david buschur
15+ Year Contributor
- 282
- 27
- Mar 29, 2004
-
wakeman, oh,
Ohio
Wow, what a freaking weekend! This transmission build has absolutely kicked my ass along with many others that I will get to shortly.
As you guys know I started this last November, used a trans that English Racing had started using, we worked together on that trans for a bit and it broke on me, two different parts. Then we rebuilt it, I gave one to Matt Smith to test and he broke it with about 525 DJ WHP during our autocross we had in June. At that time I had found a trans, by mistake, that looked much stronger and we started putting it in the Bad Bish, my RS. We never got it to work in time for our June Sport Compact Race we hold and since June we have worked on it consistently only to find we could never get it to shift or work correctly.
That takes us up to last Thursday night. My step dad, Rick Laurence and my good friend Dave Davis have been by my side through this mess the last month or two trying to help me figure out what has or hasn't been working. Kevin "Kiggly" has also has given me a lot of input. In the end it was my own transmission guru, Vince Janis that told us what to do. Dave and I had just swapped in another trans that we knew was good and we left our shop to test it. Same ordeal, simply would not shift correctly, missing gears etc. At that point we knew for sure it was an issued with electronics......or so we thought. Vince had sent me a text an asked how it was going, I told him "NOT GOOD." He called and asked what was going on. I explained to him what were were changing and how what we were sure would work did not. He asked a few questions and in doing so hit what he thought would fix it. We re-assembled everything with his suggestion and once again left the shop. Now this is late Thursday and the 20th Annual Shootout we host was starting Friday morning, we are out of time. We left the parking lot to find no changes and the trans still acting the same. Dave and my heart just sunk, it was terrible. I turned around and was heading back to the shop, only having 1st and 3rd gear and I was going to shift from 1st up to 3rd and as I passed the 2nd gear gate the car went into 2nd gear. Dave yells, "That's it, mother ####er that's it!!" I said, "I'm not getting excited yet." Shifted to 3rd and then 4th and all of it worked. We spent the next 10 minutes driving around town here just going from 1-2-3-4 as quickly as we could between stop signs. We returned to the shop and checked the fluid level, happy would be an understatement! Now the fastest thing Dave has ever been in is a Caddy CTSV, so we drove a few miles and then I rolled into the throttle in 1st and held it down, 1st, 2nd and some of 3rd, Dave is yelling I'm hurting his back! haha The car was SO smooth it simply felt slow. We ran it again 1-2-3 and returned to the shop. I pulled in the driveway and wanted to see if it would launch too, went to about 3200 rpm instantly and I left about 60' of solid black marks on the pavement in our lot! Success at last!
The next day I tried to clean up some of the wiring and other mess from the last 9 months of work. I was also in a discussion with Mike Ferrara the owner of DSport Magazine, him and I are long time friends. He told me that the control box we are using was not going to work, as we have already found it cannot handle the current and has already failed. Mike spent about 8 hours of his day on Fridy wiring up a new controller complete with relays and made it a piggy back so I could simply plug it in and try it, in case it didn't work it could be unplugged and he would try something else.
Saturday was our Autocross/drag racing at the Shootout. I wanted to run Max Effort with the car. I pulled to the starting line, left easy and decided I'd run the entire course in 1st gear as I didn't want to break anything. The car was a handful and all my mind was on was the trans. The first big left hand sweeper the car jumped to neutral for some reason, not good. I shifted to 2nd and finished the course slowly. I decided it had to be a controller issue and we all got out to feel the control box, it was so hot you could not touch it, it actually melts plastic and burns right through electrical tape. I grabbed Mike's new control box and plugged it in. Got back in line and made my second run, deciding to leave the car in 1st again and see if I had the same issue. 2nd run was clean, decently fast and no problems. We checked the controller again and now it was cold!!! Hurray!
Third run I decided to put the car into 2nd after I launched and see how it did, FANTASTIC!! Much smoother, excellent throttle response and performance, better than it would have been with the 5 speed using 2nd actually. We were allowed a total of 6 runs but being as we just go this all to work and are still developing I sat the other three runs out.
Saturday afternoon the Max Effort Class had to make three 1/4 mile passes for their drag time and the same driver/owner had to drive. So that meant the first ever 1/4 mile pass on this clutchless four speed was going to be in my hands. The car was on the Dunlap Star Specs, 36 psi of air pressure in them. 30 psi of boost, timing was pulled from my normal tune to keep it safe and AFR's were also set at 11.4:1, running E98 fuel.
