Sjödin Motorsport / ÅBM Racing

8 weeks from today we will be at Malmö Raceway for the first outing in 2017 for some test and tune before the first race in the series 2 weeks later.

I’m also back home in the Sjödin Motorsport / ÅBM Racing shop after 4 awesome weeks in USA on a well deserved working vacation, the two main reasons to go over was to help my friend Brandon Pesz to mount a new body on his 58 Vette and also organize my own stuff for the coming season when it comes to spare parts, updates etc. Just like always when I’m in the US we spend a lot of time on the road, I would guess we ended up with 6-7 whole days…! 😀 

Best thing with going over is that I always learn new stuff, see new things, meet people I been talking to for years but never met in person and of course makes new friends! A lot of friends, and some of them will be a big part of my future racing business! Fun things is about to come, that’s for sure! 

I would also like to be able to race my car in February, that’s for sure!

Always that way expensive beer and shrimp sandwich at the airport back home before leaving to the states, it’s a must do!!

Brandon’s car turned out good with the new body that is removable of course, guess he will take it of just to check the valve lash from now on! 😉 I look forward to see the new design on it after the wrap, cool things to come I promise!!

We went up to Larry Jeffers Race Cars in Missouri to get som last things done on Keith Haneys radial car and bring it back home to Keith’s shop in Tulsa Oklahoma. Must say that the Jeffers shop was bigger and did hold way more cars than what I thought, cool place with an awesome crew working there!

Just a typical day at the office in the Reid shop in Wichita Falls! Would be nice to have the garage door open back home like this in February….

About being on the road, well here in Sweden people complain when it’s more than one hour to the track, Brandon says if it’s only 12 hours it’s almost home for me! 🙂 Well me Brandon and his wife Kimmy took the little 15+ hour trip to Valdosta and the Lights Out 8 race at South Georgia Motorsports Park!

At least Brandon got a pair of good help drivers that makes the trip a bit easier! 🙂

Lights out 8, what a crazy deal!! If you haven’t been there so just get there, you need to see it for yourself!

But this looks crazy, that’s all I have to say about that! 

Keith and Enigma did good, new personal best and also the fastest nitrous car on radials this weekend with a 3.815@198.76mph! Just awesome!!!

Did meet up with the Menscer Motorsports guys for some awesome at track service, the picture shows Craig and John service, revalve and dyno testing my struts and shocks, thanks for your help guys!

One thing that makes me really happy to being a part of now when I was over was when Brandon, Chris at Frankenstein and Jeff Jones decided to team up. Smart guys that will do really good stuff together, that’s for sure! Happy for you Brandon, this will be more than awesome!! And if you ever need LS heads and other parts Frankenstein is the place to get them, contact me if you want to buy it in Swedish! 🙂

And like I said, I did arrange all the parts for my coming racing season here in Sweden, about 250 kilos or 550 pounds in this shipment! The updates on the Chevelle will improve the ET that’s for sure, really look forward to the test at Malmö Raceway in the end of April!! 😀

More will come soon, stay tuned!

The last month have been a lot about getting stuff ready for the coming season, decide what to update on the car, ordering parts, getting safety stuff sent to USA for recertification and doing some maintenance on the Chevelle.

And right now I’m in USA visiting my friend Brandon Pesz on a working vacation to help him out with some body work on his car and also get all my own stuff together when it comes to spare parts and new fun stuff for the coming season! 🙂

I sure do enjoy being back in sunny Texas again, everything feels so much easier over here compared to cold, windy, rainy boring Sweden! 😉 

I wasn’t all satisfied with the pistons I did use last year so one big change to this year is new pistons and rods (of course special custom stuff and no off shelf) from CP-Carrillo, thanks a lot to Jonnie Lindberg and Bryan Moreland for making me a good deal on this! 

I’m also working on some updates on the valve train to make it better, the plan was that I would get a new set of much stronger rocker arms to the motor in the end of February but it looks like it will take time… Sure hope that things will start to move on really soon because I really don’t want to put the old stuff back again and continue to hurt parts every round this year also!….

The plan was to make this winter not so expensive, well it turned out that I failed once again on that part! 😀 But I think that the updates will do really good, I was aiming for a 3.87-3.88 @ 320km/h last year when we lost one cylinder 2.9s out and ended up with a 3.90 @ 307km/h and that was still on a soft tune up, going to be fun to se what the updates on the motor, driveline, suspension and less weight in the car will do to the performance on the car, I kind of want it to be the end of April now so we can go and make some test hits with the car at Malmö Raceway! 

Soon, really soon!! 

About the trailer… it’s standing totally still, nothing have happened since October or so and I guess it won’t happen so much on it before the season starts, hopefully we can get the team together in some way and put some hours in it during the summer and move forward. At least I have a done deal with Treston that will help us with all the cabinets and drawers that will arrive in the beginning of March and also that Bengtssons Smide and T.Grundstöm Plåtslageri will help us out with fabricating of whatever we need to get the work benches and cabinets mounted in the trailer! 

More updates and news will come soon, stay tuned!