I'm putting a new clutch in and was snapping some pics. I wanted to show the clutch install and some pics of my torque brace made out of an aluminum tie rod swedge tube. If anyone can please host the pics, I'll e-mail them to you. THanks

 

trainwreck@wreckedyouth.com

 

your the man thanks

 

 

thanks, the torque brace is made from parts from a local dirt car shop. 2 rod ends, 2 jam nuts, an aluminum swedge tube 8" long used for tie rod ends or A-arms. It is mounted to one of the intake bolts and welded to the shock tower. It is fully adjustable. It really seemed to help throttle response. It also helps the shift from 2nd to 3rd.

The other pic is of my flywheel. I just got done removing the tranny to replace the Centerforce Clutch with an ACT Street/Strip. I have decide not to resurface the flywheel because I think it looks pretty good. If anyone has an opinion on the condition of it please post.
I decided to just scuff it up with emory paper like the FSM said.

I hope to see a difference between the Centerforce and the ACT. I will update.

 

How big is that NOS shot?


-Ted

 

I'm not bottle jockey but im his roomate. I helped him do the clutch tonight and pretty much everything else ever on his car. The Nitrous System is an NX single nozzle efi universal system. It can go from 35-75, currently it is jetted at 50hp. we had problems in the past with the nitrous. On his old engine he got the header and exhaust and didnt know about the six ports. with the nitrous it would backfire and detonate. With the new engine and the 6ports wired open it runs awesome while on the nitrous. On 87 octane at very high rpms it seems to ping a little, nothing high octane doesn't fix though. It really helps, the tach seems to move twice as fast even with only a fifty shot. NA guys shouldn't be afraid of nitrous if your not a spaz about the setup it will be awesome.

 

I would like to make a torque brace for my car. It annoys the hell out of me when my car shudders and crap like that. Nice work!

 

My roomate, bottle jockey really likes it. The plans for the torque brace were mine, although it's not jimlab's work it is practical and functional. It was a little over kill thought the way we made it. We were just dead set on using the anodized swedge tube. It cost I think $52 dollars in parts. We didn't have time to fab a mount that bolted to the strut tower so we just welded it directly to the strut tower. The other end utilizes an upper intake bolt, as it is plenty strong. It may look a little rigged but who cares the rest of the engine is dirty, it is hard as crap to keep an engine clean in kansas when the wind blows 30mph daily and it is dry as hell.

 

i dunno if i'd want to connect a tq brace to the IM.

 

On the S5 NA the IM mount is very secure.
That brace is way stronger then it really had to be.
It's on the tension side, so even a flexible cable would work there.
Max tension is around 150 LBS at that point.

I suspect you are getting a lot of chassis buzz with no vibration isolation.

 

Actually, the engine spins clockwise, so in the above pic, the brace is in compression.


-Ted

 

You are correct - My bad - That side is compression load.

 

do you notice any vibration or did you use bushings?

 

Scary stuff... makes me shudder.
There are a couple ways around wiring open the ports that are quite a bit more effective.

 

No bushings, just metal to metal, He only notices a slight vibration, And the way it is mounted to the intake doesn't even bother me in the least.

For Scathcart. The nitrous did not cause the first engine to blow. We had problems with the nitrous and then fixed it. It wasn't until about 9 months later the engine lost compression, it was high mileage. He also had the six ports operated off of the airpump, that worked great for a while but then it just stopped working, so we wired them open. I'm very confident that with some premium fuel and 104+ octane boost he will have no detonation.

 

Are you able to get to the oil filler with the brace there?

 

From what I see, the oil filter access is no problem.

Changing plugs might be easier from underneath.

 

so there's no problem with loading the IM with sureshot's claimed 150 lbs of force?

 

The alignment of the brace is perfect. There is absolutely no interference with the oil filter or the plugs.

the way it is bolted to the im doesn't bother me because i just look at like i'm pulling an engine. I'm a domestic guy particularly small block chevy, every time i pull the engine in my drag car i use a lift plate that utilizes the carb mounting pad. only 4 5/16 studs and nuts is plenty support to a 450lbs engine. I know the 13b and a sbc intake bolt system is totally different but the S5's intake does seem pretty sturdy. No worries here but we'll monitor it and check the torque on the bolts periodically and let you all know.

 

sounds good

 

Any kind of detonation and ping makes me shudder, regardless of whether or not it kills the engine.
I meant simply that there are far more effective ways to keep the 6-ports open under nitrous use than simply wiring them open all the time. I consider wiring the ports open a temporary fix, not a great solution.
The entire set-up you describe, with detonation, wired auxilary ports, and backfire just makes the installation seem like it was done by people who had no clue as to what they're doing. THIS is why nitrous gets its bad rap.
You would not have seen this problem with proper nitrous tuning and accessory install... but hey, no one worries about this stuff unless they go with a turbocharger. *sigh*

104+ octane boost will do diddly squat to the octane, it will take 91 octane to 91.3. Not worth the money. You'd be better off using Tolulene, its gobs cheaper and will yield more power. Do a search on this subject.

 

I'm going from memory here, since I read this quite a while ago, but an Australian car mag tested a range of octane boosters on a variable compression engine used by industry specifically to measure knock and calculate the octane rating of fuels, and found 104+ to be one of the few that actually worked nearly as well as it claimed. I believe the increase was around 3 points, not 0.3.

 

Assuming the octane booster is a combustible fuel, adding a 500 mL bottle to 50L of 91 octane fuel and raising the octane rating to 94 octane, would equate that the Octane booster itself had an octane rating of nearly 400. I can;t even imagine the amount of lead/boron additives that would be required to acheiev that octane level, but I find that number pretty unbelievable.

Most gasoline race cars run 114-116 octane, and still look for more. Why would they not just use this 104+ octane additive to up their octane?
I'm always skeptical of what I read. I usually evaluate it based on not what is written, but WHY it was written. Unfortunately, when it comes to professional journalism, financial backing from a company can quite often be the "why".

 

To be honest, I don't know exactly how octane boosters work, but I'm pretty sure it's not just concentrated "octane" (for want of a better word). I assume they work the same way as the chemicals added to pump fuel by the fuel companies to increase its octane.
Possibly due to the law of diminishing returns. Octane booster probably has little effect on high-octane fuel, since it'll already be crammed full of nasty chemicals. Plus you'd need buckets of the stuff, and it ain't that cheap...
I don't believe everything I read either, but given the magazine is one of the most respected car mags in Oz (Street Machine if anyone's interested) and that the tests were carried out by an Australian government research and testing lab, I have no problems with the results. There were some products on the test that did very poorly (they tested some in-tank engine cleaners at the same time and one lowered the fuel's octane rating!), and some that increased octane but not nearby as much as claimed.