Phil Morrison’s “SLAMBO” – GT1 Murcielago

11/04/23

The GT1 inspired Lamborghini Murcielago LP640 in Phil’s words is one of his “daftest” builds, as he had spent almost 3 years to overcome all the complex engineering and styling complications. It’s always exciting to form part of one of Phil’s builds as you always know it’s going to be special. Phil has been using Zircotec since his drifting days back in the late 2000’s, “I’ve used Zircotec coatings since 2007 on my S15 competition drift car. So choosing their ceramic coating for the genuine Reiter Engineering GT1 LeMans manifolds on my V12 LP640 Murcielago was an obvious choice.”

We asked Phil what inspired him to embark on this mammoth project, he added “My favourite of all R-GT cars ever seen is the pre-livery GT1 Le Mans spec car build in dark metallic grey seen at Salzburgring testing in 2007″, “This to me was one of the best looking racecars I’d ever seen.”

Some of the modifications and upgrades that had been done to his GT1 LP640 includes:

Exterior work : redesigning and fabrication of the bodywork including repainting, fitting the race panels (GT1 aero), front wings, the door to the front wing, and so much more which Phil says “it was way too much for me to write down.”
Custom-made 3SDM wheels.
E-gear to Manual Conversion
Custom built open V12 ITB intakes
Custom-tuned 3D printed stacks
Reiter Engineering LMGT1 Headers
Custom CNC-machined drop knuckles + suspension armsAnd so much more…The final figures came to 686bhp at 1600kg. As it is with Phil pushing this road car to the absolute limit, it was inevitable for the car to suffer with heat issues. Phil explained that, ”it suffers quite badly from heat circulation in the engine bay as the ITBs currently pull in that hot air from the headers.”.

As with any heat management issue, Phil approached us to see if we could help him out.

Although Phil considered our ZircoFlex® SHIELD solution which is our metallic encapsulated heat shielding option (otherwise known as a lagged system), as the headers are such a big visual part of the car, it swayed him to opt for our renowned thermal barrier ceramic coating to tackle performance as well as aesthetics.

Phil chose two finishes from our Performance Colours™ Range: Performance Sterling Silver™ for most of the headers, and Performance Graphite™ for the exit x-pipe. Our Sterling Silver was a great choice to show off the manifolds in a brighter colour. Whereas in the Graphite finish for the X-pipe was in-keeping with the exterior look. Our Performance Colours Range™ of thermal barrier ceramic coatings offers surface temperature reductions of up to 33%, and a maximum operating temperature of 900°C.

Here’s a picture of the pipework after Phil took it all apart and sent it over and its before/after:

Before.

After.

After the coating was applied, it was then a fun job for Phil to figure out how his V12 ‘jigsaw’ came back together! Phil was again very impressed with our masking work, making it a perfect fit for installation. With our high-performance thermal barrier ceramic coatings being extremely thin and lightweight, it was the perfect thermal solution for confined spaces within the engine bay, some areas only had about 1mm clearance between some of the header pipes.

Since installation, Phil’s noticed a significant reduction in heat within the engine bay, which has in turn improved the performance further. Heat management is especially important when considering Phil’s favourite pastime in ‘THE SLAMBO’ in his own words is, “doing daft low-speed high load/rpm stuff like burnouts and donuts.”

Click here to read more about how we also protected Phil’s unique 964 Turbo build.

Get in touch to find out more about our Ceramic Coating or Heat Shielding solutions to ensure your car/bike temperatures are kept down to a minimum!