November 30, 2010

Day 5 - The Shops

I spent most of the day at the new Black Halo Racing shop, as well as their new partner's shop, Arizona Rotary Rockets. Glenn, the owner of Arizona Rotary Rockets, does some amazing porting work on rotary engines, as seen in the pictures below. That gorgeous, 600+RWHP red FD3S RX-7 is his own car that he built himself, and let me just add that the pictures do not do it any justice. I'm a huge fan of the Japanese specification front bumper from the Spirit R model, and the offset on those Volk CE28N wheels made me crave a set just to have and look at when I got bored.Black Halo's new shop features one full suite that has a large garage section to it that will have all their tools, equipment, lifts etc., to work on customer cars. Next to the work area they have an office space that will have a nice customer waiting room with plenty of product to display, Ray's office, and a dedicated engine building room. Then next to that whole suite is a dedicated garage type suite that Black Halo Racing and Arizona Rotary Rockets will be sharing to store customer cars and various shared tools and equipment.While at the shop, I finally got to meet Jeff (MazdaManiac) and see his RX-8. His engine unfortunately blew during a track event over the weekend. Erick (Easy E1) came by as well, and I basically spent the rest of the day talking shop with the crew. I'll be honest, talking with the crew and meeting everyone in person is a lot different than talking with them in the forums; in a positive way though. They're all good people who know their stuff and have a serious passion for this car and finding ways to produce better, reliable parts for the RX-8 (and more platforms soon to come).Ray truly does inspire me to continue forth with my own goals though. Seeing the amount of work he puts in for the company and his customers, matched with the fact that he's having fun the whole way, leaves something for me to really aim for when I open my own shop.

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