Vegas Smith said:

How did you make that air cover over the front bumper cover and radiator support? Looks like ABS plastic molded somehow?

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Yeah I asked Lucas the same thing! Because I was really impressed when I saw it. The accuracy of the forming and cutting is pretty good. Anyway, the guys at ER made that cover in 2016 after putting in the engine. Lucas just said they cut it and formed it. I don't know how they did the forming, or if they used heat or not. I'm not even sure what the material is. As near as I can tell it could be HDPE or polypropylene or ABS or some PVC type of stuff. It's 1/8" thick. It’s pretty stiff – not soft like PVC sometimes is. There’s no fibers in it.

I remember asking Lucas, what happens when I take those screws out? Will there be a nut underneath that falls into a black hole? He said nah, the nuts underneath are inserts, like rivet nuts or well nuts.

The only thing I don't like about it is the socket button head screws, which look cool but those sockets are shallow and the drive size is small (3/32") so there's not much to drive on if they’re a little stuck. I think there’s enough head room for full depth heads so I’ll probably replace with that one of these days. For now I bought a bag of 20 of these screws from bolt depot. To replace ones that get mangled.

The engine project in 2016 was a “turn-key” project. So at the end, Lucas did a lot of stuff to kind of take care of things he didn’t like. He put in all 3 of the fans that are on the car now and this anti-reversion cover, and some other stuff. He was very interested in keeping the temps low. He wanted the temps to stay low even when the car isn't moving.

Here’s a pretty good shot of the interior. The ecu relocate to the passenger footwell was done by me, the switch panel in the center stack with the starter button and voltmeter was done by me, the 3 AEM gauges up on top were put in by English Racing, and the Autometer tach was done by the PO.

Putting my kitchen to good use mocking up a new main cooling fan for the Talon.
This SPAL VA10-AP50/C-61A (SPAL part # 30101522) is going to replace a FAL (Flex-a-Lite) that had only been on the car since 2016. The FAL quit working, and its motor case is so glued together I couldn't get it apart to look inside.



The FAL did have a nice shroud that used the factory type mounting points (6mm bolts to standoffs on the radiator).
For the SPAL, I'm making my own brackets from aluminum angle to bolt to the same 4 radiator mounting points.

Here's a pic (below) of the FAL from when I was trying to get into the motor case. You can see that the whole thing looks practically brand new. The failure is just broken conductor in the wire somewhere, either right where the wires go through the rubber grommet that you see here glued into the side of the motor case, or else a conductor broke just a little further inside the case. The motor runs if you push or hold the wires a certain way.
In my pic of the SPAL (above) you can see that SPAL is a lot more serious about how they do this wire that comes out of the motor case. It's all nailed down and in a fairly stiff cover that can't really flutter around in the breeze.



I was a little surprised that my car would even need all 3 fans working in December (ambient temps in the 40's and 50's F). So I got to poking around a little more and found that the 11 inch "Pusher" fan that is in front of the radiator on the driver side has a little problem. It is actually a "Puller" fan running backwards! So it does move air in the correct direction, but not very much air. Because the blade curvature is wrong to be used this way. It's a Perma Cool fan. Some models of Perma Cool are made to be reversible, but this one is not. It's made to be a puller only, and when you look at the blade curvature you can see why. The blades have a concave side and a convex side. If it really was a pusher, the concave side would be facing the radiator. But on this fan the concave side is facing away from the radiator. So it's a puller. Pretty funny. A little boo-boo by ER.
So I took that fan off entirely and I can't even tell the difference in what my temps go up to without it.
That's how I got down to 2 fans now. The 12" Spal puller on the passenger side, and the 9" Perma Cool puller that has been on the driver side since 2016.
This is nice being down to 2 fans. It reduces the amp draw on my alternator. And that reduces the load on the alternator drive belt. The problem I've had for a long time with that belt squealing right after a cold start - that problem is pretty much gone now. (My fans run all the time, even during cold start cranking.)

I also bought a couple of thermostats that I want to try out and test a little. I've done the regular testing on the stovetop with them, and with the one that was in the car already from English Racing. They all seem ok. They are all stamped "180 F". They all open at slightly different temps, and they all have a valve with a different footprint size. The MotoRad has the largest valve footprint. But it starts opening about 5 degrees later than the "Super Stant" which has a smaller valve. Motorad ~180 deg vs Stant ~175 deg (starting to open).

