Cannonball Garage

Cannonball Garage Cannonball Garage is your Chicago area McLaren specialist. Cannonball Garage’s foundation is the people who operate it. Our customers always come first.

We offer maintenance, service, repair, performance, dyno tuning and have an M838T & M840T Engine Program Cannonball Garage is founded by Arne Toman, AMS Performance co-founder and former Vice President of one of the nation’s top aftermarket manufacturers. Arne wanted to start something that he could call his own. A company dedicated, like his former, to selling the best the aftermarket automotive

parts the world had to offer. Cannonball Garage is a place where you can buy parts from a familiar face and know you are getting parts that perform. A place where things like profit margin and brand popularity don’t matter. A place that only sells parts he believes in. A company that not only sells the parts but understands them to their core. Quite simply Cannonball Garage won’t carry anything he doesn’t believe in himself. A place you can trust in a world filled with questionable choices. Relationships are the core of Cannonball Garage. You are never simply a name in an online shopping cart. Customer service will always be the priority. It’s easy to buy a part from someone but what if something goes wrong? What if you don’t know what part you should be buying? These questions and many more, are why Cannonball Garage is the place to shop for all your aftermarket automotive performance needs.

07/15/2026

💪 When you are building McLaren engines at the highest level, every detail matters, including how the workspace is organized.

➡️ We are proud to welcome Levrack as a sponsor of Cannonball Garage and have them outfitting our new engine room with a reimagined, state-of-the-art storage system made right here in America.

Their customizable storage solutions will help us maximize every inch of the room while giving Ivan fast, easy access to the tools, components, hardware, and supplies needed throughout every engine build. Less time searching and moving equipment means more time focused on building some of the most capable McLaren engines in the world.

We will be taking you inside the new engine room to show you what Levrack has to offer and how better organization is helping take the Cannonball Garage engine program to the next level.

⭐ Thank you to Levrack for being part of what we are building. Check them out for flexible storage solutions designed to make any workspace cleaner, smarter, and more efficient.

07/14/2026

🎬 "Ask a Cannonball Tech" is back with a new episode!

This time, we stepped away from the lifts, tools, and dyno to ask Ivan, Logan, and the team an important question: What is your favorite car movie?

From high-speed chases and a questionable amounts of shifts to timeless classics and cult favorites, the answers might tell you a little more about the crew making sure your supercar is getting the attention it deserves.

What is the greatest car movie of all time? Drop your pick in the comments 🏁

07/13/2026

This is your opportunity to take a behind-the-scenes look inside Cannonball Garage with Ivan and Jordan as they inspect a set of V8 McLaren connecting rods from a freshly disassembled 765 engine.

They should all be the same. But when you start comparing rods to one-another, they're seeing major issues.

This is the kind of inspection work most people never get to see. It is not just taking an engine apart. It is slowing down, looking closely, comparing parts side by side, and understanding what the engine is telling you.

Are the rods all exactly the same like they are supposed to be?

Watch as Ivan and Jordan walk through what they find, compare the differences, and explain why the small details inside these engines can make a big difference.

Follow along for a closer look at what happens after a McLaren engine comes apart and before the rebuild begins.

07/11/2026

Most shops change the oil and move on.

✅ We don’t.

🔎 This 720S came in for routine maintenance. Oil change. Inspection. Nothing out of the ordinary. But part of our process is going a step further. We cut open every oil filter and inspect what most people never see.

That’s where the story changed.

Inside the filter, we found ferrous metallic debris. Not something you ignore. Not something you guess about.

We tracked it down to the oil pump shaft.

Left alone, that wear would have turned into a failure. And when an oil pump fails, oil pressure drops. That’s how engines get destroyed.

Instead, we caught it early.

New oil pump installed. Problem solved. Car back on the road.

That’s the difference between servicing a car and actually protecting it.

📱Call the shop 8478290060
⚡Send us a message
👍Let’s take care of your McLaren the right way

07/10/2026

❓Does your tuner have an in-house dyno⁉️

Cannonball's investment in an advanced AWD Dynojet 424 chassis dynamometer allows us to simulate real road conditions with precision. When we conduct dyno testing, we are able to replicate engine load and driving scenarios that your vehicle experiences on the open road giving you a CUSTOM tailored tune specific to YOUR car, yielding the absolute best and safest results.

Our state-of-the-art Dyno cell is equipped with 40,000cfm fans, which serve the dual purpose of keeping your engine cool during testing and accurately simulating the airflow experienced when driving down the road at high speed. This level of attention to detail ensures that our tuning and modification processes are carried out with the utmost accuracy and reliability, allowing us to optimize your vehicle’s performance while maintaining crucial factors such as engine temperature and airflow.

Are you looking to tune your super car? Visit Cannonball Garage and see why we are the most trusted performance focused shops in the country! Call, text, or email us today! Visit cannonballgarage.com/tuning/ for more.
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📞 847.829.0060⁣⁣
📧 [email protected]⁣⁣

⭐️ The McLaren 788 HS has officially arrived!!!The numbers are pretty impressive. A 4.0L twin-turbo V8 producing up to 7...
07/09/2026

⭐️ The McLaren 788 HS has officially arrived!!!

