Some guy from the Atlanta Journal and Constitution called me today to interview me about the Rally and my car. He said that the article will be in Monday's paper. I assume that it will also be available online so I will post a link when it is up. Hopefully it will be a little more accurate than the article from Gainesville, Oklahoma:
http://www.gainesvilleregister.com/a...news/news2.txt
If anyone else has gotten some AKA press, I would love to see it. It would be nice for people to have more than a one hour TV show to judge us by.
-Ed

Congrats Ed!

I would certainly like to see what they have to say. Did you mention your other A-T-L partners?

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2001 Honda NSX-T - 2001 Mercedes-Benz E430 -1996 Jaguar XJS Convertible - 1991 Mazda Miata Supercharged
1992 Mazda Miata Spec Racer - 2005 Suzuki GSX-R 600 - 2002 Kawasaki Mojave ATV - 2002 Chaparral Signature 26ft
Oh, and my Kubota GR Series Riding Lawn Mower. Now Re-Geared with a top speed of 48mph!

I did mention you Alex and I gave him your web site url for contact information. I gave him Lee's phone number but he doesn't usually answer. The guy seemed pretty ammused by the idea of the Rally but I have no idea how he will try and spin it. He said that it will be in the commuting section.
-Ed

nice what section is it goin to be in i live in atl and get the paper

He said the Commuting section. I didn't know that there was a commuting section but I rarely read the newspaper.

Ed, send me the link also when you get it. Thanks.

So, how was that late model Saab treating you??

Hey Ed-
I know...that late model Saab must be doing real well. Thank you for passing on my info. Obviously it is Saturday and the article comes out this Monday and no call or email from the reporter. I hope he has better things to write unlike that other editor. Make sure you post the link ASAP.

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2001 Honda NSX-T - 2001 Mercedes-Benz E430 -1996 Jaguar XJS Convertible - 1991 Mazda Miata Supercharged
1992 Mazda Miata Spec Racer - 2005 Suzuki GSX-R 600 - 2002 Kawasaki Mojave ATV - 2002 Chaparral Signature 26ft
Oh, and my Kubota GR Series Riding Lawn Mower. Now Re-Geared with a top speed of 48mph!

Here is the link guys, you might need to put in some information to get to read it.
http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/met.../22myride.html
if you cannot follow the link,
go to www.ajc.com
click on metro,
click on gwinnett
scroll down the page until you see a "monday commute" heading in the middle and there will be a link for "having a rally good time."
Hope everyone enjoys it.
-Ed

Nice artical ed. I think it came out pretty well.

"They say their top speed came when they hit 152 mph in Arkansas. They measured it by satellite with their GPS system in the Audi. One driver claimed to have hit 193 mph, says Bolian, who is skeptical."

Skeptical? haha, come take a ride, I'll end your doubts. I'll post a pic soon of my speedo buried into the stock boost gauge because it runs out at 160.

So you all dont need to register at the site to read the article:


Ed Bolian's ride reeks attitude.

His car is a silver Audi S4 compact sedan, turbo-charged and modified to have a top speed of more than 150 mph.



Ed Bolian, a mechanical engineering major at Georgia Tech, took his Audi S4 compact sedan and a friend on a cross-country AKA Rally last summer.

The attitude: defiance. Asked if he has much respect for speed limits, Bolian says: "Nah."

He admits proving that contempt for the law last summer. A lot of drivers he passed probably thought he was contemptuous of them.

Bolian, a freshman at Georgia Tech, and his friend Lee Burrell, paid $1,500 to test the Audi, a high-school graduation present, and their skills in the cross-country AKA Rally last June.

Bolian, a mechanical engineering major, describes the event as in the spirit of "Cannonball Run," or, perhaps better, "Gumball Rally" — a movie about an international set of scofflaws who race across the United States. The AKA Rally was featured on MTV last month. The program shows Burrell getting a ticket for going 82 in a 70 mph zone.

"That is such a wienie ticket," says Burrell, an English and business major at Berry College in Rome. "Minivans were passing me."

The word "race" isn't part of the event's lexicon because a "race" on the open road would be illegal. The event is called a rally, defined by Webster's as "an organized automobile run on public roads, designed to test driving skills."

The AKA Rally Web site assures the public the organizers don't condone speeding. "Officially it's not a race," Bolian explains. "We were probably doing 100 to 120 most of the time but if we were racing, it would have been much faster than that."

The five-day run went from New York to Los Angeles — with stops in Memphis, Dallas, Albuquerque and Las Vegas for parties along the route. Along the way, they dodged cops — Bolian talks about hiding in a pasture while eluding officers — got nailed by laser speed guns and picked up a few tickets.

Bolian and Burrell, a friend since the pair attended North Gwinnett High School, and other drivers came equipped with radar detectors, police scanners, walkie-talkies and cellphones. Both Bolian and Burrell are 18 and from Suwanee.

But they lacked jammers to undercut the laser, a tool that is typically hard to beat anyhow because it only turns on when it's tagging a car. The trip cost Burrell dearly — more than a $1,000 in tickets and legal fees for getting written up for going over 100 mph in Texas alone. Bolian avoided any tickets of consequence.

They say their top speed came when they hit 152 mph in Arkansas. They measured it by satellite with their GPS system in the Audi. One driver claimed to have hit 193 mph, says Bolian, who is skeptical.

