StanceWorks: REGRET? The K24-Swapped Ferrari Ain’t a Street Car Anymore…

StanceWorks Video Transcript

Foreign If you have all the right tools there are very few parts to a car that are truly irreversible and that tends to include roll cages if you want to go from race car back to A Streetcar unless you take your car to RS Motorsport in which case that cage is kind of forever

It would take a ton of work to cut it out and I’m going to show you why this is the best a cage can get so let’s load the car up we’re heading to Sacramento let’s change the Ferrari forever 400 miles north of the stanceworks headquarters in Rancho Cordova California lies RS Motorsport

With nondescript signage it is nestled within an industrial complex and if you didn’t know about it you’d likely never know that it was there despite the outward appearance of doors that remain shut seven days a week Riley stare is inside 18 hours a day working diligently to perfect his craft

Among a few other details the Ferrari is here for a roll cage this will be the first time that I passed the car off to somebody else for work to be performed and I think that it does beg the question given that I have all of the tools and the know-how to

Build a roll cage for myself why would I enlist the help of somebody else to do it there are a lot of different ways to answer that question when it comes to RS Motorsport but the most important one is that I want the best RS Motorsport is a Motorsports

Fabrication shop that specializes in cage work and Chassis design a glance around the shop gives an idea of what he’s capable of but it’s a glance under the plastic covers of these cars that showcases exactly what we’re here for now cage work at its core is relatively simple it’s bending tubes and fitting

Them to the inside of a car for the protection of its driver and its occupants but not all roll cages are made equally what separates Riley from his competition is his extreme focus on fitment and quality above all else there are many tenets to cage building from overall fitment to noting to structure

And of course safety each one compounding in making a cage that is successively harder and harder to build but RS Motorsport cuts no corners yielding cages that are unlike anything else but such an extraordinary claim does require extraordinary evidence so let’s take a step back and start at the beginning of RS Motorsport

Riley may not look familiar to you he’s not one to spend time in front of the camera but his Trans Am on the other hand probably rings a bell it set the world Ablaze when he debuted at SEMA in 2018 and then doubled down by amassing

Nearly three and a half million views on his hoonigan build breakdown that was followed by a video with donut media and then with the legendary Larry Chen a sort of Who’s Who of big names in the world of Automotive content but as cool as YouTube views are those

Pale in comparison to the fact that this car has been immortalized by Hot Wheels forever as a Real Deal toy that can be bought at any store across America the sum of the trans am’s Parts warrant every bit of attention it has garnered so far but what’s more spectacular than

That is what the car represents Riley’s Trans Am was not built in a shop that resembles a space age laboratory nor was it built in a race shop with every tool at his disposal instead it was built in an open lean-to attached to the side of his parents house

It wasn’t built with an unlimited budget but instead through the sacrifice of everything else around him and its representative of everything possible when one imposes No Limits upon what they’re capable of doing while all of the media and exposure surrounding the Trans Am has been great

For Riley in his shop his true interest lie in developing the Trans Am and furthering his own skill set it is in many ways a development platform so that he can build the best cars possible for his customers he’s now seven years into the project and it continues to evolve most recently

The car received a complete changeover to motec’s Standalone and was given an all-new engine and Chassis harness on top of that Riley is testing his latest suspension revisions which include custom Billet uprights at all four corners currently the engine is out of the car receiving a few internal changes and a

Rebuild so that it’s ready for fighting duty at the ridge later this year but even still it’s an opportunity to take a closer look at the Trans Am and to take a deeper dive than others have been afforded prior to this YouTube thing I spent two years working

Alongside Riley and I was lucky enough to become intimately familiar with the details of this incredible machine for as popular as the car is it’s almost always had a focus on its absolutely over-the-top LS based engine but for once we can flip the script if it wasn’t immediately apparent the

