Alex Lichliter NST 86 - 2024 Formula Drift New Jersey Recap

#FDNJ – Event Recap
I’m going to start off this recap a little differently than previous ones. This is to help depict what ended up being the most challenging round of Formula Drift in my entire 4-year career. 

Formula Drift has a rule that states: ”Track rental and testing is prohibited 14 calendar days prior to the start of Formula Drift practice at that event track.” All the drivers in FD come from all over the world. So if you were to come to a track privately, let’s just say three days before the event started and got a bunch of practice, this would be considered an unfair advantage to the other drivers. But there’s nothing in the rulebook about day 15. For this round, I went to Englishtown 15 days before FD kicked off (June 4th). This allows me to dial in my gearing, suspension settings, sway bars, etc. The idea is that if I get this all sorted out 15 days before the event, I can spend less time dialing in the car and focus more on driving when we get to FD in two weeks. During testing, the car was down on power. We realized Intake Air Temperatures (IAT) were high, and discovered that the electric water pump for the supercharger wasn’t flowing correctly. We replaced the bad pump with a backup spare (thanks Trevor). We were excited to see better performance after the repair, but the car was still down on power. In our efforts to diagnose it, the motor ended up BLOWING UP! Cylinder 7 piston exploded into a million pieces all in the engine. We packed up the car and came home sad…

In hindsight, we now have 14 days to come up with a solution. My car has a 5.3lt LS engine in it. It has stock pistons, stock rods, stock valves, etc. It only has a few upgrades in it (pushrods, trunnion bearings, and a cam). It was put in back in 2016, lasting EIGHT YEARS in FD PRO/AM & PROSPEC (supercharged for 7 of those years). This motor doesn’t owe me a single thing. As much as we LOVE to upgrade parts when they break, getting a replacement 5.3lt LS sounds the fastest route to go. Getting a motor that I know “this bolt goes here” & “that connector plugs in here,” will minimize the hiccups along the way. To better ensure this method, I chose to purchase a brand new 5.3lt LS from Summit Racing. This engine is brand new, very similar build to my old engine (stock pistons, stock rods, stock valves, etc). It does have a cam in it, and it makes 450hp. I ordered it on June 5th (the day after my motor blew). Summit estimated that I would receive the motor on Weds, June 12th. So I had one week to remove the old blown up motor, and prepare for the new engine. Upon disassembly, I discovered that the Magnuson Supercharger had a broken IAT sensor, needed replacement plenum gaskets, and was missing half of the RTV that holds the heat exchanger in place causing hot air to surpass around the cooler giving higher IAT’s. So I had to do a mini rebuild to my supercharger.

Weds comes, and the tracking is not showing any updates. After endless phone calls, the only thing I was told was that my motor was on some truck in America and it would show up anywhere from weds the 12th (which we knew that wasn’t going to happen) to Tues the 18th (which that’s not an option because we have to be at FD on weds the 19th). I contemplated going to Nashville and purchasing a completely different motor, but was running into too many logistics about that. Finally got a friend to source the Summit motor and discovered it would be in Delaware the next day (Thurs 13th). So I choose to go retrieve it mid-day Thursday, bring it home, get it on a motor stand and prepare for tear down. I had to tear the brand new motor down to put head studs in it. This Summit motor came with head bolts and studs are required for boosted applications. We also swapped my chrome molly push rods and rocker arms over since they had upgraded trunnion bearings in them. After tossing new head gaskets on it, the engine assembly was completed, the night had ended around 2am. Friday I went to install the motor and trans together to put them back in the car. unfortunately, the motor and trans did not mate well and fighting it all night, I threw in the towel around 2am. Saturday, we finally get the motor and trans together and in the car. It's time to fire up the new engine! After many cranks, we got it to start and it ran horribly. This resulted in another 3am night.

Sunday, we complete most of the work and are ready for dyno tune on Monday at InsaneWayz performance shop in VA @3pm. The car continued to run horribly. InsaneWayz thought we should put the old push rods/rocker arms back in (which I left home in MD) and also confirm timing was correct. We decided to take it back to MD Monday night with no tune to diagnose what was happening. Monday night we tear down the front end of the motor and confirm timing. We also swap rods/rockers. Motor still runs bad. Another 3am night. Tuesday, we are limited with assistance and decided to take the car back down to VA for the tune and hope to diagnose it correctly at the shop. After extensive checks, we determine that the even side of the motor (bank 2) didn’t have spark or fuel. The electrical connector for the ignition coils ground wire had failed. It had a break in the wire, and we ran a jumper from the odd side to the even side to give it proper ground. THE CAR RUNS! Finally! Excited with joy, but only an hour away from dyno tune so it was time to button it up and be ready. We decided to swap the Summit rods/rockers out and put my performance ones in from the previous motor. Car runs horribly again. Using an extremely large micrometer, the push rods are different length. The Summit motor has 7.2” and the old motor had 7.4” so we swap the Summit parts back in and are now ready for dyno @6pm. Get on the dyno, and discover that the fuel pump was losing fuel pressure under boost. This is causing the motor to run lean, and was probably the reason for the original engine blowing up. We had to pause the dyno tuning and put a new fuel pump into the fuel tank. Also had to address some wiring as well. Fuel pump fixes fuel pressure issues and we are able to continue forth with the dyno. Another limitation presents itself. Now we are starting to slip the clutch on the dyno. The tuner had to stop tuning once the clutch started to slip to attempt to let the car be drivable at FD. We left Insanewayz at 1am, getting home at 3am.

