I had a good time at the Trans Am & SVRA race in Sebring.  I finally got to speak with Andy Lally (TA President), Aaron Coalwell (TA Technical Director) & Rob Elson (SVRA Technical Director) in person.  We've talked many times via phone & email about our new Race-Warriors for the Trans Am classes & Vintage-Warriors for the SVRA Group 10 racing.

I got to catch up briefly with Thomas Merrill (2022 TA2 Champion).  Thomas was in my driver development program several years back. He raced in Formula 2000 with Neil Porter under our umbrella & even ran a couple USA Midget races in my cars. Great racer. Great young man. He runs for Mike Cope Race Cars in the TA2 series. 

Chatted with Jeff Jefferson who has a great new race car program with the Trans Am series called TA Cup (TAC). They are building TA2 style race cars with full on 900HP NASCAR Cup engines. Great Series & a less money than a new Trans Am Race car. Which, by the way, I learned is just under $600k turn key. 


Photo courtesy of GoTransAm.com

I am confident a smart racer with fab skills & a shop can build a brand new Race-Warrior Trans Am Race car for under $300k, turn key. If they have it built by a shop, expect $400k. A lot of money ... but still $200k less than current sources. HERE is the link to our TA Race-Warrior Package. This is my all new design, with 11 advantages over the current competition. I am 100% confident the TA Race-Warrior can not only run up front out of the box, but win races with the right driver. Tuning assistance provided, of course. 

There are two other cool classes for Tube Chassis Race Cars in the Trans Am series ... XGT & SGT. 

XGT is basically GT1. We can run 850-900HP V8 engines (Carbs & No Electronics), 5-15 year old Trans Am 80.65" bodies & Trans Am level aero (wing & splitter).  The TA Race-Warrior is what I recommend for building a car for XGT. It can also be raced in SCCA GT1.  It makes it a easy & competitive transition if the Racer decides to start in XGT & step up to TA1 when they're ready. Only the silhouette body needs to be changed to a newer model for TA1.

SGT is similar in speed to SCCA GT2 & Trans Am TA2.  These run a 4-barrel, restricted V8 & make about 600-625HP. This class allows both 5-15 year old Trans Am 80.65" bodies @ 2950# or 79" TA2 bodies @ 2900#. I designed two specific chassis packages for this class. One for the 80.65" TA body & one for the 79" TA2 body. See HERE. A smart racer with fab skills & a shop can build a brand new GTS Race-Warrior for Trans Am SGT racing for under $200k, turn key. If they have it built by a shop, expect $300k. Similar to a turn key TA2 race car from one of the top shops. 

A big deal was meeting with a picking up a couple of top race car builders to build Turn-Key Race-Warriors & Vintage-Warriors for RSRT clients.  I already knew of them, but got to see their race cars & handi-work up close.  These new "Authorized Warrior Builders" will be listed in the updated catalogs coming soon.

Final Race results from TA, TAC, XGT, SGT & GT1 are all HERE.

Quote from: Ryan Kennedy on Mar 14, 2026, 01:53 PMIdk what your plans are for alignment strategy, but I am trying to make it to where I can do it accurately by myself. Rolling the car on and off of a ramp setup to allow the suspension to settle isn't something I'll be able to do by myself. My first thought was slip plates under all 4 corners, or do the front only with the rear scale pads leveled to match the additional height of the scale pad. They're pricey and now that you have slip plates, what else can you use them for other than alignments...not much.

Ryan, you  called them "Slip Plates." We call them grease plates. We'd take some .040" aluminum (only because it was plentiful in our shop) & shear 4 16"x16" plates. Then we'd spread grease evenly & slap together 2 of the plates to make a grease sandwich.

If you have a relatively flat surface, you simply roll the front tires onto these grease plates. As you make changes, the grease plates allow the front tires to glide or slip as needed for zero bind. These are not needed in the rear. 

As far as scaling & aligning the front end at the same time, we did this on either scale stands with roll off runners, or a scale platen.  We uses the grease plates on the front scales.  See images





On the scale platen above, we added roll off runners in front of the front scales.  That way we could roll the car forward & back. The grease plates always went under the front tires for alignment purposes.  But some guys like to put them under the rear tires as well to ensure there is no tire bind messing with with your scale numbers.

