The Engine Is Dead. Long Live the “New” One.
There are few moments in endurance racing more intimate than hearing your engine make a noise so catastrophic it instantly changes your relationship with money, optimism, and internal combustion. For those new to our blog, in New Orleans, our faithful old powerplant gave us 65 hard laps, one final stubborn crawl back to the paddock, and then departed this earth in a fashion best described as “mechanically theatrical.” It did not fade quietly into retirement. It punched a hole through the block with the grace of a bar fight in a machine shop and the type of violence that left us standing in the rain looking less like a racing team and more like crime scene witnesses.
Naturally, we took this as a sign to keep going.
So what is the plan now? We have a long season in front of us, and Black Flag Racing is preparing to replace the blown engine with a “new” K24A2 from a 2007 Acura TSX. In this case, “new” does not mean untouched, pampered, or factory fresh. It means new to us, less blown-up than the last one, and hopefully more likely to keep its connecting rods inside the engine where they belong.
The K24A2 from the TSX is exactly the kind of upgrade that gets our hearts racing. Better breathing, better performance potential, and a stronger reputation for surviving sustained abuse make it a perfect candidate for our next phase. We are not looking for a delicate garage queen or a dyno-diva that needs constant affirmation. We want something that can be bolted in, run hard, and still have the decency to stay together long enough to see the checkered flag.
Right now, the team is preparing to do the swap, which means our evenings and weekends will once again become a blur of parts orders, scraped knuckles, questionable tool organization, and long stares into the engine bay accompanied by phrases like, “does that look right?” There is something deeply humbling about trying to resurrect a race car on a compressed timeline. Every solved problem immediately introduces two more, and every moment of progress is quickly followed by an entirely new opportunity to learn.
Because we do not believe in easing into anything, we are simultaneously preparing the car for our next race in South Carolina at the end of April. The engine swap may be the headline, but it is only part of the seduction. There is also the usual endurance-racing ritual: checking, re-checking, tightening, adjusting, inspecting, aligning, fluid-filling, and trying to identify which small issue is most likely to turn into a massive problem the second the green flag drops.
We are updating race strategy based on what New Orleans taught us, which is mainly that speed is great, but survival is hotter. Driver rotation, pit readiness, repair planning, and the delicate art of pushing a 2007 Accord right up to (but hopefully not through) its emotional limits are all getting a fresh look. Most importantly, we are planning on not blowing up the “new” engine.
Looking ahead, we also plan to start livestreaming races from the driver’s seat and the paddock, so everyone can enjoy the full Black Flag Racing experience: speed, chaos, and emergency wrenching in real time.
So yeah, the old engine is dead. The “new” one is waiting. South Carolina is coming fast…and Black Flag Racing remains exactly what it has always been: too stubborn to quit and fully committed to going the distance.
