Well I was going to wait to post until it was all done, but I'm too excited. I drove down at 7:30 this morning, got to PFS around 12:00. Talked with Ray for a while, he remembered the car from when it was there in like 2001 or 2002, even remembered a few of the previous owners names. Then a friend from the DC area picked me up, and I took the train from DC to Penn Station in NY, walked to grand central, then took the train to Stamford where I live. what a great day .

Hopefully this time around its even better than before. He said he'd probably do it between monday and tuesday, I'll be going to get it next weekend if everything goes ok. I'm not going to be able to sleep this week haha.

 

You never stated what was being done...

 

Its getting tuned, I did all the work over the winter. Aiming for the 500 on pump and meth club.

Also just picked up my new R888's today so hopefully it will be sticky.

oh and there was a yellowish orange (with the typical black accents) veilside fortune car there, I've never seen one in person before, it was sick.

 

did you snap any pictures? sound like a busy and fun day. can't wait for the results
!

 

I didn't bring my camera, this saturday when I go to get it I'll remember my camera. There was also a really nice red FD there. It was brighter than VR, and had a painted scoot hood and nice rims. It looked really aggressive. Had a big GT wing which I usually don't care for, but it looked ok on that car.

Its so cool driving down there, back roads with fields on both sides, then all of a sudden a line of 20 show cars haha.

 

"This saturday when I go to get it" ...so confident LOL

 

hey now, thats not nice. I need to stay positive.

 

He's just a busy man, I hope your on the road for the long weekend .

 

I guess its on the dyno now, im nervous haha.

 

It's Ray so you have nothing to worry about but I can understand being a little nervous. Good luck and safe drive back tomorrow.

Anthony

 

insane burnout. LOL

 

you are in good hands. i had my car down there a few weeks back, turned out awesome.
a friend also had his supra powered fd there a few weeks back getting tuned and exhaust fabricated. awsome work. have fun driving it back

 

Any updates, spill the beans!

 

did you remember to take your camera when you picked it up last week?

c'mon, don't keep us waiting, what are the #'s?

 

hey guys, sorry i was mia last week. It actually wasn't ready last weekend, Ray called me that friday night to see if I was willing to wait a week because he had to switch over and finish a 3 rotor rx8. No need to make him work all night if waiting a week isn't a big deal for me. I've only driven the thing not even 2000 miles since i got it, and since i put the new motor in right away, i never even boosted past like 7lbs. whats one more week right?

So today I left at 6:30am, Ray was pretty tied up all week, so he actually did everything today. Which actually worked out better for both of us, i got to be there the whole time, and help out, and see everything happen. It took a lot longer than expected, but thats how it goes. Now Ill get into the results, and a few things I didn't wrong on the build that we had to fix, and also the sad news. And I just got home to at 2:30 am, so a very long day.

First, what I did wrong:

-the EVC-4 boost controller did not work (i never tested it because i was never tuned, so i never tried to go past my wastegate pressure until today.) I got it used off of the forum for $150, the guy said it was working when he removed it, so I'll go through it again and see if I did something wrong. We switched to a manual controller just to keep things moving.

-i bought the fuel cell for the meth off ebay (1 gallon), forgot to clean it, ray looked before filling it up, good save.

-a fitting on the meth pump wasn't tight so it leaked, caught it pretty early

i was using a relay that would send power to the meth pump straight from the battery when the meth controller sensed the appropriate pressure and sent power to it. I just wanted a good source of power and thought this would work, but by doing this, it is no longer truly progressive, because as soon as the controller sends the signal which is progressive, the relay clicks on and full power straight from the batter to the pump. we just removed the relay, works fine now.

I also forgot to put a check valve in the meth line, so we put one of those in. I guess I'm a noob when it comes to meth.

Now the results:
The tuning went quick once we fixed all of those little items. and put new plug wires, on the dyno chart you could see that the hp at high rpm got wavy, with the new wires it smoothed out immediately. tuned at the wastegate of 8psi i think was around 311 (that was somewhat early on, so its probably a little different.)

I don't really want to use meth all that much, when on the street probably just once in a while. So I wanted decent power without it. Ray tuned to 12psi, and no meth. Can't remember what this number is, ray is sending me the final dyno charts on monday.

Then we kicked the meth pump on and its so cool how cold the UIM gets after a pull with the meth. I didn't realize it would do that. So Ray started pumping up the boost and pulling some fuel. A couple guys were impressed with the power it was making around 14 and 15psi. But I wanted 500 right?

Sad news:
around 18 psi, it started breaking up after 7k rpm. Ray spent a lot of time trying to work it out, but it was happening consistently when adding more fuel, and also taking out fuel. I'm sure Ray worked with a few more parameters than that, so thats an my own elementary description haha. I have a TEC GT, and Ray has experienced similar problems on more than one occasion, so thats what we think is wrong. There were a few other things pointing to this, for example, after one pull, after he let off the gas, the RPM chart on the TEC software should just go down in a linear fashion, one time it had a weird hickup, when no one was touching the gas, and also one time when trying to start it, no RPM's showed up, even though it was turning over. there were a few other strange things, so thats why we think its the TEC GT.

due to the time constraints and me having to be back home by sunday, rather than tune higher and risk misfiring more and breaking something, I made the decision just to stick with 18, thats where we had consistent pulls with no breakup. Anything higher and it would misfire. 18psi got me 454whp. I guess seeing as how the highest hp car i've driven is a 400whp supra, and i've never even had my fd past 6k rpm until tonight, its enough power for me...for now haha.

He also said the T78 seemed a bit more laggy than they usually do and might also be causing everything to be a bit down on power. It is old, and when i had it off the car there was no shaft play, but i didn't remove the housings and inspect the part of the blades that you can't see. It did have an engine blow on it a few owners back (ray actually tuned it a few years ago when they put the atkins replacement in and remembered it, an oil control ring then failed on the atkins, which is why i had to switch motors when i first got it in august) so it may help if i get the turbo rebuilt.

I had an old manual controller in the car, we were using one of rays during the tuning, switched it out for my manual controller before i left. the dial was all the way off when i left, so just the wastegate seemed fast, so much fun having it above 6k and really pulling. Then i stopped at a service station, gave it a full turn, got back in, wastegate still opened. stopped at the next service station gave it a half turn, still wastegate. tried another half turn, still wastegate, so then i was like screw it i'll mess with it tomorrow. hopefully its not broken and i just need to turn it up more (i've never used it, it came with the car).

Anyway, i'm pretty much done spending money on it this year (except for repairs haha), so a turbo rebuild, ems, and re-tune can wait. Even though i didn't hit 500, I'm very happy with it (and i haven't even experienced it with the meth on yet), and also the whole experience of being there when it got tuned, Ray was great. I'll be posting a full write up on the car in the single turbo section (but sadly not the 500 on pump club section ) Now if I can just get the boost controller working tomorrow I'm just going to enjoy it for the rest of the year as is.

 

I am a loss for words. You drove less then 2k on your FD and you want 500hp ?


Do you plan to drive this thing daily ?

 

Yes, but I've had a 160whp bike, speed is speed

And I have a daily driver, if I've only put 2K on it since last august, then I must have been driving something else right?