John Freund's Time Attack 99 Eclipse GSX

[rival]

Congrats man, more coverage of all the hard work and dedication! Keep it up!

 

[TSiAWD666]

Here's how we addressed the cracking surge tank:

We added rubber dampers at the mount pounts and an additional passenger side mount.. Hopefully that's that.

In the May event the power was terrible. Car felt like it hit a brick wall at like 6500rpm. Trap speeds on track were way lower than usual. So I took steps to address this:

Updated the air intake system:

That's an ITG Maxogen air filter with a 3.5" outlet, and a new filter to turbo pipe that is also 3.5" (sized to match the turbo inlet exactly, before my pipe was 3" and enlarging right before the turbo). Air inlet from the front is about the area of a 5" circle which runs to a vastly enlarged airbox. The airbox was designed via 3D scanning of that area, designed via CAD and then cut from aluminum sheet and somewhat folded into shape like origami. It sticks up pretty high and really can only be used

You might be asking why I did this. Countless people criticized my design from before saying it was a restriction and is likely a cause of various negative performance issues like power dropoff, low torque, etc. Either the 3"->3.5" transition was a problem, the Apex-i air filter was limiting, the volume of the air box was too small, or the air inlet was too small. While I was pretty sure this wasn't the case for my target power levels, I did always question whether or not I was right. Since I wasn't sure what my issue was I decided to just go big with this whole thing and see what happened. Hopefully this is so big there are no more questions here. I don't think this needed to be changed at all (see "More Tuning" below).

Switched Boost Controllers:
I had tried the Ecmlink-recommended Ingersoll-Rand BCS because, well, it was recommended. However during the event my boost was not as high as it had been during the dyno session before the event, and I wondered if that was causing my performance issues. Also during the tuning the tuner said he had issues getting fine boost control and I too wondered if this BCS contributed.

I had mounted the BCS where borg warner likes to mount theirs, right on the compressor housing. It at a minimum is elegant, with nice short vacuum lines and a convenient location, and speculatively provides benefits to response with how short the lines are both from the boost source and to the wastegate (though I couldn't find any data on quantifying this, so it's all just speculation right now). However I worried this was contributing to the less than target boost I thought I was seeing as after the event I found that the temperature rating of the IR BCS was pretty low (and it escapes me, I'm think it was a max of 125 deg F? I forget, but something in that range, maybe lower). Mounting it on the compressor housing provided direct heat conductivity but it also is in the direct radiator outlet airflow. I worried it was overheating. The Borg Warner BCS had well over double the operating temperature range at 130 deg C (266 deg F), but wasn't officially supported. I asked Tom Dorris, owner of Ecmlink, about why this was, and he said the current driver for the BCS line couldn't support much load and the only one he knew of that was compatible was the IR BCS.

I did research and found the Mitsubishi driver component's spec sheet and did some basic Electrical Engineering math and found that the 23.0+-1.2 Ohm operating resistance of the Borg Warner BCS was well within the operating range of the driver circuit. I shared this with Tom and he was surprised and admitted he had not seen that spec sheet himself. So I wired/mounted the new BCS up and then needed to get the car re-tuned.

More tuning:
With the new airbox and BCS I took the car back to Moore Automotive and put the car in the hands of Chris there. Last time we had lots of various issues that delayed us really getting into the tuning and he has said there was more he could do with more time. So I gave him more time, and asked for more torque up top, and a longer power band.

We didn't really get this. So he got me more torque down low, about 10 more at the peak around 4300rpm. However we ended up losing power up top, and my power band still drops off dramatically after 7000rpm. I think we lost power because of tuning issues though. He was having issues keeping power steadily below my limit because if he changed one bit of timing or boost duty cycle I'd jump 10hp. He said with a better engine management system he'd have finer control. He also said he thinks the reason I'm getting this huge dropoff above 7000rpm is due to the BW internal wastegate and housing. He said in the .92 size he's always found it limiting and thinks I have lots of back pressure. He says if I switch to the externally gated 1.05 housing I should get a longer power band. So that kind of sucks, but it does mean I need to shift below 7000rpm for now which will mean one extra shift on the front straight before the finish line (and that slows me down).

So I'm just going to have to change shift points and see how things work. If I don't like this I'll make more changes over the winter.

Clutch Explosion:
So right at the end of the dyno session the clutch stopped working. Taking a look we found a silver dollar sized hole in the bell housing:

One of the clutch disks came apart. I think there are less than 8k on this clutch, so not really pleased with this. We believe the disk started a crack at a rivet and spread from there. We only found one piece of the clutch disk. You can also see the other disc has a nice big crack present which likely would fail eventually too. Not good!

Investigation found that in addition to the new flywheel inspection port that there was a nice long crack extending to the shift fork hole.

Thanks to Tim Zimmer of TMZ Performance I had a new clutch/flywheel in fairly short order and it's back in the car. The transmission case we chose to weld for now.

I'll be sending the clutch over the Quartermaster soon to look into the failure.

Post Changes:
After making these changes and a bunch of minor things mainly to do with electronics, I did a boost leak test. I have a tiny leak in the intake manifold. Probably the fourth or fifth time this has happened. I really hate this sheet metal bullshit Venom intake manifold, it just can't be welded strong enough for my race application. I pulled the manifold yesterday and dropped it off at RRT to get welded. I am unsure what if any impact this had on the car (the leak wasn't present before May as I had leak tested before the dyno tuning) up to now and the leak was arguably minor (about 1 psi/sec loss of pressure during the boost leak test). Either way, I figured if I'm going to bother going racing I should fix everything within my power and so why not pull the manifold and weld the leak. Over the winter I'm definitely going to get rid of this Venom intake manifold and switch to the cast Magnus manifold I've had sitting on my shelf for a few years now. I haven't done so up to now because to use the Magnus I have to relocate my fuel surge tank and my catch can as the Magnus extends much further towards the passenger side than the Venom.

Once I get the manifold back and put in the car all that's left is to wash it and then I'm off the Virginia International Raceway for NASA Time Trials this weekend, Oct 6-7. Looking forwarding to being back on track again.

 

[TSiAWD666]

About to head down to Virginia International Raceway. Hopefully she holds together!

 

[Archer Fabrications]

About to head down to Virginia International Raceway. Hopefully she holds together!

View attachment 552313

Good luck!

