyota MR2. We would love to have any of the DFW Miata crew at our shop for performance or maintenance work. Hopefully I'll see you guys at the track.

[Nexus Flux]

Welcome, it looks like you have had a blast of a time working on many different race cars.

I have always liked the Chaparral cars especially the big flowing curves like the 2D, or the form-follows-function squareness of the 2J.

[Magma]

Welcome Back, look forward to checking out the shop

[dyoopties]

Thanks guys, I hope you can make it out to our shop even if it is just to say hi.

[Snowdoggie]

Aren't all the Chaparrals in a museum in the Midland/Odessa Area now? I would love to do a Miata Tour up there to look at them.

I used to love those cars when I was a kid. I had a Cox .049 Model of the 2E!

[dyoopties]

Nexus Flux: I see that you have a DC5... I am building an all motor K24a2 for a DC5 as we speak. I'm mostly doing some head work and cams on it before it goes in the car. It should be alot of fun!

[jrj512]

Aren't all the Chaparrals in a museum in the Midland/Odessa Area now?

Yep. They only guaranteed all of them to be there for the first year. After that, it is possible that some will be on loan for other displays/events from time to time.

[dyoopties]

The 2J will do about 40-45 with just it's 55hp snowmobile engine driving the two fans on the rear. They pick up so much debris on the track that a cloud follows behind it. It's pretty rad to see. When I started it up in our pit it blew over all the barricades and everyone's loose clothing within 15 yards of the car.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxBiIDvbYUc

[dyoopties]

The two stroke motor takes lots of ether to get started:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtVWyk5vIgU