One of the best parts about the MPMC Conference is the Wednesday night party at the Source Interlink (SORC) Headquarters. SORC is the publisher of most of the popular automotive magazines on the newsstands, and their shop in El Segundo is like an amusement park for gearheads. The facility has lifts, photo coves, archives and a theme bar!
The party is always a car show extravaganza, and we really like seeing the magazine project cars in various stages of being built. It makes us feel better about our own projects!
Every January starts off with the speed dating event of the aftermarket industry, the MPMC conference in El Segundo, CA. Unlike SEMA which is all glitz and glamor, MPMC is a no-nonsense three days of meetings between manufacturers and media. We like it because it gives us a chance to catch up with friends from the magazines and other high performance companies.
Though we said we were going to keep our hotel room makeover simple this year, we still ended up with several luggage cart loads of display in our room. How does that keep happening? We blame Brandy’s layout technology.
This year we had a couple big ticket items to feature including our Cowl Airbox tray, the Over the Top Sheet Metal Plenum, the complete new line of late model intakes with filter color options: red, blue, white, and black and much more.
Some of the little features were our new custom cut-to-fit flex boots, our LS blade style adapter, and new line of throttle body spacers.
We were pleased to see that many of the other companies, and even the media outlets are finally catching on to social media. Everyone had a Facebook page, an iPhone app or a website they were promoting. This was just what we wanted to hear because our social media marketing strategies have been increasing every month. Now there are more online sources we can work with to keep our friends and customers up to date on our new products, customer spotlights and events that we attend and feature.
The days were long, but well worth it. We’re looking forward to seeing many of the projects we discussed get built over the next few months!
There are good things and bad things about car people, and when we brag about being car people, we have to come clean about our flaws as well…
We have too many projects, and some are neglected.
We’d feel worse about it if we didn’t know that many of you suffer from the same issue. Hopefully you’ll have some sympathy as we introduce one of our long-ignored favorites, the Spectre Dodge Dart.
Write in and tell us if any of the following sounds familiar.
We purchased the ‘69 Swinger on Ebay in June of 2006 from a guy in AZ. Why a Dart? Why Ebay? Nobody can remember. It seemed like a good idea at the time.
As is so often the case, the Dart came to us as an all-stock running car, but nothing stays that way in the Spectre shop for long. We sent the car off to Fast Eddie’s to get a full cage in preparation for a proposed drag car project.
Over at Eddie’s the little Dodge went from stock to stripped and caged, but then we got busy with other projects and the Dart has lived like a bat in the rafters for the past five years.
Happily, the Dart has made its way back to the shop floor. Does this mean that 2012 will feature a second blue Spectre Mopar project? We may just get into drag racing…or should we build a corner carver?
Head over to our Flickr account for more Dart and other project photos.
Many of you don’t know this, but Spectre has a pretty busy machine shop along with the dyno and R&D facilities at Spectre headquarters.
We’ve heard some requests for more info about the goings-on at the shop, so we decided to introduce you to some of our equipment.
The 88 TON x 98.7″ AMADA HYDRAULIC PRESS BRAKE w/NC9-EX-II 3-AXIS CNC BACKGAUGE (MODEL RG-80) is our newest toy in the shop. The guys just finished updating the machines and getting everything ready so we can start using it.
Doesn’t that sound impressive?
We use the press for bending wings, front spoilers, heat shields, and other sheet metal fabrications, especially one-offs and prototypes.
The Amada is our first hydraulic press. Our other presses, which we will feature later, are all manual.
For those of you who have never seen or used a press like this, it’s fantastic for small runs, because once you set up to tooling for one bend, you can place the sheet metal in the machine and it will bend the piece to the exact angle you inputted, then on to the next piece, all with almost no physical effort on part of the operator!
We were testing it out on some heat shield designs this week.
With the Amada in-house, we are hoping to grow the application list for our exterior components as we get more cars into the shop for intake mock-ups and also expand our offerings of heat shields for more custom options.
With all the different engine swaps that are popular these days, we know that many people can’t use an off-the-shelf kit.
As a special treat for those of you who are true machine nerds, behold the glorious specs of the Amada Press Brake:
Max. Tonnage …………………………… 88 Tons
Max. Bending Length …………………….. 98.7″
Max. Stroke Length ……………………… 3.94″
Clearance Between Beams (Open Height) …….. 14.58″
Throat Depth …………………………… 15.76″
Distance Between Side Frames …………….. 80.8″
Hydraulic Tank …………………………. 13.46 Gallons
Machine Weight …………………………. 11,200 lbs.
Machine Dimensions – Overall Height ………. 81.2″
Overall Length …………………………. 98.7″
Overall Width ………………………….. 56.3″
Motor HP / Voltage ……………………… 7.5 230/460
Here’s a video of a press similar to ours at work. When we get cranking with our Amada, we’ll post up some live action from the shop. Get your popcorn!