MotoRad #2040-180
Stant Superstat # 45868 5240-180

BTW the Stant Superstat has "Motorad" stamped right into the metal on the underside.

The thermostat that was in the car is "the one that Lucas likes" but I don't know what it is. It is in-between the other 2 in just about every way (bore, stroke, and opening temp).

In my stovetop testing I haven't rigged up any accurate way to measure flowrate through the thermostats while at high temp. That might be a little farther than I want to go with it. So I think I'm going to just try out the MotoRad first and see how it goes in the car. It has the most "bore and stroke" of any of the thermostats I've got, and that should be a pretty good indicator of the flowrate.

I put a new ECT sensor into the thermostat housing, and while the car was lying around with no coolant in it, car just sitting there in the garage, I checked the "coolant temp" with DSM link. Logged it at 51 deg F. Checked the temp of various objects in the garage near the front of the car with a Milwaukee 2267-20 infrared temp gun. They read 51 degrees F. Shizaam! Think I got a good temp sensor. Haven't checked it at high temp though. It's an NTK EF0099 which only cost $10 from Rock Auto.

Thought I should show the result of my 12 inch Spal install, since people have been asking about fans a lot lately. You can see I made an aluminum fabrication project out of it instead of using skewers through the radiator.

You can't see in this pic the 2 brackets on the bottom of it. They are completely different. These 2 brackets on the top go into the T-slots on the fan shroud. The 2 brackets on the bottom just sort of cradle around the outside of the T-slot moldings but don't go into the T-slots. If I unbolt the 2 upper brackets and take them off, I can then just lift the fan right out of there without doing anything with the 2 lower brackets. They just stay right where they are.

Online Metals is a fantastic place to buy metals like this in small quantities. 6061 aluminum is pretty cheap and is available in every common shape (angles, bars, sheet, plate, tube, etc).

You forgot to plug it in........I see the connector at the bottom of the radiator.
Spal's pull/push A LOT of air so you should be very happy with the install. I run twin Spals on 2 of my 3 DSM's and we also run them on the Z28 with the 400.

1990TSIAWDTALON said:

You forgot to plug it in........I see the connector at the bottom of the radiator.
Spal's pull/push A LOT of air so you should be very happy with the install. I run twin Spals on 2 of my 3 DSM's and we also run them on the Z28 with the 400.

Click to expand...

Yeah the Spal is working real nice so far! I've driven it 10 times so far with it like this.
That white thing sticking out of the bottom of the radiator unplugged is my old thermo switch, I think. Or else it's just something ER screwed in there to fill the hole, because they didn't want to use the thermo switch. The actual Spal fan wires are inside a black wire cover that you can see on the left side of the picture exiting to the left.

There's always something!
Got pics of some things I did over the summer and last winter.
The relocated power transistor was the main project (relocated to the cabin).
That, and the change of MAP from an Omni 4-bar to an AEM 5-bar was done in the winter.
The dipstick hold-down and the Fuelab fuel filter was done mostly in August.

Fuelab 828 series fuel filter with 6 micron micro-fiberglass element, -6AN fittings:




Power Transistor relocated to underneath the center stack in the cabin, with new connector:



Very secure dipstick hold-down. Yup I have to undo that upper M6 bolt to get the dipstick out!
It is bolted at the bottom to my alternator heat shield which I've had there for a few years now.



AEM 5-bar MAP sensor in a bracket that is bolted to a handy 8mm threaded hole in the OEM bracket that, as I remember, was for the cruise control. I have the sensor angled mostly downwards so liquid can't accumulate in it. The hose run from here is lower than the sensor for a couple feet for the same reason, before coming back up to get onto the hose spud on the back of the intake manifold.

How do you bend the aluminum for the brackets?

Vegas Smith said:

How do you bend the aluminum for the brackets?

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Aha. About 15 years ago, Andre at Pina motor sports asked me the same question and I gave him a too short answer that probably sounded like I didn't really want to tell him. So I'm going to make up for that now. Put on your reading glasses!

First, I have a heavy bench vise on a heavy workbench.
The aluminum I work with is usually either 1/8" thick or 1/16" thick. But some parts like the nose-holding brackets that we talked about before were 3/16" thick. The aluminum is always either 6061-T6 or 5052 from online metals.

