artguy

well....the car is back...for a bit...steve kan built me a new motor with a big port. we did a custom single kit based on his design for what I wanted in terms of drivability. bnr built the turbo kit.

I picked up the greddy titanium exhaust (3 inch) and am going to sell my n1 dual (2.5 inch). I also picked up the Gotham Racing Resonated Midpipe after we originally started to tune on my n1dual normal midpipe combo (wayyyyy too loud for me). It now has a nice low rumble which wont shatter the glass of my neighbors houses when Im idling outside. The greddy exhaust is only 8 lbs and feels like less. i was helping to install it and at one point thought steve was holding one end. he wasnt. it is that light.

We had some bug fixes to do

1 trailing plugs were not firing due to a simple wiring issue in the ignition harness. steve fixed it in a few minutes after cracking some jokes and I was happy it was nothing major. the anti-det device is a hoax. with trailing plugs not firing the car runs like ****. I drove it for two days like that. not only was there a loss of power but there was a loss of overall smoothness in the way the engine performed. It is a waste of your time to even attempt it. Just go to water injection like i did. it lowers intake temps and also is anti detonation. though I dont want to turn this into that discussion....i just wanted to say that I tried it unwittingly and it blew.

2 ground issue with water injection..fixed..and back on the road.


Finally we were ready to tune and up the boost. Steve installed the new profec b and off we went. we tuned for low boost first. he is incredibly fast. in a few pulls he had the low boost straightened out. we uppped the boost to ten lbs...car pulls like stink already...almost as fast as my m2 set on my mid boost setting (15lbs). up top screams like mad due to the waste gate being vented directly to atmosphere. it sounds like the gates of hell open up and give that chainsaw roar. gotta love the rotary. It was a bit too loud for me so we will route it back to the 3 and a half inch downpipe in a couple weeks.

Once we upped the boost I got the bad news...it was apparent and came right thru my feet to my brains. as soon as we hit 9-10lbs of boost and 6500 rpm's the ACT street/strip clutch lets go and becomes the ACT street/SLIP clutch. It is new clutch time.

at 7lbs of boost or so steve thinks Im putting down around 340rwhp.

I am such a low end guy that I was expecting to be disappointed by the single. Steve was true to his word however and built me a kit with good response and very quick spool. I really do like the smooth power band. the tires no longer break loose at 4500 rpms (but then again i have brand new victoracers and am running low boost). it has a lot of potential and is going to be a lot of fun.

I have an appointment up there at Gotham again on the second week of july to do the clutch and retune for high boost. I will have to wait for the dyno til then. For now I limp around with 340rwhp or so


anyhow...there is more...but that is the gist of it.


Cheers,


Jason

rynberg

That's great that everything (minus the clutch) is working out! Nice power! I am very interested to see your power curve and how quickly the single develops boost.

Are you going with an Act Extreme pressure plate (keeping the street/strip disk) or are you going to a puck-clutch? If you go puck, go with a sprung-puck disk, there's a few companies that make them.

Victoracers, huh? They'll heat cycle on you fairly quickly, but they will help provide the traction you'll need. I would go with Toyo RA-1s for "street" driving...

Good luck, Jason.

skunks

wow, 7psi @ 340rwhp, not bad! i didnt even know that was possible. very nice results. post pics

dubulup

ball bearing

FD_Newb_1974

Not to hijack your thread, but can you speak about the grounding issue with the water injection? How did you know you had a grounding issue? What did you do?

Thanks!

artguy

Im not sure which clutch to go with yet. I want drivability on the street to stay decent. I dont want the on off type of feel to it. but, i need something that grabs hard enuff to support about 450 to the wheels.

more research.....

I met up with wingsfan. He has an LS1 FD which is very nicely done...he even did it all himself. I am going to have to drag him up to see Mr. Kan because he needs some tuning pretty badly. We did a pull from a roll out on the back streets. At seven PSI i pulled on him in both first and second til a missed shift on his part ended the fun. He still has work to do on the car and said he had put down 310 on the dyno pretty much untuned. He is expecting about 400 to the wheels when final. I hope to chill in the 430 and below range on the street. Once he gets tuning we can make a run and shoot the vids. He was kind enuff to let me drive it (i did the same). It was really strange to finally drive an fd with low end torque. a dream come true...however I do love the winding out that you can do with a rotary. Overall the car was pretty nimble...it did have more weight up front with the v8 there but i was snaking it around on the road and it honestly handled very well even with the heavier feel to the front. Two curiosities done in one week...whats it like to own a single turbo car...and whats it like to drive a v8 fd? both are good.


overall, the single feels much much better than non sequential ever did for me. people say non sequential is the singles little brother...its more like a bastard stepchild. I was going to keep my m2 setup just in case I didnt like the single. Even though the single is not as responsive in the low and mid range...the way it pulls up top is going to peel my eyes back pretty good. I think that I am going to be very happy with the 420-430 rwhp range on the car.

I had bryan at bnr appraise the m2 set. He told me not to take less than 1900.00 for them...said there were a couple minor cracks in the manifold but that they were in very good condition and that the parts in them were expensive....dual ball bearing will do that.


I ended up going with the shaft bearing kit dublup...Steve convinced me not to spend the extra 1200 on that until I decided if I liked it. He said I could always get it rebuilt with the dual bb setup and that my 1200 was better spent elsewhere on the vehicle for now. I put it in the new exhaust setup and the fuel rail/1600 injectors.