 

[gsxitement]

Good luck! Go get em!!

 

[Canadian_CD9A]

I'm genuinely confused about your power drop-off issue. The .92 housing can certainly flow more than 400hp worth of air without dropping off, I doubt it's a restriction. Your cams should be able to hang on past 6500, too. Are you still on Evo 8 valve springs? Maybe they are a bit tired, or just out of their league here..

Wish you all the best for this event!

 

[TSiAWD666]

Ok so I went to VIR in October. I really should have written up some details but for the life of me can't recall everything that happened.

Had a nice paddock room again.

and a nice garage:

I think on Saturday I had basically no good laps. I believe the first number of sessions were a wash due to the intercooler connector at the throttle body coming off. I guess RRT when they worked on it just didn't know how to cinch this down just right so it holds pressure. The inlet is weirdly sized slightly too large with barely a lip for grip (a design flaw by Boomba Racing in my opinion), and so I have to position things just right to prevent it from pulling right off, and with just enough clamping force to hold it but not rip apart the clamp. So first session I think I lost the large 3" T-bolt clamp I had there. I came in and found... I didn't find any spares. I walked around track asking everyone for one and finally Phil Grabow of Element Tuning (http://elementtuning.com/) saved me with his only clamp of that size. So I went back out and... it happened again, and I lost the clamp!!. No one to blame but me this time. This time I thought that maybe the upper intercooler pipe was oriented slightly differently than I would have done it and just putting tension in a way that would help pull the connector off the TB. So I loosened the upper ic pipe and fidgeted with everything, and also walked around again to find another clamp, which I did thanks to Kevin Parlett of... Kevin Parlett Racing (http://kparlettracing.com/about/), and put the car together. I think I went out again and it held, but then I think the alternator failed. This was a relatively new Saturn Alternator from Motor City Reman, mounted in the rear of the engine with no heat shielding. Fortunately I had brought a spare, so we went through the hell of replacing that. While doing so I built heat shielding from material bought from the track store since I suspected this was due to heat:

I don't remember why but I have no valid/good times from all of Saturday, so maybe the blown alternator happened last? I really can't remember.

On Sunday it was insanely foggy and no one could go out for a few hours.

Re: the valve comment, I am still using the Evo 8 valve springs. Maybe that has been the issue, maybe no, but I'll keep it in the back of my mind.

 

[TSiAWD666]

So Summit Point was in early Nov 2018. It was COLD. Forecast was for 30-40 deg weather, dropping into the 20s overnight. It was so cold I opted to add some anti-freeze to the coolant, as well as buy a stick-on block heater for overnight.

Got out there early Saturday morning. Here's my good friend Chad who drove up from Virginia Beach checking tire pressures for me.

I can't remember exact details but I remember going out for warm-up and having to sit on grid for like 45-60 minutes. Turns out with the cold weather everyone was sliding around like they were driving on ice and there were a lot of wrecks, and fluid on the track. Here I am sitting on grid waiting to go out:

Another racer that was there spectating caught me filling the time on grid with some Clash Royale:

Went out finally for warm-up and yeah it was like ice skating. It was impossible to get heat in the tires. I felt like I was driving a RWD car with bald tires in the rain. It was incredibly scary and not sure how I could possible drive fast.

Came back in and tried tire pressure changes to make the most of it, and went out for a second session. Still slick and constantly losing control. I gradually tried to get some speed going and on turn 8 my rear end kicked out hard and I did a 180, going off the track backwards. I reacted slowly and distinctly remember slowly thinking as I was going backwards "why haven't you pushed in the clutch yet?". I did eventually but... probably too late. I came into the grid to apologize for my off, of which the stewards actually had no idea and they sent me back out. On that very next lap near where I spun I went into fourth gear and... vroom, revving sky high. I had other gears but no fourth (actually I might have lost 2nd too, I can't remember). Hoping this was something simple like it popped out gear and I lost the clip holding the shift cable, I nursed around the track (having just missed the pit-in) and started to see smoke and smell gear oil. I came into the grid and... they were trying to line me up for an annual Time Trial group photo! HAH I had to tell them I think I blew my trans and I needed to get off the grid. The steward there looked underneath, saw leaking fluid, and told me to get off ASAP. I heard they were quite pissed at me for leaking on the track as well as the grid but no one ever said anything to me directly.

I came in and parked, and there was a nice hole under the trans. My season was over. Here's a pic taken later once the trans was out:

Had the trans sent to TMZ Performance for analysis, and yeah basically 4th gear sheared off some teeth and took a lot out.

Had a small issue with the gopros, they did not like to turn on in the cold weather. So I had no rearview display nor any footage. With how slick things were though in the cold I have no plans to ever race in these temps again though, so not a huge deal. I don't like that the rearview though was dependent on the somewhat unreliable rear gopro system I set up so I had plans to change this to something more robust.

While the trans was out RRT discovered another big issue, and we opted to make a number of changes to the car while tackling it. Will talk about it in the next post.

 

[Vegas Smith]

Reading you and other people's track stories makes me think these events are a giant headache. Hopefully you get some enjoyment out of this stuff.

 

[TSiAWD666]

Reading you and other people's track stories makes me think these events are a giant headache. Hopefully you get some enjoyment out of this stuff.

Hah, they definitely are the source of a lot of headaches! However when the car works there's nothing else like it, so while yes it takes a lot of work and you have to deal with a lot of setbacks, ultimately it's worth it to me. Definitely not worth it to many other people, but somehow I don't want to be doing anything else with most of my time and money, at least for now.

So I handed to car over to RRT to deal with pulling the trans because I didn't want to deal with doing it in my tiny one car garage. I also wanted them to do a once over on the car to make sure all the suspension arms and bearing were holding up, and there was no tearing at mount points. They pulled the trans and started looking around and found something quite unexpected. It appeared the frame was buckling upwards around the footwell area of the front seats. They could see evidence of the underside frame rails bending and the floor buckling upwards ever so slightly. These pics are just awful to see it because, well, it was subtle but it was definitely there. You can seem some bending in the frame rails for sure. I'm posting the pics anyway even if they're crap.