I pulled to the starting line, so nervous I was holding back a trickle of piss, staged the car and brought it up to 3200 rpm. The car came out so smooth, 2nd gear and then into 3rd. Nervous as hell and with this trans it was so smooth my mind was zoomed in on every noise and bump, something didn't feel right like a tire out of balance or something but I ran it out. I wasn't sure what I ran but it felt good. I got my time slip and about shit myself! I just ran my first ever 9 second pass in an AWD in my life and the first ever 9 second "auto" EVO pass. 9.94 at 140.30 mph. The sixty foot was a 1.57!
That night we took drove the car to Norwalk for dinner and some street miles. It still didn't feel right as it was just funky in the front end for some reason. Nervous I took it back to the track and left it overnight and drove my truck home.
The next morning we returned and decided to see if the car could qualify for the Quick Class. So we put the new M&H 26x8.5x17" slicks on we had M&H make for the EVO's. The tires were BRAND NEW, never been run. We went over all the bolts in the car, checked the brakes and tried to find what I was feeling, nothing was loose. I told Kevin he could drive it, I had too much going on and wanted to watch anyway.
He pulled up to the line, didn't even clean the tires off, I told him if it would foot brake (remember the car has our manual brake kit on it) to 4,000 rpm to just go that high and leave the line like that, NO two step or anti-lag is being used.
He pulled up and I was behind him with my iPhone videoing it. He left and it was so smooth it was just beautiful!! He ended up running the best 60' the car has ever run in it's life on these brand new slicks! 1.393, 9.551 at 143.90 mph.
Most freaking excellent.
I want an 8 second pass, as you all know. So I turned up the boost more, gave it a few degrees of timing and we let a little air out of the slicks. The next pass wasn't as good, he left without getting up high enough on the converter and was still moving out but when the car shifted to 3rd the 3rd gear clutches let loose and wouldn't hold. The car was done. I don't want to destroy a trans that is hard enough to get as it is.
Very happy, we got the trans to work, I ran my first 9, the clutchless 4 speed has run it's first 9 and we got a best of 9.55 from it on top of that we proved these slicks we had made not only work but work excellent!! Also, Kevin reported that the vibration I was feeling had to be the other tires because on the slicks he said, "Dude you can drive that ####er with no hands on the wheel!"hahaha
Tomorrow I hope to get time to pull the trans and start seeing what held up and what didn't. We have better clutches already and I don't think any hard parts could have broken, so it should be just a matter of upgrading some friction parts or adding some extra and then go back at it.
As you guys know I started this last November, used a trans that English Racing had started using, we worked together on that trans for a bit and it broke on me, two different parts. Then we rebuilt it, I gave one to Matt Smith to test and he broke it with about 525 DJ WHP during our autocross we had in June. At that time I had found a trans, by mistake, that looked much stronger and we started putting it in the Bad Bish, my RS. We never got it to work in time for our June Sport Compact Race we hold and since June we have worked on it consistently only to find we could never get it to shift or work correctly.
That takes us up to last Thursday night. My step dad, Rick Laurence and my good friend Dave Davis have been by my side through this mess the last month or two trying to help me figure out what has or hasn't been working. Kevin "Kiggly" has also has given me a lot of input. In the end it was my own transmission guru, Vince Janis that told us what to do. Dave and I had just swapped in another trans that we knew was good and we left our shop to test it. Same ordeal, simply would not shift correctly, missing gears etc. At that point we knew for sure it was an issued with electronics......or so we thought. Vince had sent me a text an asked how it was going, I told him "NOT GOOD." He called and asked what was going on. I explained to him what were were changing and how what we were sure would work did not. He asked a few questions and in doing so hit what he thought would fix it. We re-assembled everything with his suggestion and once again left the shop. Now this is late Thursday and the 20th Annual Shootout we host was starting Friday morning, we are out of time. We left the parking lot to find no changes and the trans still acting the same. Dave and my heart just sunk, it was terrible. I turned around and was heading back to the shop, only having 1st and 3rd gear and I was going to shift from 1st up to 3rd and as I passed the 2nd gear gate the car went into 2nd gear. Dave yells, "That's it, mother ####er that's it!!" I said, "I'm not getting excited yet." Shifted to 3rd and then 4th and all of it worked. We spent the next 10 minutes driving around town here just going from 1-2-3-4 as quickly as we could between stop signs. We returned to the shop and checked the fluid level, happy would be an understatement! Now the fastest thing Dave has ever been in is a Caddy CTSV, so we drove a few miles and then I rolled into the throttle in 1st and held it down, 1st, 2nd and some of 3rd, Dave is yelling I'm hurting his back! haha The car was SO smooth it simply felt slow. We ran it again 1-2-3 and returned to the shop. I pulled in the driveway and wanted to see if it would launch too, went to about 3200 rpm instantly and I left about 60' of solid black marks on the pavement in our lot! Success at last!