I cant wait to up the boost. I also cant decide whether to keep the gates of hell wastegate dumping to atmosphere sound. it purss great with the new exhaust til i hit hard boost....then it just sounds like a rotary race car..bwahhpppppppbupbupbup It is obnoxious sounding...but it is also scarey sounding. Im undecided.

a big thanks to wingsfan for letting me drive his car....and a big thanks to gotham for bustin their asses all weekend on my car. steve is by far the best rotary guy I have ever met. Period. He really is in his element with these cars. After watching him work for two days I can say that his problem solving skills on the vehicle were great. truly.


J


J

XSTransAm

what rpms are you seeing full boost at?

and congrats

artguy

steves problem solving is very quick and rational. we were driving the car and it stalled on two occasions...just completely shut off....freaked me out terribly. we pulled back in the shop andnd he opened up the hood...i could see the wheels turning in his head if ya know what i mean. I saw him look around at the grounds and in about ten seconds he had found part of the water injection kit that was touching the firewall. It is a little pill shaped part..metallic....I am not sure what it is...i didnt ask...it had melted thru some rubber and was resting against the firewall...grounding itself out. If your car just completely shuts off while you are driving...that is what it is..a.wiring issue...bad grounding.....another symptom of the water injection being ground out was that it kept injecting water the entitre time I drove the vehicle. it was crazzzzy to torn it on and isee an instant twenty degree celcius temperature drop in intake temps. even though it was ground out...steve and i were both very happy to see absolutely no knock...and absolutely instant cooling properties of the kit. It is one of my favorite mods...I sleep a little easier for sure because of it.


J

FD_Newb_1974

I love the kit. I recently found methanol also so I am running 50/50.

I still have my battery in the stock location. My pump is installed in the hatch. I am told by aquamist I won't be getting enough voltage this way to maintain the water levels I need to. I need to move the battery to the back, or add a priming pump.

If I have 4 850 cc injectors. I need to flow 340 cc of water / min. A .9 or 1.0 mm nozzle should work accordingly, if the above problems are fixed. If you have 850*2 and 1600 * 2, you needd 490 cc's of water / min just to maintain 10% water to fuel.

If you run a mix, like methanol, they actually say you should run closer to 15% water/fuel.

Just a result of my research. GREAT to hear comments of going single. I'm debating the same thing. Dubulup can attest to me changing my mind more than my underwear.

CCarlisi

Haha, too funny.

What pressure plate are you using with your ACT clutch? I have a S/S with a heavy duty pressure plate and I'm debating whether or not to switch it out for the extreme when I install my new turbo.

I agree with what you said about the water injection system. A friend of mine has the entry level aquamist setup and it really does instantly knock the temps down by 20+C. Where did you mount the pump? He originally placed his under the hood but it burned up on the road course so he moved it behind the driver side seat.

GoodfellaFD3S

iTrader: (213)

Hey J,

Can you elaborate on your mention of the anti-det device? I have driven a rex running on only leadings and agree it sucks, but you should try driving one running on only trailings, lol

Re: your choice of clutches, I went with a Spec Stage 3 Sprung 6 puck with the lightweight (drilled pressure plate) option. I know the shop can get them, and i feel it will be sufficient for your needs.

As an aside, my R1 is up and running (with it's first decent port job ever and the new BNRs) and i hope to have it tuned within the month. Perhaps a trip down to Austin is in order and we can see how badly you spank me

take it easy man--

artguy

not much to elaborate on with running only leading plugs...it is this simple...the car runs and sounds like ***. it is also less responsive and sounds like a POS. so...if i was to run those plugs, I would have to run more boost to make up for the loss in power because the car runs like junk...which creates stress on the motor and heat stress on the o rings.

I beat a stock supra the other day...turbo...not like that is a huge deal..but it is fun to think where the car will be at fourteen or fifteen psi...Im going to run about ten or eleven lbs on the street though. I want this car to stay running for a while. hehe.


j


j

wingsfan

Jason, I just saw this thread. I was impressed with the new setup. Very clean, and like I commented before the craftsmanship on the downpipe looked good. Some manifolds look like they've been cobbled together (like my exhaust ), but you're looks like a "measure twice, cut once" type of deal.

You're so right on the need for tuning with my setup. I've been just living with it that way for the last 5 months or so. One of these days I'll have the money and the time to get a pro to tune it. I could make adjustments, but I'd just be stabbing in the dark. If Kan can tune an LS1, I might have to make the trip up to FW with you.

Impressions of your car...like I said very clean, nice install. There's definitely some lag waiting for the turbo to spool, but once it does it pulls nicely (how's that for understatement). The wastegate sounds nasty as hell, and the BOV venting to atmosphere kind of gives away any pretense or thoughts that you're playing around.

The clutch definitely starts to slip higher in the RPM band. I don't remember what my stock twins felt like, but it was driving me crazy waiting on the power. Of course, I've been driving the V8 with the "instant on" torque curve for the last 8 months. It was worth the wait though as there's nothing quite like a turbo to keep kicking your *** back into your seat. Made me miss my turbos, and reenforced my desire to go single and stroked (how does 6.5L of displacement with a bar of boost on top sound? )

I liked the car a lot, and have to thank you for letting me take it for a spin. I now know what I missed by not going the single route. I was very impressed by the smoothness of the power delivery and how fast it felt for such low boost. It's already as fast or faster than my car (we'd know if I could drive at all). That thing is going to be a monster when you get it right.

Hopefully we'll hook up again and go play some more "tag".

wingsfan

Hey, if you do come down to Austin shoot me a message before your trip too. I'd love to see your car. I like seeing all sorts of mods and available "options" that people do when they modify their cars, even if many of the owners think I'm a heretic for replacing my motor with a V8. Plus, it would give you a chance to see one of the slowest V8 powered RX-7s on the planet.