What's interesting is when they showed me this problem t I realized this was likely the cause of an issue I noticed over the last year. I was losing caster. For years I'd run about 5.2 degrees caster matched on both sides, but over the last year it went down, first to like 4.7, then 4.5 degrees. RRT didn't know why, they wondered if there had been damage at the front upper a-arm mount points or something. Well with this buckling we theorized the shock towers were ever so slightly leaning forward and thus could explain the lost caster.

We don't know why this was happening either. Perhaps the carbon fiber roof made things weak enough that the frame couldn't take it anymore. Maybe all the solid bushings I have everywhere contributed. Maybe I'm braking that much harder and things started to crumple. Really, we aren't likely going to figure it out.

Unfortunately, the only fix here was expensive. The car would have to go to a body shop that can straighten frames, and to do that the engine had to come out. Even then we wouldn't be sure if that was the cause of the caster issues, and we'd also need to figure out some sort of reinforcement to prevent this buckling from continuing.

I decided to make this an opportunity to make a lot of changes that had been on my wish list for a long time, but and many required the engine to be out. Here's the crazy list:
- Connect the roll cage to the front strut towers. This possibly helps solve the buckling problem, or caster problem, and can double as a better strut tower brace.
- Relocate the ABS pump/ecu from the front driver's corner to somewhere aft of the engine. Better weight balance, and gets its wiring out of the way.
- Get a customer fusebox wiring harness. Since the ABS relocation required a lot of rewiring, rather than mess with that I contact OHM Racing for a customer fusebox/abs wiring harness (on OEM the abs wiring is bundled into the fuesbox wiring) that would accomodate the relocation as well as remove unnecessary systems plus a few other customizations (more on that later) to get a lighter harness that is more hidden and out of the way.
- Cut out the windshield wiper box. It really intrudes into the engine bay a LOT on a 2g and makes it hard to work on things. We were already going to have to go through it for the strut tower connections, so might as well just lose it along with the weight.
- Do a timing belt job, and re-time the engine. Obviously these go hand in hand, but with how my engine hasn't been performing as well as most people expect I've always been suspicious there was something not right. Also timing belt had 6+ years of racing on it and also the mid/lower timing covers were melted from gasket leaks over the years and needed to be replaced.
- Relocate the fuel surge tank from the engine bay to the rear of the car with a firewall enclosure. For better weight distribution.
- Install the Magnus Motorsports cast 2g intake manifold I've had for like three years on my shelf. I was so tired of the Venom intake manifold cracking and leaking. This was a good time to do it because we'd be making more room for things to shuffle around in the engine bay and this manifold puts the throttle body way farther passenger side than the Venom so I would need to relocate stuff like the catch can.
- Install fuel pressure and brake pressure sensors. I didn't have these and it was a good time to do them.
- Remove the underside frame rails. Andrew Brilliant told me from the beginning I should get those removed the improve airflow through the two underside tunnels (basically the airflow paths on the side of the driveshaft/exhaust), as well as to keep things out of this area. More airflow meant more downforce as it helps keep the velocity up of the air underneath which results in less upwards force on the car and thus net downforce.
- Relocate the Accusump line, fuel lines, and timing transponder outside the airflow tunnels. I had these basically on the underside of the car running next to the OEM fuel lines (which I left in place but wasn't using). These were all hindering airflow and I wanted to move them to the side of the car, and also remove the unnecessary oem hard lines.

I think that was the list. I honestly forget, there was a lot of stuff, and I kept coming up with more as the project went on.

Ok so first, the surge tank. The lines route out directly through the trunk floor. The firewall housing is sealed with fire resistant neoprene foam.

Engine bay empty. I remembered I had them clean off the firewall insulation since I don't really need it. Less weight, yay. You can see the windshield washer motor box cut out here, and the brake lines run to the interior. Later I would have them re-route the power steering lines down below because I hate how ugly they are going over the strut tower. Also I would have them cut some of the more uselss metel behind the headlights for a tiny bit more weight savings.

Oh here's a good picture of the brake master cylinder brace I devised many years ago that helped braking tremendously as I was suffering from a deep pedal due to extreme firewall flex. Figure it can help others create one.

Interior reinforcements going in to tie into the strut towers. Also my embarrassing wiring.

The engine back in with the strut tower connections coming into place. We devised a removable brace so I could still service things. The brace itself there is aluminum and very light.

The transmission back from TMZ Performance. I cannot thank TMZ enough for absolutely incredible service. He did me yet another special favor and got everything back together after fielding a thousand questions, and was a great help in providing much needed rare parts (he gave me his Evo 1st/2nd gearset out of his personal supply to get me going again). The only big change to the transmission was going to a taller 4th gear which will help in some locations on tracks so that I don't have to go to 5th.

The ABS relocation. I had wanted it to go behind the fuel pump area but RRT insisted it go somewhere central to avoid overly long brake lines. So it ended up behind the ECU on the center tunnel.

The ABS relocation necessitated wiring changes. OHM Racing rapidly provided me with a new harness that did the following:
- relocated ABS harness to the interior
- relocated the fusebox to the passenger footwell area
- Completely eliminated any wiring crossing over the car under the radiator cross support, instead routing directly in the interiror of the car to the driver footwell panel. ABS sensors, power steering sensor, and radiator fan all route through the firewall now, along with the connection to the engine harness. This also eliminates the wiring running in the fender wells so no more lost wiring if I explode another tire!
- Eliminated wiring for systems I didn't have, such as foglights, horns, headlights, alternator (I use a one-wire self-exciting Saturn alternator)...
- Route the front ABS sensors through the engine bay rather than through the fenders

Basically I lost some weight, decluttered the engine bay, and re-routed some wiring for better protection. Pictures really don't capture how much cleaner this wiring harness is. Also, they don't capture the quality, this is really top notch mil-spec stuff. Very light weight, very thin, tailored to my exact needs... this is really awesome stuff at an incredible price.

Picture of the fusebox's new home. Also you can see the location of the brake pressure sensor in the bottom left. Don't mind the clutter, things hadn't quite been organized fully yet. Also you can see some wiring pass-throughs I asked for to make it easier for me to add new sensors. They are pretty large but after I'm done with a wiring bundle I wrap it in heat retardant foam and that gets shoved into the holes to seal things up. Easy to remove as it's just held on by adhesive. Pretty neat idea from RRT.

I do want to post a separate review which will likely be a copy paste of this but I like to include everything in this build thread for posterity.

