Road Race Build Super Lap Battle Cota bound

[rival]

rival submitted a new DSM Profile :

The Red Dragon


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[rival]

So this build started when when the strut towers started rusting out severely on my 98 gsx. I found this lil gem on here and drove it home. When i got it the car had a 6 bolt bottom end with a 7 bolt head, a 6152 turbo on 32 psi. needless to say that motor didnt last long, ran for about a weak. Thankfully the motor in the car this was replacing was gonna get installed anyway, just means i get to do it sooner!

 

[rival]

rival updated The Red Dragon


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[rival]

so I got these today! finally get to put some rubber on the ground!

 

[rival]

Just had the Talon Dyno tuned at DBW motorsports near atlanta, mady 475whp on a mustang dyno at 26 psi on pump gas! Very happy with the PT5858!

 

[rival]

rival updated The Red Dragon


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[rival]

rival updated The Red Dragon


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[rival]

rival updated The Red Dragon


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[rival]

So just got my koni yellow/GC in, and CTS-V calipers with 13" rotors, Poly subframe bushings, Poly rear diff bushings, and fender flares in, gonna be a busy weekend getting them all installed

 

[ThunderChild]

Sounds like a fun car, are those wheels xxr's?

 

[rival]

yeah xxr 527's, the wheels in the pic on the car are enkei bortax though. need to install the flares and suspension to get the xxr's to work.

 

[ThunderChild]

I like em, i was looking at some xxr's for my 1g, but aoparently they have a bad rap as a "cheap" wheel. I may still get some tho, thats down the road tho.

Nice car man, keep it up!

 

[rival]

thanks, I love the concave look of them and plan to run them for a while, that is if they hold up .

 

[rival]

rival updated The Red Dragon


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[rival]

Been a long time, but finally started to make progress on the car. After A K&N oil filter came apart inside the engine I went through the long process of trying to get them to cover damages. Long story short they admitted to the filter coming apart but refuse to pay for any repairs claiming there is no way the pieces got into the motor.... finally got the engine torn apart and put back together, and started making progress on the AMB V2 kit...

 

[rival]

 

[ThunderChild]

Nice, that looks mean and clean. What motor is in the second pic, cougar v6, and what are you doing with it?

 

[FIBA M - EC17PSE]

Nice, that looks mean and clean. What motor is in the second pic, cougar v6, and what are you doing with it?

Looks like a prelude from the headlight vents

 

[ThunderChild]

Looks like a prelude from the headlight vents

My bad, first pic!
The engine, bottom edge of the pic, haha

 

[rival]

that is a spare engine for my other car

 

[buddahboost]

What car is that, some kind of Lotus?

 

[rival]

What car is that, some kind of Lotus?

its a Noble M400

 

[RWD4G63]

Updates on this thing?

 

[rival]

So its been far too long since I have had time to update this build thread... where to begin..Sorry this may be a long one, and I will upload all the pics tomorrow night.. so I believe I left off beginning the installation of my AMB V2 aero kit.. I was able to get the bumper hood, rear fenders mounted, and decided to give hillclimb racing a shot.. I traveled to Robinsville NC where I entered the Chasing the Dragon hillclimb event. This event proved challenging for a lot of reasons.. at the time I went, I was making just north of 600 WHP way too much for such a bumpy hillclimb event. I dialed the boost controller down and took a couple practice runs..

Day 1 started with lots of issues.. my first run up the hill was ok, but at the start of my second run at turn 3 apparently the brass adapter for my oil pressure sensor sheered off over one of the bumps and sprayed oil the entire length of the track. not one flag was flown to indicate that I had a billowing cloud of smoke behind me as I raced up the hill. Once I made it up the hill and approached the finish line I had a moment to check my mirror to see the billowing white/blue cloud that trailed behind me... I shut the car down and coasted to the side into a parking area. It was here that the track official notified me that I had been leaking oil from turn 3... not gonna lie this pissed me off a bit as no flags were waved or any indication of a vehicle issue, I would have gladly pulled over and not risked damage to the engine or oiled the track down for those after me to have to contend with, but anyway is what it was.. thankfully no damage was done.. I found a spare and replaced it to fight again the next day..

Day 2 and again had a good first run, started to build my confidence in the course as this was my second day driving it. run 2 though struck tragedy... while coming through turn 13 at roughly 90 miles an hour the compression arm in the front suspension decided it had had enough and buckled, allowing my passenger tire to contact the frame just forward of the door, locking the tire up and causing me to lose all steering control... I barely stayed out of the ditch on the left side but careened off the track at turn 14 as I had no control of the car and couldnt slow it down enough to stop before the corner. Oddly enough the corner worker was on the outside of turn 14 and got a awesome video of me almost running him over as he dove out of the way at the last second. Needless to say the car got torn up pretty badly as it came to a stop teetering on a berm designed to keep racers from going over the edge. the front bumper, fender air dam were all severely damaged and the car was loaded onto a flatbed and dropped off on my trailer to take home..

I decided to give the talon a break from competition while I pieced it back together.. I decided to race my Noble that season instead in the SCCA Time Trial Nationals. My Success racing the Noble earned me an invite to Super Lap Battle at Circuit of the Americas this coming March. This is where the current scramble begins..