The next day I tried to clean up some of the wiring and other mess from the last 9 months of work. I was also in a discussion with Mike Ferrara the owner of DSport Magazine, him and I are long time friends. He told me that the control box we are using was not going to work, as we have already found it cannot handle the current and has already failed. Mike spent about 8 hours of his day on Fridy wiring up a new controller complete with relays and made it a piggy back so I could simply plug it in and try it, in case it didn't work it could be unplugged and he would try something else.
Saturday was our Autocross/drag racing at the Shootout. I wanted to run Max Effort with the car. I pulled to the starting line, left easy and decided I'd run the entire course in 1st gear as I didn't want to break anything. The car was a handful and all my mind was on was the trans. The first big left hand sweeper the car jumped to neutral for some reason, not good. I shifted to 2nd and finished the course slowly. I decided it had to be a controller issue and we all got out to feel the control box, it was so hot you could not touch it, it actually melts plastic and burns right through electrical tape. I grabbed Mike's new control box and plugged it in. Got back in line and made my second run, deciding to leave the car in 1st again and see if I had the same issue. 2nd run was clean, decently fast and no problems. We checked the controller again and now it was cold!!! Hurray!
Third run I decided to put the car into 2nd after I launched and see how it did, FANTASTIC!! Much smoother, excellent throttle response and performance, better than it would have been with the 5 speed using 2nd actually. We were allowed a total of 6 runs but being as we just go this all to work and are still developing I sat the other three runs out.
Saturday afternoon the Max Effort Class had to make three 1/4 mile passes for their drag time and the same driver/owner had to drive. So that meant the first ever 1/4 mile pass on this clutchless four speed was going to be in my hands. The car was on the Dunlap Star Specs, 36 psi of air pressure in them. 30 psi of boost, timing was pulled from my normal tune to keep it safe and AFR's were also set at 11.4:1, running E98 fuel.
I pulled to the starting line, so nervous I was holding back a trickle of piss, staged the car and brought it up to 3200 rpm. The car came out so smooth, 2nd gear and then into 3rd. Nervous as hell and with this trans it was so smooth my mind was zoomed in on every noise and bump, something didn't feel right like a tire out of balance or something but I ran it out. I wasn't sure what I ran but it felt good. I got my time slip and about shit myself! I just ran my first ever 9 second pass in an AWD in my life and the first ever 9 second "auto" EVO pass. 9.94 at 140.30 mph. The sixty foot was a 1.57!
That night we took drove the car to Norwalk for dinner and some street miles. It still didn't feel right as it was just funky in the front end for some reason. Nervous I took it back to the track and left it overnight and drove my truck home.
The next morning we returned and decided to see if the car could qualify for the Quick Class. So we put the new M&H 26x8.5x17" slicks on we had M&H make for the EVO's. The tires were BRAND NEW, never been run. We went over all the bolts in the car, checked the brakes and tried to find what I was feeling, nothing was loose. I told Kevin he could drive it, I had too much going on and wanted to watch anyway.
He pulled up to the line, didn't even clean the tires off, I told him if it would foot brake (remember the car has our manual brake kit on it) to 4,000 rpm to just go that high and leave the line like that, NO two step or anti-lag is being used.
He pulled up and I was behind him with my iPhone videoing it. He left and it was so smooth it was just beautiful!! He ended up running the best 60' the car has ever run in it's life on these brand new slicks! 1.393, 9.551 at 143.90 mph.
Most freaking excellent.
I want an 8 second pass, as you all know. So I turned up the boost more, gave it a few degrees of timing and we let a little air out of the slicks. The next pass wasn't as good, he left without getting up high enough on the converter and was still moving out but when the car shifted to 3rd the 3rd gear clutches let loose and wouldn't hold. The car was done. I don't want to destroy a trans that is hard enough to get as it is.
Very happy, we got the trans to work, I ran my first 9, the clutchless 4 speed has run it's first 9 and we got a best of 9.55 from it on top of that we proved these slicks we had made not only work but work excellent!! Also, Kevin reported that the vibration I was feeling had to be the other tires because on the slicks he said, "Dude you can drive that ####er with no hands on the wheel!"hahaha
Tomorrow I hope to get time to pull the trans and start seeing what held up and what didn't. We have better clutches already and I don't think any hard parts could have broken, so it should be just a matter of upgrading some friction parts or adding some extra and then go back at it.
Glad to hear it worked out well for you and the damage seems to be pinpointed and minimal.
Can't wait to hear more... The future is looking bright for the EVO autos for sure.
im still skeptical haha
If you plan to market this at some point are you going to grind all the serial #'s and ID tags off so you cannot be copied? I guess in the big picture you do have a Business to run and need to make money... oh well