So for the underside of the car RRT was heavily against the frame rail removal because they really weren't sure what it was providing. We argued a LOT about it. I eventually wore them down when I came up with the idea of replacing it with reinforcement on the top side. How? Well I looked at the footwell areas and figured we can strengthen there with various boxed metal, and just put a thin metal cover on top so I still have a floor. They liked this idea and were on board since I also had the front strut towers tied in. Unfortunately I don't really have pics of what was done here. Just know a scaffolding of box metal tubs were welded on the top of the footwells, with a divet left for my right foot because I needed it for room to do braking throttle blips. I'll see if RRT has in-progress pics.

Here's what the tunnels looked like after. I had them also clean up unnecessary exhaust hangers.

Actually in that second pic part of one of the exhaust hangers is still there, but it has since been removed because I caught it after taking this picture.

After the frame straightening I think (I can't remember at the moment for sure) I got back to 5.2 caster on the passenger side, but only 4.9 on the driver's. Will have to find that alignment sheet... Hopefully it doesn't get bent up again.

For the timing belt job I have no pics, but some interesting info.
- timing belt had a puncture. Looks like a rock or something pushed a chuck through the middle VERY lucky it didn't fail.
- RRT insisted the timing was way weird. Like 30 degrees advanced on cams but off 30 degrees at the crank.

They timed the engine per the original Forced Performance cam cards. The engine really hadn't had the timing touched since I got the engine. I spoke with Marco of Magnus Motorsports who built the engine and he insisted they built it correctly and to the cam cards. So really not sure what to make of it. RRT insists it was very wrong but I'm not sure how the engine wouldn't have hit valves the way they described. So I was skeptical, but who knows, and I kept it in my thoughts. The car started up and idled just fine though so that was promising. More on the timing effects later though.

Here's the finished engine bay after everything was re-assembled:

With the car back in my hands I had some electrical work to do, then dyno time, washing, stickers (sponsor changes!), and then the Ultimate Track Car Challenge and Hyperfest May 17-19.

 

[TSiAWD666]

OHM Racing is now sponsoring the car! I could've said in the above post but wanted it to be a little more noticeable. They graciously supported me with a great discount on the new custom harness as well as accelerating getting mine done in less than a month in the middle of their very busy tax season. I really can't thank Anthony of OHM Racing and really am pleased with the product. It worked on the first try and is just a work of art.

Also, SIRHC Labs is now sponsoring the car! You may remember they actually sponsored me years ago and gave me a free electronic boost controller, the Cortex EBC. I never got around to using it and a year later returned it because I felt so guilty. However with my power issue I speculated this was boost related (well, since I could see the boost not reaching the right levels per my datalogs) and wondered if ECMLink's boost control or the old OEM solenoid lines were the cause. So I needed an alternative, but still wanted RPM-based boost control so I could bump up torque but keep my HP in check to meet my class's 8.3 weight/power limit. I reached out to Chris@SIRHC and he remembered me and I simply asked if I could buy a unit (full price). He insisted on helping and opted on a compromise of a severely discounted unit. I'll write a separate review but here's the unit out of the box, sans some boost lines and connectors I told him I didn't need:

I installed this into the car, connected to my Borg Warner solenoid. ECMLink only has a handle of rpm points, supports only up to 16hz rates for solenoid control, does not have functional closed loop boost control (yes, the feature is in the menus but it does NOT work), and was proving quite difficult to fine tune my HP. This beast has:

• Gear, RPM, and vehicle speed based boost control
  • Set boost at up to 64 points PER gear based on RPM, RPM + TPS, or vehicle speed
• PID based feedback control algorithm optimized for boost control applications
• Launch specific settings to improve standing start acceleration and consistency
• Spool specific settings to minimize turbo lag
• Overboost fail-safe settings to protect engines from potentially damaging boost levels
• Memory storage for 6 completely unique boost control profiles that can be selected on the fly
• Internal 50.0 PSI Pressure Sensor
• 1 RPM input
• 1 vehicle speed input
• 1 general purpose input
  • Can be connected to TPS, flex-fuel, WBO2, water/meth flow sensors, or transbrake switches to provide additional boost control and fail-safe capabilities.
• 2 fully programmable PWM outputs with 3D mapping
• Software based configuration with high speed data logging

NEW FEATURES UNDER DEVELOPMENT:

• 64-point Time Based Boost Control Strategy
• Transbrake Bump Control
• Boost Scramble
• Water Methanol Pressure Detection and Fail-Safe Settings
• Water Methanol System Priming Feature

Ok so I copied that from their website: https://sirhclabs.com/

I was excited to try it out, and more on that later.

I did a boost leak test the weekend before the dyno day, and found I couldn't hold ANY pressure. I had a massive leak out the throttle body on the manifold side. I thought perhaps the o-ring gasket had blown or something but couldn't figure it out so I pulled the throttle body. After scratching my head for a few minutes it hit me. My Boomba Racing Evo throttle body is 75mm. I noticed the inlet hole looked larger and sure enough was 90mm. Well the way the Boomba is cut it can't seal to a 90mm hole, and leaves a nice air gap outside its gasket on the sides.

Probably not too helpful here as a visual aid but you can kind of see the 90mm inlet hole overlaps the centerline of the bolt holes for the throttle body. If you look at the boomba pictured here you'll see the gasket there does not go out far enough. Actually on the bottom edge where the ISC bolts in (or is that the FIAV? I forget) there's a big open air gap because the ISC (just going to call it that) isn't flush with the the throttle body surface. There's like a 0.5mm step there (hard to see). Well I started panicking because I hadn't thought of this and somehow for years never noticed this was going to eventually be a problem. I thought about overnighting some form of S90 throttle body but then I knew nothing about how the TPS would work, which options would be ecmlink compatible, where do I get the harness, is the throttle body reliable and not leak prone (I'd read horror stories over the years about various S90-variants)... but then I realized I could solve this with a simple plate adapter that I bet RRT could machine. So I went over there first thing Monday morning and they said they could whip something up later that day. Here's what they did for me:

I had planned to just use RTV on the manifold side as a gasket and think of a long term solution later.

Plans changed though. While I was picking this up in the afternoon I got a call from my girlfriend's mother. My girlfriend's father died suddenly of a heart attack. We immediately went to her mother's in NJ to be with her and to help with whatever we could. I was there for almost two weeks and had to miss the dyno day, and therefore couldn't go the the Ultimate Track Car Challenge or Hyperfest. I heard it was amazing and from pics it sure looked like it. Also, I would have won Fastest AWD based on the lap times I saw, assuming my car worked. Anyway, when I got back I began working on the car again.