The numbers are pretty impressive. A 4.0L twin-turbo V8 producing up to 777 horsepower, an aggressive carbon fiber aero package with a big rear wing, an “S-duct” up front, and every car built through MSO. Production is capped at just 200 examples: 100 coupes and 100 spiders.

At Cannonball Garage, we’ve spent countless hours with the platform this car is built upon. We’ve serviced them, tuned them, engineered solutions for them, and pushed the M840T engine to power levels over 1300HP in our CSO-X.

👀We can’t wait to see the first 788HS roll through our shop.

What do you think?

07/08/2026

...All of this completed for LESS THAN the cost of a stock factory replacement engine! Much stronger than factory. More reliable than stock and substantially more powerful.

🌴 This 2020 McLaren 600LT came to Cannonball Garage all the way from South Florida with catastrophic engine damage. The failure started with a broken oil pump shaft. Immediate oil pressure loss. Severe oil starvation. Heavy scoring in the cam caps and saddles. Damaged camshafts. Excessive rocker arm wear.

❌ The owner was quoted $110,000 for a stock engine replacement.

Instead of writing that check, he asked Cannonball a better question.
“What would it take to rebuild it stronger?”

So Jordan put together a quote for a CSO engine built the right way that included:
• Replacement cylinder heads
• New camshafts
• DLC-coated rocker arms
• CSO connecting rods, head studs, main studs, head gaskets, and piston rings
• Pure 900 turbos
• ID1050 injectors
• DWS fuel system
• M-Engineering Protune calibration (93 octane + MS109)

Results:
✅ 909 whp / 846 wtq on MS109 and 763 whp / 711 wtq on 93 octane

This is what happens when a rebuild is engineered, not just assembled. No matter where you are in North America, if your McLaren needs anything from a stock replacement to a fully built CSO engine, call Cannonball Garage. Let’s build it together!

07/07/2026

What’s really hiding inside your oil pump?

During a routine inspection, Ivan tore down this pump and found two major concerns…

➡️ First, wear at the support bearing surface. Over time, that wear can eat into the shaft until it cracks. When that happens, oil pressure is gone and so is your engine.

➡️ Second, and even more concerning… plastic debris.

This is the front scavenge port of a dry sump system, and it’s packed with material coming from the valve covers. You can actually see where that plastic is being worn away internally, then circulated through the system. Some of it gets caught in the filter… some of it doesn’t.

✅ And that’s the difference.

We don’t just change your oil and send you on your way.
We cut open every filter.
We inspect what others throw away.
We look for the early warning signs before they turn into engine failures.

If you want more than just an oil change…
If you want to understand the health of your engine…

📱Call the shop 847.829.0060
⚡Send us a message.

07/06/2026

Another 765LT. Same valve cover story.

This time we pulled the valve cover off a 2021 McLaren 765LT to show exactly what we keep finding inside these engines. Before the cover even came off, the spark plug tube seals were already telling part of the story. Some were pushed up, some were sitting lower, and there was already oil down in the spark plug tubes.

Under crankcase pressure, that means crankcase gases and oil can make their way past areas that should be sealed.

➡️ Then came the grand reveal.

Once the valve cover was off, we found the familiar wear marks inside. Some areas were relatively untouched, but others showed clear contact where the internal plastic ribs had been rubbing against the camshaft lobes.

This is not a one-off. This is not something we have only seen a few times. EVERY McLaren V8 engine we have taken apart has shown some version of this issue.

✅ That is exactly why we developed our CSO Billet Valve Covers.

Our covers eliminate the internal plastic ridges that can contact the cam lobes, so you are not creating plastic debris inside the engine. They also use a relocated seal position to better control the spark plug tube sealing, along with a stable billet aluminum design that helps maintain proper sealing across the valve cover bridge area.

No warping plastic. No cam lobe contact. No plastic being introduced into the engine. Better sealing. Better oil control. A better long-term solution.

McLaren owners, this is one of those issues worth understanding before it becomes a bigger problem.

📱 Give the shop a call. Let’s get your McLaren hooked up the right way.

07/05/2026

This 2020 600LT came to us from Florida with a damaged engine and a decision to make.

The dealer quote? Replace it with another stock engine.

✅ For the same money, the owner chose something better.

Instead of going back to factory spec, we installed one of our CSO built motors, added upgraded turbos, an upgraded fuel system, and the supporting mods to turn this into a completely different animal.

Stock replacement or built performance. Same budget. Very different outcome.

We’ve already completed the 93 octane tuning with M-Engineering and we’re wrapping up the MS109 calibration now. Once dyno tuning is finalized, we’ll move to the street to clean up the logs and make sure everything drives as strong as it pulls.

✅ More power.
✅ More reliability.
✅ More value for the owner.

Watch for the full story coming soon. If you’re facing an engine replacement on your McLaren, talk to us before you sign off on stock. There is a better option waiting at Cannonball.

📱Call the shop or send us a message to start the conversation!

Address

38 West End Drive
Gilberts, IL
60136

Opening Hours

Monday 8am - 5pm
Tuesday 8am - 5pm
Wednesday 8am - 5pm
Thursday 9am - 5pm
Friday 9am - 5pm

Telephone

+18478290060

Website

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