​It’s now early on Wednesday morning. We are supposed to be at FD and we haven’t even loaded up the trailer/tires/clothes. We somehow finish packing and are on the road by 1pm. Every single night that I have depicted to you was only made possible by my friends, family, and teammates who came and helped out till 3am every night to get me to FD. Absolutely insane that everyone rallied with me and chose to push their mind/bodies to the extreme. I truly am the luckiest guy in the world and I love everyone who has helped me in my most valuable time in my racing career. 

Weds – Load in
We arrive at Englishtown, NJ around 5:30pm. It's 95 degrees. Lost looking for our assigned pit space, we discover by the luck of the drift gods that we are pitted over on the PRO side. This has never happened to us before. It appeared that there was only about 6 PROSPEC drivers pitted on the PRO side and this was a fantastic marketing spot for us. I’m excited for the increase of foot traffic, making our location a wonderful opportunity to sell merch, engage with fans, etc. This stimulated good vibes amongst all of us on the team. Being that we all live so close to this round, each teammate had different sleeping arrangements. A few of my guys were planning to drift on Sunday funday at ProBroDown so they drove their own trucks/trailers with their drift cars. Most of us camped for the weekend. With scrambling to get to FD, there were a lot of things that still needed to be done. The car needed a nut and bolt check, we had to set up our pits. Around 9pm, it was discussed that the slipping clutch should be talked about. By midnight, we decided to pull the trans and replace the clutch. The stubborn pilot bearing and lack of sleep from endless nights made for a long night. I went to bed at 4am. The guys, 5:30am. 

Thurs – Practice / Seeding Bracket
The day started early with a driver's meeting at 7:30am. Everyone was drained. But everyone was in high spirits, as the car was now completely ready! Energy drinks for everyone, the breakfast of champions! It's 96 degrees today, and everyone is feeling it.  Practice started at 10:15am. It was 90 mins long, followed by a break, then a second practice for another 90 mins giving us a total of 3hrs of practice before the Seeding Bracket Battles. Every single time we got in line to go do a practice lap, once we entered the burnout box to scrub tires, we ripped off the serpentine belt. During the total of 3 hours, we went through 3 belts. We tried everything. We swapped all pulleys on the tensioner and idler. We replaced the brand new tensioner with another spare as a precaution. We determined that our brand new OEM crank pulley that came with the new motor, was wobbling while running. We also discovered that the alternator bracket had a hairline crack in it causing the alternator and the idler pulley to slightly move under load. We attempted to weld it, but it was missing alignment shims. We tried manufacturing those shims trackside. We even tried purposely cutting the belt from a 6 rib to a 5 rib just to see if it would stay on. But despite all of our efforts, we simply just ran out of time. We were scheduled to battle Justin Chestnut in the Seeding Bracket and we had to defer. We had to call it, and our weekend was officially over.

Friday – Top 32
Spirits were down. Temperature was 97 degrees. The team feels defeated. Of course they want me to be on the podium, but I just wanted to reward them by showing them they had fixed the car and could be raced on the track! Just seeing that would have yielded some form of accomplishment. Later in the evening, I did participate in the autograph signing for the fans at 5:15pm. I always truly love rapidly engaging with the vast amount of people that come through the line.

Saturday – PRO Competition 
PROSPEC no longer participates in scheduled activities on Saturdays. The day was spent repairing the car and attempting to get it ready for ProBroDown on Sunday. The last thing we needed to get the car right was that alternator bracket which I was unable to source in time. This confirms that I cannot drive on Sunday either. This was the hottest day at 98 degrees.

Sunday – ProBroDown
Typically, at every FD event, Sunday is funday. If a FD driver is local, or wants to hang out an additional day, we can drift with local sanction that runs events at that track throughout the year.  This is a neat experience because local grassroots drivers can register to drift that day, and the FD drivers drift with them. I remember when I was a grassroots driver and this was my favorite event of the year! I would be able to drift with my role models! It was just the coolest thing. Now that I am in FD, I’m so excited to do this, however, with my car still throwing belts until I can get an alternator bracket, I’m stuck spectating once again. Two of my crew mates have their own drift cars with them, so I decided to switch roles and be their mechanics. This made me feel good, considering the weekend. We left around 5pm and made a stop on the way home to get an alternator bracket. We arrived back home in Maryland around midnight and I’m officially, 100% drained.
​
*Monday I unload everything and put the replacement alternator bracket on. It took about 15 mins to complete, the car is fixed and no longer throwing any belts.

WORDS: Alex Lichliter
PHOTOS: @ignition_source_tv, @nickelbag_media

NST - NonStopTuning
www.NonStopTuning.com