After I came back since I had more time I asked RRT to cut a gasket trough into the piece, which they had wanted to do given time but they had to order the right tool to do so (which they actually went ahead and ordered and it arrived while I had been in NJ). The final piece:

Don't mind that bit of o-ring sticking out, I hadn't quite snug it in place yet. I installed this and did a boost leak test. No more leak at the throttle body! However... I had a boost leak in the manifold! Can you believe it? I had a pin hole leak on the top near the driver's side pointing to the firewall. I msg'd Marco@Magnus and he said he's only had a couple with similar failures, but he was concerned if this happened in one spot there may be other spots that formed due to whatever caused this, perhaps a cooling issue or contaminants. So he said he'd send me another one. I bought this manifold YEARS ago and he still covers it (of course I'd never used it, but still). Great company and great guy.

The next race was June 8/9 at Summit Point raceway, and since I couldn't trust the manifold would get here in time I opted to throw JB Weld over the pinhole and that stopped that leak. I was able to get a decent boost leak test done, though I do think there is some minor leak on the underside of the manifold, perhaps another pinhole, or could be something else entirely. Either way it was like 1/psi leakdown every 3 seconds from maybe 30psi to 24psi, and then it slows way down.

I also worked on a project to give me a more reliable rearview camera. Having the gopro crap out at the UTCC in 2018, and then a few times randomly at track events later in the year, I decided to puzzle out something else. I already had a display connected to the Pi for ECMLink, andI knew that the Raspberry Pi had cameras that were 1080p@30fps which should be good enough. However they connect via a short ribbon cable that I don't think can be as long as I would need from the pi's location in the center console area to the rear of the car. After some research though I found someone had created a pair of boards that lets you use an HDMI cable instead.
https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/pi-camera-hdmi-cable-extension

Someone even came up with a 3D model of a case for this for printing. Thanks to Paul Volk (@99gst_racer) of Volk Metal Craft for hooking me up with a rapid print of a prototype. I ended up using this, and figured out how to get it to autodisplay on bootup of my PiLink (my name for my ecmlink-on-a-pi system I've created) without really interfering with ECMLink. So far it seems to be working but it doesn't quite like the extreme vibration my car generates as I'm seeing some video tearing sometimes. Also it's a bit zoomed in so not... quite what you normally would want in a rearview camera, nor is it fisheye, but I think it's going to be fine for me since I just need to see other racecars driving up behind me. I'll test this prototype at Summit and see how it goes, and bring my wiring for the gopro just in case I need to fall back to it. Here's the camera installed in the rear.

Oh the rough surface is actually... liquid insulation I happened to have on my desk that I thought what the hell, I'll slather it on to seal up the case a bit from water. I can't really seal the HDMI port on the bottom though so if I get a lot of water it's probably gonna fry. I gotta order some spares.

So on to the dyno.

 

[TSiAWD666]

While I was in NJ but after I'd determined when I would be back in the area I called up Moore Automotive to see if we could schedule a dyno session before the June 8/9 Summit Point race, and fortunately they had ONE day available on June 1, a Saturday. So yesterday I went down to their shop in Fairfax, VA, to have Chris Hoover again work on my car.

Chris has always been puzzled why my setup was not performing well, especially with the HP. Previously he had control issues with both timing and HP to manipulate my HP curve, and above 6500 rpm the HP just started to drop off. This has been with the BW EFR 7670 turbo system on the car as he hadn't seen it prior. Previous tuners have had issues getting horsepower out of the car as well, with still getting some drop off above 6500. Just a note about my issues which will make sense in a bit.

I brought the car primarily to deal with the lack of power on track vs the dyno, and my current theory was that it was boost control related which is why I put on the Cortex EBC. Also I needed a re-tune with the timing changes (if there really were any) and the new intake manifold. Chris fired up the car and did a pull. Right out of the gate he said it pulled 400hp and 360 torque at wastegate pressure (around 20psi, tapering to 17psi up high). Those were amazing numbers overall. So maybe the engine really was mis-timed before? So bizarre.

Well, after that, he couldn't get boost pressure to go up and so we were at a standstill. Thought it was the Cortex EBC, and the owner of SIRHC Labs took a phone call on Saturday to help us troubleshoot. We had the settings set to 50% duty cycle across the board. Everything looked fine. We verified the wiring from the Cortex to the solenoid, and it was correct. We hooked up 12V to the solenoid, and we heard it click. We argued about my hose routing on the solenoid for a while as he had never seen someone hook the BW BCS in a twin port configuration wastegate, but ultimately we agreed I was correct and I noted we were able to adjust boost when I was here before and it was hooked up the same way then. I reverted to connecting to ECMLink as I had saved the wiring just in case, and still no boost control. We knew the wastegate wasn't the issue since we were getting wastegate pressure.

I noticed he had a spare Borg Warner solenoid on BW EFR turbo sitting on a table for a customer. I suggested we just that brand new solenoid as a shot in the dark. He said they weren't going to be using it so go ahead. We hooked it up and did a pull and bam, 25psi right away. How bizarre, the solenoid failed. Very puzzling but we were ready to go!

You may have noted I don't really post dyno charts. Edit - apparently I do right on page 1 but I forgot hah! I definitely wasn't really happy with that one though but I did like the torque down low and thought that was notable.

The reason is I've been embarrassed over the car's performance. I didn't want to embarrass turbo manufactures, my engine builder, or myself really. It's a freaking overbuild 2.3L with a decent sized turbo and we've struggled to get it to put out 370-380whp. With that said, my goal here with tuning was to get my torque as high as possible, and my HP limited to a peak of around 373whp due to my class limits. Also ideally I'd want as flat an HP curve as possible out to 8000, but I was skeptical since turbos usually have low torque and rising HP curves with dropoffs at the top.

Here's what we landed at:

I was stoked! Exactly what I asked for and no more issues like before:
- No more power drop off above 6500. HP pretty much holds to 8000rpm (my rev limit). Chris had some issues getting it to hold super steady without bumping up high so it ended up with a slight downturn in power but not much.
- High torque down low, higher than we've been able to get before.
- super flat HP curve! This should drive very nicely on the track.