Something about these cars keeps me coming back for more punishment time and time again .. so I finally got the body work repaired from the hillclimb event.. and began the process of putting it all on. This process was pretty straight forward, with the help of Garrett Mealing at Mealing racing to bounce my question off of along the way. I saw the post from Flatout Suspension on here that they were looking for guinea pigs to test their suspension they were designing for these cars, so I jumped at the opportunity after talking to them in depth about what I was looking for. (More on that when I do my install and impressions writeup later) Also decided it was time to make the switch to E85 to enjoy all the benefits it brings to the forced induction platforms. so the install of the Full Blown dual pump hanger commenced.. along with bigger feed line and ID2000 injectors. This had its challenges as the Baffle in the tank had to be modified to fit the dual 450lph fuel pumps..

Next problem I needed to figure out was how to get more rubber under it. Wheels had always been something I was struggling with in deciding size and offset I wanted to run. I bounced Ideas off most of the prominent road race DSM guys on here, and finally spoke with Phillip from C1 who purchased Andrew Brilliants record setting AMB eclipse. YES THAT ONE! He helped me out and sold me the old wheels off Andrews car that they used for loading and unloading on the trailer. A super light set of CCW SP16 R wheels in 18x11 rear and 18x9.5 front. with a 1" spacer in the rear these wheels fit perfect and now hold the required Yokohama AO52 tires in 295-30/18 tires.

Now that Wheels were all set and decided I began to question my rear wing.. I knew I was going to be running a massive front splitter, and feared that my splitter would overpower my current Street Faction Engineering wing. I started asking around for ideas and Kevin Kovatch came to the rescue. As most of you know Kevin also has an AMB aero kit for his car and has been working to build it to a very high standard! He happened to have a APR gt1k wing that was not installed on his car yet and said he would be willing to let me borrow it for this epic race! So a couple days later after discussing some mounting solutions, the wing is in the mail and on its way.. The only issue I had mounting it was that the space for the mounts on the wing were different than my chassis mount spacing, so I fabbed up some 2" spacers for each side out of some Home Depot Racing angle iron and it bolts right up.

Once the fuel system was sorted, I had the car running on the stand in the garage when it began smoking real bad.... I shut the car off to hear the turbo growling as it came to a stop... I pulled the intake and grabbed the shaft to find an enormous amount of shaft play.... CRAP.. Turbo was toast and in need of a rebuild.. well time and money was tight so I called the guys at Boostlab and inquired about some options.. when it all came to light, it was a better choice for me time and money wise to go a whole new turbo route.. enter the Boostlab 6262 Dual Ball Bearing turbo.. This thing is a beast especially for the price! The turbo arrived within a couple days, and I began the install. I kept the turbo as close to my precision 5858 setup as I could for ease of install. T3 inlet with 3" v-band out. .82 AR. well little did I know at the time that there were different sizes fo 3" vband. so my O2 housing and current exhaust setup would not work. In comes Kevin Kovatch to save the day again! he had a old hot parts kit that he sold me and had in the mail the next day. so after some more welding and minor modification I had it all fitted up and ready to fire up with the new setup..

Excited to get the car running and to the dyno for the race tune, I went out to start the car and it wont start.. it fires and dies almost immediately. sounds like it fires on 4 cylinders for one revolution then dies... WTH.... I fought with this for a few days, checking plugs, spark, compression, boost leaks, etc.. no luck well now its do or die as time is running out for the race... I scheduled a Dyno appt with Doug at DBW motorsports in ATL. as a last ditch effort hoping it was a tuning issue that I couldn't figure out.. so I drive the car 3 hours to ATL, and leave it on the trailer. I speak with Doug about the issue and we begin checking things over... low and behold base engine timing somehow jumped 3 teeth on the intake and 3 teeth on the exhaust cams. HOLY CRAP!!!! I have a hard time understanding this at first as nothing I did had anything to do with the timing at all and it ran just fine prior to the turbo install. so in the parking lot we reset base timing, upon doing so we find that the exhaust cam had slipped and maxed itself out.. our thought is that this was the cause for the timing jumping, as everything else seemed perfectly normal.. so with timing reset and the exhaust cam gear tightened down, we try to start it again and low and behold it fires to life! a couple quick revs and it sounds healthy, just as it had been before... we are in business..

I pull the car off the trailer and get it on the dyno.. now that half the day has passed we didnt have much time left, so boost was decided to be whatever we could get out of the current springs. All said and done with the swap to E85 and the bigger turbo and a few more lbs of boost we end the day with a very conservative 669WHP and 522 lb ft of torque on a mustang dyno...

Now that the car is back home and we are T-30 days till the race, splitter install begins and am super pleased with the setup so far.. I purchased the Professional Awesome splitter quick release supports and bolt them up to the frame rails. I installed the front subframe support that Bobby offers and welded some 1" square tubing to it and bolt some guides onto the splitter so you can raise the back of the splitter to start sliding the guides in then snap the front up into place on the quick releases... then I installed 3 support rods per side to the chassis to help support the massive splitter that this thing will wear . give it the old stand on it test and it passes with flying colors..

This brings us to present day, 2/16/21.. I have 18 Days until I will be competing in the Limited Class at Super Lap Battle COTA! the car has a couple minor things to touch up but I am super excited and blessed to be able to represent the DSM community at such an awesome event with arguably some of the fastest Circuit cars in the country in attendance. The race will be streamed live for anyone interested on Superlapbattle.com. Hope the 25 year old car holds together and runs well and that I dont make any mistakes. until next time....

 

[rival]

Practice laps