Confessions of an Automationeer, Part 161: Properly Awesome Insanity Nationals

Confessions of an Automationeer, Part 161: Properly Awesome Insanity Nationals

I've been much more involved in Automation forum challenges over the past three months, but among those, there is one that stood out: PAIN (Powerful American Insanity National). With hindsight, however, the first two letters could (and should) have stood for Properly Awesome, because that's exactly what this challenge was. The rule set was quite liberal (especially with the maximum price set at $40,000 AMU), so I set to work on two submissions (the maximum allowed for any entrant). One of these was the LVC LS40 - the LS60's V8-powered little brother. The other, the TSC Thunderwolf 5.0, was repurposed from an earlier submission from another challenge, but was given more power, less weight, and a more luxurious interior (the last of which ensured that it would attempt its run sooner) - in fact, it and its engine were cloned to avoid overwriting the original version.

Above and below: Both of my PAIN entries, the TSC Thunderwolf 5.0 (blue) and LVC LS40 (red), are V8-powered, with similar outputs, but the latter is lighter and smaller, in addition to being mid-engined.

Both of these cars had fully detailed interiors - something the Thunderwolf originally lacked, but I added this feature for my PAIN submission, and copied the fixtures to the original version. However, this version of the Thunderwolf has a full luxury interior and CD player in place of the cheaper premium items that were originally fitted. Moreover, in place of the (corrosion-resistant) steel chassis with partial aluminum bodywork, it now has a glued aluminum chassis with fully aluminum panels, as does the LS40. Finally, its engine is in a more aggressive state of tune, developing 440 horsepower instead of 380.

As for the LS40, its engine is a smaller 4.0-liter flat-crank (instead of cross-plane) V8 delivering 450 horsepower (10 more than the Thunderwolf), and here, it is mid-mounted rather than front-mounted. However, the LS40 is not only lighter, but also has a shorter wheelbase, which should theoretically make it even faster along the time trial route - more on that later.

The actual time trial portion of the challenge went smoothly, to say the least. The Thunderwolf was quite fun to drive, with excellent handling to match its straight-line pace. The LS40 was more challenging, but was lighter and hence quicker, as I had suspected. To be fair, neither of them was going to be in contention for the fastest overall time, but this was expected given that many of the cars entered were more powerful than these two. It should be noted, however, that both of my entries could have gone even faster still had they not spun out at least once during their timed runs.

At the time of initial posting, many of the cars submitted have not yet had their timed runs, but regardless of who comes out on top, I definitely had a lot of fun building and entering the two cars I chose for this challenge. Here's hoping that something similar to it takes place in the future.