Some truck drivers complained over the citizen-band radio about their speed and stunts, especially when they passed on the shoulder or in the median. "Some truckers would help us out and some would not," Burrell says. "They would say, 'You need to slow down, you're endangering lives.' "

"We try and drive safe . . . the goal of the rally is not to endanger people."

The two consider the trip a success. Nobody got killed. They could drum up the money to pay their tickets. And the car came through intact.

They didn't get in any real trouble when they got home.

Burrell says his parents were just happy he was alive. They had thought he was going on a leisurely drive across the nation before he and Bolian headed off to college. When they learned about the rally and about his tickets, they let him know any insurance hikes and legal costs were on him, Burrell says.

Bolian says his folks knew what the rally entailed. They asked he keep the car's speed below three digits, he says. Bolian hopes to do the Gumball 3000 road rally in Europe next summer — which would cost him $20,000 in fees and expenses — if he can get a sponsor. He hopes a Ferrari dealer he knows will loan him a car for the "rally."

Otherwise, he plans on driving the AKA Rally again. Next year, it goes from Philadelphia to Key West with a stop in Atlanta.

His parents could even join him at the hotel party.

Burrell says he is holding off on any more rallies until age 21, citing potential insurance penalties.

He could also be out of college. There is a possibility he'll have matured.

"We were the youngest group in the rally," he says. " We held our own and we gained respect by coming in first on the first day and then holding our own."

He put an asterisk by first place. After all, it was a rally, not a race.

Thanks for posting the entire article gotboOst. As far as the speed, that is pretty fast. I guess given the numbers that you give for your car, it is possible. I would love to see a picture. I suppose you don't have a picture of a GPS speedometer.
-Ed

Nice article Ed!

I am glad it was pretty accurate. I would like to see those photos too of the speedo. Although a car may have the motor to do over 200mph, it might not have the aerodynamics to do it. We use to do all kinds of test with the NSX and although the NSX is not a 200mph car, the wind would limit the top speed even with all of the gaps taped up so I am not sure the 300zx could do it. I know it is aerodynamically correct but only a few production cars and motorcycles can hit over 200mph.

Just my two cents!

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2001 Honda NSX-T - 2001 Mercedes-Benz E430 -1996 Jaguar XJS Convertible - 1991 Mazda Miata Supercharged
1992 Mazda Miata Spec Racer - 2005 Suzuki GSX-R 600 - 2002 Kawasaki Mojave ATV - 2002 Chaparral Signature 26ft
Oh, and my Kubota GR Series Riding Lawn Mower. Now Re-Geared with a top speed of 48mph!

that aritcle definitely shed a more positive light on you guys than other *ahem* media coverage. lol

Congrats on the publicity Ed. I hope it gets you a shoe in with the Ferrari guy.

Good job Ed!! Luv ya!!

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PINK M3 BITCHES!!!
KweenOFtheDINER...

Yes Ed, nice article! Nice little references to GB3K.

As speed of a moving object doubles, the power requirements quadruples. Also, most set their cars up for drag racing or for top speed, few go for the happy medium of the two. My car may only have so much horsepower, but from the way I set it up, it is still good for 187mph. Realistically, the torque of my rat is what makes the car move well, as with all rat motors.

exactly, I don't know why all these bikes and people want to race me 1/4 mile, my car wasn't built for that. I built my car for highway pulls, thats it, but I'll still run them in the 1/4 for fun.

hey gotboOst, I did a little math and I suppose it is possible that you hit 193 and, in fact, that should be your car's top speed or very close to it.

In order to calculate the effect of increased horsepower on a car's top speed or to see how much it would take to get a car to a top speed (I worked backwards from this because we already know or can find some of the unknowns in the equations) you use a combination of several physics equations. Drag is obviously difficult to calculate outside of a wind tunnel or without very precise measurements of the frontal area of the car with this value being weighted with respect to the position of the car and turbulence around the part of the car. Here is pretty much the easiest way to calculate top speed of a modified car compared to the stock version.

Take the desired top speed (in this case 193) and divide by the stock top speed (which appears to be 155 for a 96 300zx turbo). This is 1.245. Cube this number to factor drag and cancel out one unit of the hp calculation. Now you have 1.930. Multiply this number by the stock horsepower and you get the required horsepower for the 193 mph top speed which is 578.9 hp.

You said that you have 592 hp so 193 would make sense. So, it is possible, I will give you that. Anyway, it is a fun calculation to play around with, have a nice day.
-Ed

And thanks to all for the positive reviews of the article. I agree that it was a lot more accurate than the MTV show and I was happy with it.

um...it's been a few years since college physics for me.
Explain why you magically cubed to account for drag? Is that some standard unit for air resistance? or did you just pick some random coefficient?

Since we are just comparing the effect on horsepower to a known horsepower/top speed value (300hp/155mph in stock form), the parts of drag that are not speed-based are already factored in. Speed is part of the denomenator in the horsepower equation and drag increases with the square of the velocity, hence the cube of the speed.

as a physics major i must concour, the drag co-efficient whould change alittle but the formula is sound.

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91 Accord se - She may be old, but she's fiesty

Hurricane+Boat=
Me+Insurance Check =

As a Criminal Justice major I am completely fucking lost right now.

Nick

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