Thanks for the information. Didn't know anything about hub stands. This is all new learning for me.  Will be looking into all kinds of new stuff.  Have to learn a lot. I think I have a good base to start thanks to Ron.
Thanks PJ

Cool bracket!

So now the car is an inch lower than it was originally intended to be, Rev 1 exhaust just wasn't going to work. At the time, undercar exhaust was just in my brain so oval tube and over the driveshaft we go. Not in the pictures is the oil tank mounted behind the right side of the main hoop. This meant the exhaust had to be driver side only.















Picked up a lot of clearance. The exhaust is still low but for 3.5" into oval, I did pretty good. We've seen 2/3 versions of the exhaust, now. Boring....onto the next problem.

Shifter. I knew I wanted the shifter to be close to the wheel but not crowding the wheel, and I wanted to be able to make adjustments and remove the shifter from the top side.

Got a good deal on a second hand 5-speed Long shifter...but isn't it a 4-speed transmission? 
You'll notice the car is in a different shop for the shifter mod pic. It's a ways down the road but thought I'd toss this in there just to close the 5-speed shifter on a 4-speed thing.



By flipping the plate and welding in the plug shown, I was able to remove the 5th gear slot and maintain a reverse lockout. Reverse is next to 3rd which is weird, but who cares! it still springs to 3/4 for safety and the reverse lockout still takes the same effort as intended to use, which if any of you have driven a Long rail shifter, its kinda considerable. Saved $300 with a small piece of 1/8" steel.







Control rods are LH/RH 3/8-24 threaded aluminum go cart tie rods that I cut down and rethreaded the RH side.









More plumbing coming up next!

At this point in the build I was ready for spindles. Griggs offered a couple aluminum versions at the time but I wasn't completely satisfied with how they measured up after doing some more reading about suspension geometry and design written by Ron, so I reached out asking his thoughts on working with me to build spindles for the car. After some discussions about my goals and current setup he agreed and we got to work. I don't have many pictures of this process, so I'll try to keep the description accurate and brief.

As previously established, getting a vehicle CL and axle CL's was something I was already familiar with. Getting the car level and ready to measure was easy, but I was no longer making sure things were "Just level" - I was now measuring things at ride height and getting under the car to take a measurement was impossible, not to mention the concrete in my garage was not only sloped for drainage, it has ups and downs that would make consistent measurements impossible.

Ron has already outline how to measure out your car with pictures and techniques. Quickly looking at it, he outlines how to do this all on a drive on lift. I didn't have one, so getting set up to take the measurement is all I'll cover.

First thing I did was get the car up to around 12" from the ground and shimmed the car level. Next I bought a very basic laser level with an adjustable stand for manual leveling. Small variations in how the car was leveled make manually setting the laser's level ideal - as you put it in automatic, now you're leveling the car to the laser - much more difficult. Measure - tweak. Measure - tweak. The laser is simulating the ground, and it must simulate the ground at right height with the desired rake you want built into the car. Ron told me to start with around 1/2 a degree which if I'm remembering correctly was about 1/4" up at the rear using the points on the frame rail where I was measuring to level the laser. That will be different depending where and how far apart your measuring points are. Pick somewhere you can easily use, because that's where you measure every time you set up the car from now on.

Aim small miss small with your measurements.

The UCA, rear of the front LCA, and the rack points needed to be moved. As I mentioned above, I don't have many pictures of this process but I do have the UCA relocation method I used. The UCA needed to move up and out from the original location.
Outer ears were cut off and I used a piece of precision tube to go through both sides of the mini tower. I wanted to be as exact as possible locating the points provided by Ron, and this is the best way I could think of to keep everything inline.







This definitely isn't the end of the story - the tube structure at the rear of the mini tower had to be modified to "box in" the rear UCA mount, and a new front ear had to be made. I don't have pictures of these exclusively but as I continue with the build they'll be noticeable.


To get the ride height where it needed to be, a 1" extended length LBJ was used which arrived machined and ready to install in my LCA