On the Road, Again

I spend some time in Motor City.

I headed out on Wednesday morning to Detroit and spent the past two days submerged in a couple of tech stories and visiting some friends. The first leg of my trip, I stopped at Livernois Motorsports to cover two engine build ups for future MM&FF tech stories. Then I headed out to see some friends and finally I am sitting in my hotel room near Milan Dragway awaiting the start of the NMRA Ford Nationals event there this weekend.

It has been quite awhile since I visited Livernois Motorsports, I believe it was around the winter of 2001. Wow, have things changed at that facility. The Motorsport division used to share the building with Livernois Vehicle Development, the parent company of Livernois Motorsports. Since then, both segments have grown tremendously. The Vehicle Development group (which does prototype and contract work for Ford Motor Company) has moved on to a gigantic facility down the road and Motorsport took over the entire building. Livernois Motorsports is an impressive operation with a giant machine shop, clean assembly rooms, dyno facility (engine dyno, Dynojet chassis dyno, and Mustang Dyno), cylinder head porting and assembly rooms, and giant shop that caters to Mustangs, LS1 cars, and other cool hot rods.

I worked with Mike Shropp and Rick LeBlanc to cover the build up of two modular engines that will be hitting the pages of MM&FF in the coming months. I was very impressed with the size of the operation and how smooth things run in the engine shop. I was also amazed to hear that Livernois not only does retail crate engine sales, but they also supply a host of Mustang shops through a dealer network that they setup.

As I walked through the shop, I stopped to check out Dan Millen's sweet 2002 Mustang GT. I remember seeing this car being built at Skinny Kid Race Cars back in the winter of 2001. The car certainly has some miles logged on it through the years and currently runs 6.80s at 212 mph in NMRA Pro Outlaw 10.5 competition. The team was readying the car for this weekend's NMRA Milan event as they are shooting for a championship this season.

Another white Stang that caught my eye was Livernois Motorsports' new project vehicle, a 2007 Mustang GT. The crew at Livernois doesn't mess around, the car was all ready fitted with a stroker Three-Valve engine and a Whipple blower. It is backed by an automatic transmission and with barely any boost, they have run 11.50 on 20-inch Nitto Drag Radial tires. Millen and LeBlanc are gonna turn up the boost real soon.

The sun is finally out and I am heading out to the track. And if you are local to Milan, we will see you out there!