Also of note that previously I needed like 26ps on the upper end to get to the 370whp range, but now I'm getting it with only like 17psi. That's pretty crazy, but also in line with expectations of this turbo on a 2.3l engine.

So basically... we really fixed a lot and I can't wait to see how this all performs on the track.

What's really funny is we were a bit lucky. To get this torque we had the duty cycle at 95% down low. Up high though we're pretty much on wastegate pressure, and that was producing too much power (remember intiially we had 400whp) so we had to pull a lot of timing to bring the power back down. So if I go lower on wastegate spring I may not be able to get as much torque, but if I go higher on wastegate spring (for more torque) it will impact control up top and possibly make me overpowered. Either way, likely not going to mess with it as we achieved a nice curve finally after 7 years with this engine. I think now I'm really going to see how the BW EFR 7670 Twin Scroll should feel and I can't wait!

Of course with good news there's gotta be some bad news, at least with my car. While pulling the car off the dyno we saw this:

That's coolant leaking from the front side of the radiator. Joy. So now to get that out of the car and to RRT to hopefully fix it. Or if they can't I'll try some Alumaseal and hope for the best.

 

[TSiAWD666]

Red Line Synthetic Oil is sponsoring the car! I'm very excited to be announcing this as it's something that's been in the works since the 2018 UTCC. I met their sales and marketing directors there and really hit it off and we kept in touch. It probably helped that their sales director used to own a 1g Talon. They are interested in tapping into the racing community and its fans more and were looking for grass roots racers to help with that. I mentioned how disappointed I had been with Motul in their lack of support for the car (basically a MSPR discount) and little informational material or swag to pass out at events, and not even a tent for the car. Red Line listened and is working with me to get all of that while supplying all fluids for the car.

Yesterday I washed the car and removed the Motul stickers along with some of the non-sponsor stickers that I had to put on for Hyperfest in order to make room for the Red Line stickers. I also put on the OHM Racing stickers, though finding a spot I liked for this was tough (and I'm not entirely happy where they are but it was the best compromise for me).

I also pulled the radiator and dropped it off at RRT this morning. Unfortunately no obvious source of the leak. They're going to see if they can find it, but since it's not obvious where it's coming from my guess is it's where one or more of the rows are attaching to the end tanks, which isn't great news as that's pretty hard to fix. They told me they can use an epoxy and a vacuum to suck the epoxy into the cracks and seal, and they have one race car running on a core like this at the moment. Either way first thing to do is to pressure test it and go from there. We'll see what they say, hopefully good news in the next couple days so I can get to the track!

 

[TSiAWD666]

For reference here's a stock underside showing how the frame rails, fuel lines, and that exhaust hanger occlude the underside on the left and right. Makes it a bit more clear what I did and why. Ignore the highlighted areas, I think the creator of this image was trying to identify differences in the mounting gussets for a 95-96 vs a 97-99.

RRT was able to fix the leak. They found cracks near the rows by the inlet. They used a high temp and expensive epoxy to fix the cracks. They used a light vacuum to pull the epoxy into the cracks and let it cure 24 hours. Held 25 psi for 15 minutes so we were good.

 

[TSiAWD666]

Went out to the track on Friday afternoon to drop off the car and go through tech. Even though this meant two hours of driving extra I would at least be able to sleep in a bit more the following morning, get a better pick of paddock parking, and not be rushing in the AM to get off the trailer, get gas, get through tech, etc. Here I am before heading out:

Got to the track right when NASA said the gates would be open and people were already well set up in the paddock, taking all the good spots. I guess they let people in much earlier. Got myself set up next to some nice people, put up the really nice tent that Red Line provided, passed through tech, and headed home.

In the AM I went out for the warm-up session. I realized I'd not been on this track at good speed (last November doesn't count heh) since 2015. Quite a long while and while I generally know the track I knew I'd be rusty. Also I wasn't quite confident in the car handling with all the changes we'd made so I'd have to ease into those.

Sitting on grid:

Initial feelings were that the power was completely back, and felt fantastic. Great low end and just keeps pulling all the way to 8k rpm, just like the dyno charts showed. That felt wonderful and was such a load off my mind.

The front-end felt fantastic. Extremely responsive, definitely improved from before, and quite tight/stiff. I liked it. Very happy there. However the rear-end was extremely loose. I couldn't have any confidence at low or high speed, corner entry, mid, or exit. Odd, but there were things we can do to work on it.

Mid-way through the session I was black-flagged. I came in wondering why and they asked if I had heard anything. I said no, and they said my exhaust was hanging off my car. When he mentioned this I did remember hearing some underside metal clanking but had thought it was my rear diff making its normal noises I didn't really hear it at high speeds.

I came in and parked the car. The exhaust had fallen off the hangers and was literally hanging by a single nut/bolt. I'm lucky the exhaust didn't fall off and hit someone. The reason I was notified was that a driver saw the sparks from under my car and came in to get me black flagged, as he didn't want his brand new Camaro 1LE to eat an exhaust in the grill. Apparently I had been dragging this thing over two laps!

I quickly realized what had happened. While clearing out the underside of airflow blockages I had given RRT permission to remove the driver's side hanger as they said I didn't need it. Neither of us realized that's the only hanger on that side of the exhaust. So the exhaust just slipped right off the passenger side hangers. Really stupid mistake.

The exhaust magically was mostly intact, with no bent flanges or anything. The only real damage, aside from the lost nut/bolt, was that a hole rubbed through the remaining resonator.

I had random spare hardware and found a bolt/nut that would work. For the hanger issue I had some small hose clamps that we attached to the hanger rods after going through the hangers. For the hole in the resonator, while not really a big deal as it pointed straight down, I tried to fill with fast curing quik steel putty:

I probably should have cleaned the surfaces which I did not do because I'm an idiot. While it did cure fast, I found later the putty was gone. Well we'll just remove the resonator as I had intended to so anyway.

I missed the next session giving time for the curing, and did go out for the remaining two sessions. Before going out I added more wing, and backed down both rebound and compression a bit on the rear. I also continued to adjust tire pressures as they were overall too high, but moreso in the rear. I gradually improved to a 1:20.6, which is over 3 seconds slower than my fastest at the track (a 1:17.3). Keep in mind I had my slower R7 tires, and not the fast A7 tires, but that's likely only 1-1.5 seconds there. The rear was still loose after the changes but I still could back out more on the shocks and adjust the tire pressures further which I had planned to do for the next day. I was also driving poorly. Interestingly enough the power/torque changes and front-end tightness I think opened up a better racing line in one section of the track so I had planned to play with that as well.

