And so it begins...

I've officially gone off the deep end...

Sunday I drove my CS from Houston to Kansas City to drop it off with Stephen Kaspar at Imagine Auto to have a 3.8l X51 crate motor shoehorned in. Thats just the FIRST part of process I've kicked off though... Once I get the motor swapped out and put a couple thousand miles on it it's going right back to Stephen to have his supercharger kit for the 3.8 motor crammed in. The kit has been around awhile but it will take some customization of the plumbing to make everything fit. The upgraded X51 should get me around 400 crank HP, and our ballpark for the SC kit is around 530+ crank HP! SCHWEET!

BUT, thats STILL not the end of my madness...

Once the motor work is done I'm taking it to a shop in GA called 'Patritti' to have Patrick carry out a Carbon Kevlar widebody conversion which is expected to take 2-3 months. He's has conversions for the 911 and Boxster but mine will be the first Cayman so I'm working with him to get just the right look as well as ensuring we incorporate all the right air intakes for my supercharged version. It'll have styling cues from the Carrera GT and GT2 blended with the Cayman along with a 4" wider front and a 7" wider rear to incorporate 255 series tires on the front 19x9.5" rim, and 335 series tires on a 20x12.5" rear. I already have Bilstein PSS9 coil evers and H&R sway bars front and back, and we're planning on camber plates to ensure we have enough adjustability to dial in that massive rubber with an agressive street alignment.

The approximately 800 mile drive from Houston to KC was uneventful and I was making pretty good time right up until I crossed into Kansas and drove right into a massive storm front moving through that had high winds, rain coming down sideways, and the temp dropped from the high 60's down to the mid 30's. Blech! My average speed dropped from 85 to 50... Needless to say the last 3 hrs of the trip SUCKED. Because of the very real possibility of ice/snow overnight I wanted to get all the way to KC and spend the night in a hotel 1 exit away from iA to ensure I could drop the car off with them first thing monday morning so I had to press on in the crappy conditions. Luckily I had new tires on that were broken in but had full tread depth. I was getting passed by semi's and a few cars, BUT I was also seeing quite a few of those cars spun off the road sitting in the median waiting on emergency services to pull them out. I played it safe and checked into my target hotel at 10PM.

My car was on the lift and having stuff pulled off by noon on monday! I have some initial picts which I'll upload in the gallery (ITMerc's descent into madness...) and link to here. Stephen will also be taking picts and sending them to me so I can document things here. Oh! European Car Mag is also doing an article on the whole process too which is awesome!

Stay tuned...