Foundations of the Trans Am are similar to our last episode Riley built a complete tube chassis for this car eliminating everything that Pontiac originally equipped it with instead it’s a vehicle entirely of Riley’s design that happens to be wearing a Pontiac skin there are numerous justifications for

The tube chassis but perhaps the most important one is the design and utilization of Riley’s own independent front and rear suspension from the pickup points to the control arms and now to the Billet uprights everything is of his design and through numerous revisions it’s now safe to say that

Everything works and works well Foreign with the beautiful panasport c8s removed for transport we get a good look at the recent edition of absolutely massive AP breaks pulled from a NASCAR cup series car travel of all of these components is managed through push rods that actuate inboard mounted olins coilovers in the front the coilovers are buried

Within the componentry of the engine but Outback they’re on display along with the beautiful tube work and the sheet metal work that closes out the back end on that note it’s the sheet metal work of this car that often gets overlooked in part thanks to the wild parts that comprise it

All four fender flares and the front air dam were hand formed by Riley inside the car every panel that closes out the gaps and holes between the tubes are all part of a cohesive but laborious attempt at separating the outside of the car from the inside a requirement for competitive racing

Every aspect we’ve discussed of the Trans Am so far and every aspect we have yet to discuss are all an integral part of what RS Motorsport aims to do whether it’s plumbing fluid systems exhaust or even suspension design RS Motorsport aims to tackle any of those aspects for customers looking to take

Their cars racing and the Trans Am offers Riley an opportunity to refine his process on each of those in a real world way instead of relying solely on the feedback of his customers he’s able to provide that for himself as well but there is a reason he’s booked out for

Months on end it’s the same reason I’ve been saying he’s the best fabricator I know he is a magician when it comes to metal and his work speaks for itself so let’s build a roll cage in the Ferrari perhaps unsurprisingly there is a lot of work that goes into figuring out how we

Will best fit the Ferrari with a roll cage but before we figure out the how let’s talk about the why clearly it’s a safe decision but it’s also a required one if we want to compete in the world time attack challenge in Australia per the rules were required to have a

Six point roll cage and with that we’re required to use certain tubing allowances for overall size and wall thickness we’ve decided to build the roll cage with 4130 chromoly steel using a one and three quarter inch OD main hoop and one and a half inch OD tubing elsewhere I toiled immensely with

Whether or not to put a cage in this car from the get-go but with the opportunity of being able to send the car to Australia to compete I don’t want to miss it and thus we’re gonna pull the trigger building the cage begins with cutting away a lot of the fiberglass inside of

The car to reveal the steel chassis underneath Ferrari’s construction methods for this car are absolutely terrible and thus figuring out how to safely attach the base plates and the roll cage to the chassis required extensive effort base plates were installed for each side of the main hoop as well as the

A-pillars where they land at the front of the doors on the other hand the rear back stays or down Bars were tied into members that I added in back at the beginning of the build one of the first problems we encountered is the fact that the coolant lines for

The car are run through the Rockers given the engine is in the back and the radiator is at the front with Riley’s chosen method of how to attach the base plates to the chassis the coolant lines need to move once the base plates were in though it

Was time for the tube work to begin I went home and focused on the model A and left Riley to work his magic One of the core tenets of RS Motorsport is that it is a TIG only shop and that goes hand in hand with our choice of chromoly tubing which is required by many sanctioning bodies to be TIG welded as a result though the number of hours required to weld the cage can be counted

In the dozens TIG welding is a laborious slow process but the result is a more controlled Weld and one that is often stronger and significantly better looking whether he knows it or not it was Riley that pushed me to learn how to TIG weld and to use it exclusively on the 308 but

As you might guess the speed and quality of his work vastly exceeds mine that of course comes from experience not only through building the Trans Am but through the numerous race cars he’s had a hand in in the time that has followed but nevertheless all of the experience

In the world makes no difference when it comes to the amount of effort involved in fully TIG welding a roll cage especially in a car the size of the 308 it leads to hours spent welding on his side on his back on his knees or upside down

