oo7arkman

iTrader: (2)

This time last year one of my worst fears came true, I look behind my car at a stoplight and I am staring in disbelief at white smoke... I start to turn the car around to head home and the low coolant buzzer screams with desire for more coolant. I stop at Walgreens and grab some 50/50 and limp the car home.

The car sat for several months drained of coolant as not to damage anything as I did the painstaking research of how to go about the rebuild process. I decided on rebuilding the car myself with top-quality water seals from Pineapple, RA super seals, and all other OEM seals.

The car had been a 500R single turbo for a little over a year but with stock ports still putting down impressive power. I decided this was definitely the time to take advantage and do some porting. After LOTS of research and speaking to many of the local experts here on the forum I decided to take the irons and housings down to BDC for a half-bridge. Now before anyone complains about HBP's, read on and I will have to say I could not be happier.

Brian's portwork is stellar. See pics below:

Secondary Bridge






Primary


Exhaust




There is definitely a method to Brian's madness when porting so if you want more info on it give him a call. He does beautiful work.

After reassembly Brian sent me a base map to use while breaking the fresh rebuild in. After I put several hundred miles on the motor and the car was pulling great vacuum I took the car back down to Brian (BDC) for tuning last weekend.

This was the first time Brian had ever seen my car (He lives 5hrs from me) so he took a good amount of time to look the car over and check over all of my work. After the car got the stamp of approval we began vacuum tuning and then moved on to boost tuning. The session went very well and I am COMPLETELY happy with Brian's work. He is a total professional.

What does the car dyno at? I dunno, we tuned it on the street which I really kinda prefer. I have had cars tuned on the dyno, get it home and the tune does not translate great to typical street driving. OH, and all you doubters on the HBP, I see 15psi before 4k (around 3600-3700) and the car pulls like hell. Definitely not all on the top end or "peaky". It is a very consistent power pull from about 3k-7500k. I lost nearly no driveability of the stock ports. It is a little tricky when cruising under 2500rpm but who spends any time down there?

I will dyno it someday, but I don't really care. The car feels a shade faster @15psi and HBP than previously with the stock ports @17psi when it put down 405rwhp.