Hello friends and followers of mine and of CanTorque.
It has certainly been a while since my last post—I’ve been quite busy with what’s happening at CanTorque, but we’re also in the middle of the racing season, which has me running around. But, candidly, I haven’t had the motivation to write lately. Sometimes that’s just the way it is.
The thing that I’ve learned about myself is that when I find a bit of inspiration, I need to take advantage of it.
CanTorque Update
This spring and summer we’ve been dealing with issues regarding the power supply to our building, as well as the flooding that has been well-reported in the Edmonton area this year.
We’ve been working hard to update our RT design while dealing with issues regarding the power supply to our building, as well as the flooding that has been well-reported in the Edmonton area this year.
It may not look like much, but this failed connection caused us a lot of trouble over a few weeks. This is what’s left of a butt connection from the main power supply running into the building. There are three wires; none of the connections were great, but this one was the main culprit. When the temperature cooled off, it would lose connectivity, causing one phase to drop out in our office. When the heat rose, power would be fully restored. It wasn’t my intention, but the theme of today’s post is that proper troubleshooting takes time. We went through intermittent interruptions over a few weeks until finally speaking to Enmax, who was pretty quick to identify and fix the issue.
The connection was so weak that when the technician grabbed the wire to start cutting, it simply dissolved in his hands—no effort required.
Updates to RT Series
This has been a long process, but I truly believe that we’re seeing light at the end of the tunnel. For me, the most difficult part of new designs or updates is how I always underestimate how much time and how many steps are involved. This is also something that I think most customers likely don’t fully understand. Here’s a rough timeline of our last update:
- 2023: I was unhappy with the load transfer from our piston assembly to our drive plate-we identified several areas of high stress
- Started discussions with our engineering team as well as a few friends who are trusted problem solvers
- Put a few weeks of time into fully understanding the issue
- Brainstormed possible solutions using “off-the-shelf” items and principles
- Realized nothing was practically available.
- Through 2024 and 2025: We went through several iterations until hitting on something in early/mid-2025.
- Revised the concept and ran several computer simulations to identify and eliminate potential issues
- Produced the first handful of components to test the assembly as well as its operation in our controlled environment
- Identified issues that didn’t manifest in the simulations
- Met with the engineering team to plan a solution… this process took between 8 and 10 weeks from discussion to new designs
- Ordered new material to fabricate updated components… a few more weeks
- While the design was similar to the original, we realized that we needed new tooling to be able to machine it to the new tolerance and specification taking a few more weeks
- The new tooling arrived, but our supplier ordered the wrong components
- Present Day: It’s been three years from the initial concept. In the next few days we’ll receive the correct tooling. We should have our next prototypes in the next week or so
- Oh yeah, we also had to come up with new seals, which required a new process for insertion and removal
We will have to run multiple shop tests in a variety of configurations, as well as place the new components in the hands of some of our trusted and experienced customers to see if they can find the issues that only show up in the field.
That being said, I’m happy that we’re getting to the end of the process, and I am very much looking forward to seeing them start to work.
I’d love to share pictures, but I need to keep our new designs under wraps for a little bit longer.
Racing
In Spring 2025, I took a hard fall while on vacation in Europe. I caught my foot on a cobblestone, causing an extremely bad sprain and damaging my knee and shoulder when I fell into a steel pole. I only made a few kart races in 2025; despite that, I managed to get a class win.
Because my injuries limited my training mostly to core exercises, I really had no idea how I was going to perform once we got on track. It was only two or three weeks before the season started that I could even walk on the treadmill and do short, 30-second jogging stints.
I ended 2025 with an unexpected class win, this year I’m much better prepared and have won 5 of 9 races so far this year; pretty good bounce back
Over the winter, I made the decision to fully restore my kart. I stripped it down to the chassis and had it re-powder coated. I replaced every bearing, seal, and consumable item, ran a smaller fuel tank (which saved one pound), and added more titanium to help lower the total weight.
I also upgraded my tents (which we are happy to supply using your brand and layout)
NASCAR Canada
Our NASCAR season has been full of highs and lows.
Race 1 at Mosport-leading with 2 laps to go, taken out at T2, lots of damage to the car but Alex was ok.
Races 2-5 on ovals: we had almost every strange technical/mechanical issue possible. Not only were we facing issues, we’ve had rain delays at almost every race and even had a power outage at Riverside:
Race 6-Huge win at Calabogie, our first in a few years!
I was even treated unexpectedly to an Air Canada flight on one of their Jetz planes:
All business class seats, exit rows have crazy amounts of leg room.
Straight from Calabogie to media and promotion for the next race at Wetaskawin
Race 7/8 at home in Wetaskawin-more mechanical gremlins, finally got the car running in race 8 but we were cut short with extreme winds, rain and lighting
Emzone FEL Radical
This is a massive year with the formation of Tag One Motorsports, which is currently fielding six cars in the series. Of course, anything that Alex touches is done at the highest level and always redefines people’s expectations.
Truly world-class:
As with the tool updates I previously mentioned, starting a race team is endlessly complicated and takes far more time and effort than most people realize.
We’ve had two race weekends so far at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park and Calabogie. The cars and teams have worked extremely well; our newer drivers have benefited from our data/performance engineer, and our pros have shown great speed right out of the gates.
To be as politically correct as possible: we really need some breaks to go our way so we can start taking home some trophies.
The Rest of the Year
We’re about to start a stretch where we run five out of the next six weekends. These are all travel weekends, and three will feature both NASCAR and Radical races:
- GP3R: 7–9 August (this is my favourite race and event of the year) – www.gp3r.com
- Markham Indy: 14–16 August
- Circuit ICAR: 29 August
- Mosport: 4–6 September
- Fall Brawl at Delaware: 12 September
If you’re going to be around during our NASCAR or Radical races or if you want to come out to watch our kart races at EDKRA in Warburg on Wednesdays-please let me know.
Torque it Easy,
Colin