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Congrats Zbomb. Great achievement after a $h!t ton of work. No better feeling than showing up to the track and schooling the wallet warriors. Built not bought is just sooo satisfying.
Thanks @mehoff - Appreciate the kind words and agree, while the process of building stuff has its up's and down's, when it goes good - It's really good.
More good, below is the dyno graph the tuner sent me, Nothing more I could ask of the engine. Just a lot of linear power and the flexibility of big torque at any RPM I could want it.
With the dyno behind me and the engine sorted (for now), was able to tackle 2 tasks today that I knew wouldn't be fun.
1. You know how I have been so pleased with the turbo radiators blah, blah, blah... Well, I'm kinda dumb. See, I test fit the bumper when I had the side rads in with their ducts.... But not the center. An important thing to keep in mind here, I am running 997 turbo rads - why you ask.. Fair. Well, I had a WTB up for 996 turbo rads and a very nice person reached out saying they had just swapped their rads out and would send me the stockers for.... Free - but, they were from a 997. Me, being blinded by the beauty of free said...**** yeah, thank you - send em. This center rad had been the cause of a couple issues. First, I thought it was the same as the 996, as the sides were, so I had bought the mounting bracket for a 996.... WRONG... the 997 turbo bracket is completely different so I had to buy the correct 997 part. No big deal, it bolted up OK... WRONG. This bracket caused the rad to sit too low and canted too far forward for the 996 bumper to even think about mounting... it was bad. So, after finding this out last weekend and spending a week thinking about it, I came up with a plan and got to it this AM. I cut some relief holes where the bracket was interfering with being canted more inward and re-drilled the main mounting holes to bring the bumper upward about 3/4 of an inch and.... NO... still didn't work. So, I had to do some modification to the bumper, which I'm displeased about but it was the only path forward. It's nice to see the car with a bumper on it again.
2. And the next issue, the damn power steering lines. These have leaked since the car had fluid in it... not a lot, but not none - the only fluid in the car with a persistent leak... Why am I just fixing now ? well, messing around with the lines at the rack sucks huge. Lucky for me - my good buddy Aaron came by and not only motivated me to fix it, but gave me a very valuable second set of eyes and hands... If he didn't come help me, definitely still be dripping. He was also nice enough to bring the stuff to get my JRZ remote reservoirs topped up. Big thanks buddy.
Some more to do tomorrow but we are getting what I would say is very close to the point where we can see how it works on track. Really appreciate all you guys that have followed along and participated in the thread.
Really good day today in preparation for upcoming track day. MaAAron brought over a slew of diagnostic tools so we could work to verify the .1 ABS functionality and after a fair bit of troubleshooting... Everything is doing what it should.
The wheel speed sensors are all alive and reading.
The ABS internal stop light switch is working.
The unit can be accessed via PIWIS through the OBD port for diagnostics
And my personal fav - the warning light is active on the dash when it supposed to be and off when everything is working.
I am so pumped. The fact I will have a big ABS FAULT warning is there is an issue give me a lot of peace of mind.
Big huge thanks to Aaron and his big brain for the help today.
Nope - my test day got canceled. The coach that invited me had his client cancel and supposedly due to the weather, not enough members are going so the track is canning the day. Just **** luck.
After all you've done it has to be tough to wait even an extra day!
I am still pretty sour, yeah. The thing is, and maybe I am being overly cautious - I don't want to throw multiple hundreds of dollars away for a track day where I need to be on track at a certain time, for a window of time when I feel fairly confident some amount of time is going to be spent trying to make sure the car is working, assuming it doesn't tell me its not working catastrophically at least.
The members days I am trying to get into are much more open so I can go through some validation in a way that makes sense to me and allows me to progressively push harder as the car allows. If something needs to be fixed, I don't have to do it under a gun to make it back on track for my window, this is likely to make for a better more robust fix. All this should mean I am able to do more, faster which in a perfect world will mean I can push the car harder while expending less laps to get to a point of confidence.
In other news, I really like the OMP seat I put in but really didn't like how close to the wheel it put me. I was using the BK mounts off the Recaro and while they got the seat in the car, it was obvious the mounts were not made for the seat. So, a new set of BK mounts specific for the OMP arrived today and hopefully they will push the seat back the couple inches I need, if they put it whee the Recaro used to be it will be perfect. I've said it before but it bears repeating, the BK stuff is awesome so if you're considering putting a seat in, just buy their stuff - it is the best I have seen from my time playing with cars from a quality standpoint.
I hope you are driving it around putting it through heat cycles to see if any minor issues happen while you wait for the track..
Nope - the car has the rowdy turned to 11. Between the ride height, noise and restricted steering lock from running 275 front's, the car is no longer confused - it is a track car.
Plus, just can't get much info from driving it on the street, the car has already seen a lot of heat on the dyno in what was an overall very violent experience for all involved. To go further than it's been is going to take some prolonged load.
OK... make up track day is next week and the forecast is looking perfect.
Got the seat reinstalled with the right brackets and it's pretty much perfect as far as position. The floor mount makes the seat assembly so stiff, there is NO play in it at all. LFG.
Clearly no longer the Ice Cream go-getter. Really nice work. Good luck with the shakeout, it will be a great experience in itself. Where do you think you are relative the suspension settings? Last year, I recall, didn't have alot of time with it before the gearbox went. Is there any work left to do there?
Clearly no longer the Ice Cream go-getter. Really nice work. Good luck with the shakeout, it will be a great experience in itself. Where do you think you are relative the suspension settings? Last year, I recall, didn't have alot of time with it before the gearbox went. Is there any work left to do there?
Thanks Paul - yeah trips on the road are out, mainly cause of the steering with the 275's but I could throw the 19's on I guess. Ya know, for really special occasions.
Soooo much work to do on suspension. I have a ton of data from last year, you're right I didn't have a lot of time but what I did have was spent trying to learn a strategy for making adjustments. I'm hoping some of what I learned will still have some validity but won't know until I know.I still haven't put the car on scales to get the corner balance checked, at least for day one, handling is not an initial priority, if I get to the point where I'm making suspension changes on day 1, a lot more went right than I am anticipating.
I was thinking today about some of the data I am most interested in seeing with the new setup compared to old. I was going to send you an email but maybe we can keep it on the thread as the exchange of ideas may be of interest for some folks.
For me:
1, Speed traces - HP is great to brag about but the speed traces on the new setup compared to old will be, I think - the number 1 way to judge just how much of an improvement that HP makes.
2. Brake zones - with the change in power hopefully meaning higher speeds, how much is that going to affect the braking zones.
3. How much longer to get back to WOT, I imagine the new setup is going to require a lot more judicious throttle approach, will be interesting to compare new to old. The old setup allowed a pretty quick commit back to full throttle.
08-16-2023, 12:03 AM