I ran in TTU (unlimited) instead of my normal TT2 because we only had two competitors in TT2, and TTU needed just one more to give tires to the winner. I wanted to help them out. So I was fourth in TTU on Saturday, but didn't matter to me as this was a test and tune really at this point for me.

 

[TSiAWD666]

Here's the Camaro ZL1 1LE that was in TTU with me. Nearly brand new, with 650hp stock, only an intake done here. I think without driver it's over 3800lbs, very heavy. This car pretty much kept up when I was driving slowly on Saturday, and I was thoroughly impressed. Just a beautiful machine. The best part is the price... owner got it for just over $70k. Incredible performance to $ ratio. Just incredible. Only issue was after a few laps he was losing power, suspecting something overheating and timing being pulled. So not a full race car out of the gate but close.



Here are a pair of brothers. The M3 is a car like mine, a street car turned time trial machine. Very nice car in TT3, and driver is new but decent. Amazing how little has to be done for that car to be turning TT laps. I think his fastest ended up being a 1:21.something. The Infiniti G35 is a supercharged car with something like 390whp, more than my race car. Made a lot of noise


This was future TT driver here with a Subaru STi, shooting for I think TT3. He was there to have a check ride that weekend, which he was able to accomplish successfully. So we'll be seeing him soon on track.

 

[TSiAWD666]

Forecast for Sunday was for rain. My first session wasn't until after 11am so I was able to sleep in. When I got to the track it was still dry. So I set the tire pressures, even lower than yesterday with more of a drop in the rear to get more rear grip as I things were feeling better and better, but still not right. I wasn't confident the tire pressure change was enough, but also didn't want to change the shock settings (no idea, just a hunch). I think the problem is with my rear sway bar, more on that later.

Went out, and clicked off two 1:19.6 laps, already a second faster than yesterday. Rear was feeling better, but not perfect, but enough that I could start getting into the case at the apexes for some of the turns. Decided to push a bit more, and on a lap where I passed one car at the start by the aformentioned TT3 M3 and got held up on the final turn by another TTU Camaro I ran a 1:18.4. Not bad. Besides being held up I didn't see the car getting better until the physical issue with the rear being loose was addressed, so I decided to come in.

Looking at my data after the event, I was driving very slow, like 5-6mph slower, in a lot of turns than my 1:17.3 lap from years ago. Also, I found my time through the carousel area where I was able to try a different line thanks to the new front-end grip actually does speed up my lap dramatically, and is where I gained all my time on the 1:18.4 vs the 1:19.6 laps. So to summarize:
- Held up by M3 and Camaro. I think this is worth about .5 seconds.
- Slower in turns due to loose rear, I think this is worth easily 1 second if not more.
- Slower on R7 tires vs A7. I think this is worth another second.

I'm weirdly good at guesstimating lap times based on my data so I think this is reasonable. So I could be 2.5 seconds faster with some small tweaks, which puts me in the 1:15 range. The current lap record is a 1:16.1 in TT2. I'm extremely pleased with this data and the results of the weekend, despite not running my fastest.

My GoPro in-car was having weird issues powering up and I found I didn't get in-car footage on this session. I do have the rear footage, and will for the hell of it put it up with data when I get around to it.

Here I am packed up and ready to head home. The rain came in and stuck for the rest of the day, so no more sessions. Well actually I could have done half the next session but I misjudge the weather and thought it was going to rain it out.

On the rear grip issue. my current theory is that it has to do with the rear sway bar. When we had installed the rear lower control arms from Paul Volk with sphericals RRT wasn't able to bolt up the sway bar. Their fix was to drill holes closer to the sway bar bends, effectively increasing the stiffness, and they didn't tell me. I discovered it at some point later, but they assured me it was unlikely to make a noticeable difference. Also, at some point last year (it's probably chronicled in this thread) RRT noted how unevenly twisted my sway bar was making it less effective (it was bent up more from right turns, since i do more right than left turns at these tracks) and so we swapped to a brand new one. Both these changes likely stiffened things up in the rear and I think this is why I don't like how it handles anymore back there. I think. Just a hunch. So the car's going back to RRT soon to shim the sway bar out in the rear so the original holes line up and the original stiffness is restored. There is also a long laundry list of other things for them to tackle but I'll cover those later.

The raspberry pi rear camera worked very well. There were only two issues.
- The HDMI cable at the camera worked its way loose on track.
- The raspberry pi rebooted once

The former I am addressing by attaching a velcro strap to the back of the camera to support the hdmi cable. I should have just put the hdmi cable on top and inverted vertically the image, but I didn't feel like drill more holes in my trunk. The latter I think is because the pi was nudged out of its velcro mount on the side of my center console while driving and briefly lost connectivity somehow to something. Hard to say, will have to watch for this moving forward.

I decided to see what else I could do with the pi and thought about digital sideview mirrors. Andrew Brilliant told me that the sideview mirrors can account for a significant amount of drag, up to 5%, and screw up airflow in unintended ways. It's why you see a lot of work on them in profession racing. Also, my APR GT3 sideview are nearly useless as they have poor field of view and they usually bounce out of position in a couple laps no matter how tight I cinch down their locking bolts. I wondered about removing them entirely. The pi camera footprint isn't that big and could fit at the top of the back side of my fender. I didn't have another case for just the camera on hand though for a test. I wanted to try cheaper/smaller Pi Zero for this, so I bought one and hooked it up in a case, good enough for a test as it's not that big. Fortunately you can use the same OS in the 3 B+ as you can in the Zero, so I just cloned my existing SD card, put it in the Pi Zero, and hooked things up for a quick mock-up.

I think this will work. I wasn't happy with how the Pi Zero W was performing though, as it was taking like 24 seconds from power-up to image display. I dug into it and found some refinements to my code and also OS tweaks and got the time to image down to 11 seconds. What's nicer is I was able to apply many of the changes to my rearview/ecmlink pi and got its reverse image to show at 11 seconds as well.