Basically I put the material in the big bench vise and then bang on it to bend it over.
But I don't bang on it directly with the hammer or even a mallet. I have a length of 2" x 4" lumber about 16" long, with nice square flat ends. One end goes up against the aluminum, nice and flat. The other end I bang on with the hammer.
I'll have my bend line drawn onto the aluminum with sharpie before putting it into the vise. That shows me the correct position in the vise and I can check it while making the bend to make sure the piece isn't slipping in the vise jaws.

So the 2 x 4 is end-wise against the aluminum and I'm banging on the 2 x 4 with a hammer.
I stop every few bangs to look at the bend because I can "steer" it a little by how I position the 2 x 4.
I can steer it a little left or right, and I can control how "sudden" or "sharp" the bend is by up or down tilting of the 2 x 4.
Basically though, the up-or-down part of the tilt is to keep the part flat except for right where you want the bend to happen.
Usually it takes a lot of bangs. Each bang gets you a few more degrees on the bend.

The final detail is using sort of a mandrel on the inside of the bend. This I don't always do but it's better. It spreads the bend out so it is not totally sharp. It is for making a "bend radius" rather than a sharp 90 degree crease. Simplest mandrel is, I wait until I have the aluminum bent over about 45 degrees, and then I'll just lay a thin flat piece of aluminum on top of the vice behind the aluminum and then continue banging. That spreads the bend out by whatever the thickness of that piece is laying on top of the vice.
Or a better way would be to make a mandrel piece up before, with the mandrel edge of it rounded off a little, and clamp that up in the vice along with your part, behind the part so when the part bends it bends over the mandrel instead of over the vice jaw.

Sorry no video or diagrams!

We're on Boost said:

Aha. About 15 years ago, Andre at Pina motor sports asked me the same question and I gave him a too short answer that probably sounded like I didn't really want to tell him. So I'm going to make up for that now. Put on your reading glasses!

First, I have a heavy bench vise on a heavy workbench.
The aluminum I work with is usually either 1/8" thick or 1/16" thick. But some parts like the nose-holding brackets that we talked about before were 3/16" thick. The aluminum is always either 6061-T6 or 5052 from online metals.

Basically I put the material in the big bench vise and then bang on it to bend it over.
But I don't bang on it directly with the hammer or even a mallet. I have a length of 2" x 4" lumber about 16" long, with nice square flat ends. One end goes up against the aluminum, nice and flat. The other end I bang on with the hammer.
I'll have my bend line drawn onto the aluminum with sharpie before putting it into the vise. That shows me the correct position in the vise and I can check it while making the bend to make sure the piece isn't slipping in the vise jaws.

So the 2 x 4 is end-wise against the aluminum and I'm banging on the 2 x 4 with a hammer.
I stop every few bangs to look at the bend because I can "steer" it a little by how I position the 2 x 4.
I can steer it a little left or right, and I can control how "sudden" or "sharp" the bend is by up or down tilting of the 2 x 4.
Basically though, the up-or-down part of the tilt is to keep the part flat except for right where you want the bend to happen.
Usually it takes a lot of bangs. Each bang gets you a few more degrees on the bend.

The final detail is using sort of a mandrel on the inside of the bend. This I don't always do but it's better. It spreads the bend out so it is not totally sharp. It is for making a "bend radius" rather than a sharp 90 degree crease. Simplest mandrel is, I wait until I have the aluminum bent over about 45 degrees, and then I'll just lay a thin flat piece of aluminum on top of the vice behind the aluminum and then continue banging. That spreads the bend out by whatever the thickness of that piece is laying on top of the vice.
Or a better way would be to make a mandrel piece up before, with the mandrel edge of it rounded off a little, and clamp that up in the vice along with your part, behind the part so when the part bends it bends over the mandrel instead of over the vice jaw.

Sorry no video or diagrams!

Click to expand...

More detail on how you bended it please. JK
Thanks

OP I'd like to add that if you are using 6061 it's best to keep the bend radius like 3x+ the metal thickness or it can crack. 5052 is much superior in that regard, and is why it's comonly used for tank fabrication.

The qm twin definatly has reduced intertia over the full sized discs. I noticed that too with mine that it nicer to drive with less severe clangs. Be warned that with the lighter spring it can be easy to slip the clutch enough to cook/glaze the discs and then they won't grab as well. I was playing with about 1900lbs. When the discs were new it was still way too much torque capacity, once they got glazed my car would drive through them on gate pressure-19psi.

Vegas Smith said:

More detail on how you bended it please. JK
Thanks

Click to expand...

bastarddsm said:

OP I'd like to add that if you are using 6061 it's best to keep the bend radius like 3x+ the metal thickness or it can crack. 5052 is much superior in that regard, and is why it's comonly used for tank fabrication.

