I learned something yesterday. If you spend 150 bucks at the beer store, you get a free T-shirt. I guess I went a little overboard. If anyone is in Charlotte and is jonesing for some good beers, check out Brawley's Beverage on South Blvd. (http://www.brawleysbeverage.com/) They have a superb selection (don't go there to buy Bud Light Lime, OK...they have it, but don't waste their time), and since my family is coming down next week, I wanted to make sure they drank well. So now you know where the rest of the THP store money is going..hehe..

It's winter time in the Carolinas, and the smell of the crisp air means that RG is switching manufacturers. To be fair, it seems obvious that Dodge is looking for an exit strategy, so moving to Toyota is probably a smart move. Good motors, good team support, and I'm sure I'll be bouncing some of thier cars on the 7 post in the coming year. I guess I couldn't avoid the 7 car forever.

Before I take a week off from the blog for Christmas, I wanted to shed some light on the work that needs to be done when you change manufacturers. The most obvious thing that needs to be changed (other than the sticker on the side of the hauler) is the body work. With the COT this is relatively easy. There are 2 nose peices that need to be switched out as well as the tail cover. The rest of the COT bodies are the same between makes, so all the side panels and roof can stay. In fact, all the tail peices are the same between makes too, but for some reason NASCAR insists that all the manufacturers have their own part number for it, so you have to switch that too. If you ever get close to a Cup car, you will see that there are 2 unpainted areas of the nose underneith the LF headlight, and one underneith the RR tail light. This is where the part numbers are stamped into the molds and NASCAR mandates that they be left unpainted so they can be teched. See blue circled region below.

When you switched manufacturers with the old car, the bodies were trickier. The noses were offset and bent around so bad that you usually had to replace alot more peices. Sometimes the amount that the nose was offset from center for maximum downforce was different between models, and then you really had to change alot of the guts. Now that the body shapes are the same it is no big deal.

The other big change is the motor. Obviously the general architecture of Cup motors is the same between makes. However, motor mounting and plumbing will be different. This usually means that each chassis has to go to hard-fab to get new motor mounts put in them. All of the oil lines need to be rerouted, and the cooling strategy and fittings might all be different as well. So each car will need atleast a few new oil and water lines made just to get the cars to fire up again. Basically it's alot of hours and headaches for the mechanics to sort out all the little issues.

From the engineering side, all of the simulation and analysis tools will be different, so there is some effort on that end to get calibrated to the support documentation from Toyota. From what I can tell, the Toyota tools are pretty good and there is a fair amount of sharing between teams. That is not to say that RG will get Kyle Busch's setup every week, but Toyota tries to share car info in a non-offensive way to get all the teams to run better.
It will be a challenge to get the cars sorted out for Daytona, but not as bad as last year with the change a week before the truck left. I look forward to seeing the 7 guys at my shop, and hopefully the change will be for the better.