So I ordered up the gear to prototype the sideviews, and when RRT has things they'll put in some display mounts and we'll see about how to mount the cameras.

 

[TSiAWD666]

Also playing with a HUD. I think I'll just put my predictive lap timer there that is usually on my phone at the top of the windshield. Have to build a Raspberry Pi for the HUD (testing here is with my phone) as I can't find a way to invert vertically the screen on Android devices, and I don't want my phone up there anyway as it may overheat from direct sunlight. Ordered a test screen and the pi hardware to try this out.

 

[TSiAWD666]

Stopped by RRT today for a checkpoint. The side view screens and camera mounts were in place so I hooked up a test unit to make sure everything was how I liked it. Had to do some camera alignment but in the end I'm liking things. It is a bit silly with all these screens but at least I don't have to deal with those damned side view mirrors bouncing out of position anymore.

 

[taz4432]

Amazing build and awesome to see the progress over time. Just spent a few hours reading through every post from start to finish and I'm very impressed! Keep up the good work!

 

[TSiAWD666]

RRT had the car most of the last month to do a laundry list of things.

Add more camber to the rear. I wasn't using all of the tread width on the rear tires. I used to before all the solid bushings so I could only conclude I now need more rear camber. So we added .2. This pic shows how much tread was barely being used, and this likely explains some of the rear end looseness I saw at Summit:


The rear sway bar as I mentioned before had been modified to meet up with Volk's lower control arms as for some reason the holes wouldn't line up. I thought this overly stiffened the bar. Also I noticed that the end links were still cocked a bit forward which in my mind delayed activation of the rear sway bar. So I had RRT shim the bar to get the original holes to line and have the end links vertical. Note that RRT didn't quite agree the endlink alignment was necessary but I can had them make the shims so I could remove them easily if necessary.


Trimmed out some of the front fender rearward vents as some of the fiberglass was blocking airflow. Basically some fiberglass for structural reinforcement I deemed unnecessary as well as a bracket that wasn't needed. The blue lines I haphazardly drew here show where that was.


The exhaust hanger problem was solved. I don't have a pic of that. I forget what they did to make sure the exhaust couldn't come off the hangers.

RRT thought that with the front spherical bearings a delay in front sway bar activation was introduced due to the shock and its fork being able to rotate. So they wanted to add some means to hold the shock oriented properly. They created some with some machined plastic spacer/inserts so that the shock can't pivot. I honestly was skeptical and since I felt the front end was handling well I didn't want to mess with it, but they insisted, so I made sure this was somewhat easily removable in case it turns out it has a negative effect.


The power steering was exhibiting some idle and low speed behavior that seemed problematic. I was feeling lots of pulsing when turning the wheel and heard metallic noise from the pump. No issues at speed though, everything was fine on the track. RRT said they couldn't replicate it. So that problem is on the bench for now. When I got the car back it wasn't doing it. I'm a bit puzzled right now. They think the pulsing at least was due to going to harder lines and think that the stock rubber lines were dampening things, but I think there's an issue with the machined reduce we put inline with the high pressure line to replicate the function of the build-int diameter reduction in the OEM line (i.e. I think they machined the orifice too small). I'll see what happens at VIR in August, but I grabbed a spare power steering pump just in case.

We relocated the coolant surge tank and the power steering reservoir tank so they were out of the way of vent airflow. They were blocking a good bit of the vents. We also created a new catch can with parts from the Calan one that is much lighter, but uses the sight glass and filters, and fits very nicely where the oem fusebox use to be. With the reservoir going lower, and thus its air expansion volume going lower, we were concerned with trapping gases in the input line to the pump so we cut up the OEM fitting (that does this weird kink as it exits towards the passenger side upwards then turns to the driver's side) and made it enter in a way that keeps the input line low and level. Note I couldn't mount the power steering reservoir lower because the ABS used to be down there, and when we removed it I totally forgot part of the reason was to open up space for the tank to go down which is why this wasn't done before Summit Point. Only once I got my car back for Summit did I realize I forgot to do this, but since I had time before VIR I decided to knock it out.

There were a number of other smaller things but nothing really worth noting.

I got the car back on Friday 7/26. Mach V Motorsports was having their annual car show the next day and I figured with the car mostly together I should go get some sponsor exposure. So I spent all night scrambling to at least throw in a prototype of the sideview systems and the HUD. Sadly one of the devices for the sideview cameras failed, highlighting a component design problem that would have likely manifested quickly on-track due to vibration). So I used components I had set aside for the HUD for that sideview and had to leave the HUD install for another day. With everything working I got sleep. Note this pic is actually after the event hence something in the passenger footwell.

Ok so went to the Mach V Annual Colossal Open House and Charity Car show. Wasn't a massive turnout as it seems Mach V forgot to really advertise this year.


I didn't take a lot of pics and the above were right at the beginning of the event.

I donated a prize package with Red Line products and swag for the event, though I forgot to take any pics of it or the winner. doh.

Ended up winning the Best Engine Bay award. I didn't have any time to wash the car and it still had the grime from the race at Summit Point, and I also think Mach V is trying not to give me the bigger awards as they want to give others the chance to win. I.e. I'm being arrogant perhaps but my car was by far the nicest one at the event.

I met an amateur photog at the event that liked the car and took a few photos. Here's a nice edit he did, made my dirty race car look pretty (well, prettier)

 

[TSiAWD666]

Felt motivated so I installed the HUD. Looks better than pictured, much clearer. The angle isn't perfect as I'm limited by the angle of the glass and the dash's proximity, but it's easily readable for what I need to see. I'm quite pleased with how this turned out. Hopefully the system holds up at VIR in a few weeks.

 

[Mitsubishiown]

The only thing I am trying to figure out is why I have not seen this build until now! Looks like I will spend the rest of the night looking at your build

 

[DarkKnight86]

This is one amazing build. One day I'll take my galant out for a open track day, for now I will just have to settle for sim racing. I'm guessing over the winter you will be changing the exhaust housing? Hopefully that will fix your issue as your not getting power up top.

 

[TSiAWD666]

This is one amazing build. One day I'll take my galant out for a open track day, for now I will just have to settle for sim racing. I'm guessing over the winter you will be changing the exhaust housing? Hopefully that will fix your issue as your not getting power up top.

I actually did solve the issue. It ended up being that the engine timing was off, possibly a jumped belt.