The qm twin definatly has reduced intertia over the full sized discs. I noticed that too with mine that it nicer to drive with less severe clangs. Be warned that with the lighter spring it can be easy to slip the clutch enough to cook/glaze the discs and then they won't grab as well. I was playing with about 1900lbs. When the discs were new it was still way too much torque capacity, once they got glazed my car would drive through them on gate pressure-19psi.

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Yeah that sounds about right on the aluminum. The cover that you see over my ecu in the passenger footwell in post #27, I made that from 5052 and it was nice to work with considering how long the one main bend is. I think I actually used a long wood mandrel to bend that one over because it is so much longer than the width of my vise. But I don't remember haha!

My plan for the clutch is for it to last for a very long time. I've never once launched with it. Other times that I slip it intentionally are not at high power. When you glazed yours, was it from doing high power launches? My most major slipping events are getting up the driveway and into the garage, and it's a short driveway.

Re my dog box - I remembered reading a post of yours that said you were getting the nicest (least violent) dog engagements by pausing in the neutral gate for a fraction of a second before shoving it into gear when you are driving just easy, street. That is also what I found out pretty much right away, and that is still how I do it on my drives around here on the road. Because I want that dogbox to also last for a very long time. Preferably longer than I do. Same with the engine. I had so much fun driving this thing on the roads around here last Sunday. Don't want to ever be without that.

Yes, I was experimenting with different launch control strategies to get the car to leave better.

PPG has a video on the youtube on driving a dogbox and it was quite helpful,

bastarddsm said:

Yes, I was experimenting with different launch control strategies to get the car to leave better.

PPG has a video on the youtube on driving a dogbox and it was quite helpful,

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Ok thanks!

The PPG video, if you are talking about the one on channel ppgearbox uploaded Dec 7, 2009, I actually kind of hate that video. Does PPG have a newer one?

I recently found a video on "JPM Performance" channel with a proper setup for the cam and good sound and decent lighting and it shows how to shift clutchless. I wonder what you think of that video, if you've seen it? Importantly, there is a question by "Bryan's Locks" in the comments with a reply from JPM Performance, which breaks down the timeline of the downshift more clearly, to explain that the gear lever is actually in neutral when you blip the throttle.

Anyway, I haven't even tried going clutchless yet. I'm still focused on improving my percentage of reliably non-violent shifts with the clutch. That's up to about 90% now. But for trying clutchless, do you think this guy JPM Performance is telling it realistically? The car is so loud that it covers up any sound the transmission makes. That's about the only thing I don't like about this video. When I'm driving my car and the wastegate is not open (so I can hear other things) and I've got the actual feels of being there, it's a whole different thing than what you get from a video.

I mean, I'm trying to minimize the damage rate to my trans, first and foremost, whereas racers are probably thinking more about their lap times or quarter mile times, and they will just rebuild the darn thing when it needs it. Lucas English is like that. He told me. And that is one reason why ER races newer stuff that you can still buy parts for, like the Nissan R35. Of course they want reliability too, but mostly they want wins and records.

There is actually one other thing about this video - at 6:16 where he starts telling what to do when it doesn't want to go into 1st (or reverse) when the car is not moving, I'm not going to do it his way. I let the clutch out in neutral with engine at idle to get the input shaft moving again, then put the clutch back in and shift into first after about a 1 second delay, which lets the input shaft slow down a bunch but not enough time for it to stop completely. Then it will go right in. In other words I'm just not going to sit there with the clutch in and the box in neutral for more than about 1 or 2 seconds.

Good place to start in the video (1:44):

Wondering if you ever tried shifting clutch less yet? I watched this video last week and it looks way better than using the clutch imo

habitatguy187 said:

Wondering if you ever tried shifting clutch less yet? I watched this video last week and it looks way better than using the clutch imo

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I haven't tried it yet.
But I like this video. The guy who is doing the video (not the "teacher") says it right at 7:45 and I think this is the first time I've ever heard anybody say it right. For an upshift, he says "Have some pressure on the lever, then when you come off the throttle a little bit it just goes into the next gear." That actually makes sense. Except I still think that is scary for shifting from 2nd to 3rd. And I'm not so sure that your long term wear on the dogs would be less this way than if you get good at shifting with the clutch.

Right around 11:00 he makes some bad sounding shifts.