But I think he’d agree that it is all worth the effort when you get to take a step back and look at the finished product after fitting the Ferrari into his incredibly busy schedule he worked diligently for two weeks ultimately yielding this I think it’s safe to say at this point that the Ferrari is not a street car anymore although Riley put extensive effort into making sure there was as much room as possible remaining inside of the car there’s now 87 feet of chromoly tube crammed inside of this thing

However nearly every single linear inch hugs the Bodywork so tightly on the inside of the car that it can be welded directly to it gone are the days of dimple dyed pillar gussets instead the tubework is pushed to the outer limits of the inside confines of the car itself

A closer look were revealed that the tube work is Stitch welded directly to the car’s body every several inches sure I could build a roll cage for myself but I certainly couldn’t build one like this with such a focus on preserving interior space it was a tough call on whether or

Not we should install an FIA bar the bar that runs diagonally from the base of the a-pillar up towards the roof line it’s one of the most important bars for rollover protection but it also makes Ingress and egress a serious challenge but given we’re this far in already we

Figured we might as well as a result we were required by the rule book for Motorsport Australia to gusset the FIA bar to the door bars as well as gusseting the door bars themselves along with the main hoop and the roof another resulting change was the need to re-engineer the steering column Mount

And we future-proofed it for when we want to install a Woodward racing column it’s also been offset towards the center of the car for a better seating position and alignment with the pedals perhaps one of the coolest touches though is how subtle the cage becomes when the doors are closed although the x

Is visible from the rear the FAA bars almost disappear behind the cigarette window trim and the rest of the cage work is tucked so tightly to the body that it’s not visible without sticking your head inside of the car in all Riley absolutely crushed it with this cage and it’s everything that I

Could have hoped for and then some he also got it done faster than I ever would have been able to do on my own and thus thanks to him we’re one step closer to Australia so I figure what better way to wrap this episode than from inside the car

It feels so much better in here than it ever has especially being offset towards the center my feet are now lined up with the pedals we have moved the steering column honestly seating position better than ever before and it might not look like it but I’ve got more room inside of

This car than I ever did as well if you remember some of the old episodes and how much room there was above my head I I’m Blown Away Riley did such a good job on this project I couldn’t be happier with it I am ecstatic the car is

Going to be stiffer it’s going to be safer all around this is just this was the change we needed to make I can feel comfortable and confident going forward especially considering how quick this car should be with any luck uh borrowing my skill of course as far as other

Changes that we’ve got well I’ve got this new seat that I’m sitting in it is a Race Tech I’m going to talk about it more in the next episode we’ve got to get it mounted it’s just mocked up at the moment I’ve also got some other big

Changes the biggest one being we’ve got to re-engineer our cooling lines again because they can’t run through the Rockers anymore I’ve got to run them through the inside of the car and we have to kind of seal and cover them up to be legal for competition that is a

Huge job we’ve also got to install our fire suppression system I’ve also got to install our front sway bar we’ve got to put all of the arrow back on the car we got to change our spring rates we’ve got to align the car lots of small details

Here and there but the big stuff’s out of the way I feel really good about it if you’re curious when we’re going to be on track if I have my way with any luck it will either be next week or more likely the following two weeks from now

We will be on track driving this car for the first time I feel very confident about it I’m going to give it everything I’ve got to pull it off so subscribe if you haven’t the big day is coming I know I’ve said that before but I truly feel like we’re there I’m

Excited for it this is what we’ve been working towards for years at this point so thank you again to Riley for squeezing me into his busy schedule and for working his magic on this thing again I couldn’t be happier with it make sure you follow Riley at Riley underscore RS Motorsport on Instagram

You can see his work you can follow along with him his Trans Am and of course reach out to him if you need any amazing work like this because he can do it all and with that said I’m going to call this episode done I’ve got to get

To work and get this card put back together so we can get out of the track I’ll see you next week