I'll be there first in the morning. see ya all.
-ray

 

I'll see you tomorrow Ray....

 

Anyone know if steve is going to come down to southern cali anytime soon?

 

Great pictures Funk, thanks! I would have hated to be the neighbor across the street!

 

My cars overheating and now i flooded it, had to get it towed back to my house. Ive worked straight on this car for 2 weeks getting it ready and now it poops on me. This isnt my day

 

^^that's sucks ***....

My cars temp spiked on me last night for no good reason....went up 3/4 of the way. I was getting ready to freak out when it dropped back down to normal..

 

 

i hope you guys get a good laugh out of my clump welds!

give a noob some credit though, it was my first time welding aluminum and i didn't have much time to practice yet, i had to layer it on thick because the welds were porous due to lack of penetration.

i said penetration...heh heh heh.....

 

weld-a-clump....that's what i'll call you from now on!

Pics will get posted later this evening....

 

My car kills Haha you could see people running out of the shop with their eyes watering and coughing lol.. I had a pretty good pull and when I get the boost issue and exhaust leak fixed I should have 20+ more hp I think Steve said

 

Hint #1:
Welding aluminum requires a TIG.

Hint #2:
Your engine moves under load more than a 1/4"

Glad you could make it Nick and btw, I wasn't running out coughing....I was almost throwing up
That is a very nice 10AE you have.

Will do a better write up later....

 

yeah i realized i should have put in some more flex couplers in the pipes afterwards which will probably replace those shitty welds but you gotta keep in mind we had 2 days to do about a weeks worth of work.

you can weld aluminum with a mig but it takes a lot of practice and perfect settings, a few of the welds came out quite nice but it is very inconsistent with a mig.

 

I suggested cutting the piping at the welds on the drivers side and running couplers in place of them. It would also help if you flared the piping at both ends where the couplers sit...

 

Bomb *** mexican food. Suiza quesidilla chicken ...mmmm

-eh the piping is fine for now. as long as it doesnt leak. It's going to get covered in exhaust wrap anyways.

 

^ tellin ya bro...I think that everyone will agree, Las Palmas is the best....

 

I wanted to see that girl you were talking about.... booooo

 

Hey guys...glad to hear the rest of the weekend went fairly well. I was the first one on Saturday and had to leave pretty much right afterwards...sorry I couldn't stay around and meet the rest of y'all.

Much thanks to Dave for organizing this and to Steve for a great tune and some very helpful information. My car had developed a coolant leak a while ago and started to overheat on my way back home, but a quick top off of the coolant, and things were fine.

I've attached a jpeg of my my initial (blue lines) vs. final (red lines) dyno run. My final tune was at 13.5psi, and I got 339hp (up from 285) with a torque curve that I'm very pleased with. Never mind the air/fuel graph as the sensor was quite a bit off (Steve used his own wideband).

How'd everybody else do?

 

Some pictures that my buddy Scott took while we were there:

 

I hit 307 rwhp at 10 psi, but only got 344 rwhp at sort-of 15 psi -- boost was rolling off to 13.5 psi, so the 344 rwhp was really at 13.5 psi. I also got a little bit of ignition breakup, even with 9s all around and the HKS Twin Power. Steve said I should gain 5-10 more rwhp with colder plugs, so I should be expecting 350-355 at 13.5 psi. Once I get my boost more consistenly controlled, that should be good for another 15-20 rwhp. So...365-375 at 15 psi on 91 octane...sounds good to me. I'll post my sheet a little later tonight....

 

Hey rynberg...I was having major ignition problems before in my last session with Steve last year with stock twins (had a huge ignition timing split to compensate), so I replaced the primary coil, added the Twinpower, and put in some new Magnecore wires and haven't had any problems since (using 9s all around as well). What kind of wires are you running?

 

Hmm...I'm running NGK wires with the original coils (86k and counting). I haven't even had a chance to go over the maps Steve installed. Too busy.

 

after we figured out how to work the boost controler I finally pass 12.5 PSI. got tuned at 15
346 rwhp
10.9 AFR
will post the dyno
chris, what numbers did you make?

 

damn I miss it. When is the next one coming around.

 

I would like to give a BIG THANKS to Steve for taking the time to come here and help out his fellow rotorheads.
I would also like to thank everyone who made it out and participated as I got to meet a bunch of cool new people.

Surprisingly the tuning on my car went pretty smooth. I think Steve dreads trying to tune my car as there have always been unforseen problems or near misses due to one thing or another in the past. This is the fifth time Steve has had the "pleasure" of tweaking on my car, so he is quite familiar with it and the problems it can present.

One of the more recent problems was tuning with the water/methanol injection. I have an extremely good ignition system and that was never suspect, or at least not for long, when the engine started to break up under higher boost and loads of water/methanol. One of the last times tuning, with a different tuner, we ran into the same problem. Unfortunately the tuner misdiagnosed the problem by attributing the breakup to having an incorrectly marked main pulley that would retard the timing 15 degrees so he compensated for that in the ignition map. I later discovered, after popping my engine upon pulling out of the dyno shop, I had the correct pulley which meant my timing was advanced 15 degrees more than it should have been. Ooops!

Well, we ran into this hurdle again on Saturday and Steve quickly diagnosed the problem...correctly. The problem was easily solved by installing colder plugs to concentrate the spark better. I had been using NGK 9's (standard trailing) in all four locations but this was still not enough. A simple swap of the leading plugs to 10's solved my issues. Later, I will be installing 11's in the leading and the 10's in the trailing locations so I can turn the boost up even more.

With that said, troubleshooting is what makes paying an experienced tuner such as Steve worthwhile to me and others. Correct troubleshooting is also what seperates Steve from other tuners imho.

In the end though, I humbly admit the results of my weekend were not what I was hoping for. However, they were satisfactory nonetheless as my car did not blow up and I can simply enjoy driving it as it was meant to be. I put down 377 rwhp and 296 rwt and the engine made power all the way up to 8000 rpm. Steve told me the boost was at 18 psi but I am only seeing 15.8-16 psi right now with nothing changed. I'm wondering if Steve really turned up the boost to 18 psi when I asked him to so he could shut me up and not have to worry about popping my engine since we were only running 91 octane. Steve?

I know there should and will be more power. The same engine with Steves race-ports, same turbo and ecu just made 421 rwhp and 327 rwt at 15.5 psi. The other setup also spooled 1000 rpm sooner than mine. The only real difference between our engines is the exhaust manifold. The other engine uses one of Steve's "tuned" manifolds from Gotham Racing and mine is a one-off custom unit that looks better than it works unfortunateley.
I know what I am getting next
Link to the other engines thread with dyno sheet:
https://www.rx7club.com/forum/showthread.php?t=491328



Till next time....

 

tell me about bad tuners... one of my next rebuilds will be on a local's car, will be a T2 bridgeport with a stage 4 hybrid. the tuner down in sac at a shop i won't name misdiagnosed a lean condition and while i was checking fuel pressure after he got back from the tuning session his engine popped.... he blamed the problem on bad compression but his 1k mile rebuild had ~100 on all faces.

i still wish i could have made it to be mocked in person and to learn a few tuning tips from steven for the my own personal tuning on my own car, ahh well... maybe next time.