At 12:34 he does some nice slow downshifts that are step-by-step slow enough that you can tell exactly what he is doing even though you can't see his feet there. But you can see the gear lever and hear the revs. (Pauses in neutral to rev it).

At 14:22 he makes a rough upshift and says "I came too far off" (the gas). Yeah.
Then a few seconds later after some good shifts he says "It's the smallest movement" (that you want with your right foot).

At 15:25 he says "It's hard to do when you aren't focused on it". Like when he's talking and getting distracted he screws it up.

Thanks for the vid, I think this guy Cardo_GTR did a good job with it! This is probably by far the best how-to I've ever seen for driving a dog box.

I think it's a matter of getting used to it. Most of time I no longer use the clutch for upshifting when cruising or WOT (I feel I'm a very friendly person with crank thrust bearing ). I have a strain gauge shift knob to cut ignitionI instead of lifting gas pedal, at the beginning I was soooo scared of shifting at WOT without pressing clutch pedal.
I could be wrong but I think what kind of method to cut power from engine to transmission for shifting wouldn't make a huge difference on the dogs lifespan. I feel like hesitating shifting would damage the dogs more.

DSMPT said:

I feel like hesitating shifting would damage the dogs more.

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Hiroshi, what hesitating are you talking about? Hesitating when?

We're on Boost said:

Hiroshi, what hesitating are you talking about? Hesitating when?

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I wanted to say that I think a hesitation while shifting would cause to grind the dogs and that may affect the dogs lifespan more than the clutch less or ignition/fuel cut to shift change.

DSMPT said:

I wanted to say that I think a hesitation while shifting would cause to grind the dogs and that may affect the dogs lifespan more than the clutch less or ignition/fuel cut to shift change.

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Ok, just to be sure I am looking at this the same way, here is what I think this says. It is saying that if you pause too long when in neutral with your foot off the gas, (or with the clutch pedal in and your foot off the gas), the input shaft revs will drop so low that there is a huge mismatch in speed between input and output parts in the tranny. That huge mismatch in speed is what can damage the dogs when you then throw them into engagement. Is that it?
Basically, you only want the input parts to slow down a little bit, 25% maybe, not a lot more than that, while you are going through the shift gates during an upshift.

Using NLTS???
If so, I am going to set mine so it rev matches the next gear. That may take some trial and error, I am sure, but it's what I plan on doing.
In neutral, I guess you would want to rev so the trans internals spin then get on the clutch, put it in gear and stay revved up to keep the gears closer to sync.

1990TSIAWDTALON said:

Using NLTS???
If so, I am going to set mine so it rev matches the next gear. That may take some trial and error, I am sure, but it's what I plan on doing.

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No I've never used it so I don't know much about it. How do you set it to rev match? Is it just setting the time interval you want to have the ignition cut for?

Yeah, DSMLink let's you set the rev that it will move down to in between shifts so I imagine I'll have to adjust that to my car.

1990TSIAWDTALON said:

Yeah, DSMLink let's you set the rev that it will move down to in between shifts so I imagine I'll have to adjust that to my car.

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Oh I see (just now read about it ) it's not a timer. You can set the clutch cut rev limit to a single rpm value, and experiment with that rpm value. Hmmm. So I guess you'd set that up to use for shifting at max rpms and full throttle. And the rest of the time it wouldn't help anything.

What is this saying here, I don't get it what this is even talking about:

1990TSIAWDTALON said:

In neutral, I guess you would want to rev so the trans internals spin then get on the clutch, put it in gear and stay revved up to keep the gears closer to sync.

Click to expand...

We're on Boost said:

Ok, just to be sure I am looking at this the same way, here is what I think this says. It is saying that if you pause too long when in neutral with your foot off the gas, (or with the clutch pedal in and your foot off the gas), the input shaft revs will drop so low that there is a huge mismatch in speed between input and output parts in the tranny. That huge mismatch in speed is what can damage the dogs when you then throw them into engagement. Is that it?
Basically, you only want the input parts to slow down a little bit, 25% maybe, not a lot more than that, while you are going through the shift gates during an upshift.

Click to expand...

Sorry for the confusion. I was talking about the shift lever (hand) moving speed vs the dog teeth engagement, that if you hesitate when entering the gear, that would make the dog teeth grinded. And I was saying that I could be wrong but I think how quickly/smoothly you make the dog teeth engaged is more important for the dog teeth lifespan than the method how you cut torque to input shaft.